Wednesday 4 September 2024 – For subscribers, or those reading through these pages sequentially, this entry will likely cause some confusion and I apologise for that. This page is about our last full day in Melbourne, which I accidentally forgot to write about at the time, possibly in the excitement of discovering the unusual way that Virgin Australia was buggering us about in regard to our forthcoming flight to Tasmania.
One of the great things about our time in Melbourne was – like our plans for Sydney and Brisbane – a chance to catch up with friends whom we hadn’t met for many years. The centre piece of today was A Nice Lunch with Sharon and David, a couple we had met on a walking holiday in Slovenia back in 2016; we had shared a house with them, walks up hill and down dale with them (lots of that in the Julian Alps in Slovenia!) and many laughs over lunch and dinner. We knew they lived in the Melbourne environs and so were delighted that they were prepared to do the slog into the city to share a lunch with us.
The venue was the Flower Drum, in Melbourne’s Chinatown, and a decent walk for us from the hotel. The walk gave us an opportunity to seek out some more of the various bits of street art that can be found in the city streets. On the way, we passed this sign
which might be said to sum up Australia – but only in a lovingly joking manner, you understand.
We revisited Hosier Street
and discovered (as reported earlier) that the painted-over artwork was still surprisingly unredecorated.
There was some grand statuary outside the Grand Hyatt hotel
and we passed the very attractive St. Michael’s Uniting Church.
Jane had discovered other corners to look for murals.
For lunch, we headed into Chinatown
and had a delightful couple of hours with Sharon and David, catching up on the intervening years since we last met. On holiday While travelling, one meets many people, but it’s rare to form a lasting connection with fellow travellers, and it was lovely to find that this connection was still strong.
After lunch we needed to go for a walk. Obviously. We passed Parliament House
and found many more decorated buildings to gawp and attempt to photograph.
There was some great decor to be admired
and – possibly – a genuine Banksy!
This was alongside some other stencilled-type artwork.
On the way back to the hotel, I managed to get a reasonable photo of St. Paul’s Cathedral,
some nice mosaic artwork by Flinders Street Station
(sadly, the chap wasn’t about to leave; I think he was a bouncer) and some more building decoration on the way back to our apartment.
So ended our last full day in Melbourne, and a very pleasant one it was, too. The plans for the morrow were simply to get to Hobart in Tasmania, which we achieved, but not without, as I’d mentioned earlier, a frisson of frustration courtesy of the Virgin Australia ticketing system. To read all about that, the narrative continues here. Meanwhile, I’ll get back to our time in Brisbane, if that’s all right with you. Sorry for the interruption of the otherwise smooth flow.
Monday 23 September 2024 – It turned out that the plans that Lorraine and Paul had laid for our last full day in the Sydney environs involved going for a walk. Obviously. The plan was to walk from Manly to Spit Bridge – right circle to left circle
but not in a straight line; rather via the Clontarf headland. This was not a circular walk, so Paul drove us to Seaforth, just to the left of the left-hand circle, and we took the bus down into Manly. The buses, like the trains and the ferries are (a) cheap and (b) well-organised; using phone or card, one could just tap on and tap off, and the charge for the trip was Aus$1 – about 50p.
Clearly, to undertake the walk, we needed to be fortified by a robust breakfast. Fortunately, L & P had a plan for that, too; frukost på Fika – breakfast at Fika, a Swedish café in Manly. (Fika is a Swedish word to convey the idea of having comfy coffee and cake in a café)
I was particularly taken with the decor in the loo. A quick shout-out to Topaz photo software here. I didn’t realise at the time, but the photo I took of the decor was very out of focus (I was in a hurry and didn’t check the photo there and then as I didn’t want to be seen as as a man who takes photographs of toilets). Up to now, an out-of-focus original has been basically a lost photo, but with modern technology and processing power, errors from photographer incompetence can sometimes be rectified.
Original out-of-focus picture
Sharpened version
The building next to Fika is rather nicely turned out.
and there were a couple of other nice arty touches on our walk through the town
to Manly cove (the other side of the North Head peninsula from the famous Manly Beach).
The start of the walk offered a nice view across to South Head – you can see the Macquarie Lighthouse and the Signal Station.
One of the nice things about walking around these areas of Australian cities is the individuality of some of the houses;
another is coming across things that seem a little counterintuitive.
Apparently, they get Little Penguins here at some times of the year. Not today, though.
The vegetation offered some excellent frames for the lovely views we saw as we walked.
North and South Heads as seen from Manly Cove
One of the great things about Australian beaches is the routine inclusion of ocean pools to supplement the open water swimming available. This is the one at Fairlight Beach, the next one around from Manly Cove.
We came across a couple of fearless sulphur-crested cockatoos as we went along the trail;
for some reason they had markings on their backs
though we don’t know why.
The coastal path we were walking involves a lot of up and down, so I was glad that the weather was benign and not too hot. Climbs were rewarded with some great views across various parts of Sydney Harbour, as well as back towards the city.
At one stage, there were petroglyphs beside the path. Some were reasonably easy to comprehend;
some less so.
(Upside down kangaroo? Really?)
A well as scenery, there was wildlife to admire – a couple of Australian Water Dragons, of reasonable size.
(The one above was actually quite reluctant to get out of the way of the people walking the path, which I found unusual – normally, lizards shift themselves swiftly as humans approach.)
The up-and-down continued
as did the views, which had some sensational colours,
and we passed some formidable rock formations.
A very photogenic corner,
and two sorts of housing: spacious, refined, all mod cons
and less so.
Shortly afterwards, after all the ups and downs of the coastal path, we reached Spit Bridge
which was our planned destination. Trouble was, we were at sea level, and the car was
up 154 steps, so there was one more climb to do. The view at the top was worth it, though,
and you can see, on the right of the photo, that the Spit Bridge is a lifting bridge, something I didn’t know until today.
It was a great walk, just over 11km, or 7 miles,
and, as I say, quite up and down.
Normally, on a 7-mile walk, I’d use about 700 calories; this walk used over 1,200; but it had everything – sunshine, coffee, views, wildlife, historic petroglyphs and lots (and lots) of steps; an excellent day.
Tomorrow, we have to leave our friends in Belrose, but we head further north, to see friends in Brisbane. We have a few days there, so I’m hoping we might get to see some nice scenery and maybe some wildlife. Who knows what the coming days hold?
Saturday 21 September – Today marked a change in pattern of our holiday travels, as we left our hotel room so that we could stay with friends for a few days, first in the Sydney environs, before then moving on to Brisbane. But I had a photo project first, which meant going out before breakfast so I could catch the morning light. I suppose the photo I was after is something of a cliché, but my first attempt, from yesterday’s wanderings, was less than satisfactory
because the light was all wrong, and if I’m going to perpetrate a cliché, I might as well do it properly. In the morning light, the scene looks much better to my eyes.
The journey to get to the photo location was pleasant – the temperature was lovely and the sun was shining. Because it was reasonably early, the sun was low and I found myself at one point casting no fewer than three shadows – one behind me from the real sun and two others from reflections from buildings in Sydney’s CBD.
The lovely light gave me a second chance to capture some scenes I‘d tried yesterday, but which looked better today,
as well as one that I hadn’t.
My vantage point for the Opera House shot was also a good one to construct a panorama of the city
which looks a bit skinny on the web page, but I think might be a good candidate for the wall at home.
After this very satisfactory start (and the usual rather chaotic breakfast at the Intercontinental), we checked out and headed for Circular Quay, and caught the 11 o’clock ferry to Mosman. Jane prowled the decks checking out the view on the 20-minute journey across the water.
At Mosman Bay, we met our friends Lorraine and Paul, with whom we would be staying for the next couple of days. They live in Belrose, a northern suburb of Sydney, and under normal crcumstances it would have been more logical to connect at Manly; but this weekend was the Manly Jazz Festival, rendering parking and other such practicalities out of the question, so Mosman Bay (lower circle below) it was.
The plan for the day was to get towards North Head and stroll down into Manly to see what entertainment the Jazz Festival might offer, so Paul found a suitable parking spot, at North Head Sanctuary, where there was immediately a fantastic view back towards the city.
This photo really demonstrates the popularity of boats around the harbour – with an environment like Sydney Harbour and the sort of weather we were enjoying, then why wouldn’t you?
Of course, being at North Head, we could see across to South Head, and the landmarks we’d passed yesterday – the Hornby Lighthouse
and the Macquarie Lighthouse.
You can just about make out the radar mast in front of the signal station.
North Head clearly had an important military role to play in days past, possibly fuelled by fears at one stage of Japanese aggression. In an enlightened move, the military area has been turned into National Park rather than being sold for development. It features a number of military installations, some of which are used as educational installations, such as a gun emplacement, which has information boards describing how it was used.
Other military buildings are now used as a quarantine station, down by the shore, and there were barracks
parts of which are now used as an entertainment venue
and parts of which are now home to small businesses.
There are also reminders about Australia’s involvement in so many theatres of war.
The path back to Manly led through bush
and past some wildlife, such as this Burton’s legless lizard
and a pair of brush turkeys, which are common enough to be a nuisance to the locals but which were new to our eyes.
Male Brush Turkey
Female Brush Turkey
They’re called brush turkeys (not bush turkeys) for a reason.
When we saw Manly Beach on the descent (the leftmost beach in the photo below), it was clear that smoke we’d seen earlier was actually quite a significant bush fire.
As we headed down towards Shelly Beach, the path continued along the cliff tops overlooking these beaches, and there was a sombre message among the lovely views.
Shelly Beach presented a rather dissonant juxtaposition:
people having fun on the beach in the foreground whilst a bush fire raged in the background. (We learned later that it was a controlled burn that went somewhat out of control, but no-one was injured.)
On the walk past Shelly Beach, there’s an interesting little art installation built into the rocks,
and then we reached Manly, where the market had been displaced to beachside
by the clearly very popular Manly Jazz Festival.
Manly was very crowded
so (having queued for quite a while to get some splendid ice cream at Gelato Messina) we found a taxi to take us back to the car and headed over to Lorraine and Paul’s house in Belrose for the evening.
Sunday 22 September 2024.
The next day was a chance for us to catch up with more friends who lived in the area – something of a “small world” story. Two years ago we were exploring Canada on a major trip, one segment of which was spent based in Churchill, on the Hudson Bay, looking for polar bears. Whilst there, we met two delightful Australian ladies, Vicki and Kris, who were pretty much at the start of a fantastically impressive world tour over the space of a whole year. It turned out that they live in Mona Vale, which is near to Belrose and so we arranged to meet them to catch up with them. Vicki picked us up, and took us for a tour of the local beaches.
Bilgola Beach
Newport Beach, from Bilgola Lookout
Barrenjoey Lighthouse, Palm Beach
North Palm Beach
and Palm Beach proper, where I got a nice close-up of a kookaburra.
Whilst we were with Vicki and Kris, we were visited by a flock of rainbow lorikeets, which are beautifully coloured and really quite noisy.
Kris cooked a wonderful lunch for us and their friends Rosie and Astley, who were great company and whose extensive travel history enlarged our already-daunting list of possible travel destinations before Vicki took us back to Belrose where we could reflect on a lovely occasion. It’s quite common to agree to keep in contact with people met on holiday whilst travelling, but actually rare to find that the connection is deep and enduring. We had met Vicki and Kris on the UK leg of their world trip, and it was clear that they were grand people to stay in touch with; that it was so close to Belrose and such a good opportunity to meet again was a large slice of luck; similar to the slice of luck that enabled us to get back in touch with Sharon and David when we were in Melbourne*.
We have one more day staying in Belrose with Lorraine and Paul. I wonder what plan they’ve hatched for our final day in the Sydney area?
* I’m embarrassed to find out that I didn’t write this day up; it was filled with Melbourne murals and a lovely lunch with David and Sharon, whom we met on a walking holiday in Slovenia back in 2016 and formed a connection similar to the one which kept us in touch with Vicki and Kris. With apologies to them, I will rectify this omission as soon as our schedule permits.
