Chris & Rose's Excellent Adventures.      

       Australia, 6-I-2002 -> 20-I-2002

Holiday time again, but we only have a few weeks free now that we have family at home, plus all the chaos going on since September the 11th we felt we needed a close, safe & short stint to Australia to keep the travel bug satiated.  We chose two weeks spread over the three cities; Adelaide, Sydney & Melbourne... for a bit of shopping, a bit of relaxation & the sacramental Business Class meals with Laptop DVD's & games flights which we love.


Photos:  (click the image to enlarge)

       Pictures from Sydney

	Sydney was in the midst of a terrible bush fire season when we visited, clouds of smoke & fires lapping at the edge of the city were our welcome; thus many of the pictures have a hazy look to them.  Here we have the Opera House, with the HMAV Bounty, of Captain Bligh & the Pitcairn Islands Fame.
	We took a dinner cruise on the HMAV Bounty, which incidentally was built in New Zealand, which was the high point of the Sydney tour, a beautiful warm summers night with some great food & a great view... here we have the Sydney Harbour Bridge & Opera House.
	Sydney is built on a rock-shelf, which has lent itself to supply the stone & a solid, stable platform for many beautiful buildings.  Here we have the Town Hall, with St. Andrews Cathedral in the background.
	Hyde Park cuts a 4 block hole into the middle of the city, & lends a beautiful setting for the ANZAC Memorial.
	Hyde Park from ground zero, with the imposing St. Mary's Catholic Cathedral behind it.
	St. Mary's again, from the front.  You may be able to make out the beggar on the steps, in the centre of the doorway, he very politely, & in proper Cambridge English asks us for some money.  When we declined & offered to buy him some food, we were met with a tirade of very coarse, Australian twanged adjectives casting disrepute on our parentage.
	The inside of St. Mary's, a beautiful vaulted gothic cathedral with the largest vault I had seen in a cathedral to date.
	Australia has a rich naval history & Sydney has a good sized Naval Museum, this is a floating wing of that in the form of the Destroy HMAS Vampire & the Submarine, HMAS Onslow.
	Sydney Aquarium was an impressive site, situated opposite the Naval Museum.  Here we have a local Crocodile of a modest 2.4 meters in length.
	It also sports an Olympic pool sized fish tank with some fish that were nearly man sized.
	Australia has some very unique wildlife; unfortunately most of it is poisonous; or at least dangerous.  The platypus has to be one more bizarre.  When specimens of this animal were sent back to England for research, it was believed that they were a hoax & that a ducks bill had been grafted to a mole.  The platypus, by the way can also be poisonous, the males carry some fighting spurs on their hind legs.
	Sydney Zoo, a rather mediocre zoo I felt, given the population of Sydney, it was a pleasant boat trip across the harbour though.

       Pictures from Adelaide

	From Sydney we flew to Adelaide, South Australia.  I will try & be polite, but it is a hole in the ground & not at all worth visiting, there are some interesting things in the surrounding areas though.  South Australia is a city state, with 90% of its 1.2 million people living in Adelaide.
	Adelaide does sport a beautiful coastal beach & boutique shopping area though,  couple that with a steady climate, a sea like glass, a cloudless sky & it can be paradise.
	This is Victoria Square, looking north towards the Town Hall.  The fountain in the centre represents the three rivers that give Adelaide its water.  Adelaide does have a fantastic Museum & a great Botanical Garden, which lent us respite to the monotony of the place.
	Hahndorf, a quaint German town to the East of Adelaide.  A good sized German speaking population was present in the settling of South Australia, & have left their mark in the form of European villages with hay roofs nestled in the brown Australian earth.  Unfortunately this is about the most culture Australia can lay claim to & these hamlets are now tourist meccas.
	The Lutheran Church at Hahndorf.  Like Canterbury, S.A. was the recipient of German migrants fleeing religious persecution in Prussia in the late 19th Century.  Queen Victoria, being 3/4's German took it to heart to resettle many of these to folk to British Colonies.  S.A. did not lock them up during the World Wars though, as we did here in NZ.
	A Vineyard in the Barossa Valley, the tree line in the background is actually Jacobs Creek, home of the famous Jacobs Creek Wines... well, famous outside Australia, the Australians themselves seem to hold it in distain.  The area was named Barossa for its similarity to the Spanish region, but the spelling did not quite carry well over the equator.
	A 30 minute plane trip south from Adelaide took us to Kangaroo Island, which is a must see place as far as Australia is concerned.  Kangaroo Island was a lot larger than I expected, but thankfully we had a local to give us a guided tour.  He was the Deputy Mayor, & he sure knew the spots to see, & just about everyone along the way it seemed.
	Beautiful white sand dunes in the south of the Island reminded me of the Sahara, here Rose takes one for a spin... we should have brought the ski's.
	Kangaroo Island was rich, to the point of overflowing, with wildlife.  This is a Thompson's Goanna I believe.  The road kill on the islands arterials was astounding, there was just about a carcass every 150 meters.
	A Koala kicks back in the afternoon sun with its infant.  Kangaroo Island Koalas are being used to re-populate mainland Australia, as the Koalas there are dying out because of an inability to reproduce... well, they have a form of VD call gonorrhoea... how Koalas got it I asked... lets not go there I was told...
	Pelicans hung around the port, waiting for fish entail dumps from the fishing boats for an easy feed.
	A NZ Seal colony on the south of Kangaroo Island was also home of a fossilised forest.  Although barley visible, the stalactite like formations on the roof of this cave are in fact the fossilised root system of a section of that ancient forest.
	I was impressed with the number of Seals in this colony, there are some 50 seals in this picture alone.  Apparently this, & many other colonies on Kangaroo Island were almost obliterated by US trappers & hunters in the 1900's.
	Kangaroo Island also had some interesting geological formations.  This is a massive Granite dome, the result of an underwater eruption that cooled in a spherical manner, apparently similar to Ayers Rock.
	The event of formation, combined with the elements & time has produced some interesting rock formations.
	Rose expresses a keen interest in geology... demonstrating some practical, day to day applications for the formations.
	Kangaroo Island must of course have Kangaroo's right...
	This one was a monster...
	Another Seal colony, the untouched nature of this island meant we could freely & closely interact with the animals, I would like to mention at this point that although they look cute & friendly, the bulls get a bit stroppy & these animals have a really strong odour of rotten fish about them.
	More seals, this colony is just holding even in its size, Killer Whales & Sharks take a huge toll on the seal pups.
	Ditto...
	One of the colonies newest breeding pairs.

       Pictures from Melbourne

	From Adelaide we flew to Melbourne, Victoria.  Now this was what we expected in a city, beautiful parks & gardens, grand buildings & plenty of mighty fine restaurants.  Here we have Parliament House, note the beautiful lamps in front of the building.
	Another beautiful building, across the road from the Parliament, this was aptly called Princess Theatre, note how the roof high points are capped with the Victorian era Royal Crowns.
	The massive Catholic Cathedral of St. Patrick is astounding, in both size, setting & beauty.  Built between 1858 & 1940, it houses beautiful stain glass windows & an ornate tile floor.
	St. Patrick's again, photographs can not portray its size.  This mammoth undertaking was the labour of Irish migrants who settled in Victoria to escape the Potato Famines of the 1850's.
	The interior of St. Patrick's.
	St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral, built 1880-92.  This church has the second highest spire of all Anglican churches in the world.  The wires in the foreground are part of the very thorough electric tram network that encompasses the city of Melbourne.
	This palace of massive proportion is the Melbourne Exhibition Centre.  Another building that left me gaping in awe at is size & magnificence... it took some 15 minutes to walk around it.  One of the fortunate things about Melbourne is that it has taken the trouble to place large parks around its beautiful buildings, thus gems such as this are not dwarfed by sky scrapers & can be appreciated in the perspective that they were built for.
	Part of the 120 year old, 100 acre, Royal Botanic Garden of Melbourne.  Certainly the prettiest gardens we visited in Australia, & very quiet also, given its central location.
	To the South of the Gardens was this massive Memorial to Australian war dead.
	The infamous MCG, Melbourne Cricket Grounds, this was the view from our hotel window,  the Australian Tennis open can be seen in full swing to the right.
	Puffing Billy, an aptly named tourist train that journeyed through the Dandelong Ranges, which are the start of the Great Dividing Range.
	Here is Puff again.
	The following 5 pictures are of Ballarat.  Ballarat was an impressive gold mining town that was active up until around 1920.  This town was known for its "easy gold" which was often found just laying on the ground in fist size nuggets.  This town has been restored & is now a must see tourist location, viewed here is a section of the main street.
	A mining train line took us through the quartz seam, gold bearing mine shafts; a most educational & informative journey where we viewed much of the original machinery used by the miners, still in working condition.  Costumed Guides told us much of what the conditions of the times were like, I was astounded with what people endured in search of that yellow stuff.
	Another shot showing gold panning in a stream, there was a Chinese tent village, plus many original wooden buildings & some twenty plus different examples of mining equipment of various forms, both great & small.
	Here we viewed a $25,000 USD gold ingot being melted down & reformed during an interesting lecture on gold & its refining techniques & uses.
	No ghost town is complete with out the expected horse & dray ride, plus the odd wild west shoot out.  Ballarat was the scene of the violent Eureka Revolt, that brought political representation for the migrant miners & their families; & has a dear place in the Australian ethos & identity.
	To the sea side town of Werribee now, this "Palace in the Paddock" belonged to the Scottish Tuneside (sp?) Brothers who seemed to own half of Victoria at one point.  This 60 room mansion was built in 1877, & was surrounded by beautiful gardens.
	Werribee Park Mansion again, this is the foyer.  The family ran cattle off great tracts of land, & made their money in beef, leather & wool which was sold to Britain.  On the long journey to Werribee by train we saw the rougher side of the Melbourne, many poor & run down suburbs surround its beautiful city centre.
	Australia was part of of the great southern continent in prehistory & is home to many great fossil fields.  This modest size sharks jaw from the Jurassic period  left me feeling humble.  I was just checking to see if it flossed.
	Back in the Dandelong Ranges now chatting to some of the wildlife, the forest was full of parakeets & sulphur crested cockatoos.
	Never one to miss a chance with nature, Rose finds out what the bird & I were talking about, by bribing it with some sunflower seeds.
	Koala... looking rather laid back I might add.
	Some Giraffes from a free range safari park at Werribee.
	A Tasmanian Devil... looks kind of harmless really.
	The Australian Eagle, surprise... surprise... it is endangered.

Movies:  (click the image to play the movies, approx. 300-700k each)

       Movies of the Journey

	An aerial view of Adelaide as we flew South towards Kangaroo Island in a very bouncy plane.
	Panorama of the Barossa Valley, which produces 60% of Australia's grapes for the wine industry.
	The red dusk of a Sydney sunset, tainted by the smoke from the bush fires is clear to see in this feed from onboard the HMAV Bounty as we sailed past the Opera House & Harbour Bridge.
	Hilton Indulgence!  This is a video of the massive suite we had when we stayed at the Sydney Hilton, I am a fairly modest man & not given to bragging, but I have to share this one with you, just because we were in shock at the size of it.
	Panorama of NE Melbourne.