After a couple of busy, tiring days we decided to take it easy today and had a late breakfast, then did some washing and ironing as we are getting through a our clothes quite quickly in this heat. John went to get a haircut and then we just loafed around the hotel until 5pm when we left to go on our Harbour Dinner Cruise.
Toured around the harbour whilst having a nice meal and listening to quite a good duo, a lovely evening.
Surprised this one came out as the background is through smoky glass.
As it was a lovely warm night, we walked back to the hotel from Circular Quay, despite one of us moaning all the way!
ANZAC memorial
After the long, tiring day and late night yesterday, we had to get up at 5.45 am to be collected at 7.00 am for our day trip to the Blue Mountains.
The coach drove across the Bridge
and steadily climbed up the hill and two hours later we arrived at the Three Sisters lookout point in the Blue Mountains.
After that we went on to the Scenic Park and took a glass bottomed gondola across the ravine and another one down to the valley floor for a short walk around the forest (watching out for nasty creatures!) and then a trip on an inclined railway back up the mountainside. The railway was a 52 degree incline track which nearly tipped us out of our seats as it went up.
Following a quick lunch break at Leura (more shops!) we went to the Featherstone Animal Sanctuary to see Koalas, Kangaroos, Wombats, Alligators and other iconic animals of Australia.
We paid for a photograph of us with a Koala, but the official photo is awful and will not see the light of day! The one taken with our camera is a bit better
The Koala fur was quite rough and he is real, although he does look stuffed. We were so hot, it was at least 45 degrees at this point. I know he is a he as my face was level with the business end.
Next we took a ferry back to Sydney from Parramatta which was wonderful once the journey started, with a lovely breeze to dry us out!
Back at the hotel for 7 pm, so we had another shower and change of clothes and walked round to the nearest Pizza restaurant for dinner. Knackered!
After breakfast we wandered round to the Tram stop to catch a tram to Darling Harbour, which turned out to be mostly restaurants and shops. Having walked right round, we watched the swing bridge open up
and walked up the harbour side towards Sydney Harbour Bridge, via Millers Point. By this time it was about 1.00 pm and seriously hot with no shade to be had whilst walking round the headland. We eventually found some trees in a small park to flop under to recover.
Steps we decided not to go up but walked round the headland instead!
After much to-ing and fro-ing we finally reached the bridge road level to walk across, but it was much too hot to walk all the way across and back, so decided to climb one of the stone pylons to view the Harbour. (We were later told that the four pylons are not actually connected to the bridge, but were added later as people didn’t feel confident in crossing just a steel bridge – as soon as they were built usage of the bridge increased dramatically!)
The lovely (but not cool) breeze at the top made the 200 odd steps almost worthwhile! Back down again and we walked a little way across the bridge and back again, just because we had to.
After a quick look round the Rocks area (again shops and restaurants) and a dash back to the hotel for a freshen up (running out of clothes quite quickly here!), we went back into the centre for an Open Air Cinema show at Mrs Macquarie’s Point. We hoped to find something light to eat on the way to the venue, but there was nothing suitable so ended up having just an ice cream sandwich for tea once we reached the cinema.
The film was ‘Destroye’r starring Nicole Kidman and (unknown to us) it was the premiere of the film and she was there to introduce it. When we arrived there was a long queue of people and we couldn’t work out what it was all about until a security guard told us. As we weren’t the least be interested in seeing a ‘celebrity’ we thought we’d get ahead of the game and get a good seat in the front of the screen. But when we went in all the seats had reserved stickers on them so we ended up at the back on the end of a row, which turned out to be fine once the screen was raised. Our position was also excellent to see the lit up Opera House with the Bridge in the background, which was a good thing as the film was dire! The flying foxes also lightened the boring bits as they flew around and screeched at inappropriate moments. Very polite applause at the end of the film so we imagine we weren’t the only ones under-whelmed.
Walked back to the hotel at just before midnight and the temperature was still 30 degrees or so.
In all we walked over 12 miles and climbed 71 flights of stairs today – in 38 degrees. Must want our heads looking at again!
We got up at 3 am for our 3.45 am taxi to Christchurch Airport for our flight to Sydney at 6.35 am. At check-in we were asked for our Visas to enter Australia – news to us! Don’t panic! We were told we could try to apply on-line as we may have enough time before check-in closes, or we could pay them $75 each and they would fast track them. Just what we needed at 4.30 am! Powered up the lap top and iPad to have a go ourselves.
After a false start entering details onto a facilitators website before finding the Australian Government website, the applications went through smoothly and Visas were issued almost instantaneously. Saved ourselves £100!
Two hour flight to Sydney and we arrived at our hotel by 10.30 am – it is scorching hot and humid. After a coffee, whilst we waited for our room to be made ready, we had a quick shower and change of clothing to venture into Sydney feeling refreshed – which lasted for all of 5 minutes!
Took a train to Circular Quay which is a bustling port area where all the ferries using Sydney Harbour come in, along with massive cruise ships and thousands of tourists for the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House. Collected our tickets from the Opera House for this evening’s performance and dived into an air-conditioned restaurant for lunch and cool down.
The concrete and rubber mats were so hot I had to perch quickly for this photo!
After lunch we wandered round to the Botanical Gardens and Government House grounds, where John sweet-talked a lady into letting us inside to see the ballroom, which was beautiful.
Government HouseDesperately seeking shade!
Boiling hot again, so at 4 pm we went to the Opera House to cool down with a glass of bubbly for our 5 pm show, which was a one and a half hour performance of popular opera arias, so we hopefully we will recognise some of them.
On the terrace of the Opera House, wind is picking up!
The show was excellent with a very entertaining compere who explained each of the operas from which the song was taken and the singers were keen to make it a light entertainment performance too. Most of the tunes we recognised and when the two sopranos sang the ‘Flower Duet’ from the opera ‘Lakme ‘ the hairs on our arms stood on end – truly breath-taking (Google it and you’ll see what we mean!) Nessun Dorma followed that, also amazing to hear it sung live and the then finale was an audience participation of Libiamo Ne’ Lieti Calici from La Traviata (Google that one too, you’ll recognise it!) – a really memorable evening, though it hasn’t convinced us to go see a full Opera!
We were back on the streets by 7 pm so wandered around the harbour to see the Bridge close up. As we walked we saw some massive bats swooping across the water to some trees near the bridge. They looked just like the Batman Spotlight, they were huge; but nobody else was paying them any attention. Looked them up when we got home, they are Grey Headed Flying Foxes, the size of Buzzards, and there are hundreds of them roosting in the trees in Sydney.
Everywhere we’ve travelled we seem to have arrived the day after a massive community event, or have had to leave a day before, and Sydney is no exception – we have managed to time our arrival for the day after Australia Day, which is a massive festival held throughout the country with huge free events throughout the harbour area.
Drop off day today, so we cleared the van down, gave away any food we had left, packed our suitcases and left our last campsite. We drove into Christchurch to drop our luggage off at our hotel and then headed out to the airport where the hire centre was. Breezed through the drop off quickly and caught a bus into town.
We have driven 3218 kms in the south island.
Back in town we wandered over to the beer and food festival in the park to have a look, as recommended by the tram driver yesterday, but they wanted $50 each just to get in. As we only wanted to spend an hour or so there we decided not to bother and went for lunch in town before going into the Quake Museum, devoted to the recent earthquakes. An interesting hour or so listening to people speak of their experiences and seeing photographs of the destruction and the work required to get the city back on it’s feet again. Quite horrific, for everyone in the city was affected in some way.
Back to the hotel to update blog and get an early night as our flight out tomorrow is 6.35 am so 3 am wake up call required (missed that one when checking our itinerary)!
We’ve had a wonderful time in New Zealand and shall be sad to leave and hope to come back one day.
We left Akaroa and took the tourist drive towards Christchurch which took us over to the east coast bays of the peninsular, climbing over big hills with lovely views of Akaroa inlet as we went. We stopped at Pigeon Bay to have coffee and then when we made to continue there was a road sign saying ‘road not suitable for campervans’. Now they tell us! Had to take the road back most of the way we had come to SH75, the main road to Christchurch.
Arrived at our site at about 2 pm and caught the 3.30 pm bus into the city centre.
There is plenty of evidence of the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes, buildings in rubble or shored up to try to restore them; vacant lots where building have been removed and buildings obviously unoccupied with visible cracks in the exterior.
Christchurch Cathedral
But they have made massive strides to transform the city by rebuilding in quality materials, relaying whole areas at high risk of liquefaction during earthquakes which involved re-homing thousands of people and setting up street art and murals to prettify the town during the rebuild. It will be a really lovely place when completed.
We took a tram ride around the town with the driver pointing out all the destruction and the new buildings, very interesting and entertaining.
Refurbished tramTram interior
Found a nice restaurant for dinner and then caught the bus back to the campsite.
We woke to bright sunshine and a clear sky but there was a very cold southerly wind which kept the day quite cool.
Generally pottered around, doing the laundry and van maintenance in the morning and then went for a walk in the afternoon and saw some surprising beasts!
Lovely day today so we went down to the beach for a swim and sunbathe before getting on the Manutara, a 47ft classic yacht built in 1946, for a sail round the harbour to hopefully see some dolphins. We didn’t see a great deal of wildlife on the way out, despite being told to look out for dolphins, penguins and apparently hundreds of shags diving for fish. As usual didn’t see a thing, but John got to steer the boat for a while, along with all the men on board as the only crew member was the owner.
We had a good sail for an hour or so in a nice stiff breeze and listened to the entertaining patter of the owner.
When it was time to head back the sails were lowered and engines started, and the dolphins appeared as if they were waiting for this to happen. They were Hector’s Dolphins the smallest and rarest in the world, who are fairly solitary creatures not usually found in groups, so we were so lucky to see 6 of them riding our bow wave and generally having fun.
They stayed with us for about 5 minutes, but it was very difficult to get photographs as they moved so quickly.
As we reached port the weather had changed to rain so we went straight back to the van for a shower, dinner and to see whether or not John had managed to get any pics.
At about 6pm we were sitting in the van and suddenly heard a whooshing noise. Looking out of the window we could see the wind picking up and the clouds moving up the hillside completely obliterating the view. The wind continued to rise in less than a minute so that the van was rocking about and people were rushing around trying to save their tents and possessions. We have never seen weather change as quickly as that before. One tent across the path was collapsing and inflating in the wind like a pair of bellows, shaking off the rain every time it inflated, until it finally collapsed. We watched our neighbours in a permanently sited caravan with an added wooden extension frantically holding on to their roll out awning until they could wind it in. Didn’t offer to help! Several people had to spend the night in the kitchen and play rooms on the site. The wind and rain carried on for a good few hours so we went to bed.
We’ve driven all round the country covering over 6000 km, most of the time with hardly another vehicle in sight, but the night we decide to park next to the road is when they all come out! Unbeknown to us there was a milk processing plant in one direction and an abattoir in the other, so all night double length milk and stock trucks trundled past every 30 seconds or so (or so it seemed). Not to mention the logging lorries! Bit of a restless night all round.
We were on our way by 9.30 am to Akaroa on the Banks Peninsular close to Christchurch. After 3 days of fairly flat countryside we suddenly started climbing again over the hills that led to the Akaroa inlet with a stunning view of the harbour as we topped the hill.
We decided we’d had enough of Freedom Camping and we weren’t sure how much gas we had left, so checked into a nice campsite on the hill overlooking the harbour. There was a steep path down to the town so we wandered down in the afternoon and spent an hour or so on the beach before returning to the van to change and go back down for dinner in a nice French restaurant for a treat.
Today we drove further up SH1 towards Christchurch, stopping at the Moeraki Rocks, the rocks on the front of this blog. These are spherical boulders on the sea shore which can be seen at low tide, quite a few spread out over 100 metres or so. They were really strange, some were being eroded from the cliff side – most peculiar, though too many people around for John’s photographic requirements.
It wasn’t me, honest!
After that we went on to Oamaru to look at more ‘old’ buildings. Oamaru has declared itself Steampunk capital of the world which is a science fiction genre set in the Victorian era of futuristic steam driven machines, like time machines. $20 to go into the Steampunk HQ which was quite imaginative, but glad it didn’t cost more than a tenner!
Steam Punk museumSteam Punk museum
Following lunch in the van we moved on to Timaru which John wanted to see as Don, his Dad, served on the Timaru Star in the Merchant Navy. Not much to see in the town but we decided we would Freedom Camp tonight and our Campermate app said we could stay overnight in a town centre car park. However, after walking round the town we noticed a sign saying that the only place to Freedom Camp in the town was another car park by the Port which did not look too pleasant so we drove on up the SH1 looking for another place to camp about 20km away. But about 15km later we spotted a picnic area car park which allowed overnight stays, so following much doubt and misgivings on Clare’s part, we parked up for the night.
