This is my final post from Australia, the focus of our Great Antipodean Adventure. We have spent almost nine weeks travelling around Oz from Perth on the West coast, to Margaret River, Uluru, Adelaide, drove the Great Ocean Road to Melbourne, Gold Coast, motorhome along the East Coast to Tropical North Queensland and then to Sydney; through every state apart from Tasmania.
It has been amazing! The people of Australia are a friendly bunch. We have yet to meet a grumpy person, albeit two came close, both in Sydney! The food has been fresh, cheap and delicious. Fuel is incredibly cheap at 50% of the cost in the UK! The flora and fauna are just unbelievable, the country is huge, you could fit the whole of Europe into it and still have a margin around the edge.
Lesley and I have been very fortunate with the weather which has never been too hot, cold, wet or humid - though we were told by several folk in different parts of the country that it has been unusually mild for the time of year! We managed 30+ C in several places and humidity in the range of 80%, not our favourite climate, and although it rained from time to time, mostly in tropical Queensland, we never got really wet.
It will be strange to be home but not before a brief stop in Singapore.
We started our day at Paddy's Market to purchase a few souvenirs, including a bag into which to put some of the things that were not going to fit in our two cases. I could not believe the size of the aubergines or Chinese lettuce and as usual, the food looked amazingly fresh and tasty, apart from the cherry tomatoes we purchased to eat with our lunch but we should have known that at a $1 a punnet they were not going to be great.
We took the recently opened Light Railway to Darling Harbour and visited the National Maritime Museum. The special exhibition was on child migrants, mostly from the UK, it revealed some very happy and equally miserable children who suffered neglect and abuse. Whilst their journey to a new life in Australia was often full of fun, new clothes, being well fed; arrival in Australia and subsequent placement was often bleak and caused severe emotional problems for the rest of their lives.
Other exhibitions revealed interesting facts about the First Nations, explorers and settlement and sea life and there were ships to see in the harbour. We opted not to pay the extra fee to go onboard these ships, including a full sized replica of the Endeavour, that carried Cook to Australia, but marvelled at how small she was to carry nearly 100 persons on that first voyage of discovery.
We picniced overlooking the harbour and the collection of historic ships, then made our way back to the apartment to pack and get ready for our dinner cruise tonight. As usual Lesley was super organised and has managed to pack everything into the two original cases with one, we hope, to remain shut whilst we are in Singapore. The additional bag has relieved the pressure in and weight of both cases and also the weight of our two carry on bags.
We set off on a bus for the dinner cruise from Circular Quay on Sydney 2000, a ship of the Captain Cook Line. The traffic was worse than yet experienced but we arrived in good time. Seated at a window we had a good view thoroughout the cruise of the harbour and skyline at night under a new moon.
The menu included trout and beef salad starters, salmon and chicken mains and several desserts. Lesley and I both chose the lemon and lime tart which was pleasant but lacked the citrus bite I had expected. We were amply supplied with wines and water and entertained by a keyboard player and singer. We even smooched and jived a little, but then it was our last night, we were never going to see any of these folk again, so we let our hair down a bit!
Reasonably early to bed as we have an early start tomorrow and an 8 hour flight to Singapore.
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