Melbourne

The Melbourne adventure started on Thursday 25 May when I flew in, and made my way by airport bus and local train service to Shaun and Lindsey, and Hazel, old friends from Grahamstown/Rhodes.

On Friday I took the tram into Melbourne (one of the tram lines ends very close to Shaun and Lindsey's home - very convenient), and spent some time exploring the city centre. I started off on the South bank of the Yarra river, with a walk through the Alexandra Gardens and the Royal Botanic Gardens, and found a geocache. Along the way I encountered the Shrone of Remembrance - an enormous monument to those lost in the World Wars. After some lunch on the Southbank Promenade I spent some time exploring the centre of town, which is a maze of alleys and shopping streets, with some lovely old buildings (and some interesting graffiti art!).

On Saturday, we started off at Hazel's horse-riding lesson, during which Shaun and I went for a walk along the Yarra river. We saw a stack of wild kangaroos, and a lot of bird life while strolling along the excellent paths along the river. We then headed up the Yarra river valley, a beautiful drive through stunning scenery with hills and forests, and stopped off at the small village of St Andrews, which was having a market day. That was reminiscent of the craft markets at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, with various traders selling all sorts of good (and including some excellent local produce). From there we headed on to Kinglake where we had some lunch at a cozy bakery, before going to a nearby viewpoint with incredible views back to the coast and the city. The next stop on our Saturday drive was Olinda, reached on a drive past farms and vineyards. In Olinda we explored the National Rhododendron Gardens: beautiful public gardens and then had some afternoon tea before heading home.

Sunday 28 May was rather cold, grey and drizzly, but we set our for a drive down coast along the Eastern side of Port Philip Bay (Melbourne is at the Northern end of this enormous, protected bay - you can just make out the city in the centre of the photo, on the horizon). We started off at Ricketts Point with a chilly walk on the beach, followed by essential warming fluids from a cafe! From there we drove down to Frankston and on to Mt Eliza where we found another excellent market in progress (and I was introduced to delicious dim sims - "a Chinese-inspired meat and vegetable dumpling-style snack food, popular in Australia" as defined by Wikipedia). Having frozen enough for the day, we headed home with a brief detour to the Monash University Campus where Lindsey works. That is a very attractive campus, with an amazing "rock garden", set up by the Geology Department for a million dollars or so (i.e. about ten million Rand!).

On the Monday I headed into town on the tram again, with a stop at Deakin University where Shaun works. He was able to show me around the campus for a while, including his new VR lab and a 3D VR "cube", which was amazing. When I got to town I headed up to the Queen Victoria Market, only to find that they are closed on a Monday!. I then took the circular tram (a free touristy ride around the centre of Melbourne with canned commentary on some of the sights, in an old wooden tram car (see photo below). I spent the afternoon wandering around the National Gallery of Victoria, which had some excellent displays of old Chinese and Japanese art as well as traditional and modern European artists (and Australian artists, of course). In the evening I met up with an old school friend, Rod Stumbles,and his partner for a delicious Indian meal. It was really good to catch with Rod again, as we hadn't seen each other since leaving school.

I spent quite some time on Tuesday morning organising the details of my trip to Tasmania, then had lunch with Geoff Rehmet (a past student, now working for Dimension Data in Australia). AFter lunch I headed up to the Queen Victoria Market, only to find that they were busy packing up as they close at 14:00 (clearly I wasn't meant to experience them!). The rest of the afternoon was spent at ACMI, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, which is a museum/display of all things related to film, TV, and now digital art forms.

Brisbane

I was up fairly early on Thursday 18 May for the flight from Sydney to Brisbane, the first of several on Jet Star (a budget airline subsidiary of Quantas - similar to Mango and SAA). We had some good views of Sydney taking off and of the coastline near Brisbane coming in to land. Andre was waiting at the arrival gate to greet me (a nice feature of Aus airports is that anyone can go through security, so you can meet or see someone off right at the gate to the plane itself). After collecting my bag, we headed to Andre and Heather's home out to the West of Brisbane. That is a lovely "Queenslander" style home on two acres of eucalyptus bush/forest, and with amazing views out over the surrounding hills. After lunch, Andre headed back into work, while I relaxed. In the evening, his parents were having their Australian citizenship ceremony, to which I was able to tag along. It was really interesting to see the mix of formality and casualness that applied (a very jovial DJ character managed the whole event, with various civic officials making speeches and performing the legal "bits"), and the diversity and number of people becoming Australians. On the way to the ceremony, which was up in the North part of Brisbane, Heather took me up to a view point, Mt Coot-tha, which had superb views of the city and the Brisbane River.

The Friday morning was spent relaxing, before Heather and I went into town and picked Andre up from his work place in the city to drive up to Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast, where we were to spend the weekend in a lovely holiday flat on the beachfront. It was a little grey and drizzly, but we did go for a walk on the beach in the rain when we got there.

Fortunately, the weather had improved considerably on Saturday and we headed up North to Sunshine Beach, from where we walked along the coast to Noosa Heads. The coastal walk was beautiful, along golden beaches and over rocky cliffs. We caught a bus back to Sunshine Beach, and then headed back South of Mooloolaba for an afternoon walk around Point Cartwright. For dinner, we decided to get some fish and chips from a fish shop on the Mooloolaba docks, which sold really fresh fish, as well as cooked fish of a wide range of types. I chose the barramundi, which is very Australian, and was very delicious.

On the Sunday morning I decided that, as a matter of principle, I needed to go for a swim in the Pacific Ocean (this side of it anyway - the other side had been swum in on a visit to Hawaii several years ago!). After that I managed to fit in a quick geocache, which was very close to our holiday flat, before we checked out of the flat. We took the slow, scenic route home via Caloundra where we enjoyed another long walk along the beach front, and via Maleny for a stunning viewpoint over the Glass House Mountains. We stopped off on our way into Brisbane for tea and melktert with Andre's parents. Later on the Andre and Heather's non-resident children came around for a family dinner.

On Monday morning I went into Brisbane with Heather for the day. We explored a bit of the South Bank area, and took a River Cat ferry down and back up the river. I had lunch from Subway who had been torturing me advertising a delicious-sounding pulled pork special since I arrived in Australia - it was good, if not quite as amazing as it sounded! We also spent a bit of time exploring the Queensland Museum, which had a special exhibit of photos of the planets in the solar system, which were absolutely beautiful.

On Tuesday, while eating breakfast there were two kangaroos grazing in the garden (nice to see them in the wild)! I went into town early with Andre on his commute, and enjoyed a coffee in the City Botanic Gardens, which have an interesting mangrove walk along the river (these were the original botanic gardens, before the new gardens were established near Mt Coot-tha, and these became more of a city park than "proper" botanic gardens). I wandered around the QUT campus for a bit, which adjoins the Botanic Gardens, and has some beautiful old historical buildings, then headed across the river intended to spend an hour or so at the Queensland Maritime Museum. That turned out to be fascinating and took up a substantial part of the day. In particular they have an old warship (WW2 frigate, the HMAS Diamantina), which you can wander around quite freely with an audio tour. There was also some interesting history of the dry dock around which the Museum is based (and in which the Diamantina and a lighthouse ship are displayed). I headed back across the river and had a late lunch in the City Botanic Gardens again, before exploring the Queen Street shopping precinct. I also visited the City Hall, which includes the Museum of Brisbane with some interesting art and displays of the history of Brisbane. On my way back to meet Andre at work at the end of the day, I spent abit of time browsing around Dymocks bookstore - allegedly Brisbane's biggest, and very impressive.

Wednesday was a relatively quiet day. I did some laundry, and took a long walk in the area to get another Queensland geocache.

On the Thursday morning, I packed and Heather took me to the airport, via the Brisbane Botanic Gardens (the "proper" ones near Mt Coot-tha), where had a good wander around (a beautiful Japanese garden, and quite a lot of Southern African plants featured). We got to Brisbane airport in good time for my flight to the next stop: Melbourne.

Sydney

I was met at Sydney airport on the Friday evening, by my best friend from my school days, Patrick, who I hadn't seen for about 20 years. It was quite late by the time we got back to his house in the North of Sydney, and even later by the time we got through some of the basic catching up!

On the Saturday I met his wife Pam, and sons, Max and Tom, and in-laws, Frank and Robin. In the morning I went out for a scenic drive with Pat, mainly along the coast line near their home. We started off at West Head Lookout in the Ku-ring-gai National Park, with great views of the inlets and waterways on the coast, then drove around to Palm Beach. That was somewhat nostalgic for me as it Palm Beach is the scene of the soap opera Far and Away, (known as Summer Bay in the show - I had got rather addicted to the show during my sabbatical in the UK when a daily escape to sunny Australian beaches made a pleasant contrast to the grey, damp UK weather!). From there we headed South along the coast, stopping off at a smaller beach for some lunch and a paddle in the sea.

On Sunday 14 May, Patrick had invited another school friend (Sean O'Shea) for a braai along with some other friends (as an aside, the boerewors in Australia is really good!). In the afternoon, we went for a walk in the Ku-ring-gai Reserve, which starts only a block or so from Patrick and Pam's home.

Patrick had taken two days off work to act as my personal tour-guide (and he did an excellent job!). On the Monday, we took the train into Sydney, visiting Hyde Park, St Mary's cathedral, the Botanic Gardens, and Mrs Macquarie's chair (a natural stone ledge with views of the Sydney harbour bay). We then enjoyed a guided tour of the iconic Sydney Opera House, including some behind-the-scenes insights and great views. We walked around Circular Quay, and through The Rocks, viewed the Big Dig (an archaeological site), and then visited the Sydney Harbour Bridge Pylon Lookout. The latter is housed in one of the concrete pylons at the South end of the iconic Harbour Bridge, with a fascinating display on the construction of the bridge, and an open viewing platform on the top of the pylon with excellent views of the harbour, Opera House, city centre, etc.

On Tuesday, Patrick and took the train into the city, then caught a bus down to Coogee beach, on the coast, South of the city. We then followed a coastal walk up to the famous Bondi beach. That took us along some beautiful views of various beaches, coves, etc. We then caught a bus up to Watson's Bay, then walked up to the South Head, via Camp Cove (where I found another geocache, and we saw a Maserati stranded on the beach, which featured in that evening's news!). Camp Cove was the site of the first landings by the British in the Sydney area. After walking back to Watson's Bay, we caught a ferry up through the harbour bay to Circular Quay, with great views of the Opera House and Bridge. After grabbing a late lunch we took the train and bus home.

On Wednesday, Frank and I took a drive up North to the Australian Reptile Park. While that did feature various reptiles (not my favourite creatures!), the main reason was to see the various forms of Australian wildlife, in which the park excelled. We saw and stroked kangaroos and koalas (softer fur than I had expected). They also had almost everything except emus: wallabies, quokkas, echidnaes, Tasmanian devils, a wombat, a duck-billed platypus (smaller than I expected), flying foxes (actually bats!), and dingoes (which had the cutest puppies!). They also had some beautiful birds (which Australia has in abundance, but their beauty seems to be in inverse proportion to their cries!), including a couple of cassowaries - beautiful, prehistoric-looking large birds. On the way back, we drove past Bobbin Head, a lovely waterway/inlet near the coast.

Perth

My journey started with the overnight SAA flight to Perth, landing at midday. Nelwyn (a friend from my undergrad university days) was at the airport to greet me, and took the scenic route back to their home along the Swan River, waterfront area and centre of Perth.

The Monday was spent relaxing and recovering from jet-lag, with a quick visit to Bunnings, a ubiquitous DIY chain (Builder's Warehouse in South Africa on steroids). On the Tuesday I went out and did some geocaching in a nearby park, which was filled with a large flock of birds, which I later learned were corellas (impressive white cockatoos with flashes of red).

That evening was the RU Alumni Reunion in Perth, which was hosted at the home of the organisers. We had about 35 people there, and it was really good to meet a keen bunch of Old Rhodians with a deep interest in the University (I was the University's representative for the event). It was particularly good to meet Gail Mosdell (Thomas), another classmate of mine and Nelwyn's (the photo is Nelwyn and Gail with me), and one of my students, Greg Biegel, from several years ago.

On the Wednesday, Nick (Nelwyn's husband) and a friend of his invited me to join them for a bike ride, which was spectacular, on bike trails, through parks, and along the beach front North of Perth (the photo is from our ride on the beach front), before returning home. Later that afternoon I took the train into town and spent the afternoon exploring the city centre, and the waterfront area. In the evening Nick and Nelwyn were out to Nick's Australian citizenship ceremony, and I met Mike Nichols (an old school friend for dinner - chicken parmagiana, which I am informed is a staple of Australian cuisine!). It was really good to catch up with Mike again - he had calculated that it was about 35 years since we had last seen each other.

On the Thursday I took the train into town again, and then out to Fremantle - the harbour at the mouth of the Swan River. There I explored the beachfront including the old Roundhouse, which had a "one o'clock cannon" that was ceremoniously fired while I was there. The centre of Fremantle is made up of lovely old buildings (slightly reminiscent of Grahamstown's High Street). I also visited the maritime museum, which was excellent, particularly the tour of an old submarine on display outside the museum. After that I took a river cruise back into the centre of Perth itself, which provided commentary on the sights as we sailed past (and free wine tasting!). In the evening I went to Ikea with Nick and Nelwyn to sample the Swedish meatballs, which I had heard a lot about, but never eaten before (the Ikea is just across the road from where they live).

On Friday, Nick and Nelwyn took me to King's Park for a quick stroll around, including great views of the city and river, before I caught my flight on to Sydney, the next stop in the Great Australian Adventure.

View from King's Park

View from the boat cruise up the Swan River