Day 406: Brisbane

We came up on the overnight train from Sydney in a carriage we shared with a guy who coughed in a way that made everyone else feel terminally ill. We arrived at about 6.30 am and hauled our suitcases up the hill to the hostel.  As you can imagine, we wandered around in a bit of a daze after that.  Brisbane is smart and clean on the inside (not so much in the outskirts our train hauled through).  The best thing about it is Street Beach, an artificial lake where you can swim for free.

The Brisbane Eye

The amazing free public artificial swimming lagoon

The strangest ship I ever saw

Day 404: Birds of Australia

This post is for all the birds we managed to photograph on the Austalia trip, so it will be updated from time to time.

Pelican at Manly

White ibis in Sydney Botanical Gardens

OK, so it's not a bird.  It's a flying fox, also from Sydney.

Cockatoos from the parliamentary gardens at Canberra

A curious Cookaburra from Moreton Island.  It's so fascinated by Antonia, it let me get this close.

A blue pelican in Cairns.  I couldn't resist it.

Day 401: Canberra Bonsais and Sculpture Park

Art Gallery of Australia

We wandered to the other side of Canberra's artificial lake, across a traffic roundabout that was hard of access, but contained a number of benches for the brave pioneers who did get there.  We passed a hobo pushing his supermarket trolley, then called in at the Bonsai collection (since Mike loves Bonsai). I spent my time thinking that after all, if it's possible to design a tree artificially, it should be possible to design a city, but you would have to understand how to do it.  Canberra's designer did not. Canberra is to cities what those ridiculous camouflaged phone masts are to trees.  I'm not saying it's unpleasant to visit, but if I had to live here, I would be on drugs within a month.  Mike on the other hand is having a massive nostalgia crisis for Washington DC because everything here seems to him to be based on his own capital city.  This tells you everything about Washington DC you need to know.

Bonsai 'forest' with real tree

Fog sculpture by Fujiko Nakaya

We spent the afternoon at the Art Gallery of Australia.  It's up there with the world's more impressive art museums, obviously with a very strong collection of Aborignal art. but also good Colonial art, some Asian and a bit of European and American thrown in.  The highlight for me was Sidney Nolan's series on the life of Ned Kelly, but that's because I'm developing an interest in Australia's folk hero.  We were only allowed to take photos in the sculpture garden and around the outside of the building but we got some nice ones.

Day 401: Australia's Parliament

Since I'm being a bit scathing about Canberra, even though I liked visiting it, I had to make a special post for Australia's Parliament.  It's one of the loveliest pieces of architecture I've ever visited.  For some reason, the way it's built into an earth bank reminds me slightly of Newgrange in Ireland.  I spent my time taking photos while Mike studied the Australian version of democracy.

Day 400: Canberra Sculpture Walk

If Wellington is the coolest little capital in the world, what shall we say about Canberra?  I think what most people say about Canberra is 'where is it?'  We arrived at what appeared to be a train station in the middle of nowhere and were greeted by a convenient bus that drove us through open bush to the hostel and dropped us there.  The hostel is in the very centre of Canberra, if it can be said to have a centre.  Canberra is sort of like Milton Keynes on steroids.  In fact, Mike said the best thing to do in Canberra would be to take some drug or other and wander around imagining oneself in a science fiction movie.  When we went out after dinner to look at the local sculptures, we bumped into a number of people who were doing just that.  Many of them were pushing their supply of drugs around the huge expanses of empty space in supermarket trolleys.  Otherwise, Canberra at 7:30 pm is about as deserted as most cities at 3:30 am.  That's what you get for designing a city in which only people who can't afford cars are wandering around on foot.  The hostel charges $25 dollars a day for a bike - for two people, that's nearly as much as a rental car, and they can get away with it because walking anywhere here takes forever.  Canberra should stand as an eternal monument to how not to build a liveable city. In the meantime, I'm rather enjoying it.  Going on a sculpture walk in a deserted city at 7:30pm is about as close to a science fiction movie on acid as you can get:

Days 398 & 399: Blue Mountains

Taking a train ride out to the Blue Mountains is probably one of the cheaper things you can do from Sydney, and well worthwhile.  It is true that the blue mountains don't look especially blue, at least at this time of year.  They also don't look very mountainous, at least from the top.  Then you approach the cliff face and look out on unbroken forest for as far as the eye can see. For Europeans, the sight of so much forest, without a single road or building is quite special.  It's also a forest with an alien quality, full of unfamiliar trees and birdsong.

The Three Sisters

 The communities along the top of the cliff seemed to have vied with each other to create impressive cliff walks to attract tourists.  From Katoomba we went down the giant's stairway of 900 steps, some carved out of the rock, some reconstructed out of metal ladders.  It passes around the three sisters, an important landmark for the Aboriginal people.  After a nice flat walk through the forest, we came back up the cliff on the world's steepest funicular train. 

Wentworth Falls

The next day, at Wentworth (we went and it was worth it - Mike), we took an equally steep stairway down the cliff, then an amazing path constructed along the cliff face about halfway up.  This time, we had to climb back up around a waterfall.  We decided Wentworth won the best path competition by a small margin, though Katoomba is a better place to stay.

Day 397: Whistle stop tour of Australia starts here!

We're about to embark on an attempt to see the world's largest island in a mere six weeks. Mostly by train. Perhaps it would be better if we thought of it as the world's smallest continent, but that won't alter the distances on the ground, so hold on to your hats, sunglasses and shark repellant!  It's just lucky we've been to Melbourne and Tasmania already.