Last day in Sydney, mopping up a few sights before my flight leaves in the evening. I picked a ferryboat at random and went out to the western suburbs, passing under the Harbour Bridge. The area becomes scenic very quickly, small houses perched on the hills around the western bay with numerous little coves and…

Took a ferry to Manly, a suburb that is part of Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Corso, the main street, is short and connects the bay ferry terminal on one side of town with the ocean on the other side. They have a former army reserve with a quarantine station at the North Head, which is opposite…

Checked out The Rock. It used to be a dangerous part of town a hundred years ago but its old brick warehouses got remodeled into expensive restaurants, cafes, and galleries. Some of its alleys are more modern redevelopments that pay less attention to the old style, but it’s still a very nice neighborhood in a…

Yesterday was mountains, today is beaches. Sydney has countless beaches. Started at Bronte Beach, one of Sydney’s Eastern Beaches facing the ocean, and walked to Bondi Beach, Sydney’s most famous beach. There is path that connects them all, and in November there is an event called Sculpture By The Sea where perhaps a hundred sculptures…

Blue Mountain National Park begins 60km west of Sydney. It’s very accessible: a six-lane highway, double train tracks, and lots of buses connect Sydney to the park. It can get quite busy. All the viewpoints and trails in the park are tamed – perfect roads lead there, there is parking, fences, guardrails, and stone steps.…

Ok, promise, Sydney will be the last distraction in this blog before the action returns to Asia. I arrived in the early afternoon and had time for a walk around Sydney Harbor. Sydney Opera’s roof is every bit as extravagant as it looks on the postcards. It’s different from every angle. The waterfront between the…

Took a tour to Mt. Field because there is no other good way of getting there. The driver proudly pointed out attractions on the way there: a zinc smelter, a paper mill, and most importantly, a Cadbury chocolate factory. The first stop in the Mt. Field National Park was Russell Falls, a large waterfall at…

Did Hobart’s museum circuit during the short time window when things open here. The Maritime Museum has all sorts of models and items used during Australia’s colonization; the Penitentiary Chapel is a church on the upper floor and solitary confinement cells – some only a little larger than coffins – for British convicts, and the…

The plane from Melbourne to Hobart on the island of Tasmania takes a little over an hour. I am staying at Battery Point Manor in a huge room with a view of the ocean. It’s in a quiet neighborhood where people frame their driveways with flower beds, right above Salamanca Square at Princes Wharf, a…

After a final look at the Twelve Apostels in the morning, we went to Otway, Australia's westernmost rain forest. They have a nature trail through the forest, dense with underbrush, huge ferns, tall trees covered in moss, and fire hoses. It’s so dense that it would be impossible to move away from the path. Birds…

The Great Ocean Road is Victoria’s main attraction. The coastline is very rugged and consists of steep limestone cliffs, washed out by the ocean so that a number of tiny islands and pillars have remained standing out in the ocean. The deep blue ocean and sky, the yellow limestone cliffs, the white surf, and the…

The Grampian Mountains are west of Melbourne, just past the Pyrenees. Australia is almost completely flat so they have to economize – anything you can’t throw a tennis ball over is a mountain, and the Grampians peak at 1167 meters. The road there is green farmland, site of Australia’s Gold Rush in the 1850s. The…

Ventured beyond downtown: Brunswick St in Fitzroy has lots of little offbeat shops, restaurants, galleries, and bookstores, and is not at all glossy like the central business district. It’s fun to walk and browse here. If they could only lose a couple of lanes of the busy Brunswick St, and maybe add a few head…

At the travel agency they told me that the spire at the Fed Square looks just like the Eiffel Tower. Boys and girls, if you think that this thing looks anything like the Eiffel Tower, you need to get out more! Fed Square is a somewhat sterile cluster of museums, boring boxy buildings with funky…

Never had so much opportunity to chat with customs officials as today, arriving in Melbourne. They wanted to know what I do, what’s in my backpack, and how I can afford to visit so many places. They browsed through my pictures to verify my statements. Apparently Bali is a major source of illegal drugs. That,…