Canberra - Sydney

Today was the last day driving, we are going to stay in Sydney for the rest of the time left. Before leaving Canberra we stopped at Canberra Glassworks where it is possible to see glassmaking as it happen and view an unique exhibition.

www.canberraglassworks.com

 On road to Sydney I decided for a detour and turned off the GPS. How difficult can it be to navigate in an unknown country? Well, at first it went according to plan but after a while we saw a road sign with the name on the town we just came from. We then did a u-turn and a couple of questionable turns ending up in front of this:

You are sitting in a 2-wheel drive designed for tarmac only, in front of a stream crossing the road with no idea which way to go, what would you do?

I of cause choose to continue and crossed the stream but when the road turned into a steep dirt road I u-turned and drove back over the stream and back to a road the GPS could find and came back on track and left the GPS on for the rest of the day.

We then came to Robertson aiming for Albion Park. It was a mountain pass with hairpin bends and a 10% steep way down. What a fantastic drive.

Canberra

As yesterday today was mostly transportation and as we started out from Merimbula, we found some sandwich and coffee at a bakery down town and drove off. After typing in the address for the hotel in the GPS I noticed the arrival time was 1:30PM.

Driving at Princes Highway we saw some fantastic nature. At the most beautiful views it was impossible to stop, and when it was possible to stop it was difficult to take a picture that would capture the scenery.

At most town’s there is an info centre, they are a gold mine of suggestions of what to see and what to do in the local area, further they got a lot of detailed maps. They are easily found by the yellow “i” on a blue background. But if you are in a hurry you should try to avoid them, because it take long time to do a visit, especially if you tell you are from Denmark. And if you are the only costumer in the shop they are also very talkative.

We tried to follow one of the suggested Tourist Drives but returned to Princes Highway fairly quickly. Did I mention it was a fantastic drive?

After lunch at Batemans Bay we went on to Braidwood, it is said to be a historic town, and it properly is but it is not shown. It looked pretty “normal” to me. We tried to drive around to see if anything of interest would show up but decided to continue after a few minutes.

In Canberry we stopped at the info centre and was told it was to late to see any attractions, as it was 4:30PM even though the GPS said we should arrive 1:30PM we had stopped at to many info centres and done to many detours. So we went to the Danish embassy to take a photo and then drove to the hotel to check in.

We had a 7:30PM reservation at the Alto Tower restaurant, a rotating restaurant 60 meters above ground level with a fantastic view. During the meal we did a little more than a 360 degree rotation as one rotation takes about 90 minutes.

Buchan Caves

We started out buying breakfast “to go” and ate it overlooking the harbour.

We drove to Buchan Caves via Nowa Nowa and arrived just in time for the 10 o’clock guided tour with 3 minutes to spare.

This is one of these experiences that are very difficult to describe so I will not try.

The drive from Buchan to Orbost was spectacular. It is a small mountain road with hairpin bends and a beautiful view almost all the way down. It took more than 2 h 30 min to drive the 58 km.

                    

Looking out from the restaurant a lot of kangaroos was hopping around.

Lakes Entrance

I sat up to late night / early morning to see Djokovic-Nadal. It was a fantastic tennis match, and the longest slam final ever. 5 h and 53 min of awesome tennis.

Seeing it on TV is not the same as being at the game, but when Courier (AO winner 1992 and 1993) and Hewitt are commentators it is almost as good as seeing it live. The details, the insights, the analysis were amazing.

I started the day searching for my iPhone – it was gone. I phoned the Hotel in Melbourne but they had not found one. I am trying to figure out how to make it useless by informing Apple it is lost, but it is still work in progress.

Closed Gold Mine

Today we have been driving for about 9 hours, stops included. The plan was to go to Walhalla and get a guided tour in a gold mine at 3PM. We arrived at 2:45PM by driving at some scenic, hairpin bend mountain roads. The average speed was 20 km/h for the last 12 km. Upon arrival we were told the 3 o’clock tour was canceled. I suspect it was because we were only 5 tourists present.

We arrived at the hotel 6PM, checked in and got dinner down town Lakes Entrance.

Penguin Parade

After breakfast at our regular diner we got a rental car and tried to negotiate our way out of Melbourne without using toll roads. Then enjoying 35 degree C sunshine, and a great tour at cruise speed. We were headed for Phillip Island 140 km south of Melbourne. On route we passed several wineries.

At Phillip Island you can experience wildlife, nature, interactive attractions, surfing, swimming, fishing and a lot more. We chose a 3 Park Pass including: Churchill Island Heritage Farm, Koala Park and Penguin Parade.

At the Churchill Island Heritage Farm you can see how people lived and worked in the olden days. As it turns out not so different from how life took place in our part of the world.

Well, I guess that the Koala Park is self-explanatory.

The famous Fairy Penguins, the world’s smallest penguin, spend their day out at sea, feeding and catching whitebait for their young. At the day’s end, they waddle up the beach in small groups back to their sand dune burrows. Tonight they did it by the hundreds. That was an exceptional experience.

Photographing was prohibited so the picture is downloaded from the Internet.

www.penguins.org.au