Braidwood

We went to a small town called Braidwood on Saturday, 8 March (John was taking his first surfing lesson down in Broulee, I'll get him to blog about it). By we, I mean myself, Rachel, Natalie and my parents. It's 60 km inland up the King's Highway towards Canberra, and it is an old mining town. It was settled in 1830 and gold was found there in 1853, after which the town became the centre of the goldfields in the surrounding area. Many of the original miners' houses are still there, and most of the main street has the original buildings. It has one of those nice wide main streets with angled parking along the side, lots of cafes and fabric stores, antique and junk shops, and art and craft shops.

Sydney 3

Sunday, 24 February saw us up early yet again, much to Rachel's dismay, as she likes to sleep in on the weekend. We took the bus back into the city and went to St. Patrick's Church in The Rocks for mass. We met up with all the exchange people at Centrepoint Tower (http://www.sydneytoweroztrek.com.au/) at 11:30 and went up for our lunch in the revolving restaurant. I've eaten in a revolving restaurant before, at the CN Tower in Toronto, but that was a while ago and I can't remember if I felt queasy, but this time I definitely did feel queasy! Not really sick, but just not right. There's something a bit odd about being so high up (and this tower was one-quarter the height of the CN Tower) and moving slowly around. And eating, to top it all off! The food was great, John tried some oysters, I couldn't bring myself to, but we both tried the kangaroo meat, which was very good. We went around twice before heading down, the day had started out cloudey but cleared up nicely for a good look around. We could see the mouth of the harbour, the airport, and lots of the harbour. Then it was back to Abbotsford one last time and the 4 hour journey back to Batemans Bay.




























My parents had left Sydney on Saturday morning and headed inland, they met up with us on Sunday evening when we got home. They actually arrived a few hours before we did, but were entertained by some of our wonderful neighbours. They are in Australia for 5 weeks, and will be using our place as a home base and travelling around a bit, but also enjoying a bit of what the south coast of NSW has to offer.

Sydney 2

On Saturday, 23 February, we were up early and off to the city centre, by bus this time, to catch the boat for our harbour cruise that was leaving at 9 am. It was a lovely old wooden boat named Radar:














There were about 70 us board, current exchangees and their families, some former exchangees, and the organizers (all former exchangees). We had a tour guide that pointed out places of interest along the way, such as the swimming pool where a famous Aussie swimmer started swimming in the 1970's. This pool was right down on the water's edge, and just had a canvas shell and was filled with harbour water. More than a few of the pools in Sydney use this technique for their water supply. Various bridges were pointed our, including the famous Harbour Bridge of course, and also the ANZAC Bridge and Iron Cove Bridge. Cockatoo Island has an interesting history, it was once used as a prison http://www.cockatooisland.gov.au/ We boated up the river first as far as we could, then headed back. The properties along the harbour are also fantastic. Here is a sampling:



























































What amazed me, was that some of these places had their own little sandy beach, right in Sydney Harbour. We sailed under the Harbour Bridge and past the Opera House. Our lunchtime break was on the north side of the harbour at Clifton Gardens. There was a long pier, and an enclosed swimming area; not like the pools, but just along the beach with a net extending down form the pier to keep the sharks out! We had a lovely barbeque lunch; the kookaburras were waiting in the trees, and one of our leaders told us to watch our plates because last year a kookaburra came swooping down and grabbed a piece of chicken off someone's plate. Not one minute later there was a commotion and a kookaburra had done the exact same thing! The piece of chicken as almost a big as the bird as he sat there on the pavement with his prize.

Sydney Harbour Week had just started that day so the harbour was full of all manner of watercraft, especially sailboats. It was just beautiful. They had a lovely windy day for it, too.




























When we disembarked, John and I and the girls wandered around an area called The Rocks, where the original settelment of Sydney was. Lots of nice old buildings and housing areas. We even stumbled upon a little piece of Canada in the shape of the embassy, Canada House, on Harrington Street.
























We headed back to Abbotsford and 'home' after that and had a really nice barbeque dinner with our hosts and an early bedtime.

Sydney 1

We spent the weekend of 29 February to 2 March in Sydney for a gathering of other exchange teachers to Australia. Not just from Canada, but also the States, England, and Germany.

We arrived in Sydney on Thursday night, to the home of a couple who have been on two exchanges, one to Colorado, the other to Calgary, and who billet current exchange families in Australia when needed. They have a lovely house west of the city centre and close to the Parramatta River, which becomes Sydney Harbour closer to the downtown. On Friday morning we took the ferry from their place to Circular Quay, in downtown Sydney. It was a Rivercat, or a catamaran ferry, full of tourists, business people and students heading to school - just another ordinary day for them, going by water to where they need to be for the day.














My (Susan's) parents had arrived in Sydney on the previous Tuesday, so John headed off to his teachers' conference and I met my parents at their hotel in the CBD. Very neat meeting up with one's parents halfway 'round the world! We spent the day around the city, firstly having coffee in the Queen Victoria Building, which is just beautiful:
















We went to Australia's Biggest Yarn Store (you would have loved it, Wendy!) as my mother is working on an Australian themed tapestry of a couple of Eastern Lorikeets and needed some supplies. We hit Dymocks, a nice big bookstore, where we had to tear the girls away from the Harry Potter displays (they even had one of the movies showing). We went to the Strand Arcade, another great example of Victorian architecture - mosaic floors, intricate ironwork, and woodwork. It makes me wonder that if Australia has such great examples of this in its major cities, did a place like Toronto ever have such arcades? Our histories are so similar, I think we probably did, but they were bulldozed for more modern structures. It's a shame, really, because they are so beautiful.


















Anyway, we walked through Hyde Park and to the Australian Museum. I often think that museums in major cities are all pretty much the same, but I am pleasantly surprised each time I visit one that they are not. This was no exception. The first room we came to was a skeleton room (yippee!). It was fantastic, full of complete skeletons of all sorts of animals, including a whale right in the centre, and southern hemisphere animals, which are unfamiliar to me. There was also a human skeleton on the skeleton of a rearing horse, and a vignette of a human skeleton sitting in a easy chair with a book on its lap under a Tiffany-style lamp, a dog skeleton, complete with leash, was sitting next to the chair, a bird skeleton was in a cage, and a cat skeleton was chasing a mouse skeleton into a hole in the skirting board. Here are the pictures:




































There was a mineral exhibit, and an exhibit of Australian birds and insects - I now know what the Sydney funnel-web spider (deadly) looks like, in case I encounter one (small chance). There was a great interactive children's area, and to finish off some exhibits of the Aboriginies, including history and art.














We walked through the Botanical Gardens on our way back to Circular Quay, where we met John and the rest of the teachers for a nice dinner at Rossini's, overlooking the quay.

Tuross Head

On Sunday, 24 February, we spent the afternoon exploring Tuross Head, 50 km down the coast from Batemans Bay. It was a beautiful, hot day, but windy. Tuross Head is a headland with lakes on either side extending about 5 km inland. To the north is Coila Lake, which is blocked off at the ocean by a large sandbar, and Tuross Lake to the south, which empites into the ocean. The town itself it a quiet place; I wondered what people who lived there did for a living! It turns out that most of them are retired, and a lot I suppose work in Moryua, 10 minutes to the north. There were no business or industrial districts, a small shopping area, no schools, no churches, and a couple of restaurants down by the water. We didn't go to shop, however! We wandered around on the Coila Lake side for a while, the sand was beautiful, but the water was quite wild. There was a steepish slope down to the ocean, not like the gentle low-grade beaches closer to home. It was too windy to do much, so we went back to the car and drove higher up on the headland. There was a nice grassy park area up top where we stopped and had a nice picnic of tea, egg sandwiches, and cookies. The shore below was quite rocky so we went down to explore. Rachel did her usual thing and just sat on a big rock looking out to sea with the wind blowing her hair. John and Natalie did more exploring; Natalie really enjoys clambering around on the rocks and looking for rockpools. At the top of this park was a memorial to soldiers in the two world wars, nice with an Australian flag flapping in the wind.











































On to the other side of the heads, and down to that beach we went.














Here is where we discovered our first jelly fish. There was a little girl who ran out of the water crying, and upon talking to her parents, we learned that she had been stung by a jellyfish, and we looked at the sand around us we and saw that there were dozens of these lying around! And here we were just casually strolling along in our bare feet, thongs in hand, with the odd wave lapping over our feet! The jellyfish here are not the deadly Box Jellyfish that are found further north in Queensland, but a type called Bluebottles, or Portuguese Man-o-War (due to their shape). They still impart a painful sting, though. They are much smaller that I though they would be, the body of the one in the picture is about 10 cm across, but the blue trim is a beautiful indigo colour. Their tentacles, however, can reach up to 10 metres! Check out http://www.australianfauna.com/bluebottlejellyfish.php


We went to Sunday mass down here in Tuross (this was how we determined that most of the population are retired - they were almost all grey-hairs at mass!) Then we went to O'Brien's Boatshed, down on the waterfront at Tuross Lake, for some fish and chips. This is one of the few places here that you can see a sunset over the water, since most of the waterfront faces east, but this little part of the lakefront faces west and we were sitting right down at the water's edge. Lovely end to a great day.

Surfskiing in Nelligan

John has taken up a sport called surfskiing. One of his colleagues at school surfskiis and asked John the first week we were here if he would like to join him on a Saturday morning. The first day they went out from Corrigan's Beach, near Batemans Bay to surfski at the mouth of the river, and from then on every Saturday morning they have gone up river about 20 km to a little town called Nelligan to surfski in the river. A surfski is a long narrow kayak-like boat, about 5 metres long and 50 cm wide. There is a shallow depression to sit on, and two levers for one's feet to activate the rudder. You don't sit in the boat like a kayak, but on it. John says they are very tippy until you get the handle of it (I should be getting him to blog this...) The paddle has a blade at either end, like a kayak paddle.
On Saturday, 23 February, there was a series of races in Nelligan, for surfskiis, kayaks, double kayaks, and other self-propelled watercraft. There were some Olypmic-calibre racers here qualifying for state finales and amateurs like John (#31) and Pete. It was another gorgeous day here on the south coast of New South Wales, and the girls and I went out to watch the races. We had some french fries and slurpies from the local cafe and then sat on the grassy riverbank. The different categories all started a few minutes apart, and it was down the river for 3 km and back again.

Jervis Bay

We spent the day in Jervis Bay on Sunday, 10 February (I know it's taken a while to blog this!). It was a beautiful day weather-wise, so we made the most of it. Jervis Bay is a huge sheltered inlet with white sand beaches. Check out http://www.southcoast.com.au/jervisbay/
It is about a one hour drive from us, up the coast. We parked in the town of Huskisson and walked down to the beach.





























There was a sailing regatta happening at the town of Vincentia, at least a hundred sailboats were in the water.
I must admit, though, that the beaches are way better down where we live. There are sweeping curves of sandy beaches all along the coast around Batemans Bay, and although Jervis Bay was nice, not as nice as home!