Art Gallery of New South Wales

I spent the weekend in Sydney with Rachel, and on Saturday morning we went to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. I think I mentioned this gallery in a previous post, and that it has free entry and a wonderful collection. http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/

Right now, they have a special exhibit entitled "Monet and the Impression- ists", showcasing 30 works by Monet, plus paintings by Renoir, Pissarro, Cezanne, Degas and others. This exhibit had an entry charge, but it was worth it, as I really like Impressionism, and Rachel just simply likes art. I had to wait in line for about a quarter of an hour to purchase tickets, and then there was quite a crowd looking at the paintings. We were never forced to keep moving, though, and were able to double back and take another look, or just simply sit and gaze at our favourites, which I did on a couple of occasions. One of my favourites was called "Vetheuil", and was a town scene on a hillside, with its reflection in the water. The colours were all yellows, golds, and pinks. It was just beautiful, and, at the risk of sounding really artsy, it was just glowing, I could almost feel the light emanating from the frame. When I later saw it in the catalogue, it hardly looked like the same painting. We weren't allowed cameras in the exhibit or I would post a picture of it here; I can't seem to find the right on online, so you'll just have to believe me!

Afterwards, we spent some time looking at the regular exhibits, many by Australian painters and of Australian scenes.

Springtime

Spring in Australia is beautiful. I know all our friends in Canada probably don't want to hear about it (there's a freezing rain warning in effect for the part of the country I call home), but the weather is warming up here, with daytime highs in the high-20's to mid-30's. One thing I will miss about Australia is all the sunshine; today was yet another gorgeous day, so I went to one of the beaches nearby to just enjoy being near the ocean.

Bushwalking

I went bushwalking on Wednesday, I've been going regularly since April and it is just a delight walking areas of this coast with the wonderful and interesting people that are members of this group. I've blogged about bushwalking before, so just look those up for more information!
Our leader this day was an 87-year-old gentleman, knowledgeable about the bush and a very competent walker. The walk was 7 km to two secluded beaches and in the surrounding bush. On many of the beaches this time of year are thousands of blue-bottle jellyfish, on the high tide line, tangled up with the seaweed, some beaches have more than others, just depends on the orientation of the beach and the prevailing winds and tides. The warm currents are coming down from Queensland about now, bringing these with them:
















The forests at the headlands of these beaches were also interesting. The spotted gum is a tall and stately tree in most parts of the country, but sometimes, near the coast where it is windy and the soil is lacking in nutrients, the trees are twisted and gnarly. Makes for a beautiful, if eerie bush.

This is a little tree orchid we found, thanks to our leader, Jock. These types of orchids are usually higher up on the trees, and not in this exact type of forest, so it was a nice treat to see one up close:

Halloween

Halloween in Australia is not a really big thing, not like in North America. Some places here are doing more than in past years, and the stores had lots of Halloween paraphernalia, but I think they just want to cash in on yet another 'holiday'. My girls, of course, wanted to do the trick-or-treating thing, so they went out with the neighbour's children who have done Halloween here in past years. They just got dressed up and went to the five houses in the near vicinity; they probably spent more time getting ready than actually trick-or-treating, but had a fun time all the same.

Batemans Bay ETL Weekend

This past weekend was the Exchange Teachers' League weekend in Batemans Bay - nice not to have to travel away for one of these weekends! A lot of the teachers came from all over New South Wales: Sydney, Newcastle and further north, Merimbula, Cootamundra, and Canberra (in ACT, I know!) There were also some former Australian exchangees and a couple of next year's exchanges, so it was a full and varied weekend.

http://www.southcoast.com.au/batemansbay/
The highlight was on Saturday: a boat trip up the Clyde River to Nelligan and back, a 3-hour tour, and the weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed, if not for the courage of the fearless crew the Merinda would be lost... All kidding aside, we had a great day. It was cloudy, but we all had a good time and got back safely. We got to go under the opening bridge in town twice (the one I got stuck at twice today, once in the morning and once in the afternoon - the only times the bridge opens!) There's not much to see in Nelligan anymore, just a cafe and small general store, plus some historic buildings. It used to be the main port on this part of the coast, but the entrance to the Clyde River was a bit hard to locate for the ships, so they started building out at the coast and Batemans Bay was born.














We all had wood-fired pizza at the organizers' house on the Saturday night, I think someone said that Warren cooked 76 pizza! I didn't bother to make my own, as everyone else was doing, because as I just stood on the large deck they have, people would walk by with their freshly cooked pizzas and offer me a slice; I tried many delicious varieties of pizza this way. Wood fired pizza is really popular down here, many of our friends have pizza ovens in the back yards, and there is an awesome pizzaria in town called Heat that serves great pizza. We'd like to try all their flavours, and we're about 1/3 there but rapidly running out of time this year.

Sunday, we had some friends over for coffee and then we all went up to Pebbly Beach for a final barbeque. The weather had been cloudy most of the weekend, but cleared up beautifully on Sunday afternoon. The children went for a swim; I wasn't prepared - no towels or even swimsuits - they just swam in their clothes but didn't mind a bit. We weren't far from home, though.

It was sad saying goodbye at the end of this weekend, because we realized that we may never see any of these people again, with only 8 weeks to go, but we will keep in touch with some, and even get the chance to visit a few.

The Blue Mountains

We spent the weekend of the 17-19 October in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. We drove through quickly before, but this was a chance to do more exploring. This is a beautiful area, the weekend escape for many Sydneysiders, with awesome scenery. This is Govett's Leap:

We went on the Zigzag Railway in Lithgow, a series of reversing ramps to enable the train to get down a steep hillside. It is only in use now as an historic tourist feature, we always enjoy a steam train ride, and the weather all weekend was just perfect for things like that. http://www.zigzagrailway.com.au/










































On our way home on Sunday we went to Jenolan to have a look at the caves. http://www.jenolancaves.org.au/

The last 10 km down to the caves entrance was some of the twistiest roads in Australia, and when we got to the bottom we actually drove through one of the caves, out to the other side and into what looked like a replica alpine village, with half-timbered buildings with orange roofs. I often wonder what people were doing in this remote, hard-to-get-to part of the country in the late 1800's in order to discover these caves. They were impressive. There are 10 caves that can be explored, only by a guided tour. Each cave tour leaves at a specified time, so if there is one cave that you really want to see, and don't know the schedule in advance, you could be waiting a few hours. So we just signed up for a cave tour that left about a half hour hence; it was a 1 1/2 hour tour of the Orient Cave, that included walking through small passages to reach larger chambers. Lots of typical cave features like stalactites and stalagmites, pillars, and then some shawls, frozen rivers of crystal, and others. It was just beautiful.

After the guided tour we could do a self-guided tour of another set of caves, with an audio wand describing the features. This was just a huge cave, and really impressive. I've been to caves elsewhere in the world, and these are probably the best I've seen. Be sure to check out their website, it's great.

The International Antarctic Centre

This will be the last of the New Zealand blogs, then I will get on to other things back in Australia - can't believe it's already week 4 of the last term of school, not much more to go now...

http://www.iceberg.co.nz/
Our last day in NZ was taken up with a visit to The International Antarctic Centre, by the airport. This is a huge complex, currently used as a base for Antarctic expeditions for New Zealand, the USA, and Italy. There was also a visitor area and interactive display that we visited. We got to see the history of Antarctic exploration, lots of old-fashioned equipment, and, our favourite, a snow room. This large room was kept at a constant -8 degrees C, and every hour they had a snowstorm. I didn't feel the need to experience this, but John and the girls went in for a few minutes to play around in the real snow they have.

We went on a ride in a Haaglund, a snow vehicle designed for the Antarctic. It took us, from the front entrace to the building, out around the back on a course designed to show the versatility of this machine, going up and down hills, across simulated crevasses, and through a little pond, where it can float (the water was 4 m deep) and still be propelled by the tracks. Fun.














We saw the Little Blue Penguins up close, and at feeding time. These are the smallest penguins in the world and they live in NZ and the south coast of Australia, where they are called Fairy Penguins.

We dropped the camper off, and went to the airport for the uneventful flight home. The only surprise waiting for us was the fact that someone had broken into our car while it was parked outside John's sister's house for the two weeks. The thieves (who didn't get away with anything, maybe just a 20 cent piece from in the ash tray) were kind enough to only break one of the small triangular windows in the rear door, not too much trouble to fix!