Trip Preview - New South Wales & the ACT (Part 6 of 7)

Welcome to all joining the Vicarious Walkabout. Up, up, and away! We are climbing from Victoria into New South Wales, past Mt. Kosciuszko in the Snowy Mountains. Mt. K is something over 2000 meters high, which means it would be one of the higher mountains in some US state not known for especially high mountains, like Pennsylvania or New Mexico., but not California, Colorado, or Alaska. Regardless, as we depart East Gippsland (and maybe Raymond Island near Lakes Entrance), we'll have a nice day's drive into Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).


Canberra has a lame reputation among Australians. Odd thing about capital cities - there are lots of capital cities that are straight up major cities such as London, Paris, Rome, Berlin (now), and most others. Still, several capitals out there were developed so as not to offend the existing major cities: Brasilia (not Rio or Sao Paulo), Bonn (back in the day), Ottawa (not Toronto or Montreal), and several boring US state capital cities like Harrisburg, PA (not Pittsburgh or Philly) and Columbia, MO (midway between St Louis & Kansas City). Even Washington DC was a little swamp that had the sole selling point of not clearly being located in the North or South back when it was created. Just look at a map: Canberra was obviously set up by a committee as a way to keep Melburnians and Sydneysiders content that the other side was not winning. Canberra is its own territory (the A.C.T.), much as Washington was set up as its own district (District of Columbia) so as not to give Virginia or Maryland an unfair advantage among states. So Canberra was set up in an empty field in New South Wales and it remains a very large park-like city that could be easily confused for a large museum if anything I've read is correct. Thus, Alex and I will drive into Canberra and see if it and its parks & lakes catch our (collective) eyes. Let me brief here: the photos and maps of Canberra look lovely, but the word on the street is that Canberra has less going on than Akron on a drizzly November day. I hope the photos point to a good story, but if not...



We're heading through another valley into the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains take their name from the mist from the eucalyptus trees, which create something of a blue haze. It is (once again) a part of Australia that I've been to and it is (once again) a part of Australia worth seeing again. The focal point in the Blue Mountains is the Three Sisters (image from Blue Mountains site) - a rock formation as noteworthy as any in a country with lots of noteworthy rock formations: Ayers Rock, the Devil's Marbles, Bungle Bungles, and the Twelve Apostles so far. Basically it is three rock columns that happen to be near a real city, so the odds are better that a tourist will see the Three Sisters than the Devil's Marbles. I digress. We will drive through these mountains and drop through some suburbs into Sydney.

Sydney and Melbourne are the two big cities of Australia - you know that. I've already said that Melbourne is a sports crazed, cultured, old-school city. I compared it to Boston, but in a US context, New York is not a bad comparison either. Sydney and Melbourne are natural rivals, so if Melbourne is Boston/NY, guess who LA is? That's right. The shallow, business-oriented, fast-growing, good weather, get-on-that-surfboard city is Sydney. With a bay every bit as beautiful as San Francisco's, Sydney has got the natural beauty to go with its "superficial" success. OK, that is the caricature. They are both great cities. Melbourne is a bit more of a cafe city while Sydney is a city with a few more big skyscrapers. Both are great cities that make my personal top 5 on earth (along with SF, LA, and a big cluster competing at #5 including Denver, San Diego, London, Cologne, and Madrid). The point here is that Sydney has a great downtown, shopping area, park, bar/restaurant/touristy area (the Rocks), and beach city (Bondi). According to a coworker in the know, the Bondi to Cogee Beach hike is worth the effort and we may do that. One place that we've never been to is Manly. Masculine in name, it seems to be a rednecky version of Bondi. That should be fine. Bondi is much like Manhattan Beach or Redondo Beach. Known for surfing (a la Huntington Beach in the OC), it also is populated with several upscale restaurants, bars, and other retail establishments. My half day there needs to be supplemented with a few more hours near Bondi. Between downtown and Bondi, Kings Cross is the seedy place to go to have a few too many beers or otherwise get into some trouble. If Alex is down with it, we'll go there en route to or from Bondi. If there are no toddler-friendly biker bars or tattoo parlors, we'll just go through it by day and be vicariously "bad". Anyhow, it can't be overstated, there is a lot to do in Sydney and we will soak it up (image thanks to SydneyAustralia). Once again, I will feel a sense of normalcy facing traffic.








Once we leave Sydney, Alex and I are heading to Port Macquarie. Naturally, we'll milk Sydney, Bondi, Manley, and that region for all it is worth, but starting the night of March 8, we'll be at the Wyndham Resort on Flynn's Beach for a week. Port Macquarie is a little resort town in northern NSW.

As an aside, we got a bit more info on how Alex would handle long drives this past week. If you've made it this far, you are surely curious how good a road warrior my co-pilot is. The three of us drove down to San Diego for Christmas and the weekend(s), logging just over 1300 miles in 9 days (about the same pace we'll see in Oz: 10,000 miles in 60 days). Although I got in some work, we spent the rest of our time hanging out with family and going around the greater San Diego area: SeaWorld, LegoLand, Temecula wine country, and so forth. Net net, Alex was great. He was cool on the long stretches, in spite of the fact that he was awake almost the whole time. I must confess that he is rather officious and demanding on music selections. For example, he demanded Hootie and the Blowfish because he knows the name "blowfish" from a sushi restaurant. I have no idea what I am in for when he is five years older, let alone a teenager. Whoa, that sounds like a whole different blog. At least I know I can pacify him with "Let Her Cry" if push comes to shove in a month or two.


As usual, I've completely lost the plot. Pt Macquarie is a good place for us to kick back: warm water, nice beach, not yet far enough north to be into saltwater croc or box jellyfish territory... just kickin it. Our place is about a block off the beach. We may take day trips inland or to nearby towns, but we will mostly take full advantage of several days without the need to drive. This is where the temperate zone of coastal Victoria and mountainous NSW (pre-Sydney) starts to transition into tropical climates. If I am behind on my posting to this blog, this would be the place to catch up and post images. I could be off base here, but it seems like Pt Macquarie (and the northern part of NSW) will be kind of like coastal South Carolina - hot, humid, not quite Floridian (er, Queenslander) tropics, but clearly on the way there.


Anyhow, this is where we go from the part of Australia where people live (Melbourne & Sydney) to where people vacation (the northern half of NSW & then the Gold Coast & Brisbane). Coffs Harbour and Tweed's Head punctuate the rest of NSW before we get to Queensland - both are also tiny resort towns, home to surfers, hippies, and retirees. Again, we may hit these town on day trips to facilitate jumping straight to Queensland if we feel like it. Or we may just enjoy hanging out. Regardless, NSW will take us from serene and empty to ultimate urban to our own private Corona commercial on a Pacific beach about as far from San Francisco as one can get while staying on the same ocean.

Next up: our final preview, as we hit Queensland from the South - seeing all the coastal destinations en route to Cairns.