24th Oct 2014

24^th Oct:

Rained during the night but at least it’s not cold, weather has turned bad again so won’t be doing much today.

I still can’t get photos to upload the WiFi just times out. I think the a lot of the problem apart from weak signal is my camera takes photos at 24 megapixels and I don’t know how to reduce the quality to upload onto the blog so if any of you have suggestions please comment.

OK I managed to find a way to copy photos at a reduced quality and have uploaded 3 but it took for ever to upload so I will still have to wait until we have access to a better service.

Thursday 23^rd Oct

Today we travelled by rail up to the Hawkesbury River meeting up with our friends Ann and Charlie on the way. Surprise, surprise I had everyone up by 0600 and we were on our way walking to the North Ryde rail station by a little after 7.00am, our train wasn’t due until 7.52am therefore allowing plenty of time for Nancy to do the 10 minute walk, which actually takes her 20 minutes (sore back and all).

We normally cut through the caravan park and out the back gate this is no shorter but it avoids walking on the roadway where there is no footpath. When we reached the back gate it was locked and the sign said ‘Gate locked between 9.30pm and 7.30am’. Kidding that didn’t send the old girl into a tizz, all of a sudden the casual stroll had to be upgraded to a brisk walk, bloody hell it was bad enough getting up at 6.00am now we’ve got to rush. Being the rat I am I didn’t tell her we had heaps of time.

We met up with our friends at the next station and two station further on we made a train change to an inter city unit. Sitting in the upper level we were all talking at once Nancy and Ann recounting the last couple of days, Charlie and myself discussing Caravans. Charlie is quite deaf and although he wears a hearing aid he talks at the top of his voice so the whole carriage can hear his conversation and he’s a real character. As the train pulled into one of the many stations a lady passing us as she alighted suddenly rapt hard on the carriage wall and snarled “Quiet Carriage”. We all sat here in stunned silence for a few moments looking at the sign she had been belting and reading ‘This is a Quiet Carriage keep chit chat to a minimum” etc etc. How embarrassing, talk about cringe.

At a little riverside village called Brooklyn after a coffee and muffin in a local café we boarded the Riverboat Postman for a mail run cruise up the Hawkesbury River. This very popular cruise is always booked out and no wonder, you are greeted with morning tea on boarding, then the vessel travels upstream delivering mail and various items to the numerous inhabited islands on this beautiful waterway while the skipper gives an interesting and at times tongue in cheek commentary. After about 1½ hrs of travelling upstream along one side of the river the vessel turns and proceeds to return downstream on the other shore, a ploughman’s lunch is served up followed by tea and coffee, there’s also a bar for those that wish to purchase beer or wine. In between eating we sat at the bow enjoying the scenery and commentary, taking happy snaps and soaking up the 27C temp and blue sky we hadn’t seen much of since being down here.

Thoroughly enjoyed it all, highly recommend it but pick the right weather and bookings are essential. 

Wednesday 22nd Oct

Shopping weather has turned to crap again.

Tuesday 21st Oct

Tuesday 21st

Another gloomy start to the day but hopefully it will burn off as the day heats up.

We took the train and light rail to the National Maritime Museum and spent several hours looking over various vessels including the light destroyer HMAS Vampire, a submarine HMAS Onslow and Cooks replica Endeavour. We spent a lot of time on the Endeavour listening to volunteer guides explain various aspects of the ship and a few historical facts, we crawled like chimpanzees between decks smacking our heads on low slung members, getting old and wearing glasses a distinct disadvantage. The adjacent museum building itself is quite huge and houses numerous galleries displaying an enormous number of interesting maritime objects, documents, photos, paintings and film footage. Ranging from early explorers to current day interests. Kay Cottee’s vessel ‘Blackmore’s First Lady’ is even on display in there.

Australian Maritime Museum is easy to get to and certainly worth a visit. (I think so anyway.)

 From the museum we caught a light rail around to the Sydney Fish Market, by this time it was mid-afternoon and a lot of the vendors were in the process of cleaning up but I was still amazed at the huge range and variety of fish and crustacean’s on display for sale. In one display I noticed an ugly looking scorpion fish for sale the look of it was enough to put you off and I wondered if these were the poisonous fish the Japanese treat as a specialty. Another thing that surprised me was to see female crabs for sale obviously they were legal but how does the species survive. Oysters, I didn’t know there were so many different varieties available.

Blue Mountains 

A good son helping his struggling mother

Attractive villages in the Blue Mountains

20th Oct

Rest Day very windy and overcast, winter has set in again.
I will try and up-load some photos but the WiFi is going as slow as watching grass grow and I may have to wait until I get to a better hot spot.

Sunday 19^th Oct

A cloudless blue sky and a lovely warm 27 degrees, it seems everybody must head into the city waterfront on weekend days like this. Circular Quay is a moving mass, ferries busily charging back and forth around the harbour loaded with sightseers. Around the harbour wall toward the opera house every nationality is represented by someone standing against the rail either taking a photo of themselves, or being photographed with the coat hanger or the opera house as a backdrop. So many times I apologised for crashing a photo shoot or getting included in a family happy snap. We did our share of happy snapping, had a close look at the icon and wandered on around to the Royal Botanical Gardens, here we boarded a mini train and had a commentated tour around the massive park. Following that we had a forty-five minute guided tour through government house and that was interesting and informative. Government House is an inspiring old building that would be more at home in England and although it is the office of the NSW Governor it is also where he resides.  After that and a brief snack we spent some time just wandering around the park enjoying the sun.

18th Oct

18^th Oct 2014

We knew Saturday was going to be a nice day so the plan was to get up early and head up to the Blue Mountains, we may even be daring and have breakfast on the way to ensure we get away early.

So after breakfast and a load has gone through the washing machine we are on the road. One minute to nine, I guess that’s early seeing that most days we do anything it’s well after nine. Perhaps I’m just a cranky old bugger.

Initially it was a little overcast but as the sun warmed up it burnt the cloud off and we ended up with a beautiful day and just a nice temperature.

We took the usual hundreds of photos of the three sisters and all the other well photographed vistas, took the skyrail down into the rain forest and spent quite a bit of time enjoying walking through the rainforest area learning all about the substantial mining of coal that took place in the area around Katoomba many years ago. I’m sure I read somewhere that there was, or is, something like a 1000 kls of mining tunnels throughout the area. Apparently beneath the layers of sandstone and coal there are seams of oil-bearing shale. Wouldn’t it cause a stir if someone applied for a mining lease in the area.

Following the tourist route our return trip took us across Mt Victoria, through the village of Bell, Mt Tomah and the apple and stone fruit growing area of Bilpin where we stopped at a roadside stall to buy a cheap bag off beautiful apples and a homemade family apple pie. Our journey back to Lane Cove was quite slow as it took us through the western suburbs of Richmond and Windsor resulting in 60 kph and 70 kph speed zones most of the way. It was well after 7.00pm by the time we got back to the van but we all agreed it had been a great day.