Road Trip South

     The Cyclone I mentioned in the last post hit the coast as a category 5, but luckily not a direct hit on the two main towns of Cairns and Townsville.  But not so lucky for 4 small towns that were  mostly destroyed and the farmers whose  crops  were ruined. Townsville got some flooding and power was out everywhere up there.  Bananas doubled in price overnight.
     We rented a small  car and headed South to see a bit of this huge Continent of Australia.  We brought a small tent we kept on the boat and a cook stove so we could camp along the way.  Staying in motels and eating out would be hard on the budget at Oz prices.  We stopped for a few hours in the busy town of Byron Bay and looked around town.  It was full of young tourists and the surfing crowd.  We then did a hike up to the light house and to the lookout which is the most Eastern point of the Continent, and then hiked down to the beach and back up for some exercise.
There are miles and miles of beaches down this coast which is perhaps why it is called the Gold Coast.  We came within an inch of hitting a large kangaroo on one road, but luckily I was going at half speed as we were looking for our turn. The kangaroo appeared so fast in front us it would have been difficult to brake if we had been going any faster.
    The campgrounds were generally pretty nice averaging about $26. a night.  They all had showers and cooking kitchens for when it rained.  Only a couple of nights we saw the campgrounds were about full by dark.  The weather was good the first week, but the last few days we had some very heavy rain and had some water come up through the tent floor and get a few things wet. The heavy rain makes puddles around the tent as the ground can not soak it up fast enough.
 We drove as far South as Mt. Kosciusko and hiked to the top (7310ft or 2228meters) which is Australia's highest point located near Victoria, New South Wales border.  It is a 18km round trip and about 500 meter elevation gain hike to the top from Charlotte pass.  The other popular route to top uses a chair lift at ski area to get you a bit higher for big bucks and is a bit shorter hike. But taking a chairlift seemed like cheating on what was already an easy trip.  It is a nice scenic hike with a path you could drive a car up if the parks people allowed it.  There were hardly andy trees as we were above the tree line. The gradient was the easiest I have ever had up a mountain.  There is a small emergency cabin about half way as people often run into trouble up here in the winter.  We were surprised how few people we saw on the mountain considering it was the highest.  We saw no one until we were almost on top and it was someone from Holland.
   As we headed back North we drove a different route up over some mountains on a very windy steep road.  It passed through miles and miles of   eucalyptus forest where a wildfire went though in 2003.  The trunks are still standing and we were told they would rejuvenate themselves after many years.
    We stopped in the Blue Mountains near Sydney. We did several hikes near Katoomba.  The hikes here start at the top  and go down near vertical cliffs on stairs that have been carved out of the  sandstone or on metal stairs that have be bolted to the rock.  In some places you are standing on stairs with a sheer vertical drop below you and only a hand rail to hang on to. Without them you could only get down with long rappels on a rope.  This is not a place for people afraid of heights. Then when at the bottom you walk through the valley floors and then back up another set of near vertical stairs.  Usually about 300 to 500 feet up.
  One hike took us down a long narrow gorge but you walked about 100 feet above the water along cut out ledges near bottom of cliff.  There were steel rails in many places to stop you falling into the gorge.
   On this trip we saw and heard many unusual birds,  this is one of the great things about Australia.   We heard Bellminers which make a loud pinging noise all through this one forest and also large white Cockatoo's with there loud squawks.  You wake up in the morning to all sorts of birds singing. We've seen  kookaburra ,lorikeets, magpies and many others we don't know the names of.

We then camped at a campground about 8 miles out of Sydney and took the train in the next day and spent all day in town being a tourist.  Walked over the Sydney Harbor bridge and took the ferry back to other side, saw the opera house, took the ferry out to Manly a tourist village with good surfing on the edge of Sydney. We had got a $20 pass that allowed us to use the trains and ferry's as much as we wanted to all day.
   Hyde park in the middle of town is a nice place for a walk. Then went through the botanical gardens where the tops of many of the trees had large fruit bats often called flying foxes.  They hung upside down by their feet with wings folded.  We had to look twice to realize what they were. You often see them at night flying around with their two to three foot wing span. They are ugly things in my opinion.  One day near dark we saw hundreds of them flying overhead.

Near Port Stephens we hiked up some large sand dunes that went for miles.  You could hire camels for a camel ride if you desired.  The next day we hiked up Mt Warning, 1156meters high .  Just before we left the car someone said to bring salt with us as there are leeches on the mountain.  I thought we should be fine on the trail.  But after the first mile I heard Dorothy yelling and sure enough a leech had dropped out of a tree onto her arm and would not let go.  I got the salt out and poured a bit on it and it immediately curled up and fell off.  Twice more leeches got onto poor Dorothy but none seemed to come on me.
  It was about a 3 hour hike round trip, mostly through rain forest. The last two hundred feet up a steep cliff with a chain coming down to hang on to and foot holds gouged into rock.  It was socked in on top so never got to see the view. Coming down it poured  rain most of the way back to car.
  We stopped by Surfers Paradise for an hour and then were back home at the boat that night having been gone 12 days. We had the car for one more day to run some errands.