While all the political turmoil has been going on in Britain, it has sort of slipped under the radar a bit that we were having a General Election in Australia. Even here on the run up, the TV news appeared to be concentrating more on Brexit than on the possible change in government of their own country as it was expected to be a close run thing.
Voting is compulsory here so election day is quite different, it is held on a Saturday and has a touch of a party atmosphere about it. Unlike in Britain, where people drift in as and when during a long day, the polling stations close at 6pm and are crowded and most have a sausage sizzle. When asked to sum up the forthcoming election in six words, more members of the public answered 'Looking forward to the sausage sizzle' than anything else.
Mind you the electorate need sustenance when they are voting here especially as this was a double dissolution election - meaning votes had to be cast for both the upper and lower houses. Also, because there is preferential voting here you don't get to tick a box then go home, you have to number preferences on both papers and could spend all day racking your brains in your little booth. Alternatively, voters can choose to go along with the preferences of their chosen party so, for example, if you were voting for the Greens in our district of Paterson and wanted to go along with their preferences your choices would go;
1) Green Party
2) Australian Cyclists Party
3) Animal Justice Party
4) Voluntary Euthanasia Party
5) Socialist Alliance
6) Labor
The ballot paper Ian is holding up in the photo is for the Senate and the paper lists all 151 candidates for the 12 available New South Wales seats. You have to number at least 1 - 12 but can number all the way through to 151 if you so desire. I can't vote yet, otherwise we might have been there all day!
We bought our snacks for the evening ready for an all nighter watching the results pouring in and switched on the TV for the election results show only to find the programme finished at 10pm with the announcement that counting would resume on Tuesday - they were taking 2 days off!
Anyway 9 days later, the Liberal/National coalition limped over the line (don't even get me started on the fact that there is a permanent coalition) by this time it was a bit of a damp squib and most people had lost interest, as I am sure you have reading this.
Being in government limbo didn't stop us pressing on with our renovations and Ian is currently putting the finishing touches to our bike shed. We try, whenever possible to use recycled materials and this has been built almost entirely from pallets (take note Mark Pulsford). It looks rather good, I think he is taking his design influence from the opera house.
While Zoe was staying with us we took the train down to Sydney to see Vivid, where selected buildings have magnificent light shows played on them after dark for a few weeks. We set off early to make a day of it and, instead of taking the train all the way into Circular Quay, we got off a couple of stops short and walked in over the Harbour Bridge. The views from up there are sensational though I imagine the brave people we saw setting off on the bridge climb would see even more. These little groups of climbers can be seen all the time if you look carefully at the bridge. They are not easy to pick out because they have to wear boiler suits which make them blend in with the bridge so as not to distract drivers. I have the greatest respect for them, my knees turn to jelly just walking across on the footpath.
Ian has been set the challenge of finding us a different bit of Sydney to look at every time we go and this time he chose Barangaroo Point Park. This is a new park that has been developed on the harbour in an area which used to be home to old freight docks, the rest of the space is going to be taken up by a massive Crown Casino complex, but the park is delightful. It is a really peaceful place to walk, cycle or just eat your sandwiches and watch the boating activity on the harbour. They have made a marvellous job of it, planting the whole area with native trees and shrubs, it is a really neat addition to Sydney Harbour.
We shuffled back to Circular Quay via the Botanic Gardens, which are always worth a visit, and got ourselves into position with a Hungry Jack's in hand to wait for Vivid to start (Hungry Jack's is what Burger King is called here).
Vivid was good last year but even better this time. The display on the Opera House took about 20 minutes to get through its full cycle, my favourite bit was when the, astonishingly 3D, turtles were walking across it. The Museum of Contemporary Art was incredible too with blobby paint in all different colours cascading down the building, the pictures don't really do it justice.
After a visit to the Hunter Valley the next day, Zoe flew back to Melbourne and we settled down to study for our boat licence test. We bough a boat a few weeks ago (Bunny II, Ian's family had Bunny I when he was a child) but have not felt up to taking it out until we passed the theory part of our test. The boat licence test has two elements, theory then three trips out with an experienced skipper (anyone who has held a NSW boat licence for two years or more).
We were surprisingly nervous about the test and set off to the Marine Rescue headquarters with mounting trepidation, it was ok though, we both passed. You can take your boat out before gaining a licence but cannot go above 10 knots, so we ventured out for the first time this week to get the hang of the controls so we don't look like complete idiots when we go out with the experienced skipper assessing us.
It didn't go too badly. We chose a quiet time midweek when we thought nobody would see us making fools of ourselves at the boat ramp but, of course, it turned out to be surprisingly busy so we had a small, amused audience. We managed to launch it without too many dramas or arguments and took a slow trip up the creek and back. When we came to put it back on the trailer (a procedure we were secretly dreading) one of our neighbours appeared from nowhere walking his dog, so we had an audience for that too! It was all fine however, and we are now confident we will be up to speed by the time our friend Eddie and his son Archie come to visit from England in August.
Australia is still reeling from the result of the EU referendum last week, and that is saying something because there is a General Election here on Saturday and it looks like being a very close run thing but still Brexit is stealing all the headlines. Voting is so complicated in Australia that there are infomercials on TV telling people how to fill in their ballot papers, no ticking just the one box here, there are many, many boxes which have to be numbered in order of preference.
Enough about the referendum, I can feel a rant coming on and this is not the place for it, and back to lighter issues. Zoe flew back to Newcastle with me from Melbourne for a few days holiday and managed to time her visit to coincide with a spell of wonderful weather. We had been lucky to dodge the rain the whole time in Melbourne but the sun really came out for us up here. It is the middle of winter at the moment but the days are generally sunny and temperatures hover around 20 degrees although it drops down to around 10 degrees at night, so we can be in t-shirts during the day and big sweaters in the evening. We make a fuss partly because we have acclimatised but also because the houses have no insulation or central heating and are built to get as much shade as possible. Winter only really lasts for about 8 weeks though and then it starts to warm up again.
It is the height of the whale migration at the moment and it is a bumper year. Since controls over whaling have been taking effect, the humpback population has increased each year and they are swimming past us in Port Stephens at the moment on their way to calve at the Great Barrier Reef. So we set off to Nelson Bay to hop on the Imagine Cruises catamaran for a whale watch cruise. In Nelson Bay they are marking the whale season with an exhibition of decorated whale tails around the marina (a bit like the painted elephants in London a few years ago). Each whale tail has a board beside it featuring a Whale Tale, stories about ships and their encounters with whales in the area over the years.
It was a beautiful still, sunny day and the bay was like a mill pond, the sea beyond the heads looked very calm too, so good news for whale watching. As the catamaran pulled into dock and the morning cruise passengers disembarked we heard the captain saying, 'that was the most whales we have ever seen on one trip!' We got on board with high hopes and the captain said, 'Hello everyone, it's like whale soup out there at the moment.'
Usually it takes a time for the crew to spot the first whale, they are in radio contact with the other two whale watch boats operating in the area and they let each other know when they have a sighting. No need this time, as soon as we were out of the heads they pointed out a group of three whales playing around and seemingly in no hurry to press on with the thousands of kilometres they need to travel. They treated us to a display of spy hopping (sticking their heads out of the water and looking around), tail waving, fin flapping, one even seemed to pop his head up and smile at us then, because the water was calm and quiet, the crew dropped a sound detector into the water and WE HEARD THEM! We couldn't believe our luck, last year when Ian and I went we saw a couple of whale's backs and thought we had a brilliant time but it was nothing like this.
Next the captain said he was taking us to where he thought he could catch some whales jumping out of the water because they tend to do it at 4 o'clock (?) I had heard that the experts do not even really know why they jump but goodness only knows how they can tell it is 4 o'clock. Anyway, he steered the catamaran to the likely spot and, yes you have guessed it, one jumped right beside us. Needless to say I didn't catch it with my camera, just a bit of a splash at the end so you will have to take my word for it.
On our last day in Ballina we decided to cycle to a nearby (or so we thought) beach where dogs were allowed as Monty could not go on the beach at the site. We have always wondered just how far our electric bike batteries would go and we very nearly found out. We thought it was only down the road so popped Monty in his trailer and set off. We seemed to cycle for hours alongside the Richmond River passing the tiny little post office and not much else. When we finally arrived we realised we had cycled 18km in the baking sun and had to do the same to get back, when we finally limped back into the caravan site we didn't have a bar of battery life left on our displays between us!
Next morning we packed up and drove south for around three and a half hours until we reached our next destination the beautiful Grassy Head Hideaway. We were staying here for a couple of nights as it is pretty much halfway home. It is a glorious place to stay, there are three villas set in gorgeous tropical gardens with a pool and balconies in the tree tops. The Hideaway is also in the middle of a great spot for day trips out.
We started with Stuart's Point which is quite unusual in that the beach is reached by a long walk across a bridge over a waterway. It was a very pleasant little town with pretty parkland stretching the length of the waterfront and a caravan park.
Next stop was South West Rocks which is a beautiful town, much bigger than Grassy Head or Stuart's Point and is made up of two bays, Trial Bay (named after a wrecked ship) and Horseshoe Bay. There are plenty of shops and cafes there and, at the time of our visit, a vintage caravan muster was taking place. The caravans were fantastic, lovingly restored and towed by cars of the same period driven by owners wearing clothes of a similar vintage to complete the look.
Nearby was Smoky Cape with its wonderful lighthouse which operates a small guest house. My sister Gill stayed there a number of years ago and says it was glorious to sit having breakfast watching dolphins frolicking around the rocks below.
The last stop before our journey home was Hat Head, as we drove there we passed field after field of cows each with their own group of attendant egrets. I have heard people raving about Hat Head but I was not so keen. Again a caravan site seemed to have control of all of the waterfront and had put lots of rules in place which I found a bit tedious. It is a very small town indeed and the general store was the usual mix of petrol station, grocery store, ironmongers, chemist, cafe and take away restaurant.
On the way home we took a quick detour via Taree to see the Big Oyster, it is now home to a car dealership but a pretty good Big Thing all the same.
Back on the Pacific Highway we headed up to Coolangatta, which is the home of the Gold Coast airport, to meet Zoe. The town of Coolangatta is very pleasant, quite smart with plenty of beachfront cafes and bars, but the interesting bit for us was Boundary Road where one side of the street in in New South Wales and the other in Queensland. There is a time difference too so one side of the street is an hour ahead of the other (NSW residents will tell you the time difference is more like 50 years). The views from the lookout in Coolangatta are fabulous, one way the full extent of Byron Bay can be seen and, in the other direction, Surfers Paradise.
What can I say about Surfers Paradise? It is truly ghastly, sort of a hideous cross between a seaside resort, Las Vegas and London Docklands. There are just hundreds of high rise hotels and apartment blocks, each one taller than the next and as a result of an ironic town planning mistake, these massive buildings keep the afternoon sun off the beach so it is a bit dark and gloomy surfing there later in the day. It also appears quite soul less, there are no people to be seen walking around or having coffee and ice creams, they must all either be surfing or in their air conditioned apartments and hotel rooms. It is the place for hen and stag (or buck's as they are called here) weekends which is why Zoe was headed this way so we collected her from the airport and went exploring.
We started with Byron Bay, I had been looking forward to going there and it lived up to my expectations. It is the go to place for young backpackers and is very crowded but still retains its charm. The town is dominated by shops, bars and cafes but they are pretty much all independent and mostly a bit cosmic, plenty of locals and visitors wearing tie dye and plaiting their own shoes but it is still a great place to visit. The bay itself is sensational, made up of two huge crescent shaped beaches but they are the most crowded beaches I have seen so far in Australia, and that includes Bondi. The whole area is topped by a magnificent white lighthouse which is a bit expensive to visit but we could not go in anyway as they did not allow dogs.
We carried on along the tourist drive through Lennox Head and Brunswick Heads, both beautiful and worth another visit, and on through Moo moo where all the power poles and the garage were painted in cow print. Moo moo also had a Big Thing - the Big Motorbike, which was pretty good, not quite up there with the Big Prawn but better than many of the others.
This time we drove right through the middle of Surfers Paradise to drop Zoe at her destination - it didn't get any better!
Apologies for the lack of blogging recently but we have just returned from a month in England following a family bereavement. It was a sad reason for the trip but we managed to catch up with friends and family which is always a pleasure.
Back to where I left off on our trip up the East coast to meet up with Zoe. We hit the Pacific Highway heading north again after our night in Coffs Harbour, taking note of the amusing place names as usual, Tom Cat Creek, Possum Brush Road, Henry Hawkeye Edwards Bridge, Middle Brother Road, I could go on and on. Our destination was Ballina and it was interesting to see the crops change as we headed towards warmer climes, bananas are the main crop in Coffs Harbour but sugar cane took over as we passed Grafton.
We arrived in South Ballina in pouring rain but discovered the campsite we had booked was fantastic, right between a huge beach and the Richmond River. Once the rain stopped we went to explore and found the campsite had a full size flying trapeze where they gave circus lessons every Saturday!
The campsite is on the very tip of South Ballina where the river meets the sea and we stood on the huge breakwater between the two marveling at how the water on the river side looked almost black while the sea on the beach side was blue. The whole area was surrounded by National Park so Monty had to stay in the car but we spotted a couple of echidnas and several birds we don't see at home. Monty was not allowed on the beach either so we drove to a dog friendly one nearby and sat watching people in their 4WD vehicles bombing up and down. I think I may have said before that I don't see the point of this, anyone who knows me understands how much I love cars and driving but I can't see the sense in messing up my own car with sand and salt water. Must just be me because plenty of people enjoy doing it, in fact not far from us there are huge sand dunes where people take their 4WDs and the local McDonalds even has a free air pump in the car park for them to reinflate their tyres! Anyway, enough about that and back to the trip.
Next day we awoke to sunshine and took the chain ferry across to Ballina before setting of to pick Zoe up from the airport at Coolangatta on the Gold Coast. I had been looking forward to Ballina because it is home to the Big Prawn which I had heard was one of the better Big Things and it did not disappoint, it is splendid!
While all the political turmoil has been going on in Britain, it has sort of slipped under the radar a bit that we were having a General Election in Australia. Even here on the run up, the TV news appeared to be concentrating more on Brexit than on the possible change in government of their own country as it was expected to be a close run thing.
Mind you the electorate need sustenance when they are voting here especially as this was a double dissolution election - meaning votes had to be cast for both the upper and lower houses. Also, because there is preferential voting here you don't get to tick a box then go home, you have to number preferences on both papers and could spend all day racking your brains in your little booth. Alternatively, voters can choose to go along with the preferences of their chosen party so, for example, if you were voting for the Greens in our district of Paterson and wanted to go along with their preferences your choices would go;
The ballot paper Ian is holding up in the photo is for the Senate and the paper lists all 151 candidates for the 12 available New South Wales seats. You have to number at least 1 - 12 but can number all the way through to 151 if you so desire. I can't vote yet, otherwise we might have been there all day!
Anyway 9 days later, the Liberal/National coalition limped over the line (don't even get me started on the fact that there is a permanent coalition) by this time it was a bit of a damp squib and most people had lost interest, as I am sure you have reading this.
