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Jay & Nicole Visit Australia (click any picture for enlargement) |
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| Our Australia trip story picks up back in Sydney, where we plan to explore the beaches ... | ||
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The wonderful beach areas are what most tourists remember about Sydney. The city is blessed with a coastline that contains many famous beaches, the most well known being Bondi beach. | |
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| We decided to walk up a coastal trail that goes past all of the beaches; it says to schedule 4-5 hours for the walk ... one way! | ||
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Coogee Beach gave us a reference to compare the other beaches to ... it will be hard to beat! |
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Gordon beach is a great place to snorkel and has cliffs lined with expensive homes. |
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We walked around a peninsula to get to Clovelly beach ... it's small, but good for family swimming. |
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| We
passed through a large cemetery as a shortcut across the next big peninsula.
We stopped for a refreshment break since it was so quiet ... yes, it's kind of weird to drink wine in a cemetery! |
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We had to hike along even more steep cliffs before we got to the final three beaches. |
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Bronte was another big beach; it was very similar to Coogee, but the area was more residential. |
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There were many swimmers and surfers in the water, even though the water was quite chilly.
With the beautiful coastline and so many beaches, we can only say that the people in Sydney are quite spoiled! |
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Tamarama beach was the perfect size, plus it had great waves and pretty blue water. |
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The beaches up to this point were all really nice ... but the most famous, Bondi beach was just around the next bend ... ... we didn't know what to expect. |
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| The rock formations were interesting. The cliffs are made out of different kinds of sandstone, each of which erodes differently. | ||
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This was our first glimpse of Bondi beach; it's very long, with a beautiful peninsula at the end. |
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| The
summer holiday was coming to an end and the beach was full of people taking advantage of the
hot weather.
I was surprised that there weren't any shade shelters; many people were getting roasted! |
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This was obviously a big tourist area, with many shops on the road behind the beach. |
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We left the beach area in search of refreshments, as there were many cool bars to choose from. |
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We were lazy and took the bus back to Coogee. Along the way we
discussed what we saw ... |
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| I'll
add just one more beach ...
Earlier in the week we crossed the bay in a ferry to see Manly beach ... the most popular place for the people living in the north. |
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All in all, the Sydney beaches were very nice and offered a lot of variety! |
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We
decided to visit the Hunters Valley wine region, just north of Sydney.
Even though it |
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| We took small roads so that we could see the lush countryside. It rained heavily during the past few days, which the plants liked! | Nicole had the job of checking the flooded roads for debris. | |
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The Hunters Valley region turned out to be as beautiful as many other vineyard areas of the world. |
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We stopped at a Visitor's Center and got a map of the Hunters Valley region; once again their tourist organizations were wonderful. We mapped out a route and set out to do some wine tasting. |
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We visited the smaller wineries and were sometimes the only visitors. Often we had to figure out where the wine tasting was held ... in the barn ... in the shed ... in the back field? |
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At one
winery, some creatures were creating a deafening
noise. |
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Wine-making
is a relatively new business for this area and they're turning farms into
vineyards. |
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Some developers were already building golf courses and groups of homes, which will take up any spare land and cause more traffic; it's too bad that some places can't stay just the way they are. |
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Before heading back to Sydney we stopped at recommended burger place ... which turned out to be on a very fancy, manicured property ... again, they really know how to treat tourists! |
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| We
said goodbye to Hunters Valley and returned to Sydney.
We would soon leave Sydney and our nice 'home base' at Ursula's. Our plan was to go inland for a week and explore a few parks and some interesting sounding towns. We would then return to the coast for the remaining two weeks of our vacation. |
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| Claudia and I reviewed the camping items that Ursula lent to us; we practiced setting things up so we knew how everything worked. | Nicole
worked hard to finish a 3-D puzzle before we left. |
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