19 February 2013 - Sydney Tourist Park, Miranda, NSW

I sat up late last night dabbling in my genealogy, delighted to find a like minded acquaintance of mine in Germany had been delving further into families of his particular region of that country. It is official; I am without doubt one quarter German. Interestingly this side of the family spent much energy over many decades suggesting we were of Dutch origin. Such was the desire to embrace our Germanic origins.

Although it rained yet again through the night, the sun was shining when we ventured out. Perhaps today was to be the last full day in which we were absolutely not going to be called to deal with the vehicle saga? Soon after 9 am we were on the train into the city, switched at Town Hall and emerged at Circular Quay. Another huge cruise ship was docked at the terminal and the tourist numbers were boosted accordingly.

We did not have to wait long before catching the ferry to Watson’s Bay, a place we had been before, when we had instead caught the train to Bondi Junction, walked through to Bondi Beach then caught a bus through to The Gap, high above Watson’s Bay. Today we knew exactly where we were heading; along the walking track past H.M.A.S. Watson Naval Base, through to the Sydney Harbour National Park. The track passes above the charming Lady Bay where nudity is welcome, a fact clearly spelled out on an official sign. From the lookout platforms above the beach, instead of looking out for turtles and dugongs, one can spot middle aged gay men lounging about in the sun or wading about in hip high water. Most are bronzed and toasted ready for the cancer clinics. We could not avoid the sight of metal glistening in the sun; a sunseeker with hardware threaded through bits that need not be named here in this post. All too much; we hastened away to instead enjoy the birds in the bushes and the exquisite views out across the entrance to the harbour and across to the suburbs spread across the northern shores.

The lighthouse at South Head

Here at South Head there is a memorial to the Dunbar,which went down in 1853 with all crew and passengers. A lighthouse was soon constructed and still operates today, the second oldest remaining harbour light in New South Wales. It is a delightful spot and we shared this pleasure with many others who had chosen to take advantage of the weather as we had.

We made our way back toward  Watson’s Bay, this time following the coastline to Camp Cove, today a popular place for swimmers and sunbathers who chose not to visit Lady Bay. It was here at Camp Cove that Captain Phillips landed first in Sydney Harbour in 1788 and there is a memorial to mark the event. It really is a delightful spot and we enjoyed making our way barefooted along the golden sands.

Back at Watson’s Bay, the famous Doyles restaurant was quickly filling and did look very tempting, the tables set and glasses placed just so, ready to be filled. However we had our sandwiches and apples in the backpack and were happy to find a shady spot under the wonderful fig trees in the park adjacent to the wharf.

We caught the next ferry and headed across the harbour toward the city. As we pulled into Garden Island, we decided, on impulse, to jump ship and see what there was to see.

Views back to the city from Garden Island

Garden Island is the site of the Fleet Base East of the Royal Australian Navy and much of the area is fenced off from the public. It was originally an island, but extension of the base and the construction of the dry dock in the channel between the island and the mainland have resulted in its connection to the mainland shore at Potts Point from the 1940s, which in turn is just down the road from Kings Cross.

Aside from lovely parklike grounds over the hill and up to the Signal Building, from where one has superb views over the harbour, particularly back to the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, the public is welcome, in fact encouraged, to visit the RAN Heritage Centre, ostensibly a Navy museum. The centre was opened in 2005 in two renovated National Estate listed buildings, the Gun Mounting Workshop and the Boastshed, constructed in 1922 and 1890 respectively. The exhibits are well presented however I have to admit that the museum did not really grab me. We felt that the $5 entry charge was too much, however had we been passionate about naval memorabilia and history, perhaps we would have felt very differently.

We did not have to wait very long for another ferry back to Circular Quay where we caught trains back to Town Hall and so back to Miranda. We had so enjoyed our day’s expedition and exploration of new sights, genital jewellery not withstanding. Needless to say, there have been no calls from Maurie the Mechanic or the warranty company. We will get back on their case tomorrow. 

18 February 2013 Sydney Tourist Park, Miranda, NSW

As we sit waiting here in Sydney, great swathes of bush in Victoria’s Grampians and Alps have been consumed by fire. I could simply look on the bright side and say how lucky we are to have seen these wonderful areas before they are so spoiled and be glad we are in a safe haven, but alas I feel greatly saddened that people have lost their lives and homes in these infernos. The war in Syria seems to have taken a back seat to other news and yet I believe it goes on unrelenting; people have simply become bored by the whole affair. The Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has announced the date for the Federal election and so the political argie bargie continues here and continues to entertain. The Dutch Queen is abdicating  and the Pope has taken the hint to follow suit. Alas not the Prime Minister in Canberra.

The first day of the new week may have heralded an end to our mechanical woes, or so Chris hoped. He was averse to us heading too far away and so we hung about in the hope for that miraculous phone call.

The morning was partly whiled away with a walk up to Miranda and back, and then after lunch, Chris took it upon himself to ring the garage. Maurie was out but would call. Two Sudokos later and still no call, but the afternoon halfway gone, we decided to take a walk north to the Southgate Shopping Centre at Sylvania and call in to the garage in person on the way back.

Maurie had not returned our call because he had little to report. Certainly the outwork is being undertaken somewhere in the city but progress regarding who will pay for what, is still undetermined; the warranty company are dragging their toes. We left the garage understanding that we would not be moving out of Sydney until Wednesday at the very earliest. Chris, lacking my optimism, suggests next week.

On our return to camp, we spent time chatting with the couple camped opposite us who are packing up ready to leave tomorrow. They have been here at the Sydney Tourist Park for three weeks and on the road for six years. They were also full of travel tips about the West however they travel with a dog and prefer not to free camp. All advice is gladly received and I jotted pencil notes on my map for future reference.

The park is home, either temporary or permanent to hundreds; in essence a good representation of  society with a notable absence of the rich. There are long legged bronzed blond tourists camped in small campervans, a derelict bent old man beaten by life who does not meet your eye on greeting, a vibrant diminutive solo-mum with two little boys who remind me of our Charlie and Matthew who cheerfully battles her lot against the odds, several workers for Downers in temporary accommodation  a dozen folk like us of similar age and similar pursuit, and so on. Fragrant hedges and beautiful melaleucas create screens of privacy, acres of concrete save the Maori groundsman mowing and the pre-fab buildings function adequately as amenities blocks. I could almost become saddened at the thought of leaving. Or not.

17 February 2013 - Sydney Tourist Park, Miranda, NSW

More rain fell in the night and was still falling as we contemplated our plans for the day. We were pleased that we did not have to move to another site. Brigette, the very prim camp administration manager, had surprised us again with her efficiency and compassion, by juggling booked campers onto other sites thus leaving us in situ. And so, with no need to be dismantling and resetting camp, we viewed the day as a blank page, albeit it possibly a wet one.

Chris suggested we visit the Brett Whiteley Studio; we had attempted this once before but realised half way there we were on the wrong day. (We do this so often!) We have come upon this famous Australian’s work in galleries across the nation during our travels, and more recently at the Hazelhurst Regional Art Gallery where there was an excellent exhibition of his Bondi  work and some of his sculptural work. It was here we had been alerted to the existence of his gallery open to the public almost as a shrine.

The gallery at 2 Raper Street, Surrey Hills is where the artist actually lived and worked from 1988 through to 1992 when he died. I was a little disappointed at the paucity of work displayed, having seen so much more at the Sutherland gallery, but enjoyed immensely a DVD  about the artist titled Difficult Pleasure. I also enjoyed being in his studio and mess of work just as he had left it.  The main feature of the downstairs studio is one of Brett Whiteley’s more disturbing compositions, Alchemy; a huge multi panelled work taking up most of two walls; a surreal kaleidoscope of colour and content reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch’s work, the product of a very screwed mind. I do love most of Whiteley’s work and it was a real pleasure to spend more than an hour and a half there at the studio.

We returned to Central Station after pausing to eat our lunch in a park on Devonshire Street, a street full of delightful terraced houses, and caught the train on to Martin’s Place. Now the sun was shining, we hoped to find Pitt Street Mall buzzing with buskers and shoppers, and so we did although nearly every busker seemed to spend more time getting ready for their act rather than actually performing. We walked on through the crowds to the Town Hall Station, caught the train in the bowels of the underground and came on home.

Once back at Miranda, we walked across to the Coles supermarket, shopped and carried our bags of groceries back to camp along the streets lined with flowering frangipani and hibiscus. The day had turned out well; weather wise, entertainment wise and from a practical aspect as well. 

16 February 2013 - Sydney Tourist Park, Miranda, NSW

It is very satisfying to have made the most of the day, even if, as so oft happens, the day was not quite to plan.

It had been raining every time I woke through the night and was not much better over breakfast. We checked the forecast online; it promised a little better than a visual check outside so we decided to set off anyway. With a lunch packed, we caught the train to Circular Quay, changing at Town Hall and emerged into a torrential downpour. We and a thousand other tourists, most off the rather impressive cruise ship docked at the International Wharf, crowded under the limited shelter afforded by the railway structure at the quay.

It had been our plan to catch the ferry to Watson Bay and walk to the end of South Head. We had attempted this once before but found ourselves blocked by Defense Department security fencing. Retreating to the wharf, we had seen, all too late, that there was a shoreline path skirting around the forbidden precinct  but the day was fading and the last ferry due. Now we had time and opportunity to make good our omission  But this morning with the rain pelting down and the harbour looking a little wild, we decided to put it on the back burner yet again.

So instead we headed for the Museum of Contempory Art, last visited in mid-March 2011. Since then the gallery has undergone extensive renovations and we were interested to see the improvements and to revisit the works held.

Currently there is an exhibition of works by Anish Kapoor, probably the only reason one should bother with the gallery, in our opinion. We had not found the gallery particularly exciting when we visited last and alas, were not impressed this time either. However, as I have said so often, we are ignorant of art and only know what we like.

There is also a free exhibition titled “Taboo” on at the moment and we did spend some time wandering about this. The name reveals the nature of the exhibition; a collection of films, books, paintings, cartoons and other bits and pieces exposing matters that are today labelled politically incorrect, racist or pornographic. The exhibition certainly titillates debate and interest, however for myself, not at all a prude, I would be no worse off for not having attended.

We lunched under a wonderfully big fig tree on the quay as we watched the many cruise ship tourists wandered to and fro, then we ourselves wandered up into The Rocks, today the venue of a wonderful market. As so often happens when we find ourselves at a quality market, we regret we have not space to accumulate such lovely treasures. We lingered for some time, so long that it was soon time to start the journey home; we caught the train at Circular Quay and changed at Redfern and Sutherland, making the last leg of the journey on foot without the use of umbrellas.

Perhaps tomorrow there will be less rain and we can be a little more adventurous?

15 February 2013 - Sydney Tourist Park, Miranda, NSW

Early this morning we received a call from Maurie, the Mechanic; he had the fuel pump out and it was off to the “lab” for reconditioning. Still no definite response from the warranty company so we did mental  calculations in our heads to prepare ourselves for our cost share of the work; most likely 100% despite the numerous calls to and from National Insurance. It was now clear that we would be without a vehicle until at least Tuesday next week so we could apply ourselves to pursuits beyond mechanical woes. I suggested that I pack our lunch and we catch the train to Hurstville.

Hurstville, up until now just one of the many stations on the way into the city centre, is the commercial capital of St George, a region here in the southern part of greater Sydney boasting more than 220,000 people. It is bounded in the south by the Georges River and the east by Botony Bay and is a community of diverse cultures. At least that is what the tourist brochures say. We found ourselves teleported into a small city in China, fortunately one sympathetic to western reading requirements. Those same brochures expound the wonders of the Asian cuisine in Forest Road, and we certainly enjoyed the array of providors of Asian ingredients if not the restaurants themselves; a great assortment of duck parts, marvelously priced fruit and vegetables and very well priced regular meat cuts. There was however no horse meat in sight; this comment will only have relevance to those who may read this in early 2013.

We made our way to the small but interesting St George Regional Museum and learned about the very early settlement of the area. It was interesting to read of the demise of the aboriginal people of the area, so much so that there is no surety as to what tribe the original inhabitants may have belonged to, and to learn of the “dregs” of European society that came to settle through the  19^th century; hardy folk who could withstand the remoteness and the terrible conditions of the place. Interestingly when Captain Cook landed in Botony Bay, he had expounded the virtues of this fabulous land so perfect for settlement, a sentiment that had been rubbished by Phillips and those in the First Fleet who abandoned any such plan and headed into Sydney Harbour instead. Those hardy souls who did take up settlement in Botony Bay later ground out a living farming oysters, burning lime gathered from aboriginal shell middens for building material in Sydney and charcoal for the firing of kilns. Boat building and furniture making followed but it would seem it was such a hell hole that even the missionaries and educators gave it a wide berth for some time.

The railway opened in 1884, eight years after the first school. The municipality was incorporated in 1887 and in 1988, Hurstville was declared a city.

There is little in the museum to explain why the Asians have taken over the centre of Hurstville, however it takes little imagination to understand that Asians are hard working, enterprising people who would surely be most comfortable working and living among their own kind. Of course there are pockets all over the country, indeed the world, of ethnic groups doing the same. I imagine there was a time when residences were affordable here, hence the drawcard for new immigrants. But today as we browsed the real estate windows we could see that it is no longer a place for the poor to invest. Hopefully those immigrants of more recent years have done well; no doubt they deserve the fruits of their labour.

We found the museum worth the visit and it doubled as a refuge from a heavy shower of rain. We took lunch in the more conventional Westfield Shopping Centre where we found a better indication of Sydney’s population mix, although window shopping up and down Forest Road had been far more entertaining.

14 February 2013 - Sydney Tourist Park, Miranda, NSW

The past few days seem to have whizzed by despite the fact we have achieved very little. The landcruiser remains in the custody of Beekman Motors, one of the warranty approved fixit folk who have no doubt been as frustrated by all the bureaucracy as we have been. We understand that the practical work has commenced this afternoon however will not get too carried away with excitement until all is completed. Needless to say the Boss here has been even more irritated than anyone and so I have been setting time-filling activities such as eight kilometre walks and movies.

We have walked to Sylvania, to Taren Point, to Caringbah and back to Miranda. We have been to see “Lincoln” and “Safe Haven” just adding to the list of movies we have seen this past couple of months, a list which includes “Les Miserables”, “Quartet”, “The Hobbit” and “Hitchcock”. This overload of cinematic entertainment should satisfy us for the many months ahead where there are unlikely to be any such friviolities on offer.

We have pulled the maps and Bibles out and begun to pour over them, planning the route ahead. As I write this we are thinking we will head north west via Cowra, Parkes, Nyngan, Bourke, Cunnamulla, Charleville, Barcaldine, Longreach, Cloncurry and so on up to Darwin. While some of these places have been visited before, I have planned as many new routes as possible, in many cases intersecting those already travelled. This is all very prescriptive and may be considered out of character, given our travelling history so far, however we could yet turn this all on its head and head for Perth via a southern route instead. All we have actually agreed on is that we will head for Canberra as soon as we can leave here; we have an errand to attend to on behalf of one of our sons.

So in the meantime, we ensure our cellphone is accessible and turned on and stay close by camp which in turn is within walking distance of the garage, or at least in the Shire, not to be confused by the Hobbit’s shire . Our departure date is uncertain although should the car not be ready by Friday, we will have to enlist the help of another to move the rig across to another site, and you may have guessed by now that we are averse to imposing upon others.

11 February 2013 - Sydney Tourist Park, Miranda, NSW

I cannot deny that it is absolutely wonderful to be back in Australia and (almost) ready to continue with our travels of this amazing continent. We have spent the past two months experiencing the myriad of emotions one deals with when catching up with aging parents and children, all pursuing their own agendas which do not necessarily fit with the paths of parents’ expectations. And when there are melded families, one should always expect wild cards.

We spent our sojourn in our aging motorhome and pursuing a medley of wishlist modifications, many of which we enjoy here in Australia. Some of these we may follow through when we next return to New Zealand, but for now will simply appreciate that we have the benefits of solar power and the like here in Australia.

We camped on shorelines reserved for seabirds and those who could quietly remain unobtrusive observers, such as ourselves. We camped under puriri trees, were early enough to catch the blooming of the pohutakawa and jacaranda trees and on the whole, enjoyed excellent weather. We spent some days camping in rural landscapes with coastal backdrops and  in the company of scores of comical pukekos and flocks of mixed mongrel sheep. We managed to grab just a day sampling one of the new cycle ways constructed since the Prime Minister tagged this as an employment initiative, and were delighted to find we could still stay upright on our rather neglected bikes and I, to find that my Sarah Ulmer bike-pants still could be dragged up onto the lately expanding middle aged female flesh due to the excesses of food and once self-banned alcoholic delights.

We were also eternally grateful for the timing of our absence from Australia, missing the horror and grief of the summer infernos through the more southern states and the flooding of towns in Queensland and northern New South Wales, particularly Bundaberg, Gladstone, Gympie and Grafton, all of which we had stayed in and enjoyed in better times. While we did loose our first landcruiser in those Brisbane floods of early 2011, we are eternally grateful that we have, to this point, avoided disasters and loss, perhaps  more from good luck than good management.

We flew back into Sydney in the cramped quarters of a Jetsar aircraft, just as we had left two months ago but this time in the company of numerous families. (Perhaps there is a toddlers convention on somewhere here in Sydney this week?) This trip we were better prepared for the budget service and went with Subway rolls and a bottle for water, rather than pay out large sums of money for less than basic fare on board. Mentally prepared, we avoided the angst and frustration of having chosen a budget option, and would be pleased to recommend this simple service airline, especially to the backpacker brigade even allowing for the company of so many small people.

Again we were pleased to have a relatively hassle free transport corridor back to the Tourist Park, now familiar with the train service in this part of Sydney however we did find on arrival that the airport rail link was closed for maintenance and we were taken on a complimentary bus to the station at Wolli Creek as we had been once before. We had intended to complete the last part of our journey on foot however the heavy cloud cover had turned to heavy rain, punctuated with great sheets of lightning and thunder, a feature that Sydney is apparently well know for. After finding that we were too late to catch the supermarkets at Miranda’s Westfield, we stood in partial shelter waiting for a taxi to arrive. The trees between the rail station and the shopping centre are home to a thousand or more roosting lorikeets, and it was such a joy to watch and listen to them, over the sound of the battling sky. Oh Australia! How I love the birds!

Our travelling rig was as we had left it although by now surrounded in pools of rain water. We had shifted our possessions that normally ride in the landcruiser, into the caravan during our absence and so had to transfer all of this back into the vehicle before we could move across to our allocated site in the park. It was pitch black by the time we had completed setting up and we could peel our saturated clothing off. However despite all of this, I was delighted to be back.

We had been pleased to find the landcruiser started immediately last night, and found the same this morning which all adds to the frustration of intermittent mechanical problems. We drove up to the centre of Miranda this morning, visited the Telstra store where a delightful young man reinstated my Australian internet system and the local Coles supermarket where we stocked up from scratch with perishables. We had been appalled in New Zealand every time we shopped at the supermarket; prices are so much higher than they are here if you simply consider the dollars of equal value. Needless to say, it was a pleasure to find we still could receive good value for our dollar here.

The afternoon was spent travelling through to more northern suburbs to consult a Toyota service agent who just might be able to help us, on the phone to the warranty company and to more local garages, none of whom have been able to offer complete solutions. Tomorrow morning, there will be more of the same. In the meantime we have booked for a week and are enjoying the heavy scent of the jasmine and the abundant bird life in this surprisingly pleasant and very convenient caravan park.