Australia Part III - Day Three

O.K. so now that we were at the actual place that we were staying in Aussie, we slept in a bit and then took advantage of the tennis and pool facilities. You had to book the court in advance for a thirty minute slot, but fortunately there was only one day that we found it in high demand. Scott and I came to realize that it had been quite some time since we had actually played tennis when three of the balls we hit went outside the court and one ended up on the roof of the main building. Ooops. Andre and Martina we are not.

Our unit and rental car.

The lane between the buildings was lined with cool trees with purple flowers.

Reception and main building.

Cool Australian flower?

Picnic area with outdoor griddles.

Game area.

Scott getting ready to kick my tennis behind.

Pool and spa (i.e. hot tub sans the hot).

A little stream flowed through the main building between the pool and tennis court and the game areas.

And it had koi in it.

Adults only game room.

They were in the process of building docks into the canal.

Anyways, after we showered up, our main plan for the day was to head down to a town called Narooma about two hours south for an evening penguin boat tour. The tour consisted of a boat ride out to an island off the coast where there was a penguin sanctuary. We were quite excited and wanted to head down with plenty of time to make sure we were not late. We thought that we could spend the extra time exploring the town. We were somewhat...mistaken on all accounts.

Anyways, the trip down was uneventful...O.K. it was pretty boring, and when we got into the town, it was ghost-town like. There were several reasons for this. One, we were in the off season, two, it was Sunday, and three, the place just was not that interesting to begin with sadly. We hit the Visitor's Center to get some information on the area, and naturally it was closed, so we kinda meandered around a bit and I got a craving for ice cream. Fortunately, we did manage to find an open sweet shop that sold ice cream, procured our ice cream, and then found a nice bench with kinda a view to sit and eat. We sat around...

After a bit I asked Scott if he wanted to get a beer at the nearby pub with the "Million Dollar View". He said O.K. We had already scoped out the dock where we were to meet for the penguin tour, and we had plenty of time to kill still. So we went to the bar and Scott had a James Squire Amber Ale and I had a Tooney Old Ale (which we had seen advertised everywhere). His was better than mine (9/10), but mine was not bad (8/10). The view was pretty good, but I thought that "Million Dollar" was a bit of an overestimation. Our main entertainment as we sat was a seagull whom we named Klaxon who was defending his turf of outdoor patio tables very exuberantly, especially after we ordered food. I had a Greek salad and Scott had chips (i.e. fries). While sitting out on the patio of the bar admiring the aformentioned view, we noticed a pier that you could walk out on and decided that we needed to get up off our lazy backsides and actually DO something, so off we went to explore the pier.

Klaxon.

"Million Dollar View"

More expensive view.

The pier was pretty cool.

Neat hole in the rock.

Pier and rocky shore.

End of the pier with huge concrete caltrops.

View from end of pier.

Waves crashing on the pier.

View of outlet to the ocean.

Breakwall on the other side of the inlet.

Me on the pier.

Another view of the pier.

Pier from nearby observation deck.

Cute little lizard guy in the path. I wonder if he is poisonous. Isn't everything in Australia poisonous?

Two people about to see some penguins.

I had to climb over some rocks to get to the water and see how cold it was. Pretty cold.

Wee crabs.

We then headed back to the docks to meet for the tour and a nice lady who was fishing pointed out some dolphins heading into the cove. While I was frantically trying to photograph the dolphins, Scott was with the tour captain discovering that he had canceled the tour due to lack of people. Apparently it was only worth his time to make the trip if there were 8 people and so far there was only Scott and me. He did promise to try to drum up business and we tentatively rescheduled for later on in the week, but we were instructed to call before driving down, so I was not too optimistic. A damper was definitely put on the evening with this news, but we decided to take a walk on the other side of the cove entrance, so our visit was not a total bust.

These pictures are of dolphins, I swear.

There was a little beach for swimming here and some other cool things to see, but no penguins. :(

A cool bird I scrambled to get some pictures of only to see about a billion more during our trip.

Apparently the water is rock hard and slippery and you should beware of Cthulu.

Scott checks out the swimming area.

Between the rocks is the wide ocean.

The shore side of the beach area.


There were thousands of these little mollusk guys. Notice their trails.

Birds.

Jelly...thing...

We headed home with heavy hearts but there was a very pretty cloudy sunset over the ocean, and we did spot a beautiful secluded beach and some kangaroos, so not a total loss.

Whoops, also was a cool old Gothic church on the way back.

Those last four photos are kangaroos. Honestly! We could not get any closer because they were on private property. In fact the owners came home while we were still blocking their driveway.

Australia Part II - Day Two

WEEEOOOOO!!!!WEEEEEEOOOOO!!!!

Nope, not our alarm clock set for 7:30am. The hotel fire alarm at about 6am. I had to explain to a very befuddled Scott what was going on. Fortunately, it was probably just someone trying to take a shower (there were warnings posted in the elevators explaining how showering might set them off) and not an actual fire. Just drifting back to sleep when the alarm clock went off. We had to get a bit of an early start in order to see a bit of Sydney before driving down to the timeshare, so we got up and decided to hit the Krispy Kreme next door for breakfast.

We decided to take the back stairs down into the parking lot instead of the main stairs through the lobby. WEEEOOOOO!!!! WEEEEEOOOOO!!!! Whoops, that fire door wasn't labeled as having an alarm. Go, go! Walk away, and try to look normal. Doughnuts were pretty delicious although two of them was probably one too many.

O.K. Let's get outta here! We loaded up the car and headed out to the Sydney Opera House and Royal Botanical Gardens. The day was a bit...moist...and we were sadly lacking in bumbershoots and jackets but that's O.K. It just meant that the attractions were not nearly as crowded as they could have been.

People walking to the top of the harbor bridge.

We saw A Folly for Mrs. Macquarie and her Chair. Also many beautiful flowers and birds.

Not to mention cool trees. This one had fallen over and could not be stood back up without risking breaking the trunk.

During a particularly moist time (A.K.A torrential downpour), we took shelter in a gazebo by the rose garden.

Very neat greenhouse.

Mrs. Macquarie's Chair. This was as far away from the garden entrance by the Opera House as possible, so as we were sloshing along, a common phrase was, "This better be one awesome chair." It was O.K. but the view was a bit lacking due to some tree growth and dock building since Mrs. Macquarie's time.

This cheeky guy really wanted a bite of our toasted sandwiches.
"Wild" cockatoo.
"Wild" parrot?

Weird succulent flower.
Government House.

Sadly, we didn't have too much time to spend as we still had a four hour drive down to the timeshare we were staying at in Tomakin, NSW, so we grabbed a quick bite at the Opera House outdoor cafe and got on the road.

You may notice from this picture that we are getting on the harbor bridge. This is a little odd since the bridge is north of Sydney and we wanted to go south. Navigation fail. Also, we expect to receive a toll bill in the mail any day now since you cannot pay cash for the toll, but instead must purchase a pass ahead of time. Too bad we didn't plan on taking a wrong turn that left us no choice but to go over the bridge. Trust me, we tried to pay this fee while still in the country, but the whole toll "system" is very broken. Do not get us started...

Just in case you needed verification that Australia is an enormous country/continent, this sign says 939km to Melbourne.
Dark City anyone?

It was a looooonnnng and pretty dull drive south along the coast although I did see three echidnas (although sadly got no pictures) and we stopped at a roadside stand to buy fresh mangoes.

Finally made it!
Lovely view of entrance.

When we first arrived, we were a bit nervous because the property at the entrance was under construction and made it look like a bit of a dump, but once inside the Moorings, it was much nicer. The resort had a small indoor pool, "hot" tub (not actually hot, just bubbly), a tennis court, small playground, a game room, an "adults only" game room, docks, boat rentals, and BBQ's (actually outdoor gas griddles).

Living room of timeshare.

The actual condo was also quite nice, but I'll post more pictures of that later. After we unloaded the car, we again were pretty hungry and needed to stock up on some food. We were directed by the check in desk to a relatively close IGA (I have only seen them in northern Michigan until now, but apparently they are in 45 countries) in the neighboring town of Surf Beach which was blissfully right next to a pizza place. The pizza was quite good although they did not use mozzarella cheese. I also got a "spider" to drink which I thought was like a root beer float, but ended up being a pink drink with ice cream in it.

After eating and shopping we were pretty tired, so called it a night, but we did see some kangaroos on the way home! Again sadly no pictures.