RestlessNatives.net NativeGuide to
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Sydney to Heron Island :: Lizard Island :: Weekends from Sydney
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Australia page 1: Sydney to Heron Island
As of 2002, we live in Sydney. In 2001, we spent a couple of weeks on the east coast. In 1994 George spent a frenetic week visiting Melbourne and driving 4000km roundtrip from Adelaide to see Ayers Rock and the rest of the "Red Centre". In 1993 Deb backpacked Oz, travelling to the other outback - the northern rainforests around Darwin - and several major cities.
Our photos from our earlier adventures are (we hope) in a warehouse somewhere in North America, so we'll start this page with our most recent trip, which involved driving a rental car from Sydney to Gladstone, where we took a boat to Heron Island. The fact that we were no longer on student budgets, combined with the vastly improved (from our perspective) exchange rate, made this a whole different vacation experience. But we didn't stray too far from the well-beaten tourist path.
The Land of Oz
First off, it's a big country, the size of the continental USA. And, as in the USA, you don't quite realize just how big until you try to drive across it. If you're trying to take in Australia and New Zealand in the same trip, you'll be struggling to see much of either unless you allow a lot of time. Not that it can't be done, and in fact George enjoyed two weeks split between the South Island and the Outback, but you'll only scratch the surface.
Sydney
We took an overnight flight from Hong Kong and arrived in miserable little heaps in Sydney on a damp, chilly Sunday morning. After convincing the immigration and customs officials that we really weren't bringing hoof-and-mouth, mad cow or any other kind of disease into the country, we hopped into our silver Toyota and set out to find our way to the Hotel Intercontinental. One detour (always fun for tourists) and one toll road (with no local currency) later, we arrived safe and sound. Sydney is Deb's favorite city, and she was eager for George to see the highlights before we set off for Heron Island. So, after a snooze and a shower, we wandered through the drizzle to the Rocks, site of the first European settlement in Sydney and now crowded with shops, restaurants and pubs. We resisted buying any of the cheesy souvenirs and settled in at an Italian restaurant to stuff our faces. We then decided to give up on the rainy day and catch up on our sleep. The next morning the clouds were gone and we were treated to a fabulous autumn day. We spent a few hours reveling in the sunshine and wandering the Royal Botanical Gardens, moseying over to Mrs. Macquarie's chair (where Mrs. Macquarie – wife of one of the early governors of Australia – is said to have sat watching for her husband's return), and snapping the obligatory photos of the opera house. (The one-hour photo guy at Circular Quay must have the world's most exciting job. "Oh, look! A photo of the opera house from Farm Cove!")
We spent the afternoon on a cruise of the harbor. In addition to the expected sights, we saw the set where they film "Water Rats" (it's an Australian cop show we like), and a new Australian submarine on its way into port (as "greenness" is apparently more important than effectiveness, it is diesel-powered). But most of the cruise featured views of homes we could never afford -- no matter how great the exchange rate -- and we eventually tired of that. We got off the ferry at Darling Harbor and spent the rest of the day at the Aquarium. It has a good assortment of fish and some terrific tanks, including several of the "Kelly Tarleton" type walk-through tubes, where the fish swim over and around you, sometimes startlingly close. We returned on foot to Circular Quay, marveling at the notion of a thriving metropolis where people actually leave work at a civilized hour. How on earth does the city continue to function when people go home at – gasp – 6pm?? The average Hong Konger would not know what to do with themselves.
After a quick shower, we headed out to Waterfront (located, surprisingly, on the waterfront) to eat some of the critters we had seen at the Aquarium. Deb pronounced the baked cheesecake – of which there is a dearth in Hong Kong – to be "almost as good as Mom's", and we were treated to a lengthy, impromptu fireworks display (we never did find out the reason for it) over the harbor.
The next morning the weather was again fantastic, and Deb headed out for a run around Farm Cove and through the Botanical Gardens. Not long ago we heard on the news that Sydney folks were concerned that a proposed ring road would increase air pollution in Sydney, but we can assure you they have a long way to go before air quality in Sydney is a problem. The last time Deb ran in downtown Hong Kong, for the Standard Chartered 10-K, it took her lungs about two weeks to recover from all the fumes. In Sydney, she was positively giddy with all the oxygen.
We then took the ferry to Taronga Zoo, one of the most picturesque zoos in the world and full of Australian critters. (The zoo also boasts several "exotic" animals – like rattlesnakes. Do Australians find the notion of kangaroos in the zoo as funny as we find the notion of rattlesnakes in the zoo? Rattlesnakes aren't exotic – they're just the things you hope you don't find when mowing the back yard. The Hong Kong zoo has some funny ones too, such as a raccoon.) We took more highly unusual photos of koala bears to further awe the one-hour photo guy.
Left with one afternoon in Sydney and too much left to see, do and (most importantly) eat, we opted to head out to Bondi. Bondi is – well – Bondi. Full of surfers, backpackers, locals, tourists, movie stars and wannabes, ethnic neighborhoods, and no gem to look at once off the beach, Bondi is a cross between Khao San Road in Bangkok and any given beachside locale in southern California (only more hilly). Deb reckons Bondi is home to all sorts of folks who seem to share only one thing in common – the love of the beach – and would be a great place to live. George thinks there are some interesting bits, but on the whole it's (uh, like) just the sort of surf-and-granola California-wannabe suburb that he could definitely do without (dude). Anyhow, after a quick lunch at a local dive we headed out on the trail to Bronte and Coogee. We'll soon have a section on "Hiking on Sidewalks" on our Hong Kong page, but at least on this trail the views are terrific and there are definitely worse places to go for a morning run.
We managed to get a cab back to Circular Quay and queried the driver what he would recommend in the way of a seafood restaurant. Without hesitation he answered that Doyle's was the place to go. Despite the fact that it was next door to the place we'd eaten the night before and it would have been nice to mosey around Darlinghurst for a bite, Doyle's it was. The seafood was terrific, but apparently once something becomes a "Sydney institution" the locals stop going because the only people there were Americans.
Sydney to Gladstone
The next morning Deb headed out for one last run in the marvelously clean air, then we got in the car and headed over the harbor bridge and on north. We quickly learned the three major rules of the road in Australia – (a) don't drink and drive (George was subjected to a random breathalyzer test farther up the road – not nearly as exciting for us as it was for the guys in front of us, who got a ticket), (b) don't speed (we'd never do that. ahem. cough.) and (c) don't fall asleep at the wheel (the "stop – revive – survive" campaign has been great for local motels, which now sport signs that read "stop – revive here!"). Unfortunately, four-lane highway is still something of a rarity in Oz, so the occasional slow-moving Army convoys were a definite obstacle.
Our first stop along the way was the Hunter Valley, where a quick visit to the local visitor center got us a room at the Pokolbin Village (of course, the one place that did not have a mid-week, off-season special) and a spot on an afternoon winery tour. With Steve from Trek-About Tours at the wheel, we managed to visit five wineries in the space of three and a half hours. (Steve's record is 14 wineries in one day! If we'd had that much we might have been more inclined to believe the story about the carnivorous kangawallafoxes.) Dinner was a great meal at Red, a name which refers either to wine or some sort of Communist affiliation. (They have red stars on the napkins and all. We're thinking of going into business supplying them with Mao paraphernalia.) We are proud to say that we are now true wine snobs (though still ignorant) – the next morning we went back to our favorite wineries and bought three cases of wine, including an advance order. (They had taunted us with a very unusual wine that tasted of strawberries, and then said "We're sold out of this but the 2001 is identical!")
The next morning, we headed back to Highway 1 and on up toward Gladstone. Highlights:
Best Name Awards: Mooball (which is painted in black-and-white spots, cow style), Goodnight Scrub, Town of 1770, and The Entrance.
Grafton: George adds a new species to his palate – kangaroo. Not bad. (Just kidding in that photo caption to the right, we didn't meet the one we ate.)
Gold Coast: Orlando meets the beach. A big storm rolled in while we ate lunch.
Dreamworld: The guys at Tiger Island have the BEST job in the world. They spend their days hanging out and playing with tigers, which they have hand-raised from infancy. We happened to see a report on TV about these guys just before our trip, and getting paid to take tiger cubs home and play with them looks as cool as it sounds. The last two photos below are from a little "meet the tiger" type of show, and we were front and center - sitting five feet from an uncaged tiger (and puma) felt pretty cool. The women who work the koala photo op place have it pretty rough too. We also believe we have solved the mysteries of the origins of Yoda – can't you just see this little guy with a light saber? (see the picture bar on the left)
Noosa: Where the beautiful people vacation and even the cockroaches are fabulous – fabulously large and trying to find a way into our luggage, that is. But our room had a hot tub in the bedroom, and you can't beat that. Dinner at Lindoni's made the whole drive worthwhile.
Gladstone: Our trusty Lonely Planet informed us that there is not much reason for a traveler to stop here other than to catch the boat to Heron Island. We don't have much to add to that, except that the Flinders restaurant has some of the best seafood in all of Australia. Feel free to ask the proprietor what a mudcrab is – he'll bring one alive and kicking to your table. Turns out it's a huge crab built like a tank. We opted for something a little less intimidating and more dead.
Heron Island
We boarded the ferry with some trepidation due to a strong wind warning that was in effect, and George started to feel a bit uneasy about the greasy fish and chips he'd eaten for breakfast. We gobbled the motion sickness pills that were offered up, and good thing, too. After two hours on the rough seas steadfastly staring at the horizon, we were among the small minority that had not lost their breakfasts (and this is on a catamaran; imagine how bad it would be on a single-hulled boat). An interesting case of perspective - that ferry seems pretty big when it's tied up at the pier, and awfully small when it's in 10-foot seas.
Heron Island is known not only for its location at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef and hence an attraction for divers but also as a great bird watching locale. The tiny island is seasonal home to some 100,000 birds, including noddies, grey and white eastern reef herons, plovers and muttonbirds, to name just a few. All of this makes for quite the cacophony day or night. One would think the muttonbirds would be tired after a day out fishing, but somehow they have the energy to spend their nights making eerily human crying noises. All night. Deb woke up one night and commented that early travelers must have thought there were ghosts on the island, and indeed we later heard that sailors refused to stop at neighboring islands because of the wailing ghosts wandering around at night.
With 100,000 birds in the space of a square kilometer or so, one obviously has to become quite nimble so as to avoid their, er, produce. It didn't occur to us to watch out for the birds themselves, however. We learned the hard way that the muttonbird is somewhat navigationally deficient, particularly when revving up for takeoff or attempting to slow down. As we were meandering out to the helipad at about 9 PM one night for an evening of learning about southern hemisphere constellations, a muttonbird that evidently used that particular path as its runway came flying at us out of the dark. It veered just enough to avoid George (who ducked and yelped valiantly) but, to its and Deb's mutual shock, smacked straight into Deb's face. Deb landed on her butt uttering a number of unprintable obscenities, and the stunned bird sat drunkenly on the ground where it had fallen, no doubt trying to figure out how the hell those trees got on its runway. We certainly didn't expect to spend our first evening on the island in the room holding a can of frozen Sprite to Deb's eye, but she got a nice bruise to sport around for the next day or so and didn't hesitate to blame it on George, who should have been chivalrous enough to take the bird in the face for her.
Deb's misadventures on the island continued a couple days later when she went out on a guided reef walk. She and the rest of the group meandered out to the edge of the reef at low tide, studying various critters including dissolving sea cucumbers, dangerous cone shells, numerous star fish, cute little blue fishes and more. Unfortunately, no one paid much mind to the black wall of storm clouds that was coming their way and eventually dumped everything it had on the little group. A twenty minute slog through knee-deep water and blinding rain brought the bedraggled bunch back to shore.
SSHHHAAARRRRKKKKK!!!!!! We were snorkeling against the incoming tide in about three feet of water, when we heard this muffled shout. We are fairly used to seeing baby black tip reef sharks when we snorkel, so we looked around expecting to see a few of those. Imagine our surprise when what loomed out of the murky water were two six-foot-long adult white tips, one of which thought it was appropriate to start circling us. Logic told us that reef sharks are not dangerous, but logic does not always prevail when one is faced with a fish that is larger than a person. We made like flailing wounded fish and got the heck out of there.
George on the diving.
Well, assuming you're not a muttonbird freak, diving is the main reason to visit Heron Island. And despite some uncooperative weather (rain and wind), it was good diving - although not quite up to what I expected from the Great Barrier Reef in terms of visibility. I'd say visibility was something like 8-12 meters. I blame that on the weather, the time of year, and the fact that Heron is at the very southern end of the barrier reef so not really representative. But in any case, visibility was good enough to get a look at an excellent assortment of corals and critters. I saw sea turtles, eagle rays, white-tip reef sharks, barracuda, a good variety of reef fish and corals, anemones, and the highlight for me, a manta ray. It was a "small" one, which means it was six or seven feet across instead of ten. It's a very cool animal, and big, and I hadn't seen one before, so that pretty much would have made the diving worthwhile even if the rest of the dives were bad (which they weren't). Sorry, no pics to show here; I tried using a disposable camera but got no decent shots out of it.
By the way, we'd like to pause here to do our bit to dispel an annoyingly persistent myth, which says that all sharks have to swim continuously to move water over their gills. This is NOT TRUE. It is WRONG. Tell your friends. If you want a source, George is an eyewitness to the fact that at least some sharks - nurse and white-tip for instance - looove a good (motionless) nap. If you want a better source, look it up yourself.
OK, that's the good part, here's the complaint: Despite enjoying the dives, I would probably not choose Heron Island for future diving, or recommend it, because I didn't like the attitude of the dive shop management. Don't get me wrong, the staff were all excellent - friendly, knowledgeable, etc. - and I appreciated the efficiency of their procedures. But they insist on severely limiting your dives - 18 meters or less on all dives, each dive 2m shallower than the previous dive that day, no dives 24 hours before flying, etc. Not necessarily bad recommendations, but more conservative than the normal standards for no apparent reason except to make life easier for the dive shop. And they enforce these rules (by threatening to withhold service) with no regard to the diver's qualifications/experience, no deference to the diver's own judgment, etc. It was all just a little too overbearing for me; "like boot camp" is how another diver put it. They are also quite inflexible in other ways - for instance, the dive shop was extremely reluctant to do any night dives for some reason (lack of profitability apparently), which disappointed me. And perhaps the most annoying issue concerned the dive boats - there was at least one day that some diving had to be cancelled because their boats weren't rated to go out in the "rough" seas, which looked perfectly acceptable for diving. Hello? You dive this area (and only this area) every day, these are not abnormal conditions, you rake in plenty of bucks, and you still don't have a boat that can handle it? And of course, all these problems are compounded by the dive shop's monopoly position on the island. Anyway, I'll look into the details of the dive situation a little more carefully before my next dive trip in Australia.
Leaving
So, visit to Heron over, we gathered our bags and took a few photos while waiting for the ferry to arrive. When it did, the ride back to the mainland did not look promising – two people had to be carried off of the arriving boat because they were so sick. But once again the motion sickness pills did the trick and we survived the ride relatively unscathed, although the 3-4 meter seas were if anything worse than on the ride out. (The main problem on both legs of the trip was that the waves were coming in almost directly broadside to the boat). The six hour drive back to Brisbane was no picnic, but we arrived safe and sound in Brisbane – unfortunately in plenty of time to catch our plane home to Hong Kong.
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