Sydney

After an early morning flight from Melbourne, we arrived in Sydney around 8am. We headed over to the hostel to drop off our bags and begin exploring the city. We headed down to the
Harbor and caught the first train over to the Taronga Zoo. We spend several hours at the Zoo and even caught a seal show at the end. After the Zoo we took the ferry back over and took a tour of the Sydney Opera House. The project began with a budget of 7 million and ended up costing around 109 million to complete.

After the Opera House we headed back to the Hostel to get settled and moved into our room. We were able to make it back up town in time to catch the sunset from the Sky Tower. We enjoyed dinner afterwords in the rotating restaurant on the top floor.

The next day we got an early start heading to the Australian National Maritime Museum and Wildlife World before lunch. We spend the afternoon taking a cruise around the harbor and exploring the Sydney Aquarium.

We spent our last rainy day in Sydney getting caught up on rest and visiting a few last sights. We revisited the Australian National Maritime Museum and caught an afternoon film at the IMAX about the Wild Coast of Africa.

We have now begun our treck up the East Coast. We caught a 7am train out of Sydney bound for Byron Bay.

Great Ocean Road

The Great Ocean Road...hard to believe there is more to the tour than standing on the very beach that Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze stood on at the end of the film "Point Break''....Bells Beach... This was actually our first stop on the tour...couldn't save the best for last.

We actually begun the tour from Melbourne, amongst the worst bush fires in Australian history. The fires affected suburban areas of the city itself so the effect was easily felt among everyone we encountered on our tour.We passed through Geelong (Second largest city in Victoria) and stopped in at an Aboriginal Cultural Center there. It was our first encounter with Aboriginal people that we were able to interact with. The Aboriginal people experienced a history similar to that of Native Americans in the United States ( I am starting to think it was worse). Needless to say they is a large amount of the population that is understandably self-separated from western society. It was good to have a chance to actually speak with an Aboriginal person, as it seems that every Australian (White - European decent) has a different opinion about the "situation".

We drove up the coast to the "Twelve Apostles" where we hopped into a helicopter for a birds eye view of this natural wonder. The video and photos of our flight are amazing and will be posted to this page...see above...

We also visited an arch just up the coast called "London Bridge" and were surprised to learn that a second arch existed before 1995 and had fallen while people were out on the section that is now separated from the land. Fortunately no one was hurt during the collapse...but they did just finish filming a BMW commercial on the arch and had 12 BMW's parked on the part that collapsed the week before. Good thing for Bavarian Motor Werks that they didn't film the commercial one week later.

Kangaroo Island

Up and out the door early to catch the first ferry to Kangaroo Island our of Port Jarvis. You may remember Port Jarvis made the news a few years back when a dead whale was devoured by great white sharks off its coast for several days a few years ago. There are some famous pictures of a local standing on top of the whale while the sharks were slowly eating there way through it. We had the privilege of riding with the very man who captained the reporter out to take that famous picture. (See Below)

Kangaroo Island is the 3rd largest Island in Australia with a population of about 4000 people. We headed out to Pennington Bay for a bit of a swim before getting our tour of the island started. We headed out to a few rocks named the "Remarkable Rocks". They resemble "The Baths" in the British Virgin Islands, but these rocks are perched high atop a cliff and have a fantastic view of the southern ocean. We visited several beaches that hold a few of the remaining Australian and New Zealand Seals. You can get very close to the seals and we were able to get some amazing pictures of them. We finished up our visit with a sand boarding in a place called the "Little Sahara".

Adelaide

After arriving on the Ghan from Alice springs, we didn't have very long in Adelaide....an afternoon and evening on the front end of our trip to Kangaroo Island and an evening on the back end. We spend our afternoon looking through the city market in Adelaide. It is the Australian version of a farmers market. We stocked up on some fresh fruit for our trip to Kangaroo Island and headed down to the beach. We found the only Mexican restaurant in town and enjoyed Sangria and a great view of the beach. We needed a chance to cool down from our days spent in the scorching outback heat.