Australian Pilgrimage Part 4 - Trip to Sydney

As I wrote in the previous post, we left Armidale for Sydney last Thursday morning (due to interruptions and delays it's longer ago now). Our plan was to stop for a night at a motel near Newcastle. We took our Armidale friend Mark's suggestion and went The Bucketts Way road. He said it's more interesting than the New England Highway. 

It was a pretty drive. It only got very steep and winding in one place that I remember. John may remember more.

Not the steep winding part

This was half way down the steepest part. It was steeper than it looks here.

Some of the pretty scenery along the way.

Those little dots are cows

Here's an enlarged view.

In the afternoon we stopped in the town of Gloucester for a walk and to try to find the loo--we did eventually.

They have a beautiful park along Gloucester River.

 

I was surprised and delighted to see by this sign that there are platypuses in the river. I didn't see any but still it was exciting to know that they are there. I've only ever seen them in captivity.

 

These were the only duck-billed animals we saw. Not as exciting as sighting a platypus would have been but still cute.

We also wiled away the time while we drove by singing hymns and choruses and trying to listen to an audio book on-line. The internet was spotty so the book stopped every so often. Then we sang for a bit until the book came back. Our memory of the hymns was a bit spotty too. We sometimes had to look them up on line. But it was a delightful way to spend the time.

We stayed the night at The Sir Francis Drake Motel outside of Newcastle. 

A large room with comfortable seating, table and fridge.
It also had wifi so I was able to download the audio book to make it easier to listen to. (it is "Love Among the Chickens" by P.G. Woodhouse. It's funny so far. We haven't finished listening to it yet.) 

The next day we only had two hours left of our trip to Sydney. But we stopped to hike in Strickland State Forest along the way. It looks close to the motor way on the map. But the way to it once we were off the main road was so convoluted, narrow and winding that it was rather hair raising and we were beginning to wonder if it was worth the trouble. 

I'm glad we didn't meet any on coming traffic.

We hiked the Strickland Falls Track. The hike in and out was more interesting than the actual falls. 

John was not ready but hopefully the scenery makes up for it. When I showed him he quipped, "Every prospect pleases, only man is vile." 

The waterfall. It was more like a trickle when we were there. The water doesn't show in this photo. The part on the right that looks like water is actually a dried palm frond. 

We went back a different way that was higher and got more light. I was delighted to see so many flowers. It was good that John had allowed plenty of time for this part of our trip!

This is a very enlarged photo of a wattle flower. Wattles are the floral emblem of Australia. They were even embroidered onto Queen Elizabeth II's coronation gown in 1953. They are often brighter yellow. I love them in any shade!

Notice the flower at the top of the very tall stem on the right

Here's a closer up picture of it.

Thanks for coming along for the ride, so to speak. 

Stay tuned for our time in Sydney. I'll hopefully get us caught up soon.

Aussie Pilgrimage Part 3 - Armidale, NSW

We're in Sydney now. So much has happened since my last post that I'm going to break it up over two or more posts.

Since my last blog post, we had a good time visiting Mark and Uli Evered in Armidale, NSW. As I may have mentioned last time, John and Mark attended Monash University together in Melbourne many years ago. Armidale is off the beaten track, so to speak, so although we've kept in touch with them over the years it was quite a few years since we had last been able to come and see them.

Mark arranged for John to share about our work with Wycliffe Bible Translators on the Wednesday evening. It was not a regularly scheduled meeting so we were surprised and pleased at the turn out. Several more slipped in after he started.

Mark introducing John

Chatting afterwards

We also went for walks with Mark and Uli (and on our own too) and enjoyed seeing two of their daughters and grandbaby when they stopped by. 

Kangaroos cropping the grass at an aged care facility across from Evereds' house. Kangaroos often visit their yard too but we didn't see any while we were there--just lots of evidence of previous visits ;-).

Obligatory selfie with kangaroos in the background

Mark said they were having two full moons this month. So we can really say we saw them more than "once in a blue moon."

Evereds' daughters, Katie and Annie, and Annie's daughter Eva, came for a visit. The last time we were here Katie and Annie were just kids! 

Thursday we left for Sydney with a night's stop near Newcastle. Mark recommended we go The Bucketts Way because it's more interesting than the usual New England Highway route most people take. I'll cover that in my next post.

Aussie Pilgrimage Part 2 - Dicky Beach to Armidale

We're in Armidale, New South Wales, at the moment, visiting friends from John's uni days. We drove down from Rothwell on Sunday and stopped for the night in Tenterfield.

Yesterday we stopped for lunch at a place called Stonehenge Recreation Reserve where there are a lot of mammoth sized boulders. The interesting arrangements of these ones are all naturally occurring, unlike the other Stonehenge.

John doing his Atlas impression.

On Sunday we broke up the drive by stopping for a short hike. The scenery was completely different. It had an almost tropical rainforest feel. You would never know from these photos that it was close to a busy noisy highway with loud trucks roaring past. We didn't have long so we only hiked in for 15 minutes and then out again. It did get a little quieter as we went a long. Sorry to my FB friends who seen most of these on Facebook already.

The trees are immense. 

Sunday morning John got an unexpected chance to preach and share a little about our work with Wycliffe Bible Translators. It was one of the only Sundays left that he didn't already have a presentation scheduled.

A number were away on a cruise to Cairns.

Last week we had several times of getting together with old friends and make some new acquaintances with people who wanted to hear about our work.

Last week had few days break in a little suburb of Caloundra, Queensland, called Dicky Beach. (It's about an hour's drive north of Rothwell, that I wrote about in my last post.) The house where we stayed, which was lent to us by friends while they were away, is just a five minute walk to the beautiful beach of the same name. So our first order of business was to visit the beach.

Interesting tropical trees on the way to the beach.

First glimpse of Dicky beach.

The beach and surrounding area are named for the SS Dicky-- a 226 ton iron steamboat that ran aground during a big storm in February 1893. To read more of the history see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicky_Beach,_Queensland

It was a cold windy day. Heavy rains had been predicted but didn't come our way-- or were all done--by the time we arrived.

There were several wind surfers out every day. Mostly they were further out. This one came in closer so I could get this photo.

There was another sign a little ways down pointing back toward this one to mark the area to avoid swimming in.

We came back via the "boardwalk" to get out of the cold wind. The soft sand is nice but is also quite a workout to walk in for long periods.

We saw these stunning flowers in someone's garden on our way back to the house. The wind was so strong John had to hold them for me.

For dinner John got take away fish and chips. The chips were gluten free and they grilled my fish. It was delicious. It was a great way to celebrate our first day at the beach.

After dinner we watched our Pastor Rudy Topete's sermon on YouTube, entitled, "Get over yourself." It gave me much food for thought.

One day there we also visited a light house, or two. Actually it is two right next to each other. 

This tea towel where we stayed was the inspiration for finding them.:

The older one on the left was built in 1896. The new one on the right was built in 1968. The old one was moved off the site for a number of years but after the deactivation of the new one the old one was moved back to the site in 1999. They are open to the public but we did not come at the right time. To read more about their history see the sign further down here.  

The high-rise building behind them cut short the usefulness of the new one. But it was still used as a harbor light from 1974-92.

 

I think if you double click this photo you can enlarge it enough to read the history. 

In between walks on the beach John got quite a bit of work done--programming, email and various arrangements for meetings and travel. I also did some laundry and wrote the previous blog post. 

Some other high lights from Dicky Beach:

We'll be here in Armidale until Thursday and then we plan to drive to Sydney. We've never driven this far on our previous trips to Australia. We usually fly from Brisbane to Sydney. But it's been a fun adventure and a nice way to break things up. As John said it beats sitting in airports.