Nov 21, 2004
Not everything is ready yet but I have posted up videos from the trip.
My buddy Tom and I went to Melbourne, (victoria)
to meet up with his niece Julie who was attending Monash University as a
semester abroad from Loyola University in Maryland. We spent a week in
Melbourne then took two days to drive up to Sydney (spending the night in
Canberra - the national capital) and then on to Sydney. In Sydney we
hooked up with Julie again and also with my friend Pat Hammond and his wife
Deidre and son Max Julie left
to go finish final exams, Tom went back to the States and I spent a week
wandering New Zealand - starting in Auckland and then progressing via the
train to a quick overnight stay in Wellington (no photos except for the
ferry because the train was very late). A quick jaunt to the south
island village of Picton and then the train again to Christchurch - the most
English town outside of England.
Christchurch was founded by the Anglican
Church and is modelled after Christchurch college in Oxford - the river Avon
runs through town, complete with punting
- Australia - Melbourne up towards Sydney.
Melbourne is very much like San Francisco in my opinion - in Australia
it is known as Mahvelous Melbourne. The Yarra river runs through
center of the city, complete with about a dozen boat sheds of various rowing
clubs. They have managed to keep the river front open with cafes,
restaurants and parks. We also spent a day down at St. Kilda which is
the beach area - we took the tram down there. According to Julie when
it was hot and sunny, then it was extremely crowded.
We rented a car a couple of days and drove down to the Twelve Apostles in
the south - which are parts of the cliff faces that were left out to sea as
the cliffs eroded back. Tom and were a bit late leaving and were a bit
too slow - we arrived well after sundown and about 15 minutes before full
dark fell. Still we had a good time and a local cafe gave us
instructions how to get back about 1 hour faster!
We did manage to see the ass end of a Koala bear waddle off into the forest
too - but got no pictures
The drive up through Victoria, ACT and New South Wales was very
interesting - the whole place is a giant pasture full of mobile, four legged
lawn mowers busily working away.
- More Australia - mostly Sydney.
Sydney is very interesting and much larger than Melbourne - about 4MM
people. Some of the more interesting areas were The Rocks which is
some of the oldest areas of Sydney and are now pubs, shops etc... We
spent a couple dinners at the Lord Nelson which is the oldest hotel in the
city - they have their own brewery onsite. Our hotel was near Darling
Harbor which is a refurbished industrial harbor area - the Aquarium and
Power House museum are there. Both are fascinating places - the Power
House is the converted power station for the city as an industrial museum -
they still run live steam there
- New Zealand - New Zealand was a very
interesting looking place but I spent too much time traveling. I
definitely will be going back with my climbing gear - or on an off-road
biking trip (the roads are narrow and rough)
Various shots from my
digital camera
- This is a shot of the steam engine in the
Power House museum which is from the Whitbread brewery - the engine was
installed installed in the early 1800's by James Watt and had numerous
innovations which mark it as one of the first large and practical steam
engines (and certainly the oldest surviving example). It provided
power to the whole Brewery for about 75 years and then was sold to the Power
House as one of their first exhibits.
- The Aquarium shark tank has two
acrylic tube walkways - pretty neat!
- Someone abseiling from the Sydney bridge
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