Goulbourn to Pilthirn via Sydney
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We ended up 10km short of Goulbourn at the John Alexander French VC rest stop, named for an Australian corporal, recipient of the Victoria Cross for bravery in WWII (he cleared out 3 machine gun nests single handedly, saving his platoon, but didn’t survive clearing out the 3rd one). We ended up doing just over 700 km yesterday and after today, we’ve cleared 8000 km total for the trip. One visitor in the middle of the night (that I know of) and a couple of people in the morning but mostly it was quiet.
Not much morning routine at the rest stop so we were heading into town by 8:30. Problem number one, finding our way to the harbor and the ferries. Degree of difficulty 2.3. We managed it with only a few tries, although we did end up going across the harbor bridge, requiring paying a toll to get back into town. But we wanted to cross it anyway.
Next problem, finding a place to park. Degree of difficulty 3.7. With a 2.65m high camper, we couldn’t park in any of the garages. Too tall. So we had to find street parking and even on Sunday, street parking is only 2 hours. We wanted to take the ferry out to Manly Beach and needed more time than that. But 2 hours was good enough for investigating and we finally found a place near “The Rocks”, which is Sydney’s Old Town. It’s the spot where the settlers first landed. Well, settlers isn’t really right. Convicts and guards, but you know what I mean.
The Circular Quay, which is where the ferries are, was mobbed. Primarily by non-Australians. We found out the ferry runs to Manly Beach every half an hour and we could get on anyone we wanted, so we bought a ticket, and went off to look around. The Opera House is nearby so we started there. An impressive building. We wandered around it and had a look at the harbor and the skyline.
We stopped for lunch, then needed to head back to the van to get our swimming stuff. On the way, we found the walkway up to the Harbor Bridge and decided to go walk out on it. We got out to the first pylon, where there’s a “Lookout”. Way up above us, we noticed people were walking up the center span on a tour. I had heard you could do this and we decided it would be fun. So we paid for the Lookout and went up. Well, it turns out that the Lookout is an attraction in its own right and not the bridge climb. We never did find the spot for doing the bridge climb and it was just as well because we didn’t really have time. But it looks like quite an experience.
Got our stuff out of the van, moved the van to another parking space, and headed back to the ferries. We missed the 2:00 ferry by about 1 minute. They announced it was closed as we were walking up the quay. But that gave us a little time to shop for trinkets.
The ferry to Manly Beach is a Jet Cat. It moves along at quite a good clip and we got to Manly Beach in about 10 minutes. As we pulled in and looked out, we saw a pathetic little beach, maybe 100 yards long. On top of that, the wind was blowing about 30 miles an hour, spraying sand in our faces like a sand blaster. We thought, this is IT? The famous Manly Beach? This? Well, no. This wasn’t it. The actual beach was on the other side of the point. Luckily, we happened to notice the sign and headed over to have a look.
To get there, we had to run the gauntlet of tourist shops, trinket stores, restaurants, etc. at a level we had not seen to date. And it was mobbed. But we finally made it across and lo and behold, the real Manly Beach. It is a fine, long beach like the others we’ve seen. But unlike the others we’ve seen, there were roughly 2.8 million people there. It was packed. I’ve never been on a beach with this many people on it. And if you added up all the people on all the beaches we’d been to so far, it would equal the number of people in a 10 square foot area of this beach.
But, we ventured in, and found a spot to put our stuff. The water was warm. And the surf was up. We went out to give it a try. Up till now, our beach swimming had been in very calm waters. These were not. The breakers were at least 5 or 6 feet. But the water was not over your head. It was a perfect wave pool. You could stand out about shoulder height and body surf, when you weren’t being smacked in the head by breaking waves. It was SO fun. It was a lot of work though. The ocean kept trying to throw us out. It took 5 minutes or more to get out where the big waves were because the surf kept pushing us back in. But we each caught 3 or 4 big waves and rode them. Riding the curl dudes! Gnarly!
The waves were strong enough so that if you didn’t quite catch it, you still got a bit of a ride. But if you really caught it, you’d know. You’d get lifted up and your speed would pick up and you’d come over the top of the wave and into the surf churn. That was the point I had to close my eyes so I wouldn’t lose a contact lens. From there, it was Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride for about 5 or 6 seconds and hoping you didn’t run into anybody. My last good one I got flipped over completely. Just rode the wave right over and back around and landed on my feet. And didn’t lose a contact lens either.
I mentioned the beach was really crowded. So was the water. A guy on a boogie board went right by me and missed me by inches. One of the times I caught a good wave I went right over somebody who dove underneath. The last wave I caught, I slammed head first right into somebody. Les got kicked in the chest. With visions of paralyzing neck injuries or worse, we decided it was maybe time to head back to town.
We caught the ferry back to downtown. Another ten minute ride. These people live in a major city, surrounding a beautiful harbor, where it’s sunny most of the time, and great beaches are 10 minutes away by ferry. Not too shabby.
Time to head out of town, but first, an Internet cafe. We drove around a bit and found what turned out to be the mother of all Internet cafes. There must have been 100 PCs in it. We did a little e-mailing and headed for the Blue Mountains (after a bit more struggle finding our way out of town). In less than an hour we were at the foothills. But now a bit of a problem. It’s 9pm and we need a place to sleep. We haven’t seen a caravan park sign or any rest stops for that matter. The road is getting twisty into the mountains and besides, we want to see the scenery. That’s why we came this way.
We asked at a gas station and they sent us back towards town to the only caravan park in the area. Turned out it was closed and the gate locked. We went back into town looking for a motel but they didn’t have one of those either. So back down the hill a little farther to Pilthirn. Pilthirn is a reasonably sized town and we figured it would have a motel or two. Well, it did, but one was closed for the night and the other was pretty spendy. We continued into town and finally found a pub/hotel. It seems like in Oz only hotels can serve liquor. So all the pubs also have rooms to let. They aren’t really hotels in the real sense. But there’s a bed and a bathroom and what the heck. It was a lot cheaper than the other place too. So we’re here in Pilthirn above the bar. It’s midnight and things are starting to quiet down. After all it’s Sunday.
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