A Boaters tour of Australia

[RickK]

The end of Feb I had the opportunity to go to Australia for 3 weeks for work and I'd like to share some pix of that area with you - starting with the Sydney area.
I'll start out with this pix from the hotel in Bondi - a town just east of Sydney.  It is a famous topless beach and also where they held the Olympic volleyball competition (too cold and windy for any topless sight-seeing, sorry guys):


I then took a bus to a ferry pickup point to head to Sydney Harbor.  The ferries are part of the public transportation system - $16 "day tripper pass" gives you 1-day unlimited access to all the transportation - buses, trains and ferries. You can see the ferry coming in.

These are BIG Cats

This is the Sydney Harbor Bridge

and a few shots of the Opera House - typical "tourist pix"







Close-up of the bridge



More ambitious than I was

I took another ferry to Parramatta. I knew I was going to be safe  



I heard a "local" telling someone that this used to be where they off-loaded ammo off ships

Sydney skyline


The last ferry I took was to Manly.  This was a BIG ferry - maybe 100ft long and could be driven so that it go either direction - was no front or rear of the boat.

The winds were up to about 35 knots - I got really windburned.  Here is a BIG auto-transport ship going out to sea.

One of the "Heads"

These were NOT small snailboats - maybe 50 footers and although it's hard to see, they had maybe 12 people hanging over the side for balance.  The ferries have the right-of-way.  Had one big sailboat almost broadsided us - I mean tacked away at about 20 ft out.

We reached Manly in about 45 minutes

The rest are pix on the way back to Sydney;












And you thought it wouldn't be about boating, huh?

[RickK]

After 2 days in Sydney I had to head to Mebourne to go to work. This is where I spent the majority of my time in Australia (and the least time sight-seeing)
Here are some pix of the Melbourne area - we had a weekend off and headed to the southwest along the Great Ocean Highway.  Our goal was to make it to see the 12 apostles - about a 4 hour non-stop drive from Melbourne.  Needless to say, it was a LONG day (about 15 hours)


The first stop was at Bells Beach, probably the most famous of surfing beaches, with Jan Juc, a close by beach,  being right behind it.  To say the least, surfing is the primary past time here and where they say surfing started.

Most of these pix are just scenery pix as we worked our way southwest.  Some of this could be like our West Coast.















We finally make it to the Twelve Apostles which I think are what is left of the shoreline after the water eroded the sandstone looking rock away leaving 12 unique pieces of it standing out away from the shore.  I think there are only about 8 "apostles" left - still cool looking.














Hope you enjoyed this. A little reprieve from your hectic day.

[jdupree]

Brings back memories from my Navy days :)   Being the typical sailor I did not take many pictures when I was there, but do remember hitting the bars :!:

[Marcq]

Cool pictures Rick, too bad it was cold and windy :(

Marc..

[larsli68]

Thanks for sharing Rick!
I will in Australia and New Zealand in 1992. I was only 23 years old. Had a great time.
Great pictures! Thanks!!
//Lars