Category: Miscellaneous

Beach Cricket

I’m extremely tired as I write this, falling asleep mid sentence. Today was a long, hot summer day.

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I walked to Coogee beach (above) from Adams place. I knew the coast road to Bondi started there and wanted to (finally!) walk the whole track. I didn’t anticipate the incredibile heat though, and was sweating like a pony not ten steps from his door!

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That’s Gordon’s Bay, north of Coogee. Note the ancient boat ramps! There was a sign that it was an underwater nature preserve, with all sorts of fish and invertebrates. A lovely place.

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The path continued along the coast past Clovelly and Waverly Cemetary, which is surely one of the highest appraised cemeteries anywhere with its hundreds of metres of pristine seaside views.

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It took more than an hour to reach Bronte Beach, at which point I knew there was not much to go before Bondi. But that last twenty minutes or so was agony since I was tired, hot and hungry. When I got to Bondi I ninja’d onto a waiting bus without even taking a photo and was quickly on my way to Bondi mall.

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Lunch was the usual Ambrosia, and I spent a good long time at the mall wandering around like an amnesiac. Truth is the exertion of these past weeks is definitely catching up with me…

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After an afternoon packing my bags and resting, Adam returned and we shortly set out again for the cricket down at the SCG. A cat on a fence was happy to pose for a snap as we walked past.

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The cricket was great! We had excellent seats, the (extremely overpriced) food was delicious, and the teams (Sydney vs Adelaide) put on an exiting game that wasn’t decided until the last over.

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We didn’t get back home until about midnight. As I said at the start: a long day. I only have one more full day here, who knows what I’ll get up to?

Murals

There’s lots of murals all over Newcastle, both conventional and graffiti style, but this one halfway up Hunter Street must be my favourite:

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Here’s detail of the girl in the crystal ball, who is only a few cm in height:

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What a lovely piece of work!

Camping

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That’s Sue, who I’ve known for years, and who is an expert on the manufacture of Weetbix. She’s been suggesting for ever that we go camping during my stay, and thus year we did! So the other day Sue, me, her two kids and her niece went to the Allyn River campgrounds in the Barrington Tops, about 2 hours NW of newcastle.

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That’s my room above, which was the tent on the left. Hardly the Hilton, but comfy enough that I slept like the dead after our busy day!

But I get ahead of myself! We did the usual campground activities of hiking…

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Swimming…

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Cooking sausages (this is Oz, after all)…

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And sparklers around the fire…

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Although truth be told, due to the kids most of the time was spent at the two swimming holes along the river 🙂

I enjoyed camping quite a lot, although I wonder if I would have had we continued beyond one night. Truth is the campgrounds were much closer together and busy than in America and camping here is extremely popular with the, shall we say, ‘less cultured’ type 😉

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That’s a Brush Turkey, one of the many animals we saw. Probably the highlight of the trip for me was waking at sunup (just before 5) and seeing many little pademelons in and around the campgrounds, including two not 3 meters from my tent entrance!

Thanks to Sue for taking me camping. I enjoyed it greatly, and it may be time to dig out the old tent and camp again in the US.