Giving the bird to old-fashioned cuckoo clocks!

It's one of my best Christmas presents ever! Not only does it have lots of  our very favourite Sydney area Australian native birds on it, but they all sing to you! They sing to you on the hour, every hour*, and you can tell the time by which one is doing the singing!

Old-fashioned cuckoo clocks, your days are numbered.






* Except after 11pm and before 8am. How considerate these virtual birds are. Most real birds are early birds after all!

Tidbinbilla's hard rock cafe

It was lunchtime and we were visiting the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Communication Complex near Canberra. It's run by the CSIRO for NASA, and its job is to communicate with NASA's various space probes around the solar system.

It was particularly busy in the late 60s and early 70s, when Americans were commuting to and from the moon, bringing back moon rock specimens like the one in the display case. Also on display are some leftover astronaut food packages from the time, and don't they look disgusting!

Which brings me back to lunchtime. The cafe is called the Moon Rock Cafe, and some of their offerings were only marginally more appetising. We played safe, and had OK wraps and a salad, but the people on the next table left their sausage rolls almost untouched.


Overall it was a very enjoyable and informative visit. The visitor centre has space suits to try out, and shrunken versions of space rockets and moon capsules galore. Maybe it's relativity or something that causes them to come back so much smaller. Fabulous educational exhibits too on the many astronomical breakthroughs that have come out of space based observations.

















And below is Voyager 2 broadcasting its pictures back to us from Uranus in 1986.

On top of Australia again

I first visited Australia's highest point, the summit of Mt Kosciuszko, over 40 years ago, shortly after arriving in the country. That visit involved a ride up the chairlift from Thredbo, and a pretty easy stroll from there, so I felt it never really counted.

The other day I finally returned, and did it properly by way of a decent sized bushwalk.



From Charlotte Pass it's a two or three hour easy 9km walk each way along the Summit Track. I did the longer and more interesting loop walk, returning via the Main Range track. It made for a good leg stretch and a nice day out.

You start at about 1800m altitude, still below the tree line, and pass some very attractive mountain gums.











Up above the tree line now,  and crossing the Snowy River near to its source.




At the summit lots of people are having their lunch and admiring the 360 degree views. It's funny though, you get little sense that you're on a higher peak than any of the other numerous ones all around. It's a gently rounded sort of peak. The nearby Mt Townsend is less rounded, and for a long time it was thought that that one was the highest. It had been called Kosciuszko and Kosciuszko had been called Townsend, so they just swapped the names over so that Kosciuszko could continue to be the highest peak in the land!









There's quite a lot of snow around still at this time of year, and some of the visitors found these bits a bit tough going.

Returning now via the Main Range Track, looking back towards Kosciuszko (the right hand one of the two rounded peaks near the centre).

Below: the view to the south west, across the Victorian Alps.

Losing ourselves in Canberra

Everyone gets lost in Canberra. It's the wild, free-form layout of the suburban road system, and the unexpected roundabouts and hexagonal 'circuits' of the inner city. There are also lots of invisible suburbs spread out all over the countryside.

Our well-meaning sat nav lady, Karen, wasn't always much help either. But that's nothing new.

Canberra really excelled itself this trip though. We were looking for the road up to the Mount Pleasant Lookout. Karen pretty well refused to acknowledge that there was such a place, but we knew it was near the military academy, so headed towards there.

There was a promising brown road sign pointing to the right, and in through the gates of the Duntroon/ADFA complex. (I'm still working out the difference between the two institutions, but that's another story.)

In we drove, checking at the gate that it really was OK for civilians to be here, and there wouldn't be an armed response to our presence. We then spent what seemed like half an hour driving round and round these tortuous campuses. We looked for further signs (there were none), we asked directions from several friendly and helpful young military types. We saw lots of new graduates and their proud parents assembling for their graduation ceremonies. Round and round we went, until we suddenly came good. The view from the lookout (top picture) had been recommended in a tourist guide for its Lake Burley Griffin perspective. The lower picture is the view from Mount Ainslie, which we had reprised earlier in the day.

Last year we had a similar 'lost in Canberra' experience in the ANU campus. Again no clues, no signs, no way out it seemed for a while. I think it's a giant conspiracy. They think the lack of signage will buy them time when foreign invaders come to take over the Government.

Canberra's cooling pools and whirling hoons

When Canberrans venture out from their comfortable and cultured urban paradise, there are plenty of things to do. Swimming in delightful Murrumbidgee River waterholes, for instance, like Kambah Pool here.


And a good number of them seem to entertain themselves by hooning around the countryside, doing wheelies and donuts. Canberra is after all our national (hoon) capital, and the home of the Summernats Festival, described by  visitcanberra.com.au as the biggest Horsepower party in the Southern Hemisphere.

Light relief

Sydney built one of the world's biggest tramway systems a hundred or so years ago, before tearing it all up to make way for the all-conquering motor car. My impression is that in those days they put down the rails, concreted around them, stuck up the power poles, and off they went. Probably built whole lines before breakfast.

Well, now they're coming back. Or at least, one new line is coming, to supplement the one built a few years ago.


You don't say trams these days, it's light rail. And crucially, this thing is taking many long years and $2.5 billion to build. It will run from Circular Quay, up George St, past Central Station, through Surry Hills, and out past Moore Park and Centennial Park, to Randwick and Daceyville.


So George St has been a construction zone nightmare for a long time now, but suddenly, there's some pre-Christmas light relief. No trams yet, but a couple of blocks are more or less ready, construction-free and pedestrianised. Don't get your hopes up too much though. It will be 2019 before you can expect services to start.


I paced out most of the route yesterday. My personal tour of inspection. It is indeed quite a big project, maybe worth a billion or two after all. It's made bigger by the ground-level power supply system being installed for the CBD sections. It switches to overhead cable further out.

Escalation

The old wooden escalators at Wynyard station have re-appeared recently as a remarkably eye-catching piece of sculpture, suspended above the new ones!

It's quite an attention-getter.

Arrowtown

Arrowtown is a historic gold mining tourist town, just north of Queenstown on New Zealand's South Island. We called in for breakfast and a quick look around, prior to heading to the airport at the end of our trip.

Here it is, or at least here it was, when I was there in 1990.

Here it is the other week. Looks about the same, except the cars have got bigger, and do a better job of obscuring the historic buildings.

There was just time to visit the museum, or at least the 'Tribal Warriors' exhibition there. There were warriors from all over the world. Except New Zealand that is. A bit odd, as New Zealand's Maoris pride themselves for their warrior past, or so I thought. The museum lady confirmed my suspicion that it has become a 'politically sensitive' issue.

Another Queenstown crazy thing

"Why the #$@* would anyone want to ride in that?" I rather undiplomatically asked.

"Why the #$@* wouldn't they?" was the rather obvious retort, from the driver of the thing.

We were talking to the 'Hydro Attack' sharknado* man on Queenstown's Lake Wakatipu. He was just closing up for the day, having put his shark machine to bed for the night, underwater maybe, as we couldn't quite see it.

We'd met him through our Irish mafia connection, and I think he was rather proud of his machine, and of the business. It's a very Kiwi  creation - a thing you ride around the lake in at breakneck speed, on but sometimes under the surface too. It rears up out of the water at times, dancing on its tail like no shark I've ever seen.

Like bungy jumping, it's rather expensive, and definitely not for all tastes. I gave this one a miss too, but perhaps I was a little curious, and a little harsh in my initial judgement. Maybe next time!


* My term, not theirs.

Bungy!

We called in at the original home of bungy jumping, the Kawarau Bridge over the Shotover River near Queenstown.





When I was last in the area the bus I was on stopped on the nearby road bridge. We watched a young chap standing on the edge, about to jump. Watched him for several minutes in fact, before he chickened out and retreated.
















This time there was no anticlimax. The young lady went ahead and did it.

She swung and dangled for a bit, while the retrieval dinghy came out to get her.

Nearly retrieved now.







And probably feeling glad to be alive!

Training them young

They're a fit bunch, those Kiwis. We kept encountering runners charging up mountains that some of us were somewhat challenged to walk up. And often there were mothers (or fathers) carrying their babies up quite challenging mountain walks.

Here at Fern Burn hut, after a 500m ascent and a three hour slog, this 14 month old Kiwi finally catches up with her mother. OK, it wasn't quite like that. Mother put her down 50m before the end of the walk so she could do the final bit solo. But we were still impressed.

Fern Burn

Here we are heading off up the Fern Burn valley, at the start of the Fern Burn Track, which is the first stage of the Motatapu Track, from Wanaka to Arrowtown, near Queenstown, in New Zealand's South Island last week. It's easy and level walking to start with.

Bùrn: Scottish Gaelic for fresh water (English equivalent - Bourne)

We then entered the antarctic beech forest of the Stack Conservation  Area, and it was a bit more up and downy. In all the ascent is about 500m, and the walk takes three hours or so each way.

Up above the tree line now, and after a few more ups and downs, the Fern Burn hut is sighted.

It's a great spot for lunch, and then it's off down again through that rather photogenic beech forest and bùrn.

Isthmus Peak, crowded mountain!

One of the many highlights of our New Zealand visit last week was the walk up Isthmus Peak. It's about 1000m of ascent from the start, near Lake Hawea, to the summit, so it's a respectable three hour slog. Excellent track of course, and fabulous scenery.

Nearing the top now.

Right on the snow line. And on the western side, beyond Lake Wanaka below, are very snowy mountains twice as high, including Mount Aspiring, the highest in the area.

The big climb didn't deter the crowds though. It seems to be peak tramping season in New Zealand, and dozens of groups of visitors from all over the world were doing Isthmus Peak that day.

Some locals, we noticed, were doing it the (relatively) easy way, paragliding their way up and then looking down on us.

Wanaka wannabes

I got back recently from a few days of bushwalking ('tramping') in New Zealand's South Island. A small group of us based ourselves in Wanaka, and did a selection of excellent day walks.

Here we are, in the Mount Aspiring National Park Visitor Centre, examining a rather fine wall map and checking out our proposed routes.

Wanaka town is a very pleasant place, full of holiday homes and tourist facilities. At the bottom of Helwick St here is a beach and Lake Wanaka. The other large lake in the area is Lake Hawea.

There are several ski resorts nearby for the ski season. For the rest of the year there's a big range of terrific walking tracks.

The scenery is magnificent: snow covered mountains, clear blue water lakes, and during our stay clear blue skies too. There are rivers and creeks, antarctic beech forests, and sheep, cattle and deer farms.



Below: the team, atop Rocky Mountain, with its fabulous 360 degree views.