Canowindra and my burst balloon

 
Canowindra was a pleasant surprise. I'd expected flat, dusty and straight, but it's winding, scenic, and characterful.

It's also got balloons, as in little sculptured street furniture ones, and pictures and posters everywhere. Canowindra is one of NSW's hot-air balloon capitals.

 

It's several hours west of Sydney, so you need to make a bit of a holiday out of it. You get picked up from your lodgings before dawn for the sunrise flight.

The weather was perfect, but my flight got cancelled anyway. The pilot had been taken ill, and it seems there was no back-up. So we got our money back, and my inaugural ballooning experience will have to await another milestone birthday.

I enjoyed Canowindra anyway. I might be back!

(Wishing the pilot a speedy recovery.)

Grey is the new Orange

Orange, in NSW's Central Tablelands, is quite the place for a visit. If you believe visitnsw.com, it's about unforgettable getaways in exquisite rolling hills, vineyards, lush orchards, boutique shopping, and renowned food and wine. Plus it's renowned also for its preserved heritage.

All that's true of course. I like it, and have often stopped there briefly and quite liked the place.

This time we spent a night and a day there, and looked around a little bit more. (Photo at right courtesy visitnsw.com)

 

 

 

 

We checked out the botanic gardens and Cook Park, both very nice places.

 

 

 

But Orange's recent popularity has brought a big expansion in its population, and big new suburbs are appearing all around. And what's with the ubiquitous dark grey roofing everywhere? Not just unsightly, but a very sub-optimal colour too, if you don't want to waste energy during the rather hot summers they have out here.

Bound for South Australia - 10: Whyalla

 
Whyalla was a surprise. It's not just steelworks. It has beaches, parks, a new jetty (circular indeed).

 

 

 

And there are even some very pleasant cafes in the main street. 

Bound for South Australia - 1: Nyngan ninjas and bogans

 

Nyngan was well positioned for my first overnight stay en route to the Flinders Ranges in South Australia recently.

I quite liked Nyngan. It has two official sights to see. There's the Big Bogan, which was very controversial, I gather, when it was erected. The term has rather negative connotations, after all, but then we are on the Bogan River here, and in the Bogan Shire! They've decided to own it.

It's also got a stuffed and mounted Iroquois helicopter. This is one of the actual machines that evacuated the entire population of the town during serious flooding in 1990. 

It's also got the classic country town fine dining option: a bowling club with a Chinese restaurant. Not one that serves real Chinese food, like city ones would serve these days. This is the good old glutinous goo 1960s Australian chow mein stuff. Yum!

The good old Spit-to-Manly walk

It works every time. You've got an overseas or interstate visitor. You need an easy but scenic little bushwalk to show off Sydney Harbour in all its glory. The Spit-to-Manly is a very safe first choice.

It's capped off by the ferry ride back to Circular Quay at the end.

Sun Moon Lake

Every tourist visiting Taiwan gets taken to Sun Moon Lake. It's a scenic tourist resort approximately in the centre of the island. You're supposed to be able to see a crescent moon and a sun within its complex shape, but we were having trouble with this, despite it all being carefully pointed out.

Anyway, it was a nice place to spend a few hours. A day off between our first two big day hikes, and the higher altitude challenges to come.

What do hikers do at Sun Moon Lake? They hire bikes and become bikers of course! We were told we didn't have time to cycle right round it. It's over 30km after all. But we did a few km of it, and generally had some fun. We were all a bit surprised though by how many of the local tourists seemed totally out of their depth on bicycles. We whizzed past them as they wobbled and weaved! Seems most Taiwanese abandoned their bikes decades ago, and moved on to motor bikes and cars. You do still see lots of sporting cyclists though, and Taiwan is a very proud centre for the world's bicycle manufacturing.

After our bike ride, we were promised a swim at a lakeside pool. Turned out the pool wasn't yet built. It was all a bit bizarre, wandering through a town centre in our swimming togs, to a swimming pool that didn't exist. And I loved how tour guide Samantha managed to hide her embarrassment about it, until she owned up to that several days later!

It actually is a rather great ocean road!

Just about everyone does the Great Ocean Road at some time, along Victoria's coastline. Especially the grey nomads, the Asian package tourists, and the Melbournian day trippers. It's much talked about, and I'd wondered at times if it was perhaps a little overblown.

That wasn't my experience though. It truly is a rather good trip. At least, it was the other week, out of season and away from school holiday time or weekends. It might get a little busy then.

For a start, there are the free range koalas, and some over-friendly native birds.

Then there's that truly stunning scenery to the east and west of Port Campbell. Like the Twelve Apostles. It seems the number of apostles is a little rubbery. Wikipedia, (here: Twelve Apostles Wikipedia ) tells us that from the main viewpoint you see seven - there were eight but one collapsed. (Or was it nine but one collapsed, except that might have been one of the nearby Three Sisters - the accounts vary).

And there's the remaining part of London Bridge. The connecting bit collapsed in 1990 (see: London Arch Wikipedia) and it became London Arch instead. That would have been a sight. It surely was quite an experience for the two tourists who were stranded and rescued by helicopter!

Petra - Day 2 - The Monastery via a back door

Day two in Petra, and I was initially going to retrace my route through the main entrance, past the Treasury, and penetrate deeper into the ancient city. I was intercepted though by this chap, who had a better idea.







For a very reasonable sum, he explained, he would drive me around to the other side of the mountain range, to a rear entrance of the park, from where I could make my way in via the Monastery, along a much less used and more interesting route.


I bargained hard from my customary position of ignorance, and for what turned out to be an exceptionally unreasonable sum, was taken on an interesting ride. Through the old Bedouin township, and along some very wild looking dirt roads. He let me out and sent me on my lonely way.




















After a while a came across this lady, selling traditional fabrics and  touristy knickknacks in her roadside tent, so I knew I was on the right track.











At one spot near the Monastery, there were two signs beckoning me towards the mountain's edge. One (pointing to a hill with a hawker's shack on top) said 'The best view on earth'. The other, on the cliff edge a bit further on, said 'The best view'. I decided the latter was probably the better bet, as the former limited itself to one planet only.


It was indeed spectacular. The air wasn't particularly clear, but I could across the valley to Israel, 30km away.

The Monastery is another spectacular rock-cut tomb with a magnicent facade, like the Treasury, but even bigger. The area is much less crowded too, thanks to the significant climb involved in getting up to it.

As Vivid as ever

The great Vivid light show thing has been coming to Sydney for a few years now. It was invented to provide a bit of a tourist attraction at the time of the year when sensible tourists knew to stay away, because winter had just arrived.

Officially it's not just a 'light show thing'. It's an annual festival of light, music, and ideas, but the other stuff would be happening anyway, just with different branding. And it's the lights that bring out the punters (and photographers). By the million, allegedly.

I got there last night to do my annual review. My verdict: It's very photogenic! Well worth a visit.