Australia
Our knowledge of Australia is strictly limited to a 3 night stopover in Sydney en route to a holiday in New Zealand but what we experienced we enjoyed greatly. Arriving quite late in the evening we set out to find something to eat and in nearby Darling Harbour we found . . . McDonalds - where we discovered they sold cheese and ham toasties! Our `hotel` comprised a front desk and apartments - no other services (apart from room cleaning of course). The back door lead straight onto the local monrail platform - a useful circular service it turned out.
At Customs and Immigration we were asked : Do you have any criminal convictions? When I said that I didn`t realise we still needed one it rapidly established that the officials do NOT have a sense of humour! This is actually a joke by the way. Indeed one of Gill`s predecessors was transported to this penal colony for a stand against farm mechanisation.
We wandered down through the centre on the city - passing no less than Grace Brothers departmental store! - to the main harbour, gazed across at the harbour bridge and opera house and ascended up the Sydney Tower - eating lunch in the rotating restaurant, like all good tourists, gazing down on the stunning views across the harbour and out to the Pacific Ocean. Later, on February 14th we casually walked into a great seafood restaurant round the corner from the main harbour in Darling Harbour and managed to get a table for two, having forgotten that it was St Valentine`s Day! You can see some of what we ate in the picture gallery below. The short fat lobstery thing that Gill is holding is called a Balmain Bug.
Australia is a strange amazing place. It`s both a country and a continent. It has unique creatures like egg-laying mammals like the Platypus and Echidna and pouched marsupials like Kangeroos and Wombats, to say nothing of black Swans. It has both wet (very) and dry (deserts), hpt and cold (yes, even snow). Funnelweb spiders and all manner of things to kill the unwary and yet it`s a very attractive place.
And then there are the mineral deposits. Australia is huge - it`s not only a country and an island but so large that it`s a continent. It has massive mineral resources which are a major source of foreign currency. In Kalgoorlie there is the biggest open-cast gold mine. There they have copper, silver, uranium, coal, cobalt, tungsten, bauxite (aluminium ore), iron, lithium. You name it - they`ve got it. Did I mention natural gas or opals! Yup. In fact leaving aside industrial mining the gemstone industry is a major player in it`s own right. The opal is virtually synonymous with Australia
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Browse through the picture galleries below relating to this page and you will get a much better idea than just reading my words! Each page has it`s own set of relevant images - where possible taken by us.