Australia Part 1

Although daunting, the 15-hour flight to Sydney went by fairly quickly, since we left at midnight and managed to sleep on the plane. Unfortunately, Sydney was experiencing a "rain event" when we arrived so our first impression of Australia was bleak - fog and mist everywhere with no views whatsoever. It was raining so hard the airport's underground parking garage was flooded, which made packing our rental car rather tricky. Once we escaped the airport vortex, the two-hour drive to our accommodation flew by. With the help of Google Maps, we rolled right up to the door of our "cottage" and got settled in for our two-week exploration of the Blue Mountains. Our home base, Blackheath, was a cute village just off the Western Highway, which bisects the national park. The small downtown core had all the amenities we needed, including a couple of great bakeries and a tasty Thai restaurant all within walking distance of our house. We were impressed with how lush the various neighbourhoods were. Houses were set well back from the streets on large, vegetated lots that provide a real sense of privacy. We enjoyed evening walks while being serenaded by a cacophony of very loud bird calls. The cockatoos were so loud we started referring to them as the "pterodactyls".

Our cottage

Elise's nest, where she spends a lot of time...

Australian magpie

Laughing kookaburra

Eucalyptus (gum) tree

The Blue Mountains is a UNESCO World Heritage Area located in New South Wales, about 50 km west of Sydney. The area is essentially a sandstone plateau covered in eucalyptus trees that's been dissected by a number of creeks and rivers. The so-called mountains are really just large hills, very different from the rugged peaks of western BC. The escarpment around Blackheath sits at an elevation of about 1,000 m and stays a bit cooler than the area closer to the coast, but during our first week it rained almost every day. The temperatures were generally quite warm (22-29 degrees) and the air was often thick with humidity. This made for challenging climbing conditions, but kept the forests lush for our hiking explorations. The national park has an extensive system of hiking trails, but since most start on the plateau you typically spend the first half of your trip descending and the second half climbing back to the rim, which is very different from the valley-to-mountain ascents we typically hike back home. Two of our favourite hikes were the Grand Canyon and Rodriguez Pass, both very close to Blackheath and with extensive changes in flora and fauna.

Crimson rosella

Eastern river dragon

Mountain devil

Sulphur-crested cockatoo

Australian snake-necked turtle

Grey kangaroo

Our first kangaroo sighting was in the evening while hiking back from a somewhat remote climbing area. It had rained heavily beforehand and the dirt track we were ascending was quite damp. I spotted a movement in the brush beside the road and caught a brief glimpse of a kangaroo jumping into the trees. Elise was very disappointed that she didn't see it, and we plodded along in silence for some time. However, about fifteen minutes later and just a short distance from the parking area, we scared up two more, which hopped through the brush alongside the trail. This time we all got a great view as they nested into the trees and watched us from a safe distance. Since that time, we've spotted a number of "mobs" in fields nearby, usually in the evening. The Megalong Valley just below Blackheath was the perfect spot for evening drives due to the abundance of grassy fields and we explored it on more than one occasion.

Crimson rosella

Can you spot the trail?

Australian brushturkey

Where's Elise?

Our time in the Blue Mountains flew by rather quickly and we are now ready for the next stage of our trip. A long, 12-hour drive will take us to the Grampians National Park northwest of Melbourne where we'll spend the remainder of our time. We hope to see emus and koalas, but will try to keep our expectations at bay. Our accommodation is called "Bracken Lodge", a rustic (!) cabin in the forest near the boundary of the park. Options in the area were few and this seemed to be the best we could do given our budget and location requirements. We certainly won't be walking to any bakeries or Thai restaurants, that's for sure, but if we're lucky we may spot kangaroos out our back door. I'll post a second instalment at some point near the end of the trip. Stay tuned...

Christmas in the Desert

This year we spent our Christmas holiday in St. George, Utah, a very dry area in the southwestern portion of the state. The weather was cool but settled and we enjoyed spending most of our days either climbing or exploring the various recreation areas near town. The government shutdown thwarted our plans for Zion National Park somewhat, but other than that there were no surprises. We ate at some nice local restaurants, watched movies and enjoyed a clear but cold afternoon of horseback riding in Snow Canyon State Park.

Click on the pictures if you'd like a larger view.

We rented a second-floor apartment in a condominium complex on the edge of St. George, which provided stunning views of Signal Peak to the north, seen here coated white on Christmas day.

The desert provided much dry stone, sunshine and interesting flora. We enjoyed becoming familiar with the various species of cactus, watching for desert hares and dodging roadrunners, one of which we almost hit with the car!

Our day in Zion was sunny but cold. We had hoped to do a climb, but the crowding in the park slowed us down and we ran out of time. We did, however, hike to the base of our intended route and enjoyed splendid views, hidden petroglyphs and some welcome backcountry solitude.

There was no shortage of climbing around St. George and we spent New Years day walking through Moe's Valley watching people boulder. This area was sandstone, but most of the spots we visited were limestone and we saw plenty of interesting fossils.

Our afternoon of horseback riding was a nice treat. Our guide, Mike, was very knowledgeable about the local flora, fauna and geology. He provided a very interesting two-hour tour through sand dunes and a deep gorge in Snow Canyon State Park. Our horses were well behaved, unlike the last couple of times we've done this, and the ride was uneventful. We learned a lot about the natural history of the area and enjoyed his company. We were glad we bundled up, though, because the shade in the gorge was frigid in the late afternoon.

During our two-week stay, we only had two days of rain - the rest of the trip was sunny and clear. We enjoyed the starkness of the desert and the silence at some of the more remote areas we visited. It's not hard to leave civilization far behind in this part of the country yet we had everything we needed to be comfortable. We were sad to leave, but excited to get home to our crazy cat, which was well looked after by our house-sitters. Happy New year to you all.