After leaving Tasmania behind, I'd taken up residence with my Uncle Les in Mittagong, south of Sydney, so that I could spend Christmas with family. So far we'd retrieved my grandad from the airport and visited the Blue Mountains. Somehow, I am dealing with living with two grumbly, but lovely old men.
Leftovers for tea again
A lovely, relaxed Christmas Eve morning was balanced by an afternoon drive around the area with Linda and her younger son while Uncle Les did... whatever it is that needed doing for the Christmas meal. First stop, Avon Dam, with pretty views.
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And then on to Nepean Dam, which also had lovely views and also the somewhat disconcerting sound of thunder closing in...
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Finally a quick stop at a small animal sanctuary, where the wallabies were sensibly trying to shelter from the incoming storm.
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And so came the storm. Pretty sure it's The Storm, the one that follows me around. It certainly seemed angry enough.
And then sleep. Always, sleep. Oh, and reading of that Pratchett book I picked up, which is rather good.
Merry Christmas!
There isn't a whole lot to say about Christmas. It's a big family affair with my uncle, not like the quiet thing I have at home. Still, there was enough food to last out a zombie apocalypse and Secret Santa brought me cider. All round, a pretty awesome day.
I don't think I've eaten that much since I left the UK... So stuffed.
It's not that far
On Boxing Day, Uncle Les took us to Morton National Park, where I had to deal with the ticket machine because after 5 minutes of watching my uncle and grandad struggling with it, I thought I'd best do something. Not entirely sure what they were doing wrong, but it worked first time for me...
First stop, the Echo Point lookout, over this beautiful valley.
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And then to the Wishing Well, which is clearly a man made hole in the rock and not really what I was expecting.
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Finally, a short walk down to the old Erith Coal Mine. And I mean short. The sign said something like 1.2k return. OK, so it's down a big old hill, but it's not very far.
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The mine is all shut up, but some of the props still seem to be in there.
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Apparently there used to be a railway running to the cliff edge above the mine and they'd hoist the coal up there instead of having to cart it out by the hill. The hill which we then had to climb again. The way my uncle described it afterwards, you'd think we'd walked miles...
And then Christmas leftovers for tea. This is going to become a running theme.
Do you think it likes eggs?
The following day, Linda rescued me from another day of grumbling by taking all three of us on a trip to Wombeyan Caves.
Access is via a dirt road, which initially I thought was total awesomesauce. An hour or more in, I started getting travel sick, courtesy of all the twists. Urgh. Nice. Fortunately we weren't too far from the caves and once I got out of the car I was fine. Besides, one of the first things I spotted was this goanna.
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I'm a huge Disney fan. Rescuers Down Under is one of my favourites and so of course I started stalking this goanna, calling it Joanna and asking if it wanted eggs. I don't think anyone heard me...
First stop, Victoria Arch. Pretty.
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And then on to our guided tour of Wollondilly Cave with the excellently named, somewhat insane, John Mango. Here, have a slightly out of focus photo of the prettiness inside the cave.
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And maybe another?
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It was nice and even better because it was cooler than outside and had no winged demons to bite me. Ultimately, though, I've seen more interesting caves.
And so back onto different dirt road back to civilisation. Via McDonalds where I filched the free WiFi and tried to find out when Claire was arriving on Thursday and how to get into our AirBnB. I hate being so reliant on WiFi.
And so to sleep.
Um... I have control?
On my last day in Mittagong, my uncle's brother-in-law offered to take me and my grandad on a little sightseeing flight over the area. He co-owns a small plane and teaches folks to fly, so I thought this was a great idea.
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I was not expecting to get to fly the damn thing. But a minute or two into the flight, having explained how the basic controls worked, Ken told me I could have a go. So I hesitantly confirmed that I had control and that was it.
I flew a fucking plane.
I thought it'd be for a few minutes, but I had control for the entire flight up until landing. It was both terrifying and pretty damn awesome.
This would also explain why I have precisely zero photos from the plane, but plenty of us on the ground. Look at me, looking stupid in the pilot's seat...
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She's a cool little Piper. Wouldn't mind having another go. Cheers, Ken.
Apparently nothing else on this day even came close to making an impression on me, because all my journal says after "I flew a fucking plane! :)" is "not sure what else happened here?"
I hear a Northern hemisphere accent - would you like some ice?
After my flailing with Macca's WiFi a couple of days prior, Claire had managed to text me late on the Thursday night (my time) to tell me the flight was delayed. Unfortunately, by the time I got that text, Grandad and Uncle Les had already gone to bed with the intention of getting up early to accompany me to the airport. This despite my assurance that I was more than capable of getting on the train on my own. Bless.
So we left early, drove to the station and hopped on the train. I believe my uncle was going to take my grandad into Sydney for the day, but I never got confirmation on that. I honestly thought the pair of them were going to cry when I got off the train at the airport after hugs and goodbyes and being pressed with more coffee money than I could ever need. It had been a really lovely week being surrounded by almost-familiar people instead of the constant stream of strangers you get travelling.
Still, I was going to retrieve Claire and that meant another two weeks of familiarity. Despite the delay to her flight on leaving, she arrived near enough on time and after acquiring an Opal card for her and topping up mine, we hopped on the train into the city.
I hadn't thought it through. Normally, I'm pretty good with public transport. I'd figured we'd get the train out to Lewisham, the nearest stop to our AirBnB rental and then get a bus from there.
There was no bus. Claire was melting in the 35 degree heat, which coupled with her jetlag was not great. In the end, I had to use a payphone to call a taxi, which took us the 10 minutes down the road to the AirBnB.
At this point, all should have been well. The info I had from our AirBnB host implied that someone would be home to let us into the annex. No one answered the door. For ages. So we went round the corner to a cafe so I could grab some breakfast and Claire could rehydrate. Going from freezing in the UK to melting in Australia can't have been much fun.
In the meantime, I sent a message to our host to say that we were having trouble getting in and promptly received a call back to say that her brother should be around to let us in. So we tramped back and tried again. Still no response. I even tried sticking my hand through the gate to see if I could open the lock. Apparently even my hands were not skinny enough for that.
Meanwhile, Claire's melting into a puddle in the front yard. We'd already tried the neighbours to see if they had a number for the brother, but had no luck. After a while, the neighbours appeared again, said hi and came out with a line that made my day.
"I hear a Northern hemisphere accent. Would you like some ice? And some water?"
Thank you, unnamed neighbours. Having saved Claire from completely disintegrating, I sent our host another message regarding our inability to get in and was delighted when she got straight back to me with instructions to get into the key box. More than an hour after we arrived, we finally got in.
With the day rapidly wearing away, we refreshed and caught up and then headed off to find some food. Ended up at a little Italian place at the end of the street where I had the most delicious gnocchi with gorgonzola. So good.
And then Claire passed out on the bed when we got back. Poor thing.
Of course we need funny shaped ice cubes...
With Claire feeling a bit better the following morning, we caught the bus into the city and went for a wander.
First stop, Darling Harbour, which was busy and also home to a visitor centre selling koala, kanagaroo and Australia shaped ice cube trays. With the temperature still in the 30s, we decided we might have to come back and buy them. We resisted for a while though, mooching off around the harbour with the aim of getting to the Rocks, one of the oldest parts of Sydney. Passed the Harbour Bridge on the way.
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We had a wander around the Rocks before popping into the Opera House to book a tour. Hey, we can't afford to see a show there (and I don't think we were interested in anything that was playing), so the next best thing is a tour, right?
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Then on to the Rocks Discovery Museum, which was kind of interesting and also free, which is always a bonus.
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Onwards, up to the Observatory where I geeked out about science things and we also got to go into one of the telescope domes.
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At this point, I was amazed that Claire hadn't completely collapsed from the heat and residual jetlag. I think it started kicking in on the way back to the bus stop though, when we had to stop for gelato.
And then well and truly collapsed when we got back to the AirBnb. Oh dear.
Plenty of sleep needed, because next we have New Year's Eve in Sydney to negotiate as well as Claire's birthday. A few more days in Sydney and then we're flying to Alice Springs in preparation for our trip to Uluru.
You think Sydney's hot? Ain't seen nothing yet...
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