I have been to Australia three times on vacation. It was a place I had always wanted to visit but to which I could never get anyone to send me. Fortunately, the places they do send me provide an ample supply of frequent flyer miles. So when I finally sent myself I was able to travel in style. The pictures you see here are a small sampling of the hundreds I took during my first two visits in 1992 and 1994.
Natural Wonders
Unnatural Wonders
Flora & Fauna
The Three Sisters, in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney. There's a lovely
legend about the place that involves an aboriginal shaman, his three daughters
and a magic bone.
Looking out toward the Blue Mountains. The mountains get their name from
the eucalyptus trees that cover the area. The trees release so much eucalyptus
oil that from a distance everything takes on a blue haze. The oil is also
the reason why forest fires are such a hazard out here.
This was taken from a place called Stanwell Tops, south of Sydney. I remember
being told that the town down below was Wollongong. But I've now been reliably
informed that that's wrong. It's actually Stanwell Park, which is a suburb of
Wollongong. Which was a shame once, since Wollongong was the name of a modem
maker back in the early days of my obsession with computers. And Stanwell Park
isn't the name of anything, aside from the town in the picture. Still, who
remembers Wollongong the modem any more?
A view from the Kuranda Scenic Railway, on the way from Cairns up to Kuranda
in the Atherton Tablelands. The route involves fifteen tunnels and forty
bridges and was a major piece of engineering less than a century ago.
Uluru, also known as Ayer's Rock, in the Red Center of Australia. Normally
a dull brown, it turns a glowing orange when the sun catches it at dawn
and dusk. Uluru stands in the middle of a flat, barren plain that runs for
hundreds of miles.
Distinctive architecture in Sydney and Brisbane. Several tour guides pointed
out that Australia has more MacDonald's per capita than anywhere else in
the world. Ignoring for the moment the question of whether this is something
to take pride in, I still thought that this was among the best
looking MacDonald's I've ever encountered.
A bit of fractured history. This is Cook's Cottage, which now resides
in a Melbourne park. The exhibit at the cottage talks about the life
of Captain James Cook, who commanded HMS Endeavor to the discovery of
Australia. (At least if you ignore the Dutch who found it first. Or
the Aboriginals who never knew it was missing...) But Cook never
lived here. The cottage was Cook's father's, built after Cook had
left to join the Royal Navy. Funny how the exhibit neglects to
mention that.
A view of Brisbane from Kangaroo Point on the eastern shore of the Brisbane
River. Brisbane is quite a change after visiting Sydney and
Melbourne, not just because of the subtropical climate but also
because of its vast area. I'm told that Brisbane is one of the
largest cities in the world in terms of the land within the city
limits.
Traveling in style in the Kuranda rainforest near Cairns (quaintly
pronounced Cans by the locals) in Far North Queensland. A genuine
WWII-era amphibious duck, just the thing for those seriously washed
out roads. In case you're curious, I took this picture from an
identical vehicle which was sitting in an equivalent amount of water.
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