Happy birthday, Charley

What better way to celebrate the anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth than a visit to a couple of botanic gardens? I visited Hunter Valley Botanical Garden north of Newcastle and Stony Ridge just south of us in Brookvale in the last couple of days. Not the manicured displays of plant life from around the world, these two gardens are a testament to the hardiness of local fauna and the vision of gardeners to let the plants show off by themselves. I marvel at the adaptations plants make to microclimates; Stony Ridge is a pocket of garden-gone-bush in a suburban neighborhood, making a contrast between home plantings and the real thing. I hope to join the volunteers at Stony Ridge on Tuesday for some maintenance work.

Icon check

I love the huge roadside attractions all over Australia. Homegrown, odd, and clever, they are in the spirit of the Burma Shave signs of my childhood, only gigantic. Anyway, near Newcastle is The Rock, a huge replica of, you guessed it, Uluru. It's a gas station of sorts, with picnic area (it was between bucketing showers, so no picnikers). The bathroom door features pictures of local animal scat, so more possibilities to check off icons of Australia. Wombat poo, check; koala poo, check; roo poo, check.

Another icon is the dingo, and on my recent road trip to the central coast for bushwalking and just generally poking around, I shared the track with a hungry-looking dingo. Dingo in the wild, check.

Reptiles and more

At Australia Reptile Park, a good many of Australia's famous critters are on view. Besides reptiles, there are the mandatory koalas, roos, wombats, crocs, birds, and of course, spiders. The center is doing quite a job on Tasmanian Devil research; in the wild they are threatened by a 100%-fatal virus. ARP has 39 little devils and they are working on cause/cure for the virus. Meanwhile, you can watch a trio of devils getting a feed, and that's an experience! They really are as noisy and aggressive as their press makes them out to be.

The snake & lizard area was extensive, the frogs and turtles fine, but for me it was the spider house. Since we have been dealing with our resident spiders, this area was of special interest. Yup, there they were: a couple of huntsman, a nasty little redback, a funnelweb and some miscellaneous others guys thrown in. There were giant models of a redback and a funnelweb, almost big enough to count on the Huge Roadside Attractions list.

Never a dull moment at school

Although I don't always trust the accuracy of a third-grader's report, this time it might be taken as true. There was an alledged sighting of a red-bellied black snake on the school playground last week, and the teachers chased the kids off the area and closed it. Third most venomous of Australia's Deadly Dozen! But kids around here know their critters, so when all the kids knew it immediately for what it was, I'll believe it!

Sharks and rays

How could I resist visiting a place where you can wade with sharks and rays? Somehow I was expecting an ocean-side attraction, but this one is housed in a huge metal barn, some meters from the ocean. There are two big tanks and several smaller ones for the smaller specimens. You can carefully offer bait fish as a snack with a pair of salad tongs to rays of all sizes and smaller Port Jackson sharks. The young woman on duty, her shirt embroidered with "shark wrangler", told me the sharks and rays like to get a pat and they are very friendly. Hmm. If you are ready for more, you can don a wet suit and snorkel and get in either of the big tanks with the denizens. It's another one of those home-grown attractions, with the owners' two terriers running around. Now, why they haven't been tossed in a tank yet, I don't know.

Koalas in the wild

Where the Hunter River runs into the Tasman Sea, a submerged valley with lots of side canyons makes up the Myall Lakes National Park. There are beaches and little towns where you need to set your watch back about 35 years. Check out the turn knobs high in the shower. It was pouring rain, and thunder and lightening displays were quite stunning, so I didn't get the feel for the beauty of the beaches, and no koala with half a lick of good sense would be in the tops of the gum trees during a lightening storm. The big trees have rather fragile limbs which tend to come crashing down during windstorms too. This limited my bushwalking considerably. I stayed at Tea Gardens (not too many gardens, no tea except in a pot); the first thing I saw pinned to the bulletin board at the information center was the advert from a couple of locals who will help you get rid of your snake problem. On the Tilligerry peninsula is a small koala reserve run by volunteers. No koalas to be seen in the rain, but the helpful vollie at the desk said, of course, "You should have been here yesterday!" But for a modest donation, I was able to plant a couple of gum trees from the reserve's nursery in an area they are reclaiming for koalas. I was content with that. Gum trees grow so fast, I'm sure they will be huge by my next visit.

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A great day in Sydney
Because I had a dinner scheduled in central Sydney with some friends from an online travel community, TheTravelzine, I decided to make a day of wandering around the city. I took a morning bus to Manly, then the ferry to Circular Quay. From there, I walked around the point, under the Harbour Bridge, and around Darling Harbour, and back across town to Hyde Park to cool off. It was hot, but a lovely clear day. On the way, I stopped for a beer at Sydney's oldest pub in The Rocks area, the Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel. It's been in continuous service since 1841! Of course, the Superbowl was playing on the TV in the corner, which somewhat detracted from the atmosphere; no one really understands US football anyway. I stopped in at the Sydney Aquarium, a comprehensive look at the denizens of watery Australia. The walk-through glass tunnels in the shark tank were especially frightful. I wished Jack were there to gape at the big boys swimming around. Several tourists (including me) were clustered around the bluebottle information board to find out about these pesky, painful jellyfish. They are prevalent on the ocean beaches when the nor'easters are blowing in the summer. There are lots more wonderful walks in the Sydney area and I'll be ready for another one. On of my Australian friends is walking from Sydney to Melbourne, albeit in short stints, with his bushwalking club. Sounds like fun!

Beaches, beaches, beaches
The kids and I have decided we need to make a list of all the beaches we've tested so far, and make a ranking system for ho-hum through wow. We hit the biggest wow yesterday at Balmoral, and sadly, I didn't haul my camera! It's a great swimming beach full of families enjoying a day out on Sundays especially. There are so many choices I don't know how we'll work our way through them. On Saturday, we had hoped to try to go to a couple of beaches in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park which are reputed to be some fine swimming, but because of fire danger, all tracks within the park are closed. Mona Vale beach was an ok second choice, with lots of good tide pools. Bradley's Head beach had terrific views of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, but the swimming was ho-hum because boaters back their craft up to the beach, anchor, and wade ashore with picnic stuff. We've tried a couple of other inner harbour beaches, but they were second-rate. For the surf, though, our Warriewood Beach, just five minutes' walk away, is hard to beat.

The boys of summer, Australia style
I am starting to recognize the local kids on our Warriewood Beach, and now that it's heading toward the end of school, it's getting poignant. They come running down to the beach as soon as school is out, boogie boards or surfboards under their arms. Their boardies, slung over narrow hips, are ragged at the hems and the hair skimming their eyebrows is sun-bleached. If they are wearing rashies, it's obvious they won't make another season, they are so worn out. Some still sport the tribal designs of neon-colored zinc sunblock in varying designs on forehead, cheek and nose, but they're probably past sunburn this late in the season. Pushing and shoving, calling to each other, they race to the ocean as if it will be the last run.


Elvina Bay bushwalk
Although it was really hot, last week I decided to take a bushwalk in Ku-ring-gai, not knowing that tracks could have been closed for fire danger. I took a small ferry from Church Point to Elvina Bay, a lovely little cove in the Hawkesbury system. From there, the track went steeply up through a small rainforest ravine to the top of the hills, an upland gum forest. On the side of the trail were a couple of gravestones marking the site of burials in 1847 & 1867, though I couldn't make out the names. There were fabulous birds, blooming banksia, and drowsy cicadas and a side track leading to a flat rock terrace with some aboriginal rock carvings. The emu was more than life-size! The walk back down into the cooler water-side zone was much more pleasant than the four-kilometer killer slog uphill through the sparse forest on top. To catch the ferry back to Church Point, I put out a rolled-up flag into a holder at the ferry dock; the ferryman could see it as he went by the bay and clipped in to retrieve me. There are lovely homes along the foreshore; owners use wheelbarrows and hand pulleys to get supplies from their boats in the bay up the hills to their homes. Hard work.

Why is Tracy on the chair?

The wildlife chronicles continue: the huge resident spider was spotted making a run from under the refrig to under the dishwasher. Bigger than a small mouse, the darned thing is fast too! I'm not sure being on the chair was any protection, but it felt right to Tracy. The golden orb spider who thought she owned the area around the laundry lines has finally given up, though, and moved to the other side of the garden. Her web was easily two feet across and not easily broken, even with wet laundry.

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