We’ve just spent four days in Sydney and believe it or not, today is our last day in Australia.  It has been an absolutely fabulous trip, full of amazing experiences, wonderful people, and the beauty of this gorgeous country.  

Happily, our adventures are not yet over.  This evening we embark on the MS Noordam for a 15-day cruise from Sydney to Honolulu. On the way we will visit Fiji, American Samoa, and New Caledonia.  I will continue to write about our experiences during the cruise but I am not sure I will be able to post any blogs while on board, due to limited internet service. Once we reach Honolulu new posts will go up.   For now, I leave you with some snapshots of our time here in Sydney.

Historic Vaucluse House built between 1805 - 1827

Native Banksia 

New South Wales Government House, the 

Governor's residence, built between 1837 - 1843

Kangaroo Paw, a native plant

Surfing

Manly Beach

Sydney Harbour Bridge, built between 1923 - 1932 using 

steel manufactured in Newcastle at the BHP Steel Works

The famous Opera House

The Noordam was actually in port at Newcastle a couple of weeks 

ago.  Here she is passing in front of Newcastle Beach at sunset.

The Noordam at Circular Quay, where we will board her later today.

Newcastle, New South Wales

Newcastle might not exist if it wasn’t for two things – escaped convicts and coal.  In 1797, just nine years after the First Fleet’s arrival, Lt. John Shortland was chasing convicts who had stolen a boat and sailed north to escape the penal colony at Sydney.  Though he did not find the convicts, he did discover the Hunter River with its natural harbour and also noticed chunks of coal lying loose on the ground.  Shortly thereafter, Australia’s second city was founded and named after Great Britain’s famous coal city, Newcastle.

The modern Hunter Harbour

Newcastle’s massive coal deposits have been a driving force in the region and along with its other natural resources, like timber and sandstone, helped build not only this city but also much of Sydney.  Coal deposits are everywhere and much of Newcastle and the nearby city of Stockton stand over a Swiss cheese of underground mine shafts.  Even now, all proposed building sites must be carefully reviewed and any underground shafts filled in before development can begin.  Coal is still mined in the region and Newcastle is today the largest exporter of coal in the world.

This is a coal seam on a beach not far from Newcastle Beach.  

It is common to find pieces of coal washed up on the beach.

These early 19th century coal train tracks are still visible 

not far from the coal seam in the photo above

Newy, as the locals call it, has done a fine job preserving its heritage architecture.  Newcastle East where we live, near the mouth of the Hunter River, has a number of beautiful buildings.

Christchurch Cathedral just up the hill from our apartment

Terrace houses in Newcastle East

City Hall was built with local sandstone and steel made at the BHP Steel

 Works on the Hunter River.  They burned coal mined here to make steel.

City Council Chambers.  Note the picture of Queen Elizabeth on the wall to the left.

Back in the early days of the city Customs House oversaw the collection of tax on imported goods entering the harbour.  Due to its close location to the river, the building also had a time ball mounted on its tower.  In the early 19th century, time balls were used in harbours all over the world.  At precisely the same time every day the ball dropped down a pole, signaling to ships to set their chronometers, a crucial navigational tool used to determine longitude.  Though redundant now, the Customs House time ball still drops daily at 1:00 pm, preserving an important piece of local maritime history.

Imported goods were often held in large warehouses, called bond stores, until the bond or customs tax was paid.  The word “store,” in this usage, doesn’t mean a place where things can be purchased but rather a place where goods were stored.  Owners of bond stores typically made a good living in a busy port like Newcastle and often their structures were quite handsome.

Earp Gillam Bond Store

Nobbys Lighthouse, sitting atop Nobbys point, dominates the mouth of the Hunter River.  Once an island, convicts helped build the causeway that now connects Nobbys to the mainland.  Over the years a beautiful beach has built up and the original rock-filled breakwater has disappeared under the sand.  

Nobbys at sunset

The sunsets in Newcastle can be quite stunning.

Newcastle is a truly lovely town and we have come to feel completely at home here.  The people are friendly and kind, the weather is fantastic, there are restaurants and cafes galore, and we have enjoyed so many wonderful adventures both within the city and nearby.  It is the perfect size, in our opinion; big enough to have all the amenities we like but small enough to feel like a real community.  We have loved every minute of our three months in Newcastle.

But today we say a fond and bittersweet farewell to Newy and head south to Sydney, another pretty fantastic but much larger city.  Newcastle has a population of about 550,000 compared to Sydney’s massive number of around 5 million citizens (just slightly less than the entire population of the state of Minnesota).

Hunter Valley

The Hunter Valley is one of the oldest wine-growing regions in Australia, with vines first planted around 1823.  These early growers knew little about making wine and their grapes were intended for the table, not the bottle.  It wasn’t until James Busby, a Scotsman with a passion for viticulture, immigrated to Australia in 1824 that the wine industry in the Hunter Valley began to develop and grow. 

Busby wrote a number of important books about viticulture, the most useful of which was titled, “A Manual of plain directions for planting and cultivating vineyards and for making wine in New South Wales.”  He also collected a wide variety of grape vines from wine-growing regions of Europe, including France and Spain, and planted them at Kirkton, his Hunter Valley property.  Cuttings from these vines were shared with many vineyards in the valley, playing a crucial role in the early development of the wine industry here.  

Since those early days, viticulture has exploded and today the Hunter is one of the premier wine-growing regions in Australia.  Its winding roads, eucalypt woodlands, vast vineyards, and distant mountain ranges are also very pretty.

View across the valley of the Brokenback Mountains 

We are lucky enough to live just one hour from the Hunter Valley and have spent many a lovely day exploring its beautiful byways, restaurants, and vineyards, buying a bit of happiness.  

Australians love a glass of wine with a good meal (they would say “a good feed”) which means that the valley is also full of fantastic restaurants.

The people in the Hunter, like everywhere in Australia, are very friendly and personable.  We have had many interesting conversations with the locals about winemaking while tasting great wine and even meeting a friendly dog or two.

Chardonnay aging in new French oak barrels.  The heat 

helps bring out the buttery flavors from the oak.

Baxter the wine dog

Australian Reptile Park – Part 2

The Reptile Park has one of the biggest saltwater crocodiles in captivity.  Elvis is about 5 metres (15 ft) long and boy is he fast!  We got to watch a keeper feed him a chicken wing and the speed at which this huge beast could move and strike was shocking.

Salties can be extremely aggressive and have been known to stalk small boats in Darwin Harbour as well as attack and eat unwary humans.  They are excellent swimmers and inhabit rivers, water holes, lakes, and even the sea in northern (tropical) Australia, which means that even the beach is unsafe up north.  We’re too far south in Newcastle to have to worry about salties, which is a very good thing.

 We were lucky to see an echidna at the park because they are shy and often hide.  In fact, this one was hiding; it probably just didn’t realize that part of it’s back was showing.

Echidnas are very interesting animals.  They are monotremes, mammals that lay eggs and also nurse their young.  A fertilized egg is held in a female’s reproductive tract until it is the size of a grape.  It is then delivered to the mother’s pouch where it stays for about ten days before the puggle (baby echidna) hatches.  After about 50 days in the pouch, the puggle’s spines become so long and prickly that it must move to an underground burrow which the mother has dug.  Leaving the growing puggle for a few days at time, the mother goes out foraging, returning to feed her baby.  When the puggle is 200 days old, mum nurses it one last time and then abandons the burrow, and the young adult is on its own.  This complex reproduction and puggle-rearing process is quite remarkable, I think.

Sacred kingfisher birds are found throughout Australia

Crested pigeons look like punk birds and are also found throughout Australia

Dwarf bearded dragons are native to Western Australia

Lace Monitor

 Lace monitors, also called goannas, can grow to be two metres (6 ft) long.  They spend much of their time up in trees, coming down to forage for food on the ground.  Interestingly, females lay eggs in a hole they excavate in termite mounds, especially those found up in trees.

Termite mound in a dead tree

After laying 6 - 12 eggs, the female leaves the mound, letting the termites re-cover the eggs inside their nest which keeps them at a constant temperature.  It is believed but apparently not yet documented that the female returns to the termite mound to dig out the young when they hatch.

Cane toad

Cane toads were brought to Australia in 1935 in hopes that they would eat a beetle that was destroying sugar cane crops.  Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the toads had any impact whatsoever on the beetles but instead they have become a serious pest.  With no natural predators, the cane toad population has exploded. Aggressive feeders, they have a significant negative impact on native insect, bee, and frog populations.  Cane toads are also toxic, releasing deadly venom from their skin when attacked.  Native animals killed by toads include goannas, snakes, freshwater crocodiles, and dingos.  In humans the toxin can cause intense pain and temporary blindness.  Outside of Australia, humans have even died from eating the toads or their eggs.  Cane toads live up to 15 years and are highly adaptable to different climate conditions which means they are spreading rapidly across the country.  Scientists are working to find a way to control toads in Australia but have had limited success so far against this scourge.

We learned an awful lot about Australian animals, reptiles, and amphibians at the park and we also had a lot of fun there.

Australian Reptile Park – Part 1

The Australian Reptile Park is a unique and special place.  It has fascinating visitor experiences as well as a strong commitment to native wildlife, especially endangered Australian species. It also has an awesome entryway straight out of Jurassic Park. 

Koalas are perishing at such a high rate that they are projected to be extinct by 2050 and Tasmanian Devil populations are also in steep decline.  Both species are dying as a result of serious diseases, loss of habitat, and vehicle-caused deaths.  In response, the Reptile Park has developed specialized breeding programs for both koalas and devils in the hopes of saving them from extinction.  So though it’s called the Reptile Park, there are a wonderful variety of species to see there.  

The park is not terribly large but makes up for it by offering many animal encounters, both casual and more formal.  Tame kangaroos, wallabies, emus stroll the grounds and it’s not uncommon to come across a giant Galapagos tortoise out for a walk or an olive python enjoying a slither on the grass.  You can also pet a koala and have your picture taken, with all proceeds going to support the work of the park.

A curious kangaroo 

That's Rosie the koala.  She's about a year old.

The park is extraordinary in other ways.  For instance, they have been providing snake venom for the production of anti-venom for 60 years and today are the only provider in the whole country.  Venom production is time consuming and dangerous. Every week the park staff “milk” 100 snakes by having each one bite the latex cover on a vial.  Venom drips into the vial and is then freeze dried.  

Milking a highly venomous tiger snake.  If you click on this photo you 

will be able to better see the angry glint in the snake's eye as it is milked.

When enough venom is accumulated it is sent to a special lab which injects increasingly strong doses into horses over a six-month period.  This does not hurt the horses but does cause them to produce antibodies to the venom.  At this point, blood is drawn and processed to separate out the antibodies which are then used for anti-venom. This dangerous, labor-intensive process has saved approximately 10,000 lives since anti-venoms were developed.

The Reptile Park also helps produce anti-venom for the notoriously toxic funnel web spider, considered the most dangerous spider in the world with a bite that can kill within an hour.  

Funnel web spider

Collecting this venom is perhaps even more dangerous than with snakes because of the spider’s massive fangs and the fact that the venom must be suctioned off them with a small pipette while keeping fingers away from the aggressive spider.

Funnel web spider fangs are longer than many snake 

fangs and strong enough to puncture plastic

The process for making the anti-venom is similar to snakes except that in this case the venom is injected into Flemish rabbits which have a natural immunity to it.  Since the anti-venom was developed in 1980 there have been no recorded deaths from funnel web spiders.  

In New South Wales it’s not all that uncommon to come across a funnel web spider in your home or yard and the Reptile Park has a program to encourage the safe capture of these arachnids which are then transported to the park for milking.  Believe it or not, the park receives about 1500 spiders a year from the community which is a significant contribution to the anti-venom program.  Dave and I encountered a funnel web spider ourselves when we were here in 2015 but it was probably a female, which are much less aggressive than males, and did not leave its funnel web so we were not in any danger. 

Click on this photo so you can more easily see the spider inside the funnel 

Burning Mountain

Burning Mountain is a strange and marvelous place, like no other we’ve ever seen. The Martian landscape and sulfurous air make it an otherworldly experience.  It is such an intriguing place that we went back again after first visiting here in 2015.  The countryside around Burning Mountain is hilly pastureland.

So it’s quite a surprise to see that just a short distance beyond this bucolic paddock is the barren, orange top of a small mountain.

Burning Mountain, as the name implies, is on fire.  Not on the surface, however, but deep below.  About 20 - 30 metres (70 - 100 ft) underground is a blast furnace – a coal seam that has been burning for at least 6,000 years at a temperature of around 1700 degrees C (3090 F).  Moving at about a metre (3 ft) a year, the hellish temperatures of the fire scald the ground above it. 

 Only dead trunks and tree limbs are left on the scalded land

At the peak, where the fire is hottest, the ground is a barren Mars-scape and the ground is hot to the touch.  The intense temperature causes minerals in the soil to react and change colour, creating patches of red and orange (iron), yellow (sulphur), and white, (alum). 

The stink of sulphur wafts out of narrow channels, called chimneys, that run down through the earth into the inferno.  These vents suck in air and exhaust out burned gasses.  As the fumes reach the surface, they cool and form sinter, a hard mineralized rock which can grow into otherworldly colours and shapes.

Sinter – the black spot on the middle right is a chimney

As the coal seams burns onward, the land behind slowly recovers from nearly being cooked to death.  With enough time, the scars left by the subterranean fires nearly disappear leaving only small spots of brightly colored ground and the occasional collapsed chimney, overgrown by vines, shrubs and trees.