Randy and I took this trip over most of the month of November. As with my trip to Hong Kong, the original impetus behind the trip was a conference, in this case, in Sydney for the first four days. After that it was a lot of driving around. As you can see from the map at the right, the 5960 km (3710 miles) we drove barely scratched the surface of this wonderful continent.

SYDNEY

We spent the first week and the last four days of the trip in Sydney, Australia's biggest city and the capital of New South Wales. The city is a few miles inland, centered around one of the most beautiful harbors in the world. Here you can see Randy and me at one of Sydney's two most famous landmarks, the gigantic Harbour Bridge, completed in 1932. The other landmark, of course, is the Sydney Opera House, seen here on a sunny Sunday afternoon with a market in the foreground, and again here, at nighttime with a ferry in the foreground. Here's downtown Sydney the same night, with the central ferry terminal, Circular Quay, in the fore.

Much of the rest of the city is modern and clean and not much different from any other urban area. Here is a photo of part of Darling Harbour. Home to the Casino, Sydney Aquarium, and the Maritime Museum, it is just one of the several areas reclaimed from old rundown docklands and turned into a public social area. Sydney of course is hosting the 2000 Olym_new, so we got to tour the Olympic site. Here I am, on top of Kronos Hill, a landfill turned monument near the stadia.

Sydney has many beachside suburbs which we visited, among them Manly, Watsons Bay, and Bondi Beach. All of these places were beautiful in their own right, with long beaches interspersed among rocky outcroppings. Here are some of the beachside homes of Manly, right on the South Pacific Ocean.

QUEENSLAND

Our first direction once we rented our Corolla was north, heading to Queensland, the state north of New South Wales. The first stop was its capital, Brisbane, seen here from our hotel room. From there, it was north into the natural world. We had two big adventures here. The first was Fraser Island, the world's largest sand island (almost the size of Long Island, NY!) This island was built up over time from sand eroding off mainland mountains and deposited east. A tropical rainforest, including this staghorn fern, have grown on it since. Some pristine inland lakes, including Lake Mackenzie, with the whitest sand I've ever seen also dot the island, which has claimed several ships over time, including this 1935 wreck of the Maheno, now mostly covered by the sand and the sea.

Our second adventure was to the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest living organism. As Australia is a huge place, we had to drive hours and hours just to reach the southern end of it, at Lady Musgrave Island, half a degree outside of the tro_new. The trip out was a three-hourly boat ride INTO the wind, which turned our catamaran into an infirmary as nearly half of us lost our breakfasts (not me though!). Here is Randy recovering on the pontoon. Despite the nausea I felt for the rest of the day, this was a truly incredible experience... as though I was swimming in an aquarium, though it wasn't as tacky as that sounds. I learned that all the colorful fish are too shy for my underwater camera, so these guys are the best I have to show. Fortunately, the coral isn't in as quite a hurry.

CANBERRA

Upon leaving Queensland, our next goal was Melbourne, far, far away on the southern coast. A three-day drive, we stopped in Canberra, the capital, for two nights. Canberra is a planned city, so as with Washington DC, driving around is a nightmare; they did have the foresight to make the roads so wide that even during rush hour this city of 500,000 seems vacated. Up over half a mile, this is also the only place I visited where it was too cold for palm trees to grow. The main function of the city of course is government; here you can see the ultra-modern Parliament House (seen up close or from the War Memorial. The new building, finished in 1988, is just about as different as you can get from the Old Parliament House.

MELBOURNE

Another long day's drive took us to Melbourne, Victoria. Melbourne was much different from Sydney; while still modern, it looked more like a misplaced European city than the ultramodern Sydney. Trams ran down every street, it was cloudy the entire time (not that this is typical!), and the architecture was much more solemn, as you can see by the Victoria Parliament and the Flinders Street Train Station.

As with most cities, Melbourne has a nice waterfront. Here you can see downtown Melbourne with the Yarra River in the foreground. Along the riverside is this interesting Thing whose actual name eludes me. Despite the weather we got outdoors quite a bit. After a day at the Melbourne Zoo (see pic below), we got out to one of the nicest botanical gardens; here you can see me under a big tree. Our best weather day was the final day there, where we escaped from the city to points south, hitting Puffing Billy, a working steam train (complete with wooden trestles and all), and Philip Island. Phillip Island featured the Penguin Parade, where, at dusk, hundreds of foot-tall penguins scrambled up from the Pacific to their abodes while being assaulted by screaming, hungry newborns. (Couldn't take any photos/australia here!) Before this adventure, I did get to see one of the biggest seagull colonies I'd ever seen, nesting at the Nobbies, on the western end of the island.

BLUE MOUNTAINS

The return to Sydney passed through the Blue Mountains, a significant impediment two centuries ago but now just a slight strain on our overused car. A popular weekend getaway, the "Three Sisters" in the town of Katoomba (which is where we stayed) is undoubtedly its best known symbol. Here are Randy and I at the main overlook, and Randy down a thousand feet after we rode on the world's steepest railway, which drops at an angle of up to 52 degrees! Down there we saw some of the many waterfalls around the area.

An hour away from where we stayed are the Jenolan Caves, the most extensive cave system I've been into (which isn't really saying much). I did manage some nice photos/australia, including this one of its trademark The Broken Column.

THE ROAD

Driving as much as we did you learn a lot about the road systems, and grow to appreciate the US Interstates. Some of the roads where of similar caliber, though a lot of others, even between major cities, were quite tiny with frequent stoppages as construction forced both sides to use the same lane. Tacky tourist stops abound in Australia. As if the continent weren't big enough, there's a size fetish; we were treated to the Big Banana, the Big Worm (no I'm NOT making this up), and The Big Pineapple. It wasn't all bad though, as even though we got nowhere near the real outback, we did get to see the world famous Ayers Rock... rest stop.

THE FAUNA

No description of Australia is complete without talking about the interesting animals encountered there. Most of the animals were not easily seen; the wallaby was the Australian armadillo, only around on the roadside in slightly less than perfect shape. At the Featherdale Wildlife Park, near Sydney, we did get to see a lot of different creatures, including the koala with junior, the weird cassowary, an albino marsupial which looks to me like a three-foot rat, and last but not least, my personal favorite, the wombat. I also got to feed a kangaroo (or is it a wallaby?). Note the enthusiasm of the background animals! The Melbourne Zoo gave me a chance to take daytime photos/australia of the fairy penguins that I couldn't photograph in the wild.

Australian birds were much easier to spot in nature. Along the shorline, especially up in Queensland, the huge (and I mean huge) Australian Pelicans were all about, in this photo in front of Surfers Paradise. Inland, parrots were quite common, especially the crimson rosella, seen here right outside the Jenolan Caves, N.S.W.. Here a happy Rosella family seems to be settling in for dinner.