Today is Australia Day. Despite the heavy rain this morning I went down to the harbour to see some of the events. The highlight of the day (for the second year in a row) was the display by the Australian Defence Forces.
Category Archives: Gallery
Photos: Sculpture by the Sea 2011
This morning I walked along the coast from Coogee to Bondi to check out Sculpture by the Sea. My idea was to do the walk early enough in the day to avoid the big crowds – as it turned out lots of other people had exactly the same idea!
However, as the photos attest, today was one of those moments when I love living in Sydney. The weather was perfect – not too hot, not too cold, and people were out and about smiling and enjoying the day.
These photos only represent a very small section of the artwork on display. In total there are over 100 exhibits and despite taking 250+ photos I still missed a lot of things.
An added bonus to my walk was seeing a Blue Tongue Lizard for the first time in the wild. I would have expected it to be hiding from all the noise but it seemed content enough to stick around and pose for me.
Photos: Hiking Berowra Valley Regional Park
I spent today hiking from Mt Ku-ring-gai to Berowra with friends from my university. The highlight of the walk was seeing five lace monitors (goanna lizards), a Gould’s monitor (sand goanna) and a water dragon. At one point I almost stepped onto the top of one of the goannas as I came over a small ridge.
Overall, the day was brilliant and I am absolutely spent now as the heat really sucked energy out of me.
Unfortunately, despite the beautiful weather this will probably be the last hike I do this year as it is getting too hot in Sydney which brings out the snakes and raises the fire danger.
Photos: Hiking Berowra to Mt Ku-ring-gai
I have just got back from a half-day hike from Berowra to Mt Ku-ring-gai. The 9.5km track took three of us 3 hours 30 minutes to complete. During that time one of my mates got managed to fall into a stream we were crossing, and then attacked by a leach, while the other grazed his knee crossing another stream. However, I managed to survive with no damage.
More details on the track are available on the Wild Walks website.
Photos: NRL Grand Final Day #nrl
I’ve just got home from spending the day at the NRL Grand Final. What an awesome day despite the Warriors losing the NRL Grand Final. This was the biggest sporting event I had been to – 81,988 people in the crowd.
Photos: Hiking Berowra Waters
I have just got back from spending the day hiking from Berowra to Cowan via Berowra Waters. Full details of the walk are on the wildwalks.com website.
The 13km walk took five of us about seven hours to complete but that included a long lunch stop at the cafe at Berowra Waters. Overall, despite three steep climbs, the day was brilliant and the walk proved to be a good challenge without too much pain.
Six Days in Godzone
I have just got back from a very quick holiday in New Zealand. With the trip only lasting six days it didn’t give me time to catch up with as many people as I would have liked to have seen. However, I still did manage to see a little over 30 family and friends, including a number of members of my extended family whom I had not seen in over two years.
The highlight of the trip was two days of Bluebird skiing conditions at Mt Ruapehu. It takes around 4 – 5 hours to get to Mt Ruapehu from Auckland. So to make the most of the day I got up at the insanely early hour of 3.20am on Thursday morning to do the drive to Whakapapa Ski Field. I arrived at the ski field just after 8am, got my ski gear on and hit the mountain.
After a few runs down the Knoll Ridge and Valley T-bars I ventured out into the Far West area of the mountain. Despite having skied at Whakapapa many times over the last seven years I have never encountered a day where the weather has been good enough to go out to the Far West so the first time heading out there made this trip especially worthwhile.
After a few runs down the western slopes in ankle deep powder I decided to traverse back to the main area of the mountain, just as the cloud rolled in and the visibility dropped to only a few metres. Because of the poor visibility I managed to get a little lost on the traverse back and ended up dropping in on one of the chutes above Hut Flat. This run is an extremely steep double black diamond and I am quite proud that I conquered it, even if it was an accident – because I doubt I would have gone down it if I had known fully where I was going.
I stayed overnight in Ohukane on Thursday night and ventured up to Turoa Ski Field on Friday morning. There is a lot more snow on the Turoa side of Ruapehu and for the first time ever I saw snow in the forest on the drive up to the ski area. The top part of the road was very icy and despite having hired a fairly powerful car it still struggled at about 20km/h up the final 3km of the road. Friday was another Bluebird day and the snow conditions at Turoa were even better than Whakapapa the day before. The powder wasn’t as deep but there was much better coverage across the mountain which meant I was dodging around rocks.
Despite both Whakapapa and Turoa being on the same mountain and run by the same company the two fields have quite different characteristics. Personally I prefer Turoa, all the times I have been up the staff have been extremely friendly, and there is much more open terrain to explore without needing to do long traverses.
Before I went to the ski fields one of my friends had disputed that I was any good at skiing – being a computer geek and not playing sports gives me that reputation – so I set up my GPS on my phone to track one of my runs down the mountain… and… I managed to get through 2.3km, 700 vertical metres in six minutes with an average speed of 23km/h and a top speed of 39km/h – a result that I am very happy with.
The remainder of my trip in NZ involved visiting extended family in Wanganui and catching up with many friends from my former university and workplaces. As I write this I am on a plane back to Sydney and I am already missing home. I may be biased as I am a kiwi, but New Zealand is simply the most amazing, friendly, and adventurous place I know. Australia may be my current abode, and the world may be my oyster, but New Zealand will always be my home.
Photos: Hiking Cowan to Brooklyn via Jerusalem Bay
I spent today hiking with friends on the Jerusalem Bay Track in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park (about 70km north of Sydney).
Despite the dire weather forecasts the day turned out to be absolutely perfect, not too cold, not too hot, and absolutely no rain. The track is only 13km long, however, it has some quite steep climbs and took us about six and a half hours to complete.
48 Hours in Melbourne
I have just got back from a very fast weekend holiday in Melbourne.
At 7.45am on Friday I caught the daylight XPT Train from Sydney to Melbourne. I really like trains so spending over 11 hours on a train is better and cheaper than flying. Upon arriving in Melbourne I headed to the airport to meet a friend flying in from NZ to join me for the weekend. Once we had checked into our accommodation (Space Hotel) we went for a midnight stroll around the CBD.
On Saturday we got up early and headed out to the MCG and walked around the former Olympic Stadiums. From there we caught a tram to St Kilda and Luna Park before spending the afternoon shopping. In the evening we investigated Southbank and Crown Casino. The casino complex is massive, by far the biggest casino I have been in, and also just as impressive in eating my $5 I put in a pokie machine in rapid time.
Having tired our legs out with so much walking on Saturday, we spent Sunday morning at Melbourne Museum. Their dinosaur exhibition is amazing (see video below). From there we went shopping at Spencer Street Mall – which has a very Dressmart feel to it. After this me and my friend parted ways, they flew back to NZ and I caught the overnight XPT train back to Sydney.
This was my third visit to Melbourne, it is one of my favourite cities, in fact I came very close to moving there a few years ago – but a better opportunity arose in Sydney. The city has so much shopping, trams, and culture. Everywhere you go and look there is something unique and different to see. I simply love it.
Photos: Vivid Sydney 2011
Tonight a group of friends from uni and I went to Vivid Sydney and had a fantastic time. Vivid Sydney is on every night for the next week and a bit at Circular Quay and The Rocks and it is well worthwhile checking out. But don’t take my words for it, instead let my photos below convince you.
