Australia and New Zealand 2020

Home Sunday 23rd February

I’m not even sure which airport this is; I know I definitely passed through it on my journey home.

The flights from Hong Kong to Dubai and from Dubai to Glasgow went as well as they could.

On the first flight Patricia and I had a row of 4 seats to ourselves. This meant that we could take turns lying down to try to sleep.

Almost as soon as we stepped into Dubai airport we were sent on separate routes. I don’t know how Patricia fared there but she got home safely. I got to the gate just as boarding started for the flight to Glasgow. This was a busy plane. I was lucky to have a spare seat next to me. The flight went well though it is funny to have your lunch served at 8am UK time. It was 3° when we landed in Glasgow.

My only delay was caused by flooding in Scotland. All trains to Aberdeen, and therefore to Dundee, were cancelled. This meant it took me from 1130 to 1550 to travel from Glasgow to home.

Tom was a welcome sight at Dundee train station and I’m glad to be home. I’ve been well looked after this evening but I can’t stay awake any longer.

9.30pm. Good night all after a wonderful, never to be forgotten experience.

HongKong Saturday 22nd February

Our last day in Hong Kong. We will leave the hotel at 2015 for our 0035 flight to Dubai where Patricia and I will part company.

The lovely piazza outside our hotel. We have seen wedding photograph sessions, Tai Chi being practiced and a lady feeding the pigeons daily, right next to the notice forbidding it.

Corona virus again: a lot of lift buttons are covered with a plastic film and a notice like this one.

There are plenty more very expensive names inside this promenade shopping mall.

The Avenue of the Stars on the promenade, so named for all the handprints of celebrated Hong Kongers. (Is that a word?)

The street furniture on the promenade is wonderful. There are many different types of seating available with plenty of families taking advantage of the warm sunny weather.
Some families wore masks but some didn’t.

We took the ferry to Central District on Hong Kong Island. we were aiming to experience the Central Mid-Level Escalators recommended by Daniel.

Much of the business centre is here. We were grateful for the overhead walkways to cross all the roads near the ferry terminal.

After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing through yet another high class shopping mall we found the start of the Escalators. The first few were travelators with quite a steep gradient.

We had to pass through temporary hoardings to reach the escalators. The system is being refurbished. It was built in the 1990s, is 800m long and rises 135 m.

A very old and dilapidated mosque by the side of an escalators. We have seen almost no Muslims in Hong Kong.

The top escalator. I particularly like the instruction not to wail.

We passed a lot of old, poor housing on the way up, but here at the top it was very different. It was all exclusive blocks with concierges and underground car parks. The girls with the boards were trying to sell expensive apartments. We saw some very expensive cars up there but no coffee shops at all! Patricia was exhausted but we had no option but to set off down again.

When our guide Daniel recommended the escalators he failed to mention that they only went one way at a time.
From 0600 to 1000 each day they go downhill. It takes 20 minutes for them to change direction. Then they only go up for the rest of the day.
We set off down the steps.

Finally back in the mall: Pret A Manger Macaroni Cheese Lasagne for a late lunch.

We had one last walk along the promenade back to our hotel.

The weather was beautiful, 23° and sunny.

Hong Kong’s amazing Black Kites keep the seagulls away.

Back at the hotel we changed for the journey, checked out at 6pm and waited in the hotel bar to be collected at 8.15pm for the airport.
A final G&T each turned into 2 each as it was happy hour yet again.

HongKong Friday 21st February

All 14 of us set off for a guided tour of HongKong Island

The public areas of our hotel are quite grand.

This is the university building which was occupied by the student protest.
The other side of it is still cordoned off.

Our hotel is on the Kowloon Peninsula. We were heading for the tunnel to take us to Hong Kong Island.

Once there we drove to the Peak Tram to take us up to Victoria Peak.

It runs from Garden Road Admiralty to Victoria Peak.

It is a funicular railway built in 1888 to take visitors to the highest peak on the island.

This gives an idea of the angle of travel: really, really steep!

There were stunning views on the way up.

Victoria Peak offers the best views of Hong Kong.

Look closely at the narrow, coiled cable below the red. This is the cable by which 120 passengers were pulled the whole way up.
I was glad Daniel didn’t point it out until we were at the top.

I’ve put this in to illustrate the effect of coronavirus on tourism here. It means we don’t have to queue for anything but it is disastrous for the Hong Kong economy.

During the day a young Hong Kong man beamed and called out “Welcome” to us. Later another beamed and gave us the thumbs up. I think they were delighted that some tourists have actually come to HongKong.

Our coach was waiting at the top of the Peak. The drive back down was challenging for our driver.

Next stop was a fishing village called Aberdeen for a Sampan tour of the harbour.

The harbour was packed with a variety of different types of vessels.

Fishermen have to stay in port for 3 months of the year to preserve fish stocks.

Many families clearly live on their boats. Some even have mini gardens on the top.

Most of the sleek, modern boats were mothballed.

We drove next to Stanley Bay and Stanley Markets.

We didn’t bother with the markets but stuck to the bay.

We found a lovely supermarket and bought bread, cheese and mini cucumbers.

We enjoyed our picnic by the water with the usual Ginger Beer.

After returning to the Kowloon Peninsula and our hotel we joined Valerie and Martin in a delightful cafe serving delicious cakes.

Later 8 of us agreed to meet up for a walk along the Avenue of the Stars and go for a meal before the 8pm Symphony of light show.
This is part of the walkway, complete with lifts. from the piazza outside our hotel to the waterfront.

It is a lovely walk along the promenade.

Ann Marie and Heather, your Nathans have their own special road here in Hong Kong!

And to the very upmarket shopping mall beside the promenade.

It took a while to find the restaurant we were heading for.

The meal was excellent.
The restaurant was empty when we arrived but a couple of other groups arrived a bit later.

We moved on to the viewing platform near the clock tower in time for the “Symphony of Light”

Lovely reflections on the harbour water.

The show used the existing lighting on many of the buildings over the water along with laser projections over the bay.

It was well coordinated with the music but nowhere near the standard of the Singapore sound and light show

We all walked back along the promenade after a lovely evening.

Then enjoyed a drink in the hotel bar. For some reason Happy Hour seemed to have stretched; we were all brought second drinks without asking.

HongKong Thursday 20th February

Breakfast at 6am then off to Sydney Airport for our 9 hour flight to Hong Kong.

We said farewell to Alex and the 14 of us boarded on time.
The plane was a bit empty!

Hong Kong baggage collection.
55 million passengers pass through Hong Kong Airport every year.
Not many of them are travelling today!

We have never been in such an empty airport.

Our new guide Daniel first issued face masks then guided us to the coach.
We are really wearing them to avoid the disapproval of other people.
Everyone here seems to wear a mask

We all had our temperatures taken on arrival at the hotel. I thought Daniel said the hotel occupancy rate was 80%; he actually said 8%!
The real problem is the ban on travel from China to Hong Kong

On the way back to our room after eating with John and Pam in the hotel’s Italian/American restaurant. 3 other patrons in the restaurant.

8 of the 14 of us will go on a 4/5 h tour tomorrow. Thank heavens we don’t need to leave until 0930. It has been a long day, we were up at 0445 this morning and although it is only 9.30pm now we know it is half past midnight in Sydney.

Sydney Wednesday 19th February

Our last day in Australia. We planned an easy day before our Sydney Opera House outing.

First stop, an optician to try to get Patricia’s glasses mended. She laid them on her suitcase while packing, then exerted pressure to close the case forgetting they were there. They were usable but fell off every time she leaned forward.

Next we needed a new screen protector for my phone, the existing one was cracked and crumbling.

Coconut water is a very big thing here.
Google maps is pretty poor at guiding through multilevel shopping centres.

This lovely young man finished his lunch early to lead us to the bridge over the highway.

The two combined shopping plazas were mixed indoor and outdoor areas all squashed in higgledy-piggledy between high rise office blocks. The area was thronged with young professionals on lunch breaks. These 3 photos are of the eating areas within the plazas in the sun and shade.

We enjoyed coffees and cakes here for our lunch.

Navigation remained a problem and Patricia got a bit weary. I left her sitting while I got the new screen protector.

I left her contemplating North Sydney Post Office.

The Danish architect Jorn Utzon won the competition to design the building in 1957.

It took 16 years to build at 20 times the original 6 million dollar budget amid much controversy.
Jorn Utzon was dismissed when there was a change in government.

The curved sections of the roof are parts of a sphere.

They are covered with over one and a half million Swedish ceramic tiles in cream and white.

The Utzon Le Corbusier Tapestry
Jorn Utzon commissioned this tapestry from his mentor Le Corbusier in 1958, shortly after winning the competition. It spent more than 50 years in the Utzon household before being bought by the Opera House in 2015. It now hangs in the foyer.

Our meal in the Bennelong Restaurant was superb. This is confit of duck with blueberries.

It came with these accompanying wines. One just for you Tom.

We had barely finished when it was time to go to the Joan Sutherland theatre for the David McVicar ( a Scotsman!) production of Don Giovanni.

With Michelle and Ian on the outside terrace during the interval.

The theatre and production were excellent. We had brilliant seats and the whole experience was wonderful. We managed to get a taxi back to the hotel at half past ten without much difficulty.

It was an excellent finale to our stay in Australia.

Our wake up call tomorrow is at 0515 in the morning. Goodnight.

PS. The two, left behind, swimsuits were delivered to our room before we left our Sydney hotel. Well done Alex.

Sydney Tuesday 18th February

A city coach tour of Sydney this morning followed by a harbour lunch cruise.

All on the coach in good time and off we went.
Summer uniform for Sydney boys.

The Royal Botanic Gardens.
Mrs Macquarie’s chair.

The chair was carved out of a sandstone rock ledge by convicts in 1810.

It was commissioned by Governor Macquarie for his wife Elizabeth.
It provides one of the best vantage points to view the sights of Sydney Harbour.

He succeeded Governor Bligh, of mutiny on the Bounty. Bligh’s attempt to stamp out corruption in the colony had led to the “Rum Rebellion” in 1808

Many young folk were in the sea waiting for waves but we only saw one manage to surf for a few seconds.

Wish you were here with your board Jamie?

Some of our group “chewing the fat” on Bondi Beach

Time to board for our Top Deck Lunch Cruise of the harbour.

I think we were expecting some sort of basic buffet. It was much more upmarket.
I had Tiger prawns followed by fillet steak with a glass of wine. The food was excellent.

Peter offered to take my photo: his photographic composition skills leave something to be desired, as does my hair!

The temperature in Sydney is mostly very comfortable.

The tall building under construction will be a 6 star hotel. This means butler service for all!

There are 3 or 4 projections into the harbour like this. I’m not sure if they are apartments.

Sailing under Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Note the walkers on the top. A number of our group did the climb later in the day.

Fiona and Rob getting rigged up for their climb in the afternoon. They said there were scary moments.

Michelle and Ian were the last to climb. It is quite arduous; several sets of 40 or more steep steps as well as steady uphill walking. It was late evening and they were caught in a thunderstorm on the way back down. They were a bit traumatised!

After our cruise we chose to stay in The Rocks and look around.

We visited the Contemporary Art Museum.
This is by a Torres Straits islander.
It tells the story of a Badu Island song and dance.
The story is about the pearl diving industry which existed between 1860 and 1960.

After cooling ginger beers on the Art Gallery roof, we set off to walk over the Harbour Bridge back to our hotel.

We climbed a lot of stairs but found a lift for the last bit.

Bumped into fellow travellers yet again; Mair (very Welsh) took this photo.

We sat on a bench in the shade, admiring this Ibis, contemplating possible routes back to the hotel.

Fortunately Karen and Neil appeared and showed us the way home.
We could have found our own way but we may have taken a few wrong turns on the way. As we had already walked over 5 miles in the heat we were glad to be guided.

This view of our hotel car park explained the frequent rumbles from beneath us; the hotel is built over the railway tunnel!

We had a bar snack in the hotel in the evening.
We chose Port to finish the evening. When others joined us the service was so poor we all finished up with complimentary drinks. We chose port on ice this time.

Everyone keeps saying farewell as the group will separate tomorrow as we disperse to Hong Kong, Dubai, Bali or Singapore for our homebound stopovers. There is an awful lot of hugging going on!

Another great day. Tomorrow is our last day in Australia.

Sydney Monday 17th February

Time to leave the Northern Territory today and travel to Sydney

The hotel’s bedraggled peacock having a morning sip.

On the way to the airport we had a really interesting visit to the Alice Springs School of the Air.
The school was the inspiration of Adelaide Miethke and was opened in 1951. She saw what Pastor John Flynn was achieving with his Flying Doctor initiative and thought the same ideas could be applied to education for those children who couldn’t get to a school.
The school does superb work.

The pupils’ work on a project “Lest We Forget”.
They were sent the poppies and returned a photo of themselves in a field of Poppies.

Until 2005 the education was delivered to children isolated in the outback using mail and radio.

Since then modern technology has been used. Library books and art materials are still sent by mail.
We saw the live interaction between this teacher and a couple of the pupils during a lesson.

This map illustrates the vastness of Australia by superimposing Europe.
With enormous cattle stations there is real isolation for children.

The pupils come together for a week 4 times each year. This may be the only time they see others their own age.

Next it was on to visit the Royal Flying Doctor Service Alice Springs control centre.

After an excellent holographic presentation on the history and development of the service we were able to check out the type of plane currently in use.
There are over 70 of these planes in use throughout Australia.

Next stop was Alice Springs Airport for our flight to Sydney. A number of flies seemed keen to travel with us!

Qantas lunches seem to be either 3 mini pies or 3 mini filled dumplings.
We prefer the pies, we have had really tasty pies in Australia.

After a good flight we crawled through Sydney rush hour traffic to our hotel.
I love these WRONG WAY signs we see everywhere.

We made it here around 6.30pm. Another time change; we are now back to being 11 hours ahead of you.
The view of Sydney Harbour Bridge from our bedroom.

We ate at a nearby Italian restaurant and found half of the tour group there. It is early to bed tonight. We have gone back one and a half hours but need to be up well before seven in the morning. It is going to feel like 5.30am! We will be setting off for a city tour at 8am. We are crossing paths with another Distant Journeys tour group, also on a city tour in the morning. It is going to be a very busy breakfast.

Alice Springs Sunday 16th February

Amongst other things, we were on the hunt for swimsuits as we had belatedly remembered ours were still hanging on the balcony of our Cairns hotel.

We found the Catholic Church just as the bishop, priests and congregation were coming out of the 0930 Mass: it was 1130! We hadn’t attempted to attend such an early Mass.
The church had a new parish priest and this was his first Mass there and a bit of a celebration.

The Supreme Court of the Northern Territory

We had a successful morning buying swimsuits in an amazingly cheap shop for under £4 each. We went back in and bought shorts, T-shirts and I even bought shoes! Mainly because of the heat, there are no more photos of our day. We walked in the heat and flies between the Shopping Malls, meeting fellow travellers as usual. It was tea and cream cake in a bakery cafe next. I asked for hot water with our tea; it came in a minute cream jug. The girl didn’t quite get the idea.

After a taxi ride back to the hotel we spent much of the afternoon in the pool and the shade. Contrary to our fears the cheap swimsuits didn’t leak dye into the pool or onto our skins. The was however much amusement when Patricia sat up on her sun-bed and her straps pinged free one after the other. It is currently a halter neck swimsuit.

The promised cocktail party in the early evening was very good. Champagne, wine, beer and excellent canapés. There were delicious little steak pies and quiches, battered prawns and much more. It was a complimentary event to make up for the fiasco of our preflight early breakfast in Cairns in another Hilton Hotel.

It was straight from the cocktail party to our meal with six others in the hotel’s Asian restaurant. It was a very sociable meal.

Naturally I had Butter Chicken and rice; it was Sunday after all.

PS Our swimsuits are currently in the mail on their way to our Sydney hotel for £9 postage. I hope they get here in time.

Alice Springs Saturday 15th February

Breakfast in yet another hotel, just the one night here.
Each hotel has a different system but I’ve never seen this before.

A good breakfast before our 6 hour drive from Ayers Rock to Alice Springs.

Mount Conner in the Amadeus basin. It was on the seabed long, long ago. Fossilised sea creatures found there.

And catch a glimpse of Lake Neal, a salt pan in the basin.

The sand was very soft. My feet and the backs of our ankles were covered in red sand when we got back on the coach.

The seemingly endless road to Alice Springs; the Lassiter Highway. Alex never ran out of interesting things to discuss.

This one included a camel farm.
On to the Stuart Highway to continue our journey to Alice.
The Highway was maned after John McDouall Stuart who crossed Australia from north to south in 1862.

We finally reached civilisation, the outskirts of Alice

The old Telegraph Station is now a museum. It brought worldwide communication in 1871 and helped to establish Alice.

Horrifying events, reflecting the attitudes of the times.
(Hope the resolution is good enough for reading. )

Took us to the ephemeral Todd River. It originates in the Macdonnell Ranges and sometime flows through the Telegraph Station.
The smooth, almost triangular rock close to the water is the site of the original Alice Spring.

A final stop before reaching our hotel, the ANZAC WAR MEMORIAL

A quick sightseeing drive through the city to our hotel then it was time to get ready for the evening outing.

We all enjoyed a fantastic BBQ evening in a quarry at a farm outside Alice Springs, all finished off with the best stargazing session I’ve ever experienced. We saw the Southern Cross and much much more; the final touch.

Euros (a type of small kangaroo) came hopping across the track into the quarry.

We stood against a fence to watch a boomerang demonstration by Danny, the cattle farmer.

He had a very dry sense of humour and could really throw boomerangs way above the quarry. They all came back.

The fire where Danny cooked the damper, the bush bread.

Danny’s camp kitchen. He was very entertaining.

The flies were only a nuisance in the early part of the evening.

There was plenty of wine, beer and water to drink.
Patricia’s new look!

The steaks were fantastic.
These are the medium rare ones.

All the food was fresh, plentiful and delicious.

Australian country singer Skipsy was another good entertainer.
Of course Waltzing Matilda had to be in his programme.

Then serving it with cream and billy tea.
It was delicious, like a rum flavoured scone.

Back to Skipsy for more entertainment, with audience participation for the percussion section.

The finale was a superb stargazing session in the evening warmth. Graham was knowledgable and a good communicator, making excellent use of a laser beam as a pointer. With all the lights switched off the Milky Way above us was absolutely beautiful. Amongst many other planets identified we could clearly see the Southern Cross. (Do you remember that Patricia and I bought tanzanite crosses in the form of the Southern Cross, with money from Rosemary, when we were in South Africa.)

It was a very happy group of people in the coach back to the hotel. Tomorrow is another freedom day so we can relax and take it easy.

Ayers Rock Friday 14th February

After our 0345 wake up calls we all dutifully appeared in the lobby of our Cairns hotel for the promised tea/coffee/juice/fruit and croissants. The hotel let us down. One poor man from the kitchens brought out the oddest things to eat; sushi, chicken wraps etc but no croissants! The coffee machine was eventually switched on and a production line from the group worked wonders at the toasters. We all managed something to eat and drink.