Friday, March 9, 2012:
We decided to take a long weekend and explore some of the area south of Wollongong; so we rented a car (Ford Focus) and headed out early on Friday morning. I drove in the
British arrangement (wheel on the right side/car in the left side of the road)
previously in England and Ireland; so it wasn’t a complete shock. Still….it took me a little while to settle down and get comfortable.

Our first stop was Shellharbour, a beautiful little town edged right up to the shoreline. The
public beach offered a “rock pool”—a salt water pool carved right out of the
shoreline rocks. When the waves roared in, they crashed right over the edge of
the pool giving it a very rough surface. Linda couldn’t resist; so she changed into her suit and climbed right in. What a refreshing way to start the day…..

A little further on we entered Kiama, another incredible seaside town with lots of shops and local attractions. The “blowhole” sat at the end of a public park on a short peninsula
surrounded on both sides by crashing surf. The wind was really blowing that day making the waves pound against the shore—more so than usual, according to the local folks. At the end of the peninsula we saw a gaping hole (“blow hole”) worn up though the black, lava-like rock. When the waves came in, they pounded into the hole and shot a plume of seawater into the air—sometimes 40-50 feet high and accompanied by a cannon-like roar. I took a few photos and a couple of short videos of the action.

We left Kiama after a couple of hours and decided to head inland via the Jambaroo Road to the Minnamura Rainforest. This trip took us from the ocean shore, over some of steepest and most serpentine roads I have ever traveled (driving on the other side of the road, mind you) to a mountaintop forest sanctuary unlike anything either of us had ever seen. The national park provided raised wooden platform pathways up the side of the mountain with an incredibly dense and diverse growth of vegetation. The trees and vines were so intermingled that they seemed to form a single, fantastic organism. We couldn’t identify or appreciate much of what we saw, but it was spectacular. The raised pathways extended for about 4.6 KM each—almost entirely uphill during the first leg. At the end we arrived at the breathtaking Upper Minnamura Falls with its torrent of clear water thrusting out of the trees overhead and into the jungle below. The
sight made the walk well worth the effort.

After all the effort, we decided to take it easy for the night and found a motel room and a fish dinner at a nearby coastal town, Batemans Bay (pronounced like byte-mins baye—or something like that).

Saturday, March 10, 2012:

The next morning we crawled out of bed nursing our various aches and pains after the mountain hike of the previous day and decided to make the drive to Canberra over the King’s Highway.
The drive, about 2 hours, took us westward into the highland hills and into the mountains separating the Capitol City from the coast.

Once we crested the mountains an entirely different landscape stretched out before us.
Whereas the Sydney to Wollongong area and coastal areas beyond displayed a vibrant green, we suddenly came upon a vast and hilly brownish prairieland broken up by low, scrubby trees and scattered with cattle and sheep in every direction. Linda and I both thought that this reminded us of Texas. We drove through a couple of “cattle-town” like areas, but most of the drive was wide open and uninhabited—at least that’s the way it seemed.

Finally we hit the outskirts of Canberra with its landscaped boulevards, incessant roundabouts and ubiquitous road signs—all an indication that the quest for the seat of government was about to draw to a conclusion. A stop at the local tourist information bureau gave us some tips about how to get into the city, what to see and where to park (apparently not a big problem in the Capital on a Saturday….!)