Winter at the beach

We have passed the shortest day of the southern hemisphere year which had got to mean summer is coming and it’s time to go to the beach, right? While not exactly balmy, after scraping off the frost from my car windscreen and driving through the morning mist, I found myself beside the sea and comfortably warm enough to parade about in a short sleeved T-shirt. My destination this time around was Murramarang National Park, just north of Batemans Bay. I’ve been here a couple of times, mainly because it is one of the closest nice coastal spots to Canberra, a mere two hours and well worth it.

After an early start I was one of the first to park up at Pebbly Beach, home to the characteristic sandy beaches, bushland and wildlife that is the east coast of Australia.

From here I took what was in parts a mildly strenuous walk through giant gum trees and patches of cool climate rainforest, cutting a swathe to the top of Durras Mountain.



Some website somewhere describes this as one of the most popular walks in the park and with spectacular views from atop, in fact it goes as far to say a photographer’s delight. I think the website must’ve been one of those niche sites for people who wear stilts or something since the vegetation up top blocked out most of the views and it was all tantalizing glimpses through trees and snippets of blue water here and there. It wasn’t all doom and gloom with the distinctive form of Pigeon House Mountain (named by our old friend Captain James T Cook) off in the distance.

My favourite part of the walk was back down at sea level and only 15 minutes out from Pebbly Beach, where another isolated bay typified the landscape around here. It really is how this whole coastline must’ve looked when James and Joseph and a few scurvy dogs sailed on by.

By this point I think I had earned a little nourishment and so I soon rejoined the Pacific Highway and headed to Batemans Bay for some fish and chips beside the water in my T-shirt in the sunshine. And then I sat on the beach in Broulee and read for a little while, distracted every few minutes by watching the surfers doing their stuff. And to complete the self-pampering I grabbed a coffee and slice of Hummingbird Cake (a bit like carrot cake but with diced Hummingbird… I mean pineapple and passion fruit and stuff) in the pretty village of Mogo, fuelling me as I rode like a cowboy in a black Magna into the setting sun.

Getting high

Women blocking the aisles in men’s clothing shops: stop treating your hubby like your own little personal teddy bear and get out of my way!! He’s old enough and big enough to buy his own clothes, surely! OK rant over, though I could start moaning about the challenges of finding summer holiday clothes in the midst of a southern hemisphere winter. And what’s so great about Fyshwick Fresh Food markets when half the ingredients you want aren’t even there!

Sounds like someone needs to cool off, and the best way to do this is to head to the mountains. While the Australian Alps may not measure up to any other “Alps” in this world, they are bigger than anything in Britain and pretty much begin to the southwest of Canberra, which itself is higher than the highest point on Dartmoor. I headed to Boboyan Trig in Namadgi National Park, which climbs to a lofty altitude of 1459 metres, greater than Ben Nevis. And a pleasant, if somewhat bracing spot it is too.



From a car park off a dirt road the walk leads through a variety of vegetation – a swathe of Peppermint Gum leading down to swampy grassland and then rising up through Snow Gums to a sparsely vegetated bluff, battered by cool southerly winds and opening up a view to the mountains all around. It’s a lonely spot… the kind of place where unwary British tourists go missing!! The only other life seems to be the numerous wombat tracks, although even these were in hiding.

Life and warmth returned back down in the valley, in fact, so much life that I had to stop the car a couple of times to let a huge flock of Cockatoos and Galahs pass. With all the noise and cackling it was like being in that clothes shop all over again!

Citizens orve Orstraylior

I’ve learnt a few things over the past few days, which is always a good thing as they say the day you stop learning is the day you stop living. (Do they? I just made that up but I’m sure someone said it once).

Lesson 1: Don’t let an Aussie ramble on about becoming a republic.
We have just had the Queens birthday long weekend, where everyone gets a day off and, in Canberra at least, has the legal right to buy fireworks and more than happily takes up this privilege into the small hours. So a day off and fireworks all for someone they claim to want to get rid off. Who are they kidding, sneaky Australians?!

For my part, I celebrated by eating some cake and swinging on monkey bars. I guess the monkey bars were a way of working off the cake and getting a fix of the outdoors. In between other weekend at home tasks I headed up the far southern peak of the Red Hill Nature Reserve at the end of a superbly sunny Saturday for some classical bush capital scenes.




Quick Canberra geography lesson (see, you can learn something too!): Red Hill is in the south of Canberra but the very refined la-di-da inner south. Further south and things get slightly more bogan in Woden, but still fairly respectable. Then you get to the deep south of Tuggeranong which, like deep souths everywhere, has the distant sound of banjos being played from sofas on verandas. There is a North side to Canberra too, signaled by the spray of the Captain Cook Memorial Jet on your car windscreen. It’s very much a reflection of the south, getting ever so slightly more dubious the further from civilized society you head. I think things were still reasonably civilized when I found myself on the algae filled shores of Lake Ginninderra in the North on a much greyer, more wintry Sunday afternoon. Surprisingly there is significant North v South rivalry and I tried to hide my southern roots on a stroll around the lake.


Now, Melbourne is a place in which the Canberra North v South rivalry pales into significance, especially whilst I’m in the midst of watching Underbelly, charting the gangland murders of the past ten years. It’s pure sex, drugs and violence but what marks it out for distinction is that it’s actually an Australian made TV series which is, well, good. It was with several murders in the back of my head that I ventured to Melbourne on the holiday Monday.

Lesson 2: You really do need a jacket in Australia outside of the national capital.
OK, hands up in England who thinks Australia is 365 days of sunshine, all singlets and barbies on the beach? Yeah, well, while some in the know will be aware of the 60 nights of frost Canberra experiences each year (more learning, see), it’s still hard to take ‘winter’ seriously. So hard that, once out of Canberra, you forget that you might just need that extra layer after all. So it was on a dreary English-like day in St Kilda, a beachside suburb a few miles from the centre of Melbourne, that I found myself strolling along rather briskly to keep the blood pumping and warmth flowing. If anything was going to prepare me for my trip to Blackpool in a couple of months, this was it.



Having said that, the fish and chips in St Kilda were pretty good and there is a strip of fabulous coffee and cake shops, perfect to warm the cockles of the heart – it’s just a shame there’s only really room in the belly for one cake out of the hundreds of options.

The air was slightly warmer in the city, away from Port Philip Bay, where I didn’t do much bar stock up on a few souvenirs (tat central) and got lost possibly in the most confusing department store known to mankind (Myers in Lonsdale Street… or is it Collins Street… oh, it’s both… how confusing…). Perhaps I should have gone to the footy down at the G, but really I didn’t fancy sitting, clueless, with a bunch of well watered Collingwood supporters for the afternoon, so I just walked along the river and took some pictures as the night came all too quickly.



My presence in Melbourne wasn’t purely out of love of the place or fascination with the gangland haunts of the Moran Boys, but, sigh, work. For the most part it was actually all rather fine, amazing how things can go when you expect the worse. Everything done and dusted… now off to the airport.

Lesson 3: Don’t assume just because you are in a large metropolis you can easily get a taxi.
Ah, you know, should be easy to flag one down on the street, I figured, this being the world’s 17th most livable city and all (they were actually up in arms about this and wondering how the hell Auckland came 5th and Sydney 10th. Meanwhile, Canberras were just up in arms that they got overlooked completely…you’d have thought they’d have got used to that by now). Thus it was with half an hour until my piddly Qantas flight something or other was about to take off I finally left the city. Thankfully there is such demand from the people of Melbourne to come to Canberra that plenty of flights take those pour lost souls to Capital City and I managed to weasel my way onto a flight an hour later.

I didn’t really learn anything else, apart from the fact that the snacks on board those flights are getting worse… they really just shouldn’t bother anymore. I don’t think my brain could have taken anything else in anyway, struggling as I was to utter a few simple words to the taxi driver on the way home. Actually, it’s quite a wonder I’ve been able to write such a brilliant, eloquent and oh so charming narrative of the weekend’s events don’t you think. I better stop before I lose all of those remaining brain cells, and end up in a shack in Tuggeranong with my banjo or something.

Yellow Mellow

It’s one of those Sydney entries again, where I ramble on about the harbour and go for another little walk around some of the shoreline and gaze upon the bridge and shade my eyes from the glaring opera house all while having a coffee and piece of cake. I really don’t know how to write it any differently and not use words like beautiful, picturesque, easy going, fair dinkum…

The weather was perfect – not always the case I have to say… honestly it is not all clear blue skies despite what all the brochures and TV shows have to say. But on Friday and Saturday it was, well, like I say perfect, and the pleasant weather was enough to bring out the yellow T-shirts, which formed the basis of a game which started off as a little time filler down at Darling Harbour and eventually dominated the weekend. I’ll just say now, I defeated my friend Jill, 68-66 at yellow top so am currently the world yellow top champion.

I was staying in Coogee, always a pleasant spot on a sunny day, and a great place to have a great Australian breakfast. By Australian I don’t mean kangaroo sausages and wattle seed damper, but just really damn fine breakfasts which they seem to excel at more often than not.

Fully loaded, we left Coogee to catch a ferry to Cremorne Point over on the North Shore, a land of identikit inlets scattered with boats and lined by alternating patches of wild bushland and more refined gardens of frangipani and other such gardener’s delights. From here we walked around the inlets of Mosman and onto Taronga Wharf, throughout catching iconic city views, passing happy, healthy people and their dogs, and spotting yellow tops.

It was, as always, a great way to spend a sunny day and by time we returned on the ferry to Circular Quay, a tiny part of my stomach was game enough for a spot of coffee and cake beside the Opera House. Have a taken this photo before? Oh, probably, but who cares? Occasionally, being here still brings about a pinch-yourself-moment, to be sat down there in the pleasantly warm sun having a coffee with the Harbour Bridge in one corner of your eye and the Opera House in the other.

From the whites of the Opera House it was more yellow top spotting on the bus back to Coogee, where the day was fading all too early and the faint chill of winter was starting to emerge beside the shoreline.

As darkness enveloped the beach and made yellow top spotting difficult, we retired to a restaurant for an early dinner of BBQ ribs before I caught my flight back to Canberra, fully satisfied on the food, the weather and the glow of victory.