Markdale Binda

... the Easter holidays. Traffic jam to get into Byron Bay, the town, beaches & Lighthouse areas were all heaving so we decided to pull out and drive on. We eventually arrived at Kingscliff a beautifil town about 1 hour North of Byron and managed to rent a 2 bedroom appartment overlooking the beach for 5 days. Yesterday we went down the beach, mile up mile of silver sands and rolling waves, for a swim, just as we were about to go in ...

... next day visibility was extremely low and we couldn't see 'owt. Deciding there was nothing for it but to return to our B&B and have some wine to warm us up, we headed back, but via the Paragon cafe where B was served a comically small portion of cake. She complained and got a free bit, excellent work. Our B&B was a big old Victorian house called Balmoral, and was decorated in Victorian-style. It had a slightly weird headless manikin ...

humph. got the train from sydney with helen for a trip to the blue mountains. first grey day since arriving in sydney.... train ride was good and i'd imagine the views would be pretty good if the sun had been shining.. arrived in katoomba to find it in the middle of a cloud! checked into the yha (vvv nice!) and headed out to find it had cleared a bit. guess you can see from the pics that it was still a bit overcast. ho hum.. had a fab chat on messenger with beck ...

... theatre and loads of lovely old photos of people on the beach in the early 20th century. The drive to Blue Mountains takes a couple of hours and our first stop off is in Katoomba at Echo Point. Here you get amazing, sweeping views of the Blue Mountains National Park including the 'Three Sisters' rocks which are an important site in Aboriginal history. The mountains are not blue but earn their name from the ...

For my last day in the Blue Mountains I booked a trip to Jenolan Caves, one of the most celebrated underground cave networks in the wold. They are now said to also be the oldest at 400 million years old. I borded the bus for a 2 hour ride around the canyons to Jenolan. The caves are similar to other limestone caves with stalactite and stalagmites. They are quite spectacular and the tour guide was very informative. Unfortunately I arrived on a Sunday and was on a tour with ...

... 600 meters below. Of course the stream has carved a nice 10 meter mini canyon at the bottom. This is where you abseil down. You strap yourself into a harness. Attach a rope and walk off the cliff backwards in the waterfall. Beginners end up doing one of 2 things. You lean forward too far and you feet slip downward from under you. You face plant against the rock and end up with a fat lip. What I did was lean too ...

... trip up the railway the power went out half up. This was fun until people started to think about the failsafe break failing. For the math freaks out there, here is a question. You have a rail car full of people inclined at 51 degrees after a free fall of 250 vertical meters, how fast will the screaming people be going as they break through the bottom station and sore into the canyon below.

So we decided to take a tour of the Blue Mountains, about an hour west of Sydney. The day consisted of a lot more than just the Mountains though. We started off the day with a quick self-tour of the Sydney 2000 Olympics Games area, and got some fantastically funny shots of a random, weird animal on a pole. We didn't really know how long we had at the Olympic Site so we didn't venture far, but I have a sample of pics for you to see. At the Blue ...

Well Australia has redeemed itself. The blue Mt's were fantastic. A 2hr train ride took us in land to the BM, and its surprising how much of a climate change there was. It was cold, freezing compared to Sydney with a drop of around 8c and it was raining but that only worked to our advantage as for one we had planed to do some walking and two it kept all the camera happy tourists away, joy. After a night in the newly opened Backpacker Central ...

We drove out west today (some 105 kilometres) to visit the Mount Tomah Botanic Garden. This cool-climate garden is located near Bilpin (between Richmond and Lithgow), and is a sister centre to the Royal Botanic Gardens in central Sydney. At a thousand metres above sea level a different set of plants thrive here, including the prehistoric Wollemi Pines. It was a warm day and this was an ideal place to take a hamper and ...