Off on a holiday

Well, last Sunday morning I clambered aboard a mini-bus which picked up lots of others and deposited us to North Sydney where we did some more clambering, this time aboard a big coach.

There were 34 people and a very endearing driver/guide who filled us with information as we drove from place to place. For example, that the M5 tunnel is five and a half kilometres long, which incidentally correlates to five and a half kilometres of boredom. The whole trip was in fact stretches of boredom interspersed with food, eaten at various exotic beachside resorts. (At least the area around the airport didn’t stink as it did in the ‘50s because then you drove to the airport via a number of tanneries.)

Sydney is very, very big. If you add on Campbelltown which, strictly speaking, is another city, then Sydney is very, very, very big indeed. By the time you get out of greater Sydney, you would probably have driven through three European countries.

The boredom of long stretches of driving is largely because the entire flora of the NSW coast and inland is eucalypts of various descriptions, with she-oaks or casuarinas. True, past the border of gums you sometimes see rather wonderful vistas of cleared land dotted with homesteads, farm buildings, cows, sheared sheep and horses. What made these views special was the extraordinarily verdant green of the pastures because of the rain over recent months. There was also evidence from time to time of the terrible fires two-plus years ago but eucalypts are remarkable trees in their capacity to regenerate, so despite their blackened drunks, the eucalypt forests are also very green.

Another interesting fact from our bus driver is that Australia has 800 species of gum tree. We passed many with white and very straight trunks. They must have been ideal for the sawmills. But in the pastures, for windbreaks I expect, were great stands of what I think were fir trees. There’s no doubt that the Great Dividing Range, which seems to come very close to the coast as you go down south, provides spectacular vistas.

We also had two cruises, both of about two and a half hours duration: one up the Clyde River at Batemans Bay (where incidentally we had the best fish and chips I’ve ever eaten) and the other at Jervis Bay to see dolphins. Perhaps I’m hard to please but I must say both these trips were about as exciting as watching paint dry. The Clyde is very wide and its shores are covered with mangroves and eucalypts (of course!) and decked with oyster beds. We sailed up to a small town called Nelingen which was closed, so we were told. Considering this was mid-afternoon we were puzzled. It turned out that one place which sold souvenirs was in fact open but by that stage I’d decided not to risk the uphill walk to the shop. The cruise in Jervis Bay showed you a lot of Jervis Bay which is something like six times larger than Sydney Harbour but has infinitely less charm. We did in fact catch up to the dolphins in the last ten minutes or so but they were not obliging and only showed us a small curve of their backs and their fins.

One of the highlights of the holiday was a visit to Mogo zoo where you could get up close and personal with meerkats, strange moustachioed monkeys and giraffes who came right up to the keepers to be fed. The zoo also has cheetahs, lions (including white lions which were hiding), hippopotami or it may have been rhinoceros (also hiding), a couple of very grumpy looking gorillas and lots of zebras.

On this holiday, I observed again what I’d noticed in driving holidays many decades ago; the propensity of country people to build their homes right on the roadside or, if further away, at least facing the road. It’s extremely odd that they don’t find a spot off in the pastures which would give some privacy. Ah, well … a mystery not to be solved. I also noticed shipping containers in many of the gardens of the more run-down houses. Were they for storage or living? Another mystery not to be solved.

By contrast, at many places on this trip we drove through or into flyspeck towns packed with huge, modern and attractive homes, some with a holiday feel and others very suburban. In other, bigger, towns there were mixtures of these modern buildings and old-fashioned fibro houses or weatherboard, sometimes gussied up with smart paint. The tour organisers took pains to take us to attractive towns to have morning or afternoon tea and lunch. We’d pull up to a park (universally well kept) at a beach with covered benches and tables where our driver set out the goodies. And one very important fact: there was always a toilet block. Given that the average age of the people on tour was probably 80, access to a clean toilet is the sine qua non of a driving holiday. These small coastal towns down south could teach our Northern Beaches parks a thing or two. The only negative in some of the parks was the need to dodge kangaroo poop; in one park we saw a large group (troop?) of kangaroos snoozing in the shade of a large tree.

And speaking of coastal communities, on the way back via Wollongong, we actually avoided Wollongong itself and took the coastal road past a series of small beach-side towns like Thirroul, Austinmer, Coledale, Wombarra and more. They were delightful and many boasted houses of great charm. I’d say they would be a perfect place to go for a beach holiday except that I live in a beach holiday!

(Our driver, as I’ve said was full of facts. He told us not only that wombats and koalas have a common ancestor but that koalas poop olive-shaped poos but wombat poop is cubed.)

As I said earlier, this trip – and perhaps all coach tours – caters for an older tourist. If you live on your own, as many of my companions did, it was a nice way to have company on a holiday. At least one third to one half of the whole 34 was English. Most of the group were very hale and hearty and seemed to have no trouble keeping up the pace. I imagine, however, that this sort of trip with its long driving stretches and multiple stops (and loos) was just right for the energies of the slightly older. For the remainder of the passengers, some spoke such broad ocker that I wished I brought Let Stalk Strine with me. All, thankfully, were nice people, easy to please and appreciative of the company they found themselves in.

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

Sir Robert Menzies, when accused by a Member of Parliament of harbouring a superiority complex: “Considering the company I keep in this place, that is hardly surprising.”