The D&O Diary was on assignment this past week in the Asia Pacific region, with the first stop in the great country of Australia. It is always great to be in Australia, but the Southern Hemisphere Summer is a particularly good time to be there. After a day or two of clouds and some rain on arrival, the weather turned particularly glorious, as reflected in the pictures below.
Upon arrival in Sydney, we took the Airport Link train to Circular Quay, on the Sydney Harbor, and then caught a cross-harbor ferry to the suburban beach town of Manly, to spend a day or two recovering from jet lag. The main attraction of Manly — in addition to the beach itself — is its accessibility of the Sydney Harbor National Park.
After our recovery time in Manly, we took the ferry back across the harbor to spend a few days in Sydney proper.
One day while we were in Sydney, we took another ferry to Watsons Bay to have lunch at the Doyle’s on the Beach restaurant (famous for its views of the Sydney skyline).
We were up the next day before dawn to catch an early morning train on the Blue Mountains Line, to Katoomba, about two hours west of Sydney. In Katoomba, we accessed the the Blue Mountains National Park, where we planned to walk through the park from Katoomba Falls to Leura Cascades, and then to catch a return train from Leura back to Sydney. It turned out to be a great day of hiking, entailing more than 15 miles of rugged trails and beautiful scenery.
After our visit to the Blue Mountains, we returned to Sydney with a plan to spend the weekend in the beach community of Bondi (pronounced “Bon-DYE”). As it turned out, it was a brilliant plan because we were fortunate to be able to enjoy absolutely wonderful summer weather for the duration of the visit.
It was an amazing visit overall. The very idea of summer in February is a brilliant concept, self-evidently meritorious. It is also a thing of wonder that we saw only a very small part of this amazing country. Clearly, we have to come back. Soon.
