Two days of travelling took its toll initially, but now that we’ve had 3 days on the ground here in Australia, the Masseys are starting to feel more human again.
We stopped over for a couple of hours in Malaysia on the way over. Kuala Lumpur is definitely a city of extremes. At one end of the scale, the Petronus Towers dominate the landscape of air-conditioned glass and marble shopping malls interspersed with perfectly manicured tropical gardens. Here, globally recognised brand names demonstrate their ubiquity – Harrods makes two appearances along with the usual suspects, Calvin Klein, Armani, et al. Much of the rest of the city is the real urban Malaysia with small local shops, marketplaces and bustling, noisy crowds.
Naturally, we tend to keep an eye out for interesting ideas for the shop – one that struck us as charming (although not necessarily for Masseys) was this fish tank stand we found when we went out for breakfast after landing in Sydney. The old television casing is the genuine article, once proudly owned by the proprietor’s parents, and now effectively recycled as unusual restaurant décor.
One night in Sydney to refresh and get some sorely needed sleep, and we were on the road up to our first stop, South West Rocks. This is a charming seaside community, which we could imagine would be steaming with holiday-makers in peak season. As it was, being low season, we had the pleasure of an early morning walk in this tranquil place with very few other people around. The estuary was magically still with flocks of egrets nesting in groups in the distance.
And then it was off on the second leg of our journey. But before we left South West Rocks, we took a drive up to Smoky Cape lighthouse. This is the highest lighthouse in New South Wales, a fact we could endorse having hiked up the steep hill to reach it. Here we saw, in the distance, our first whale breaching. Unfortunately, it was too far off to be able to tell whether it was a Southern Right whale or a Humpback. (Smoky Cape lighthouse trivia – in 1964, the lighthouse had to be manually operated when the assistant lighthouse keeper blew the power by plugging in his electric frying pan. Bet he was popular!)
We’ve now reached Lennox Head where we’re actually staying still for a few days. The whales are still travelling down the coast so with luck we’ll have another opportunity to see if we can identify one of these glorious beasties from its flume. We learned that the humpback produces a single spout, and the Southern Right creates two branches. More in a few days…
Posted under Quite Interesting
This post was written by Vandy on July 5, 2009
Wow, these are great. It’s great to hear all about your travels, it sounds like a real adventure.