To a Town No One Has Heard Of

Guard this map with your life. If questioned, immediately swallow it and act normal.So, every Australian to whom we've said "We're going to Yowah," has not been to, heard of, or knows the location of said town. Rowan discovered this opal festival starting on July 15th there so all previous plans were canceled* to attend this all-consuming desire to explore something of potentially no value held in a town of potentially no potential. But opal! Who doesn't want to see opal in its pristine state? (This is where you click on the comment link and say, "Oh, yeah, opals, you can't beat those puppies for nothing!") Rowan is nearly certain you can get a 'roo to follow you through the opal fields of Yowah, placing countless finds in their marsupial pouches as they hop contentedly behind waiting for a lick from his Vegamite Bagel smear.

Anyway, to get there, we've started to make our way in our "caravan" (as they say here) inland to the mythical town of semiprecious renown. Tonight, we sauntered into Denman, a town known for its IGA grocery store with adjoining hardware annex, managed to run out of propane, but found out the place has a great grill and Rowan cooked corn and sausages.

We've plotted out a half-assed itinerary to get us there by this Friday so we can get a good spot at the ol' caravan park. So Tuesday first thing in the mid-morning we head to Point D on the map (having already left Points A in Sydney, B in Narrabeen, and C in Denman) for a three-hour drive further into the land of Oz. Then Wednesday it's on to Bourke, Point E, for another three-hour drive. Thursday has us coming into Cunnamulla, Point F, to be within earshot of Yowah for Friday. Or at least, that's the plan for the moment.

Internet connections may be iffy as we head to the town of lore and ore. We'll be there until Sunday, July 17th, when we start back towards the coast (Brisbane) and perhaps moving to a warmer area.

*There were no plans. (Seriously, plans? Traveling with Rowan?)

Caravanning Across Australia!

Our Deluxe Camper Van Ready to Rock n RollThanks to a couple of Parisians we met in Tokyo, we started to think seriously about just driving around Australia and as one thing led to another, we just rented a caravan, which is basically a mini RV complete with a running water sink, microwave, fridge, bed and cooking equipment. It's a mobile camper that lets us drive to where we want, when we want. We're going to head out Wednesday to a campsite near Sydney in the north for at least three nights there. There's an Opal Festival in the middle of nowhere that we'll have more on later.

The weather has been cool but really beautiful during the day, then much colder at night. So we're thinking of moving north for a little while then south again towards Melbourne and perhaps skip over to Tasmania. We have our little home on wheels until September 10th, when we dropped off in Darwin, in "the NT" as the call the Northern Territory.

The eight days here have been very relaxing. It's rained off and on but overall the middle of winter in Sydney is very mild. We've walked around with light jackets most days.

Photos Taken Near Our Apartment in Sydney

This is near Clovelly (Sydney), Australia, where our apartment is located as we walked back from the town of Coogee. Click on the small image to see it full size.

Bird Watches the Bay

Our Sydney Apartment

Our first place in Sydney has been a nice first-floor apartment in the small neighborhood of Clovelly, near the end of Thorpe Street, just a few steps to the cliffs of Gordon's Bay and up from the little town of Coogee. Trying to figure out where to stay before we arrived in Sydney was a challenge because we'd put off that decision for after our arrival in Tokyo. We discovered a website called Airbnb.com that Rowan had actually heard about while visiting San Francisco and because our standard fallback of Vacation Rentals by Owner did't have anything, we used Airbnb.

Given the lateness of deciding, we did not have a lot of choices and the one place that was downtown in a high-rise apartment complex sort of strung us along until we had to give up and cast our net wider.  We were glad we did because the CBD (Central Business District as they call the downtown Down Under) was too much of Just Another City and not fun enough (after we finally did see it). We're glad we chose this more folksy neighborhood because it was easy to get into the CBD with the excellent bus system of Sydney. The hotels are expensive and the exchange rate knocks off about 12% of our spending power (it used to be much better) so even the $964 (US Dollars) we spent for 8 nights here was a comparatively good deal. We could've spent much more.

Click on the image to view a larger version. (Seriously, now you can click on the image to view a larger version!)

The lower part of this building is our place.

Front living room looking towards the kitchen (on the left) and front (blue door)

Kitchen (left) and Blue Front  

The Bedroom with hard-to-find queen-sized bed.Modern Bath with Step-In Shower Tub

Trip from Our Apt to Imperial Palace

The video here represents us leaving our apartment in Shinsen, going on the subway, and arriving at the East Garden of the Imperial Palace. In realtime it took one hour and fifteen minutes. I sped it up 2000% for a runtime of three and a half minutes.

We ended up at a nice garden. Here is a beautiful tree on the mound where the video ends up:

And next to that were some more trees and flowers. Japan has a lot of nice landscaping...