Between Sydney and Melbourne

There were two options for us when leaving Sydney to go to Melbourne. There was the slower ocean road sticking to the East and then the South Coast or the "short cut" down the main road via Canberra. We chose the latter, mainly because having left Sydney we decided on a trip west up to the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains is another national park offering bush walks, amazing views and limestone caves to explore. We stopped off at Wentworth Falls and took a 2 1/2hr walk from the top of the waterfall down to the bottom and back up again. It involved a lot of very steep steps in rather warm temperatures. The major attraction for the blue mountains is the Jenolan caves which is deep inside the national park. The caves are a series of huge limestone caves. Only a tiny fraction are open to the public and there are thought to be many more that haven't been explored yet by anybody. We took one of the organised tours into one of the cave systems and had a 1 1/2 tour underground getting to see some very impressive underground caverns.

Half way between Sydney and Melbourne is Canberra, an interesting place in that there isn't much to see or do there and there seems very little point for the place other than it was a purpose built capital when nobody could agree on either Melbourne or Sydney. We did actually find something worth going to see. The Museum of Australia which had very interesting exhibits about the Australian land and it's people. Other than that there is nothing too complimentary I can say about Canberra, it's just full of parks and confusing road systems.

We bypassed Melbourne when we reached it and headed out onto the Great Ocean Road which I have to describe as one of the most challenging drives i've ever done. I have never seen so many tight corners on steep hills on a small stretch of road as I did there. I think for about an hour and a half driving I managed 45km! The views are spectacular however and the sea is perfectly clear and blue (freezing too by the way). We managed to drive almost the entire length of the road stopping along the way to view some of the more interesting natural features along the way. The 12 apostles is probably the best known of these, twelve sandstone pillars jutting out of the sea.

I'm going to stop here and let somebody else have a go with blog writing. You can expect another blog from Laura on the parts of Melbourne that she went to see without me and Rich and you'll get a sporting update from Rich about the week of sport that we've just been to see. Aussie Rules Football, Formula 1, a tour round the MCG and yes World Championship Syncronised swimming!! I bet you didn't guess the last one!!

Chris