 Miles, Alexa, Helen, Lydia |
 Safe Swimming |
 Blue Mountains Line |
 Lydia, Helen, Alexa, Uncle Alan |
 Uncle Alan's House |
 Uncle Alan's House |
|
 Uncle Alan's Other House |
 Adelaide |
 In Cleland Wildlife Park |
 Aunt Joan and Uncle Neil at Home |
 Golden Wedding Party |
 Orchid Bay, Hinchinbrook Island, Queensland |
 Lace Monitor |
 At the Helm of the Hinchinbrook Explorer |
 Mangroves |
The holiday started in Sydney, and with a guided tour of the Opera House. We were so impressed that we returned in the afternoon to watch the magnificent production of Delibes' opera 'Lakmé'.
This opera includes the Flower Duet, which was adopted by British Airways as its advertising music. It is used occasionally as part of the boarding music, and at the start of the safety video.
We also visited the Botanical Gardens, The Rocks, Darling Harbour, the Aquarium, the Powerhouse Museum, the Museum of Sydney and Taronga Zoo. We took a ferry through Sydney's huge natural harbour to the quiet seaside suburb of Manly. As we passed the entrance from the Pacific, dolphins swam alongside the ferry.
Alexa and Lydia go to a Marist School and so we sought the plaque marking the site of the first Marist Brothers' school in Australia.
We met up with Helen's friend Anne who, with her family, is living in Sydney for a few years. We had lunch with her at the Bathers' Pavilion in Balmoral.
In the mornings we had breakfast at City Extra on Circular Quay. The breakfasts served there are some of the best!
One morning we went on a two hour train journey through the Blue Mountains to visit Helen's Uncle Alan. He is building single-handedly a house on a hilltop in fifty acres of land. He has completed the garage and is now fitting the roof trusses on the walls of the house.
The house features an ingenious system of solar heating. On the south side of the inner courtyard there will be a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling window, in front of a Trombe wall of high-density concrete bricks. At each end of this wall, between it and the window, there will be a door. During the day the sun will heat the Trombe wall. In the evening the doors at the ends of the wall will be opened, allowing the heat stored in the wall to be released to the rest of the house. There are also narrower Trombe walls behind windows on the east and west sides of the courtyard.
After a hearty lunch of bacon buttys put together in the completed garage, we had a walk around Uncle Alan's land. There is a stream running through it, brightly coloured birds in the trees, and a burrow dug by a wombat. In the evening we had dinner at the Tarana Arms.
The next morning Uncle Alan took us to Katoomba. What was once a coalmine there is now a scenic viewing area, with an extremely steep railway and two cable cars.
Two days later we had the pleasant surprise of being met at Adelaide Airport by Aunt Joan. We had dinner with her and Uncle Neil at their lovely home.
The following day Aunt Joan drove us through Adelaide, relating some of the history on the way. We stopped at Light's Vision on Montefiore Hill to see the statue of Colonel William Light, Surveyor-General of the then Colony of South Australia, and to enjoy the view across the city. Colonel Light also has the distinction of sharing his birthday with Aunt Joan, the 27th of April.
We walked through the wonderful Cleland Wildlife Park, and visited Helen's cousin Ellie, Ellie's husband Brandon and children Leni, Ben and Hannah in their very adventurous home.
Helen's cousin Rob and his wife Felicity magnificently hosted Aunt Joan and Uncle Neil's Golden Wedding Party. All of Joan and Neil's children, children-in-law and grandchildren were there, except for their granddaughter Sarah, who very sadly was in hospital with a ruptured spleen, and her mother Ann, who was with her.
Helen was the only guest who had also been at Joan and Neil's Wedding, albeit a few weeks before she was born.
While we were in Adelaide we also travelled on the new trams to Victoria Square, from where we walked to the shopping area around Rundle Mall, and to Glenelg, on the coast. On the evening before we left Adelaide, we had another good dinner with Aunt Joan and Uncle Neil.
From Adelaide it was a day's journey by aeroplane, minibus and ferry to Hinchinbrook Island in Queensland. This island is approximately thirty-seven kilometres long by ten kilometres wide. It is a National Park maintained by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. Hinchinbrook Island Wilderness Lodge was established in 1974 on Cape Richards, at the northern tip of the island, on a block of land leased from the Queensland state government. We stayed in one of the original beach cabins that had been constructed in Townsville and transported by lorry and barge to the island. The newer tree houses are less basic, but they were fully booked during part of our stay.
The Lodge has a beautiful beach, Orchid Bay, which is safe for swimming, and a good swimming pool. We went snorkelling near the Brook Islands and from Orchid Bay, and a couple of times we went by boat through the extensive mangrove swamps to another idyllic beach, Ramsay Bay, which is nine kilometres long.
We saw a crocodile when we were on the ferry from the mainland, and at the Lodge we saw some fairly tame lace monitors, which are about one and a half metres long and similar to iguanas. We also saw some turtles in the sea near the jetty and, appropriately, at Turtle Bay, surfacing every few minutes to take a breath and to have a short rest.
On our last morning on Hinchinbrook Island we were woken by the 'crowing, gurgling and squawking' noise of the orange-footed scrubfowls scurrying past our beach cabin.
Our only regret was that we did not see any dugongs. The dugong is a large mammal that lives in the sea and grazes on seagrass. The waters around the island are a feeding ground and a Protection Area for them.
Before we left our hotel in Sydney for the flight to London, we met up with a friend of the family, Leonard Amadio A.M. (A.M. is Member of the Order of Australia.) Len had a distinguished career in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and subsequently in senior arts positions in the South Australian government. He has also served on many national boards and committees including the Australian Opera, UNESCO, the Adelaide Festival, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Youth Orchestra.
Our visit to Australia was recorded for posterity in the Census, which was taken on the night of the eighth of August. We were staying overnight at a hotel in Cairns, on our way back from Hinchinbrook Island to Sydney, and we had to complete the same form for each of us as everyone else in Australia. You will be able to read that account of our visit in ninety-nine years' time.