Selcouth Chronicles Week 8
Hello family and friends! Welcome to week 8 of the Selcouth Chronicles.
Week 8: February 25th - March 2nd
🛫Feb. 28 Hamilton Island->🛬Sydney
🚗March 2 Sydney-> Blue Mountains
AUSTRALIA
Highlights: Snorkeling the GBR, animal encounters, Sydney’s free museums, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney Opera House tour, day trip to Blue Mountains
James:
Goodbye, Week 8. We’ll miss you and the fun times we had over the course of your time.
You really started off well with our Great Barrier Reef snorkeling trip on Sunday, which dazzled us with its natural beauty and abundant wildlife. Even though the visibility was supposedly only average because it was overcast, we still saw tons and tons of fish and coral and anemones. In my case, I even saw an octopus! Mom was so jealous.
On Monday we decided to jazz things up with animal encounters. Abby and Dad got to pet a very fluffy koala named Yindi. I love snakes and I have always wanted to hold one, so when Mom saw that reptiles were an option for the encounters the two of us went for it immediately. The snake in question was a black-headed python (creatively named BHP) and we actually got to hold it! It was really interesting; smooth and dry, and you could feel all of the different muscles moving as it was bending around to look at you from every direction. It was also adorable - can you believe we were the only two people who wanted to hold the snake that day? We had lunch afterwards and went swimming to let out energy before bed.
Tuesday was a rainy day, so we all took it slow with naps (for me), laundry (for Mom and Dad), math, and a nice Italian dinner.
On Wednesday we got more active, hiking through mountains all morning in the rain to Resort Lookout and Flat Top Hill Lookout. Once we were completely soaked, we got on a three-hour plane flight to Sydney and ended the day with a view of a wonderful fireworks display above the Sydney Opera House.
We explored Sydney the following morning. Mom had found a barbershop called The Barberhood because she decided that I needed a haircut. I resisted, but eventually I got in the chair, and when I was done, Abby decided to get one as well. Once our hair was sufficiently cut, museums beckoned. Specifically, The Rocks Discovery Museum, which gave us some fascinating looks into Sydney’s past, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was full of modern (and sometimes confusing) art.
On Friday, we wanted to continue the adventure, so we went on a self-guided walking tour through the small streets that most tourists overlook. The anticipation of discovering new things was fun, turning corners to find hidden restaurants and shops, although many of the areas were only back alleys that had once been grand. Next we walked through the Royal Botanic Gardens. The plant life was a nice refresher after the bustling city. We finished our day with a tour of the Sydney Opera House, which was in fact connected to the Gardens. I thought it was an excellent tour and our guide was really knowledgeable.
The final day of the week was our most active, with a trip to the Blue Mountains National Park. Even though we only had one day there, we managed to see three different locations in the park. We hiked around Echo Point and the Three Sisters, over Wentworth Falls, and finished off the evening with a night walk at Katoomba Falls, although it was so misty you couldn’t see the falls itself. We slept well on Saturday, and thus ended another week of our selcouth adventures!
Abby:
One of the things that makes Australia famous is the Great Barrier Reef, one of the world’s greatest natural wonders. Our family had planned to snorkel here since before we left home, and we were excited to finally make that happen. I had never gone snorkeling before, but had seen Mom and James snorkel a few weeks ago with Dusky Dolphins. I was pretty excited that my first snorkeling experience was going to be one of the most magnificent places in the world that you can do this.
We took a nice boat ride out to the area we were supposed to swim, though throughout the ride we were nervous that we wouldn’t be able to see as well because it was quite misty and gray, but, as we were arriving, one of the crew members said that we would have “average” sight.
As we were stopping, everybody had to get in their gear, like finding the right size snorkels, flippers, and stinger suits. 🪼 Afterwards, we quickly had to squeeze me into a lifejacket and get our pool noodles (for extra buoyancy), then everybody made their way into the water.
At first, I didn’t want to put my head under water - I’m a bit afraid of looking down into the water and just seeing endless blue - but after a minute, mom told me that the reef was directly under me. I took a breath and looked into the ocean. The minute you put your head underwater, it’s like you’re transported to another world. A world of bright, neon-color corals and fish. A world of endless life and community. A world of magic. I had only seen such things in pictures, or little bits in aquariums, but just being there, looking at the schools of fish and wondrous, thriving, living landscapes is nothing you could ever dream of.
We saw many very cool things, like rainbow fish and orange, swaying coral. Dad & I even thought that the schools of little gray fish were pretty cool, because they all would move in unison. At one point, when Mom & I were heading back to the boat, we swam over a patch of sand and suddenly, it moved! It was a giant fish that had buried itself in the sand. We were so surprised when a big shape suddenly darted through the water!😂
I don’t really know how to fully describe it, and we couldn’t really take pictures, but I’ll just tell you that it’s fantastical! You realize, in things like this, how fragile and special our planet is, and how everybody needs to respect and take care of this amazing place. 🌎:)
Caitlin:
Arriving in Sydney made for a major atmospheric change for us! After a month of outdoor-focused locations we are back in the middle of a city. We have loved all of our time enjoying nature, but it’s fun to switch things up and be able to walk right out the door to an abundance of… everything! We knew we were off to a good start when we arrived in the hotel room in the evening with a view of the Opera House, which soon started a fireworks show. Apparently this is a common occurrence in the summers, but we like to pretend that the timing was special for us. 😉
Being in the Central Business District (CBD) has been ideal because we’re within walking distance of so many things we want to see. However, before we started sightseeing I was on a mission to get a haircut for James. He was… less than enthusiastic… but quite overdue. Luckily, his initial reluctance soon faded and he was happy chatting with his stylist. In fact, he enjoyed himself enough that Abby noticed and insisted that she was in need of a trim too! The kids probably don’t care that much, but I felt better having that taken care of. And the gelato we got afterwards was a nice reward for everyone.
After the haircuts we doubled back past our hotel, through Circular Quay and on to The Rocks neighborhood, so named because it was one of the original colonial settlements on top of rocky cliffs. We started with The Rocks Discovery Museum, which is small but gives a good history of the city, including the Gadigal people who were the original Aboriginal inhabitants of the land. Next we went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, only about a block away. It’s a lovely museum right on the water. I especially enjoyed a room that was an artist’s homage to her neighbor’s garden. The neighboring home had been bought by a developer and was slated to be bulldozed, so the artist created rubbings of every plant in the garden as a way of honoring what was being lost. The result is an entire room of paper hung from ceiling to floor with meticulously constructed rubbings of plants, many of which were taller than me. For the most part the rubbings were all black on white paper, but here and there it was punctuated with bright pops of color to highlight a particular flower or fruit. It was such an unusual concept and I’ve never seen rubbings on this scale; it was a delight! We ended the day with a stroll up to Observatory Hill, which has a wonderful view of the Harbor Bridge.
The next day the kids and I decided to try one of the free self-guided Culture Walks tours curated by the City of Sydney. There are a number of different themes, but James was definite that we should try Sydney’s Little Laneways, which promised to let us “explore the city’s laneways and minor streets, the ones the casual passer-by doesn’t see.” In that respect, the tour was a huge success, but I’d say that we had an overall-positive-but-mixed experience. On the one hand, some of the laneways are not currently thriving, so it was interesting to read their histories, but you’re still just standing in an alley. In other instances, we would turn down laneways that we never would have even noticed on a casual walk, and lo and behold there were hidden treasures of small shops and restaurants clearly known to Sydneysiders, based on the length of the lines out the door at lunchtime. We definitely saw parts of the city that we never would have found on our own, so in the end we felt that despite a few uninspiring spots we were fairly well rewarded for our efforts.
We met Sean for lunch and completely changed the tone of the day by visiting some of the most well-known sights in the city. First we walked through the Royal Botanic Gardens (free to the public, like all of the museums we had visited so far!), which were beautiful by themselves and enhanced by the fact that they are right on the harbor, so they have abundant water views and a lovely cool breeze coming in from the sea. Our particular favorite spot was The Wishing Tree, which claims to grant a wish if you walk around it three times forward and three times backwards. James pointed out that “backwards” could be interpreted either as walking the opposite way or by walking facing backwards. We decided to walk facing backwards, and thanks to the rather large circular path around the tree the ritual took a bit longer than we expected, but we told ourselves that the possibility of granted wishes was worth the effort. Fingers crossed!
The gardens are adjacent to the Opera House grounds, so we strolled in that direction to make it in time for our late afternoon tour. I was very much looking forward to going inside the Opera House, because when my family was here 25-ish years ago we had the misfortune to visit when it was closed for all tours, so we were only able to view the outside. The tour did not disappoint, and the two performance buildings are equally lovely and full of surprises inside - more on the Opera House next week! So far we feel like Sydney is off to a great start.
Sean:
To end the week, we rented a car and took a day trip out of Sydney to the Blue Mountains National Park. This was an opportunity to get out of the city and see some of the diversity New South Wales has to offer. It’s about an hour and half drive from the city, so easily done without a lot of planning.
The area was named due to the blue haze that is seen across the vast expanse that makes up the canyon. This is attributed to the multiple species of Eucalyptus that are endemic to the area. The trees give off an oil that mixes in the air with dust and water and diffuses the light, causing us to see everything with a blue hue. This, in combination with the orange cliffs, leads to a striking vista. Our first stop was Echo Point in Katoomba. This is the most famous of the stops in the Blue Mountains, thanks to the Three Sisters which are easily seen from the viewing platform.
The legend of the Three Sisters is that long ago, there were three sisters of the Katoomba tribe, Meehni, Wimlah, and Gunnedoo. They fell in love with three brothers of the Nepean tribe but this love was forbidden. The brothers aimed to forcibly marry the sisters despite the ban by the tribes (Romeo and Juliet, anyone?), which caused a war. In order to protect the sisters, a witch doctor turned the sisters to stone with the intent to turn them back once they were safe again. The witch doctor was unfortunately killed, and the sisters have been stuck there ever since. Quite the entertaining thought looking out at the spires jutting up over 3000 feet from sea level. Luckily, we were there right before a mist rolled in and shrouded the sisters and the valley for much of the afternoon.
After doing some walks near Echo Point, we stopped at a bakery to eat some pies (pumpkin, lentil, and feta was surprisingly delicious) before continuing to Wentworth Falls. Here we started a rainy walk to the falls, and just a taste of the National Pass that continues down the cliffs and along the river at the valley floor. The walk was incredible, thinking about how the early workers had to hang off the side to carve the steps, and going from rainforest to sudden cliff side views into the distance. Returning, we took a slightly different path along the Undercliff track and the Princes Rock lookout track, which gave us excellent views of the falls as the rain cleared out and clouds rolled away.
This left us a bit winded, so we checked into the motel and took a power nap. After the refresher and some dinner, we went to Katoomba falls to do the night walk. The path is lit every few feet along the handrails, with flood lights set up in some areas to shine on interesting views. A heavy mist rolled in during dinner, so it was a movie set feel walking through the shrouded forest. Going a bit further than we originally planned, we luckily made it all the way to the Cascades, which were a treat in the dark.
Though we only had the one day, it was a fantastic peek into the incredible Blue Mountains region. The history here is fascinating as well, and I’d encourage you to read up on Charles Darwin’s walk through the area, which was a significant influence on his theory of natural selection.
See you next week!
Sean, Caitlin, James and Abby
Catching up? Read week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7.