Sydney Harbor and Manly

I had two days to spend in Sydney on my way back to the United States. One of the days I caught a ferry from downtown Sydney out to a suburb called Manly. It is on the north side of Sydney Harbor and is situated on a narrow peninsula with beaches on both the harbor and the Pacific Ocean.

The ferry ride was wonderful and it really allowed me to see Sydney in a unique way. If you are ever in Sydney a ferry ride is an absolute must.

Perth Zoo

The Easy Riders express bus returned me to Perth. I spent another night with Rebecca and her family. The morning of my flight to Sydney I went to the Perth Zoo, where Rebecca works, to see many of the amazing animals that are unique to Australia. I finally got to see a koala.





After a morning at the zoo Rebecca took me to the airport. Rebecca and her family were generous hosts, and like Joanne, they truly made my visit to Australia a million times more fulfilling and enriching.

Exmouth

Darren and the Easy Riders bus headed north without me and I stayed on in Exmouth to do two days of scuba diving. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures like I did from Malaysia. The first day I did two boat dives with Exmouth Dive Center. We went to Labyrinth and Blizzard Ridge. We saw several types of sharks, sea snakes, rays, turtles, and of course, what seemed like millions of fish.

The second day I went diving with Ningaloo Reef Dream. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT go diving with this company if you are in Exmouth, Western Australia. They were unprofessional, irresponsible, and practically downright illegal.

There were 8 snorkelers and 4 divers on the boat. There were two staff. There was a dive master who was also the skipper of the boat. The second staff member was a young woman (22) who was on her second day of dive master training. Because on staff member has to stay with the boat she was assigned the task of leading the four paying divers on a tour of a site that she had never been to before. Two of the four of us were on their first dives after open water certification. Needless to say, this poor girl, who should not have been in the situation that she was in, got us lost and failed to keep track of everybody's air levels and I had to eventually take charge and get everyone back to the boat alive. Outrageous to say the least.

Anyway, that is enough text. Below is what comprises rush hour in Exmouth and the light house at the north point of the peninsula.

Aussie Beers

One of the best things about traveling is experiencing new things in different parts of the world that you do not have access to at home. Examples include art, music, and food. Another one of these things is of course beer. On the plane flight down to Oz I decided that I would try as many different beers as I could and eventually write this post rating the beers that I tried.

Before I start this list there are a few things that readers need to know.

1. I tried 23 different beers.
2. I frequently tried new beers even when I could have drank a beer I had already found that I liked.
3. All Aussie beer is served ice cold.
4. Aussie beer is a lot stronger than American beer. Usually about double the percentage of alcohol .
5. The vast majority of Aussie beers are lagers.
6. The whole micro-brewery phenomenon is not as prevalent in Oz as it is in the US.
7. The beers are listed in the chronological order they were tried with the first at the top.
8. Aussies do not drink Fosters. They think the stuff is $#!%.

• Tooheys Old :|
• Carlton Draught :|
• Tooheys New :(
  
• Victoria Bitter :(
• Red Back w/lemon :(
• James Squire :|
• Coopers Sparkling Ale :)
  
• Coopers Pale Ale :|
• Cascade Premium Light :|
• James Boags Premium Light :|
• Abbotsford Invalid Stout :|
• James Boags Draught :|
• XXXX Gold Lager :(
• Hahn Super Dry Premium Lager :(
• Swan Draught :|
• Little Creatures Pale Ale :)
• Crown Lager :|
• Bootleg Brewery Raging Bull :)
• Little Creatures Bright Ale :|
• Little Creatures Rogers Beer :)
• Emu Bitter :(
• Emu Export :(
• James Squire Porter :|

On the whole I have to say that I was relatively disappointed by the quality of beer in Australia. Most of it is flavorless piss colored lager. It certainly does drink easily - mostly because it is very cold -, and it does get you drunk. As the micro-brewery thing catches on more and more in Australia I think that there will be more good beers to choose from in the future.

The best beer I had down here was definitely Little Creatures Pale Ale. The brewery is a small one in Fremantle, Western Australia, that primarily ships its beers along the west coast of Australia.

Beach Day

The tour north was cleverly designed to put the majority of the driving at the front of the week which allowed us to spend plenty of time on the fabulous beaches around Coral Bay and Exmouth. One of the most interesting beaches we went to is known as Shell Beach because the entire thing is comprised of tiny little round shells. Trillions and trillions of them. The beach is hundreds of meters wide, kilometers long and our guide told us that they are tens of meters deep. The top shells are slightly dirty grey, but the ones underneath are blindingly white.


After Shell Beach we quickly stopped in Exmouth to check into our hostel and then headed out around the tip of the peninsula to Turquoise Bay in the Cape Range National Park. As is evidenced in the picture below, there is perfect white sand and crystal clear water. This corner of Australia is fringed by a large barrier reef called the Ningaloo Reef. While it is far smaller than the much more famous Great Barrier Reef on the eastern side of the continent, the marine life is in perhaps better shape for it. The remote location and low population densities in the area also insure that the beaches are a lot less touristed.

We spent most of the afternoon snorkeling in a current where we would walk up the beach swim out into the current over the reef and get a free ride along. We saw turtles, rays, two types of shark, a swarming feeding school of reef fish, and of course tons of coral.

Life in the Sea

The afternoon of the second day an the morning of the third day of the bus tour north ended up revolving around critters that live in the ocean. Appropriately, we started with one of the oldest organisms on earth: stromatolites. To make a long story short, 3.5 billion years ago, when the earth's atmosphere was mostly comprised of carbon dioxide, stromatolites appeared and over billions of years eventually produced enough oxygen to raise the oxygen percentage to a point that other life forms could flourish. In other words, if it were not for stromatolites, none of use would be here today. Unfortunately, it was a very low tide when we visited them in Shark Bay, so they simply look like black rocks sticking out of the water...

The next stop was a small marine park that has been created outside of Denham, our stop for the second night. The park has been created solely through private funds and private labor of the last two decades. It served to rehabilitate injured marine animals found in the area as well as conduct research into sea turtles, dugongs, and other endangered species.


We were given a tour of the park by a volunteer who showed us stone fish, sea turtles, a variety of fishes, and even a few sharks that they had in a giant pond. The shaggy blob shown above is the seemingly unimpressive stone fish. The venom that the fish's dorsal spines can inject is said to be so painful that some people who have had the misfortune of being subjected to it, have amputated their own limbs in an attempt to find relief. If the shock caused by the massive onslaught of pain does not kill you outright, and you do not cut of your leg, a complete recovery can take more than a year.


After a relatively uneventful night of beers at the local pub in Denham we all got up extra early to head out to Monkey Mia (pronounced Myah) to see the dolphins. Monkey Mia is a place where several decades ago a family of dolphins started showing up and people started feeding them. This was of course a bad idea, but the highly intelligent dolphins caught on to the act and started relying almost solely on people for food. Things have of course gotten much better under professional marine biologist supervision and while the dolphins are still fed, it is only about 20% of their total daily intake.


Every morning the dolphins come into the shallow waters to be fed. Hundreds of tourist, controlled by parks officials, line the beach to take pictures and hopefully get picked to have the opportunity to feed a fish to one of the dolphins. Hey, Luck is my middle name.