The Travelling Buncebury's

Covering 25 October to 2 November 2019 the estuary at Mallocoota just about dawn from next to our van about midday, nearer the sea and then after the afternoon rain Very close to the Victoria/New South Wales border we spent a couple of days at a place called Mallacoota whose campsite sits looking east right on the edge of the most beautiful tidal estuary.   It was a huge site and in the office they told us that at Christmas it’s just manic with three thousand people booked in.   So definitely a place to be avoided in late December. Mount Kosciuszko is just left of centre Snow Gum trunk After this we headed back inland again to visit something many people would not associate with Australia - Snow.   The highest peak in the country is in the Snowy Mountains and it’s called Mount Kosciuszko (pronounced here as Kozzie os co).   Most of the walks here were officially closed due to snow levels and work being undertaken before the summer tour

Covering 19 to 24 October 2019 so much for Betty's in York one of the fine old shopping arcades All I knew about Melbourne before we arrived was that it had held the first southern hemisphere Olympics back in 1956.   I thought it was a strangely old-fashioned sort of place but that decided on solely by the extensive knowledge I absorbed in about a three day visit.   Walking to the tram stop through a suburban area, it was like walking through the 1970s in England, based on the way people had their gardens planted up.   To our surprise the area near our campsite in the Melbourne suburbs had a set of photographic themed road names.     We saw a Snapshot Drive and a Portrait Road amongst others but no Motor Drive or Overexposed Crescent.   It seemed very odd.   As we travelled into the centre, the various shopping areas we went through just reinforced that view of ‘old fashioned’.   The excellent tram system runs along the centre of the road or sometimes alo

Covering 16 to 18 October Boat Bay Next to Uluru (the place we always used to know as Ayers Rock) and The Great Barrier Reef, the 150 mile long Great Ocean Road is probably Australia’s most well known natural sight.   Now, we all know that the road is not natural and people do not flock here to stare at the tarmac, they come to see the stunning scenery of the sea and wind sculpted limestone coastline.    The road was constructed in the early 1920s by servicemen returned from the First World War as a way of providing employment and at the same time increasing tourism access to this stunning and previously almost inaccessible coast.   Bay of Islands Bay of Islands panorama Bay of Martyrs We saw the whole lot of it and it really was spectacular, nearly all cliffs and a terrible danger to shipping, particularly in times of sail.   Through places like Boat Bay, Martyrs Bay, The Grotto, The Arch, it seems every bit of it has a name.    There are a few beach