Australia pt 1: Sydney and the Blue Mountains

April 15, 2025

The next country we were on the way to was Australia!

We were starting in Sydney, and more specifically, Bondi Beach. After three weeks of roadtripping around an increasingly chilly New Zealand, a few days on the beach was just what we wanted. We arrived in the evening and checked straight into our little loft room for the night. In the morning we went to explore the area and check out the sea. There were some really big waves that week, and they'd actually caused some damage further along the shore. Swimming was off the menu, but we did enjoy watching and lying on the beach. We also did some beach shopping to get me a hat and a new swimsuit, and ate lots of smoothies and acai bowls.

The hostel we were staying in held some activities while we were there, so I did an early morning yoga class (which even by 8:30am was pretty hot) and we joined a group for a trivia night at the local brewery which turned into drinks (boys) and ice-cream (girls).

On our final day, we did part of the walk along the coastline. It was really pretty, but some sections were closed because of the damage. We walked through several other smaller beaches on this route and lots of parks.

After the beach, we were off into the city of Sydney. We hopped on the bus and arrived at our new hotel. It was above a casino/bar, but was surprisingly nice and quiet upstairs with a little kitchen area and everything where we could make breakfast and some dinners. The roof in the hallway did start leaking after it rained one night though.

On our first day, we went out to see the Opera House and the harbour, then walked across the harbour bridge and visited Wendy Whitely's secret garden, a small shady garden with lots of trails and benches. We also saw the rocks, an area that was filled with market stalls for the weekend.

On the way back we walked through a theme park (!) and got some different viewpoints of the harbour. We grabbed a snack from the markets and sat on the grass to eat. In the evening, the city has fireworks every Saturday night at the harbour, so we went to go and watch them.

The next day, we went for a free yoga class under the bridge. After that, we went to explore the botanic gardens properly which were huge, and I think we ended up in there almost every day. It was also a great place to see wild birds, we saw parrots, cockatoos, and kookaburras. We found some great food on our travels; we liked the food courts in shopping centres, although they all seemed to close at 5pm which was confusing.

The next day we caught the ferry to the zoo! It was a very nice zoo and it took us a lot longer to get around than we thought. Highlights included the dingos and the nocturnal exhibit which had echidnas, bilbies and platypus.

The following day we spent exploring the free museums in Sydney. We went to the Australian museum which had a really good exhibit about the history of indigenous peoples, some dinosaurs and a birds of Australia exhibit. In the afternoon we headed over to the NSW Art Gallery and took in some art.

Our final full day in Sydney, we took the bus out to Collins Lane which has a very cute row of shops and a little beach. We didn't spend too long here, so when we got back to the city we had time to go to the aquarium. They had a dugong, penguins and some very big sharks and rays.

That was it for the city, and in the morning we packed up and headed to the rental car shop. We drove out to the Blue Mountains National Park and met the people we would be housesitting for for a few days. They had a cat and a dog we needed to feed and walk while they were away, and in exchange, we got to stay there for free!

We did some laundry and made the most of having a house to relax in for the first day. Then we went on a day trip to Katoomba to the Three Sisters lookout point. It was a rock formation with three points and just along the trail there was a single rock called the "orphan". The trail was very cool and overlooked the mountains. We crossed a small waterfall and watched the skyrail go over the trees.

We ate our lunch and then went to the next area. We visited Wentworth Falls, where the main big trail seemed to be closed, but we could still go out and see the viewpoints and watch the big waterfall.

The next day I was feeling pretty ill, so we had a day at home and caught up on all our shows. We were glad this happened when we had a house and not just a small hostel room.

Our last full day in the mountains we drove up to do the Grand Canyon cliff walk. This was really fun, and we crossed some small streams, went behind a waterfall and got great views of the grand canyon.