Winter Magic Fest - Katoomba

I was at the Winter Magic Fest at Katoomba this Saturday. It was really nice, the whole of the main street was blocked off and there was a hugely colorful parade. Here's a collage of the parade (that I'm so disappointed at because of the 'free' collage maker's watermark on my creation.. oh well.. beggars can't be choosy):

There was a lot to see and there was a HUGE crowd.. but to be honest after having a couple of panic attacks of wanting to crawl back in I was totally done by about 1:30pm and wanted to catch the first train to the city.. But Eminem inspired me to stay and aksed me if I was going to make the most of the opportunity or just squander it... Weeelll.. no one calls me chicken.. I'd seen the map of the hop on and off service before getting onto the train platform and saw an interesting point in the blue mountains called the Honeymoon point and I told Coco(my wide eyed handsome baby) that mommy will be here someday with daddy.. I thought that'd be an interesting place to check out to make sure it was worth visiting..

The whole of Katoomba is beautiful and the trail that seemed giant big on the map is not really that big the walk from the echo point to the scenic world is just that.. really not that long.. but superbly beautiful. I was lucky enough to have gotten a weekend when it finally wasn't raining and the winds blowing my hair off so watching the valley below in the mildly golden sunshine was a bliss...


I took the stairs to the Katoomba cascade and its an amazing spot for photos. I was lucky enough to have mine taken (not posted here but on my FB ;) But here's a photo of the water cascade I took with my clouds white balance retouched a bit (I even got a compliment for my camera, Fujifilm HS30, which I think is crappy but apparently it put someone's super expensive Nikon DSLR to shame.. so to return the favor I gave the lady a crash course in getting different tinges to the photos just by altering the white balance setting... really I was just passing on the kind knowledge I'd received on my Canberra trip from a lady while I was waiting in the queue for the Gold and the Incas Exhibition).


I saw the rare Kookaburra and tried to get some shots of it but couldn't quite focus on him.. I do have a shot of him in just a fuzzy feathery flight which I'd like to share through:


On the track to the Katoomba waterfalls there's a small waterfall place that you can climb down to which I did because it wasn't that muddy Its a nicely serene place to just sit and not be bothered by the bypassers.. unluckily I had a balloon from the winter magic fest tied to my knee (because I had no place else to tie it onto) that was spotted by a nosy tourist guyand was like "hey look there's a balloon down there..." and blah blah and totally spoiled my calmness so replied back politely in a "ferk yew" and climbed back up.. When I was further up on the track saw back to where I"d gone down realized how goddam close I was to the edge of the vertical cliff and if I'd slipped I'd end up near the end of a very vertical fall... which I assume wouldn't be pretty :)


The stairs are fun to go down when goin from the echo point to the scenic world but are a bitch when climbing back up.. It was getting late and I wanted to just go back home.. unfortunately I didn't have Dorothy's pretty red shoes so I just had to climb all the steep stairs back up.. Its sunday night now and my calfs are still a little mad at me for the walk. It was totally worth it though.. It isn't a long walk but its very very scenic. There are a couple of my favoured spots on the walk.. one where you're coming back from the scenic world and there is no guard rail/hand bar and you get this amazing 230degrees view of the sleepy valley and the second just is off the track where you can sit with your feet dangling off the edge of a small cliff and just sit there listening to the badass currawongs who like the sound of their own whinging echoing off the vale.

So worth the visit ..considering that I'd almost decided to cancel it considering the crowds and all!. But to be honest it was way below 20 degree.. must've been 10 or so.. but to the Blue Mountains' credit it didn't rain on the parade.. only rained way late in the evening after about 5pm

Kurnell (mis)Adventure

The weather wasn't really that great but I decided to go to Kurnell anyway. I guess that's what this blog is about... going places even when the weather isn't picture perfect. Guess this time my journey was a bit jinxed... you'll know why shortly...

Most times I don't really plan my random visits and this time it wasn't any different... I saw Cronulla on google maps and decided to go to it because there was a direct train going to it. When I checked it out on wiki (which I normally don't do), I saw Kurnell as a nearer cooler place to go to and had a bit of a historical back ground to it too so it was an instant pick as the destination of the week. Turned out that luckily there was public transport arrangements to Kurnell too... so figured that's where the pin had landed and that was where Coco and I were going.

As I got there it was raining and it was biting cold... definitely way less than 20degrees... but hey there was no way I could complain as soon as I saw the first rocky pier thingy there... There's only one thing to do when you see one of these... climb over the super terrifying rocks all the way to the end.. and I did just that... it was.. well.. Heaven!! and then saw another pier where a black lab was sportying his long jumps onto.. well.. I wasn't going to let a puppy beat me.. so I went there too... I took a few selfies there.. but got this giant stalker pelican in the shot too:


There isn't much to see in terms of scenic beauty at Kurnell in my opinion because its all marred by these giant oil or something rigs that I did take photos of... but.. as luck would have it, my camera's card decided to tell me it was corrupt after we got back from teh Kurnell trip. Didn't matter much because I didn't like the photos much anyway.. Besides it was so cold I was reluctant to have the camera out and take any photos too..

Well.. since there isn't much to see.. in about an hour an half or so after climbing on a 3 or so rocky piers (where I was still stalked by that scary mean Pelican) I was done and wanted to return back to the city.. so I made my way to the bus stop and realized this:


There are only two buses to Kurnell on Sundays.. a morning and a late evening bus! oh joy! it was 12:30pm and it looked like I was stuck there for an eternity!

Luckily I am participating in the GCC and thought heck if i walked back to Cronulla I"d really boost my step count up.. and I did.. and damn I gotta say that walk wasn't pleasant! It was terribly cold and it was mildly raining... The wind was so bad that at one point I literally had to stop walking lest I be blown backwards by the wind... no fcuking kidding! There were some plus sides to the 10km walk back though...  I got beeped at a lot and given the Joey look by a couple of bikies .....annnnd... I saw a plant that looked like fennel that I grazed like a goat and was glad it was indeed fennel! lol

I did get these cool shells from the beach there that are proudly sitting on my desk:


When I walked back to Cronulla I walked to the beach and sat there for a while with Coco... we were both so glad to have made it to civilization and weren't stranded on the highway or splattered on the road like was-a-roo.. The Cronulla beach is very nice it has big beautiful waves and big dreamy mossy rocks on the beach... I cherish the photo of me and Coco there with a milky wave engulfing one of those mossy rocks in the background and both of us smiling dreamily (not posting it here though :p). I had a hot chocolate on the way back to the train station and a super sweet almond pastry (which put me off all almond pastries for..ever!). This will be one (mis)adventure I won't forget.. and I"ll always make sure that there isn't just a way TO to the place but is a way back 'from' the destination too... no one wants to be a giligan!

Barrenjoey Lighthouse

I had decided to go and stay overnight or so over the Queen's Birthday long weekend. The most lucrative place was Port Stephens but I couldn't find any bookings at my fav backpackers so I decided to book a place at somewhere else.. and picked the Batemans Beach instead... The thing is.. I lived in Canberra for about 5 months.. and during those days, I was never inclined to go there even once. Maybe having seen Adelaide's white sandy beaches had set a high bar for my expections of a beach... I cancelled my booking a couple days before because finding a car rental was going to mean me having to do something for the first time.. And I hate doing things I don't know and would include asking a friend or a coworker for their advice..

So I decided to go someplace close to the city that didn't require me to pay overnight accommodation.. double bonus!

Initially I thought I'd go to Collaroy Beach, but saw that the same bus, L90, goes all the way to the Palm beach so it was an instant decision to visit the Barrenjoey Lighthouse aituated at the very tip of the landmasses as you can see fro google maps. Besides I think I have a thing about lighthouses. I have a very special lighthouse in mind as our wedding venue I've never been to yet..

The bus ride to the Palm beach is nice especially if you're sitting on the last seat on those ultra-long buses. It does get a little curvy and isn't the most enjoyable for people with any form of motion sickness... But I survived the ride.. and got off a stop ahead of where I was supposed to get off because I was so taken aback with the spectacular view.


The walk to the Barrenjoey lighthouse is supersteep and there are no stairs. The weather was beautiful in the morning when I Was making my mind up but when I did get to the Palm beach, it looked like it could rain any moment. The laborous walk uphill to the lighthouse is very rewarding as you get amaysome views from up there. There's also a whale watch point where you can sit drinking in all the beauty that surrounds you for hours waiting for one of the getle giants of the ocean to surface for a little bit of a playtime. I sat there for a long time.. but I wasn't lucky enough to see although as soon as I got there, people had exclaimed about seeing a splash somewhere but I must've missed it by this much! This is a photo of the whale watch point taken from atop the lighthouse:


I sat at the whale watch point sketching the lighthouse through a bit of a drizzle but left when the kind ranger announced the last tour of the lighthouse for the day (at 3:00pm). It was a half hour tour where he took us to the top of the lighthouse. I'd never been up the top of any lighthouse yet so that was an amazing experience. The windy side is so windy that my camera was almost ready to fly away with the winds. The place has a very old history. This port used to serve as a smuggler's point to drop off goods so they wouldn't have to pay the taxes had they unloaded the shipment at the Sydney harbor instead. The tour guide also explained that the lighthouse had a red screen on so the ships could distinguish this lighthouse from the Sydney one.


The steep walk down is much faster as I was running down most of the way. The place was an amazing visit and will stay in my heart for years to come..

Kiama - The Big Poo

I've wanted to visit the Australia's big things for quite a while now. I've seen two of those in South Australia. According to the words of a wise man, Australia is full of giant fiberglass statues put up by nowheretowns to attract tourists (or something like that). I miss the man that said those words. I've dedicated this blog in the hope of showing him how much he and all his words mean to me. I pray that I'll somehow reunite with the love of my life through this blog.

Of all the attractive big things, obviously, The Big Poo seemed like the best place to start this journey with. Wiki states that it was erected by the townsfolk of Kiama as a protest against reusing waste water. It says that it was made form foam.

I caught a train from Sydney at 7:29am and arrived at Kiama after a 2:22 long journey. On the way the weather had already begnu to show that it wasn't going to be at its nicest, but I was hoping and praying that there would be blue skies down south as compared to Sydney. After all, they say that Wollongong is a beautiful place and Kiama isn't far from Wolly much.

As I got out of the train, it was pouring mixed with really strong winds. I

So without further ado, here're the photos from Kiama.

This is the Big Blowhole. This unique rock and cave formation makes trapped water spout out in a giant fountain over 30ft high at times.

There is a beautiful lighthouse near the big blowhole.

This is the small Blowhole. I personally found this one more beautiful as its much more in the open and is less crowded and there are rocks where you can just sit and watch it blow forever.. Its very very beautiful and mesmerizing.

But wait.. where's the Big Poo that got me motivated on the journey to Kiama? I aksed a few boys at the cafe near Shell harbor and the oldest and wisest of them said that it was 60km up somewhere and there was no way one could walk to it. But if it really was 60km of there.. It wouldn't really still be Kiama, would it, buddy? Guess he was makin sure his seniority and wiseness wasn't challenged in front of the youngsters. At the visitor's center, the older nice lady that I asked the same question to said that she was here for 7 years and has never seen it so it must've crumpled away.. After all it was made of foam.

But wait.. On the way to Kiama Hieghts just before the small blowhole, I found the giant caricature.