Trip to Australia (Sydney and Melbourne): 17 to 28 Aug 2013

On 16 Aug 2013 evening, Yanni and I departed for Australia, for what would be our longest break since our honeymoon in Oct 2010.  We planned to spend 11 full days in Australia – 5 days in Sydney and 6 days in Melbourne.  Although we had planned for a free-and-easy trip, five days would be spent on local ground tours – more of that later.

Before the blog proper, perhaps we could share some useful learning points for travelling in Australia.  Firstly, consider getting a pre-paid SIM card for your smart phone.  It will allow you to make calls, send sms, and best of all, assess the Internet.  Most telcos offer pretty much the same deal – we got our A$30 SIM card from Vodafone, which gives us A$450 flexible credit and 500 MB of data.  At the end of our 11-days trip, we still had more than A$400 flexible credit and around 50 MB of data left.

Secondly, consider getting unlimited travel passes on local transport if it's available.  We bought our A$44 multi-pass in Sydney, which allowed us to take unlimited rides on trains, trams and buses for up to 1 week.  This saved us a fair amount of walking in the cold weather.  Unfortunately, we didn’t find quite a similar deal in Melbourne, so we made our way around with the free circle tram.

Day 1: Markets and Fireworks

After our red-eye flight on Qantas, we arrived in Sydney around 8am on 17 Aug (Sat).  Sydney has several weekend markets, some of which only open on Saturdays.  To save time, we took a cab to our hotel – BreakFree on George Street.  While the façade of the hotel and its reception area was nothing to shout about, we were on the whole happy with the apartment, as it came with amenities such as cooking stove and a microwave (which we used a few times to heat up our food).

Our first stop in Sydney was the Paddington Market.  It was a short bus-ride from Museum Station, which wasn’t too far from our hotel.  The market was located near a church, and had quite a large number of stalls, selling mostly clothing, accessories, toys, paintings, etc.  We had our first snack in Sydney – Turkish Gozleme, which looked like a pancake and tasted pretty ok.  As we didn’t spend as much time as we expected to at Paddington Market, we made our way to Glebe Market, which is also open only on Saturdays.  I would say the two markets are pretty similar in nature.

 

After Glebe Market, we headed north to the Rocks, where we spent some time at the Rocks Market (open only on Sat and Sun).  It consisted of a few laneways of stalls, as well as a covered area where more stalls were concentrated.  At the Rocks, we had our much anticipated scones at the Tea Cosy, which is a quaint shop with two levels and scattered sitting areas both indoors and outdoors.  We ordered a platter for two, which comes with two drinks and four different flavored scones.  It may not sound like much, but we faced some challenge in finishing the rather big scones, good as they may be.

 



 

 

After our pit stop, we made our way across Sydney Harbour Bridge, which is one of the monumental and most photographed structures in Sydney.  The walk from the Rocks to Milson Point to the north offered us a spectacular view of the harbor and the Sydney Opera House.  We also saw many Sydneysiders jogging along the same walkway, something which we could almost imagine doing if we had more time and weather were a little warmer.

 



 

After we crossed the bridge, we ended up at Milson Point, where we took our first train ride to Central Station.  The high-ceiling trains offered two or three levels, depending on how you looked at it.  From Central Station, we walked over to Paddy’s Market, completing our grand slam of four markets within one day.  By far, Paddy’s Market was the largest, but also the least distinctive among the other three markets.  The majority of stalls sold souvenirs, costumes, handphone covers – a couple even offered massages.  We took a quick peek at the fruits and vegetable section, but didn’t spend much time there as we were not planning to cook.

 

 

In the evening, we took the tram to Harbourside, where fireworks display takes place most Saturday nights at 8pm.  After walking through mall, we decided to cross the Pyrmont Bridge to the dining area of Cockle Bay Wharf.  You can catch a good view of the fireworks from anywhere near the waters, but we stopped at the quayside between Harbourside and Cockle Bay Wharf.  The duration of the fireworks was around 20 minutes, which we felt was rather generous for a weekly display.  This is probably worth a stopover if you happen to be in Syndey on a Saturday night.  We ended off our first packed day at 3 Wise Monkeys, where we ordered nachos (as they were out of pizza dough) and a couple of beers – James Squire Golden Ale and a Holiday Ale.

Day 2: Royal Botanical Gardens

On the second day, we had breakfast at the nearby De la France, before heading to Royal Botanical Gardens.  We took the free daily tour by one of their volunteers, which leaves the Palm Grove Centre at 1030am daily.  Our guide for the day was Philip Armstrong, who was very knowledgeable and passionate about all things green.  He first shared a brief history and significance of the RBG, which started out as a 9-ha farm to provide subsistence farming for the first batch of prisoners and wardens from Britain back in 1788.

Philip then pointed out some interested areas within RBG to us, such as the Begonia area, which housed many different species of Begonia plants, which are distinguished by their non-symmetrical leaves.  He also shared several interesting characteristics of the Eucalyptus tree, which allowed it to survive the harsh summers of Australia (more than 40 degrees).  For example, its smooth white bark reflects sunlight; its open branches of leaves provided ventilation for the tree; its leaves are tapered to collect moisture and channel the water droplets to the roots of the trees; its leaves are also waxy and oily to allow bush fires to pass through quickly without damaging the core of the tree truck.

 
During our walk, Philip also pointed out the Golden Wattle tree to us, which is Australia's floral emblem.  Hence, Australian teams will don green and "gold" uniforms during major events – saying yellow will apparently offend the Aussies.  We also saw the Wollemi Pine in RBG, which is one of the three such trees known to be wild – making it almost as rare as a dinosaur apparently.

 
After an educational morning at the RBG, we walked along the bay to Mrs Macquarie's Point – named after the wife of one of the Governors of Sydney.  The walk also offered some good views of Sydney Harbor Bridge and Sydney Opera House.  From there, we then walked over to the Syndey Opera House for a brief look up-close.

 

After several kilometres of walking in the morning and early afternoon, we needed some refueling.  We had lunch at Reuben Hills at the chic neighbourhood of Surry Hills.  The café offered good choices of breakfast and snacks, and we ordered scrambled eggs with avocado and fried chicken wings (the exact name of the dish is in the menu attached in case you’re curious).  Food was good generally, although we found the wings on the salty side.

 



 

 

After lunch, we stopped at the historical Queen Victoria Building within city center.  While most of the shops were on the pricey end, we came across a homeware store in the basement, which sold interesting yet affordable homewares, some on discount.  As we had the multi-pass, we decided to go out of city center for dinner at King’s Cross.  After dinner at Tropicana Café, we made a few snack stops of yoghurt at Wowcow and ice-cream at Messina (which was good).

 

Day 3: Blue Mountain Tour

 

Day 3 in Sydney was set aside for our Blue Mountain tour with Activity Tours Australia.  Steve picked us up from the hotel around 740am.  Our first stop was the Featherdale Wildife Park, where we saw many Australian native animals, such as Wallaby, Koala Bear, Wombat, Emu, Penguin, Tasmanian Devil, Lamb, etc.  We were excited to get up close to many of these creatures, and even managed to pet one of the Koala bears.  It was also interesting to see that many of the animals are not fenced in, which allowed them to roam the grounds of the wildlife park freely.

 

 

 

 

After the visit to the wildlife park, Steve also demonstrated how to use the boomerang.  For native Australians, the boomerang serves many purposes: the men use it for hunting; the women used it for cutting up meat; the children used it for play.  Different symbols on the boomerang depicting different animals and their prints also signified different blessings.  He also pointed out certain aerodynamic features of a returning boomerang, so next time we see a boomerang, we will be able to tell whether it is a returning boomerang or purely for ornamental purposes.

We had lunch in the town of Leura.  After a quick google (this is where the pre-paid SIM card comes in handy), we settled on Red Door Café, where we had Spanish omelette and sausages.  The meal was pretty decent on the whole.  After lunch, we spent 15-20 minutes walking along the stores before heading back to the bus.  In one of the stores (Teddy Sinclair), we had a chat with the shopkeeper, and were surprised to find that she used to be a Singaporean who had been in Australia for many years, and her mother still stays in Katong area.

 

Our next stop at Echo Point offered us a good view of the Three Sisters Peak.  According to the local legend, young warriors wanted to marry the three sisters.  As their father was not willing, he cast them into stones before he fought the warriors.  He perished, and for centuries, none of the witch-doctors were able to return the sisters into human form.

 

 

Our next stop was at the Scenic World, which offered three types of rides and a free bushwalk.  We had a go at all three rides, and spent more time at the Railway so that we could be at the front-seat of the world’s  supposedly steepest railway (64 degrees at the steepest, depending on how you adjusted your seat).  On the whole, I would have liked more time here, as we had to rush to meet the assembly time after our last returning ride on the Railway.

 

Our final stop for the day was at the Olympic Park, which was used for the Olympic Games held in Sydney in 2000.  One of the structures also had inscriptions of medal-winners on the ground.

 

Steve bid us farewell at the Olympic Park ferry terminal, from which we took the CAT ferry back to Circular Quay.  The ferry back offered us a good view of the harbor, especially as we were approaching the city area.

 

 

We had made bookings for dinner that night at Redoak Boutique Beer Café, which turned out to be one of our most memorable dinners in Australia.  We liked the beer matching seafood platter, which offered four small glasses of beer with four aperitifs.  The beef burger was a pleasant winner that night, with its caramelized onions.

 

Day 4: Hunter Valley Tour

 

The next morning, we had our day trip to Hunter Valley – again with Steve from Activity Tours Australia.  As we passed by the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the second day in a row, Steve again narrated the history of the bridge, and certain features, e.g., 6 million rivets were used, which was three times that of Eiffel tower.  What amazed us was how he narrated this story, and others after that, almost word for word compared to the day before.

We were aiming for four visits to wineries that day, but eventually only had time for three.  The first stop was at the family-owned and operated Ernest Hill.  One of the interesting features of this boutique winery is that some of the wines are named after family members, some of whom are deceased.  We bought two half-bottles of dessert wine (Semillon and Gewurztraminer).  We also learnt that most wineries in Australia had switched to screw caps, due to the short supply of good quality Portugese cork.  Furthermore, researchers in New Zealand also found that the use of screw caps would not diminish the quality of the wines produced.

 

The second winery was the Iron Gate Estate, which is one of Hunter Valley’s newest boutique wineries.  The estate produces wine grown and picked by hand in its own vineyard.  Therefore in years during which weather conditions are not conducive for the grapes, the vineyard may not produce a particular wine at all.  The estate is  owned by a millionaire who is passionate about wine-making, and is one of the few wineries in Australia which still insist on using cork for all its bottles.  We bought a late harvest oaked Semillon from this second stop.

 
The third and final stop for the day was at Savannah Estate.  Besides the regular tastings, the lady in charge also offered us fortified wines such as port and muscat.  Unfortunately, not many people bought wines at this last stop, probably because they had already bought what they wanted at the previous wineries.  The winery also offered “clean-skinned” bottles for export to China and other countries, and could also customize the wines (e.g., labels, volumes) for companies.  Therefore, we felt that this winery was more commercialized than the first two wineries.

 

For dinner, we settled on Australia Hotel at Cumberland Street, as we wanted to try some of the local meats.  We ordered a half-half large pizza: coat of arms (emu and kangaroo meat) and salted crocodile meat.  We had the Pavlova for dessert, which was recommended in many websites.  Unfortunately, the desert was too big and too sweet for our liking.

 
Day 5: Sydney Fish Market

Our last day in Sydney was also the day we were most looking forward to – Sydney Fish Market.  We took a tram to Sydney Fish Market, and arrived quite early (before 10am), so the bus-loads of tourists had not arrived yet.  The fresh seafood on display was too good to resist.  We spent almost A$100 on various types of sashimi, half a dozen oysters (around A$1.50 each), scampi (which was one of our favourites that day), scallops, prawns, baked lobster, soft-shelled crabs, etc.

 

After a filling brunch at Sydney Fish Market, we made a quick stop at Paddy’s Market to pick up some souvenirs.  We also had coffee at Mecca Espresso, before heading to the city center (Strand Arcade, Pitt Street Mall, etc) for some window-shopping. We stopped by World Square briefly, before heading back to hotel where we were to meet Joelle for dinner.  She met us at the hotel lobby around 530pm, and we headed to Harbourside for dinner at Pancakes on the Rock.  We had seen a long queue of people  outside the restaurant the Saturday before, and were lucky to have reached there early before the crowds formed.  We had pancakes and beef ribs for dinner, before heading to San Churros for dessert.

 

 

Day 6: Melbourne's Laneways

 

On the 22 Aug morning, we took a domestic flight from Sydney to our next port of call - Melbourne.  Upon arriving at Melbourne airport, we bought a two-way ticket on SkyBus, which brings us to the Southern Cross Station - a stone's throw from our hotel, Best Western Atlantis Hotel.  After checking in, we took the free Circle Tram to the city centre.  Our first stop was Hopetoun Tea Rooms, where we had scones, mudpie and some tea.

 

 

Following that, we took a walk around Melbourne's famed laneways, such as Block Place, Centre Place and Degraves Street, where cafes and shops abound.  From Federation Square, we also walked to the famous Hosier Lane, where we looked at the various street art or graffiti, whichever way you chose to look at it.

 

   

We had dinner at Beer Deluxe at Federation Square, as they had a A$15 burger and beer deal on Thursday evenings, before walking to the Chinatown (Little Bourke Street) and Greek precinct (Lonsdale Street) for a look around.

 

 

Day 7: Great Ocean Road Tour

 

For our Day 2 in Melbourne, we took the tour to Great Ocean Road with Go West.  We had originally signed up with Escape Discovery Adventures, but were informed that their vehicle had broken down the day before.  They had recommended Go West, and we were generally happy with Travis (our guide for the day) and where he took us.  Our first stop was a beach where we saw surfers in action, even in the cold winter.  Travis told us that RipCurl started in Australia, by two friends who could not find the right gear for their sport.

 

 

After morning tea at a river mouth, we proceeded along our journey along Great Ocean Road, stopping by a few "Kodak Moment" locations, including the Great Ocean Road archway.  As we continued driving, Travis also spotted a baby seal, and we stopped the vehicle to watch it for a while. 

 

 

We also made a stop by a road where wild koala bears and various birds could regularly be found.  According to Travis, it is illegal to feed the birds as they would lose their ability to hunt for food on their own.  But the irony of it all was that we were still able to find the birds there as people continued to feed them.

 

 

After a few more stops along the way, where we didn't stay out very long due to the intermittent rains and heavy gusts of winds, we arrived at Melba Gully, which is one of very few temperate rainforests in Australia.  Being at the southern part of Australia, the air here is said to be as good as that in Tasmania - regarded as having the best air quality in the world.  We saw a small waterfall, and also a "man-eating snail", which actually feeds on dead animals.

 

After a long day's drive, we finally arrived at the highlight of the day - the Twelve Apostles Marine National Park.  It is still debatable how many apostles or standalone rock formations there are within these area, and answers can range to 9 to 17.  Irrespective of that, the sights of the rock formations were still beholding, despite the cold chilling winds.

 

Some of the rock formations also had tales associated with them.  For example, the Lord Ard Gorge tells us a tale of a shipwreck, in which only two out of 54 crew and passengers survived.  Tom saved Eva from the brink of death by scaling the impossible cliffs to get help from the villagers.  Once she recovered, Eva went back to Ireland, never to come back to Australia again.  According to Travis, Tom tried to contact Eva a few times, but never got any response, and died a heartbroken man.

Another interesting story surrounded the formation called London Bridge, named for its similarity in structure to the actual London Bridge (before its collapse).  Prior to the collapse, tourists could go the entire way to the tip of the rock formation.  On the day of the collapse on 5 Jan 1990, a couple was left stranded and a helicopter had to be activated to rescue them.  It turned out that they were married, but not to each other.  They refused to speak to any journalists after they were rescued and quickly went on their separate ways.

After a spectacular day out at the Great Ocean Road, we stopped by Colac for dinner.  This is apparently where all day-trippers had to stop at, but there were few food options.  We had dinner at Noodle Canteen, where we ordered Char Kway Teow and Curry Laksa Noodles - neither turned out the way we quite expected.  But to be fair, they tasted ok even though they were not authentic.  By the time we finished our tour that day, we had completed around 600km on the road.

During the evenings in the hotels, we bought wine, chips, pesto dip, strawberries from the nearby Coles supermarket, which closes late around midnight.  One night, we bought three boxes of strawberries, which cost only A$1.25 per box of 250g.  This was by far the cheapest food we found in Australia by comparison with Singapore.

 

Day 8: Yarra Valley Tour

 

The next morning, we goggled for a breakfast place before our Yarra Valley tour.  We wanted to try out Langley's, but it wasn't open when we arrived.  We settled for a back-up place at the Grain Store, which turned out to be a gem.  We had mocha and chai tea latte, as well as poached egg with portobello mushroom, brioche mozzarella with nashi pear.  It was by far the most satisfying breakfast we had in the entire trip.

 

 





After breakfast, we headed for the 7-Eleven store at Spencer Street and Flinders Street, the pick-up location for our wine tour with Australian Wine Tour Company.  We were surprised that most of the participants were locals, two were from New Zealand and one was from UK.  Our guide for the day was Brett.  Our first stop was at Yerring Farm, followed by Balgownie Estate, where we had a nice, sit-down lunch of pumpkin ravioli and lamb shank.  We left with a bottle of chardonnay from Balgownie Estate.

 

 

After lunch, we made our way to our third stop of the day - Yerring Station, where we got a bottle of Pinor Gris.  Our final stop of the day was Chandon, which makes champagne.  We were given a rare tour of the wine cellar, where the champagne bottles are kept and left to age.

 

 

The tour ended quite early, and we got back to city before 5pm.  We headed to Grossi Florentino, an Italian restaurant for dinner.  The restaurant had three sections, of which the cellar bar served the most affordable range of dishes.  We ordered risotto with suckling pig and spaghetti vongole, which turned out to be rather good.  Service at the restaurant is also impeccable, despite the crowd thronging its door.  We would recommend this restaurant if you stop by Melbourne.

 

Day 9: Queen Victoria Market

The next morning was a Sunday, which we had set aside for shopping at the famous Queen Victoria Market.  The opening hours for the market varies every day, so it can be confusing for tourists.  Do note that the market is not open on Mon and Wed. 

The market is divided into a few sections - Deli Hall selling all types of cheeses, salami, honey, etc, Meat and Seafood section, Fruits and Vegetables section, Souvenirs section.  It can be overwhelming at first, but once you get your bearings right and walk in a systematic manner, it is quite possible to cover the entire market in one morning.

 

 

The first snack we had was the American Doughnut Kitchen.  The donut had some jam filling inside, not quite unlike donuts I tried before.  Next we stopped for latte at the Market Lane coffee, which specialises in only coffee.  Afterwards, we had cheese and spinach borek, which is like a pita bread, followed by a cream cheese wrapped in salmon, and goats cheese wrapped in prosciutto.  Before we left the market, we got a bratwurst sandwich.  Each of these little snacks may not look like much, but they do add up after a while.

 

 

 

After breakfast, we made our way to Harbour Town Factory Outlet.  There are quite a number of outlets spread over two floors, but we didn't manage to find many good stuff to get.  We headed for an early dinner at Stalactites in the Greek precinct.   We ordered a lamb and chicken souvlakia and a beef casserole spaghetti.  The portions may not look much in the pictures, but it was a heavy and meaty dinner that we couldn't quite finish even though we were quite hungry to start with.

 

Day 10: Philip Island Tour

The next morning, we had an early morning breakfast before our Philip Island tour.  We headed for Hardware Societe at Hardware Street, as we had seen many good reviews online.  We ordered coddled eggs (with cured meats and salmon) and baked eggs (with sausage).  The hot chocolate and latte were also delectable.

 

After breakfast, we headed back to our hotel where we were picked up by our guide, Simon from Autopia Tours, for our final day tour of this trip - the much awaited Philip Island.  We were the first customers to be picked up at 910am, and the last guest were picked up at 1030am.  From there, we headed to our first stop at Tooradin, where we were given our baguettes for early lunch.  After lunch, we headed to what turned out to be one of the major highlights of this day tour - Maru Wildlife Park.  We had the chance to buy some animal feed to feed the wallabies and kangaroos, as well as other animals

 

 



We continued our drive into Philip Island, and stopped by Woolamai beach which had strong curents and where surfers sometimes were seen.  We took a 20-min beach stroll along the coast, which turned out to be quite tiring due to the slope of the beach and the sand.

 

 

The next stop was at the Nobbies Center, where we went on a short walk on the boardwalk.  We could see the "Seals Rock" out in the horizon, where thousands of seals reside.  It was too far to see the seals from there, but we chanced upon a tour group looking at it using a special camera in the center itself, and the sight of the rock packed with seals was an interesting one.

 

After Nobbies Center, we made our way to the Penguin Parade.  Along the way, we saw several wild wallabies in the bushes.  For the Parade, we were told that no photography was allowed, as the flash could damage the sight of the penguins permanently, and also make them vulnerable to preying birds.  We were also told that the penguins would take "highways" to their respective nests or homes.  Some of them may wander into the carparks, hence the signs below.

 

Although we could not take any pictures, the Penguin Parade left a deep impression on us.  Seeing the Little Penguins come up the shores in groups after sunset, and stumbled on to their nests.  Given their short legs, we were rather amazed at how quickly they managed to scale the slopes so quickly.  We watched three waves of penguins go by, before we had to leave to meet the stipulated timing.  We were told that the penguins would keep coming until about 2-3 hours later.

 

Day 11: Final Burst of Eating and Shopping

 

Before long, our trip in Melbourne was to come to an end.  Our last full day in Melbourne was spent mainly on eating and shopping.  In the morning, we headed to Queen Victoria Market for our last purchases, followed by breakfast at Cumulus Inc.  We ordered crumpets (with whipped ricotta and honey) and Bircher muesli, which were both good.  After breakfast, we headed to Melbourne Town Hall, which we had called on the morning itself  to join the 11am tour.  But when we got there, we were told that the 11am slot was fully booked for a school trip.  It was too bad that we didn't manage to visit the historical Town Hall, so that will have to wait till next time.

 

 

We made a brief stop at the Melbourne Central mall, before heading to Spencer Shopping Outlet.  After the shopping, we took a short break at Kinfolk, which is a social enterprise run mainly by volunteers.  We had a small snack of lemon tart and nashi pear salad.  The shop went by a honor system, in which customers declared what they ordered and paid accordingly.  This was indeed an interesting little café to visit.

 

 

Our last shopping stop for this trip was at the DFO at Southern Wharf.  The entire mall is huge, but we managed to cover the grounds in a couple of hours.  We then headed for our meal highlight of the day - Rare Steakhouse.  As we were early, we were the first customers to be seated at 530pm.  We ordered a Rare set meal, which came with a starter (Beef sausage), 200g of Porterhouse beef, and a glass of red wine.  We ordered two other sides: Sizzling Garlic Prawns and Beef Tartare.  All in, the meal, especially the starters, were satisfying.

 

 

 

After a brief workout back at the hotel gym and some packing, we headed to the nearby Mail Exchange Hotel for a drink.  It is befitting that we had beer to celebrate the conclusion of a fun-filled trip, just as we had beer on our first night at the 3 Wise Monkeys in Sydney. 

 

Till next time then!