Sydney Opera House & Harbour Bridge January 5, 2009 (posted a couple of days later due to recovery from jetlag & spending time with grandkids). Last night we arrived back to our home on wheels in the Dallas area after a good uneventful flight. What a long day! We left Sydney at 3:15 PM and got here at 6 PM on the same day - in “less than 3 hours”. However, we crossed the International Dateline and “gained” a day so the actual elapsed travel time was about 20 hours and January 4th for us was over 40 hours long. We thought that we would have to pay duty on the $2,500 in items we brought back, but toys and books do not count. This brought our total to under $1,600 which is the duty free limit.
What a change in weather! When we left, it was warm and people were swimming at the beaches. When we arrived here, there were icicles hanging from our parked truck. After warming up the trailer, adding water, & connecting up to electricity, we enjoyed the night back in our own bed.
On New Year’s Eve in Sydney we stayed up until midnight to watch the massive 6 million dollars worth of fireworks. We were staying in a hotel close to the Harbour Bridge and had gone down to the waterfront at 9 PM to watch the “family” fireworks being shot up from multiple barges. What a packed crowd! There were more than a million & a half people watching the fireworks in the Sydney area and the area close to the bridge was overcrowded. Some of the prime viewing areas were only for ticket holders (which were sold out). Even though we did not have the best view, we decided to watch the 12 minute (1 minute for each month of the past year) midnight fireworks from our hotel room. We could see the Opera House and many of the fireworks being shot from barges & the tops of skyscrapers. In addition, we also had the TV on and could see the overall fireworks. If we ever came back, we would not stay right downtown, and get tickets months in advance for one of the better viewing areas -but probably not at the Opera House where tickets started at $220.
On the 2nd, we rode the train (electric) into downtown to the Circular Quay area where the Opera House is and the harbour ferries dock. First, we rode one of the ferries around the harbour to see 7 of the harbour lighthouses. Then we toured the Sydney Opera House – what a beautiful fascinating structure and engineering feat. We would have liked to have heard the symphony or seen an opera, but we only brought camping type clothes (blue jeans) along with us.
In our travels in New Zealand and Australia, we drove almost 6,800 miles. I did all of the driving with Cathy helping me multiple times to remember to keep to the left. It never really became completely comfortable driving on the left side & when I drove today I had no trouble readjusting back to the right side. In Australia, the turn signal lever is on the opposite side of the steering wheel & I kept accidently turning on the windscreen (windshield) wipers on about ½ the turns we made – with Cathy telling me over and over to turn off the wipers.
We were very successful in tracking down the lighthouses that we wanted to see and managed to find and take photos of 34 lighthouses in New Zealand and 42 in Australia to bring our grand total to 516. In New Zealand we saw most of the lighthouses, but Australia is so big that it would have taken weeks and thousands of miles to see them all. Maybe someday we can see them all – but on the other hand, this is probably just a dream.
In summary, we had a fantastic trip “down under” and in our campervan really ‘fell in love’ with New Zealand with its diversity in scenery, beautiful birds, and great people. In Australia, we traveled by car mainly in the populated areas (Brisbane, Sydney, & packed beach towns in between) and did not enjoy it as much. By this time we were starting to get tired from our long trip and also did not enjoy finding different motels/hotels to stay in each night. We did, however, thoroughly enjoy our visit to Canberra (the capital of Australia).
If you have been following our travels “down under” in this blog, we hope that you have enjoyed the trip. You can follow our past and future travels and learn more about us at our website at http://cathyandjan-travelog.com/
Vaucluse Bay Rear Range Lighthouse with “Disney style” top 
Hornby (South Head) Lighthouse at entrance to Jackson Bay & Sydney Harbour 
CLS-4 Carpentaria Lightship. This “lighthouse” was anchored at a point where a lighthouse was needed but not there yet. 
A circular “island” in the Pacific Ocean as seen from our flight home.