August 16 Sunday Jon and I agreed we would leave tomorrow and plan on spending a week in Melbourne once we arrive there. So I got what I could ready, bought some food supplies for the travel time and relaxed the rest of the day.

August 17 Monday Happy Happy Happy Yay for the Blue Mountains! We checked out of Asylum, I left one bag in storage until I get back in September, and we headed west of Sydney into the mountains. The guidebooks we have and advice from other travelers told us the best bet was to go straight to Katoomba and check in at one of the info centers or with locals on the good things to see. The tours that go up there from Sydney really only go to two outlooks (3 Sisters at Echo Point and Wentworth Falls), have a lunch and 'professional' commentary for $120 and up. We checked into the Blue Mountains YHA, got a basic area map and headed for the cliffs. Jon and I found a place to join the Prince Edward Cliff Trail and walked south until we met with the Three Sisters viewing station at Echo Point. We went down to the Sisters themselves on the upper part of the Giant Staircase (which goes all the way to the valley floor for longer hikes) There were many many viewing stations on the way, each of them tremendously spectacular. We continued south to the next town, Leura and the Cascades that bear the towns name. One beautiful sight after another. Slowly we returned to Katoomba and got in the car armed with the names of a few viewpoints further west that 'surpassed' Echo Point. First was Evan's Lookout and the second was Govett's Leap Lookout, which we watched sunset from. Wow and more wow. The only down side to the whole day was how difficult it was to get good pictures. The contrast between the ranges in the distance and the mountains/cliffs in the foreground caused constant issues. Added to that is the issue that gives the mountains their name: a slate colored haze comes from a fine mist of oil exuded by the eucalyptus trees. Whatever the cause the pictures just do not do the scenery any justice.

August 18 Tuesday Happy Happy Happy We checked out of the hostel and returned slightly north to see a few more places near the overlooks we saw yesterday afternoon. First was Hargreaves Outlook, and like the previous ones it takes your breath away. We also went to Mount Blackheath Outlook, which is similar and looks down the Megalong Valley. Then we started our journey out of the Blue Mountains toward Canberra. That meant a stop at Sublime Point, which is just that looking over the Jamison Valley. Then I thought we would stop for 15 minutes and see what Wentworth Falls was all about. Two and a half hours later we returned to the car VERY satisfied with a tremendous waterfall and wonderful hike (the Undercliff Path) under our belts. If I was on one of the tours I would feel really cheated with only a half hour here. Anne Lamott talks about there being basically two types of prayer: Help me-Help me-Help me, and Thank you-Thank you-Thank you. These past two days have been filled with Thank you's for the absolute beauty of nature.

We drove pretty much straight to Canberra after that, passing through long stretches of forest alternating with large sheep farms (stations). We got into Canberra just before sunset and the first thing we really noticed is that for a capital city there is very little traffic. That was proven true during the rest of our stay. After 6pm the streets were nearly deserted of both motor vehicles and pedestrians. I went with Jon to find a supermarket and very few people were out. We cooked our dinners in the hostel kitchen and then went to our room. We are in a ten bed dorm and one if the other people there had met Jon in Perth many months ago. He was in Canberra trying to get a replacement passport. I still wanted to do some exploring so I marked out the Lonely Planet walking tour of the city on a map they gave us at reception and set out. Canberra means meeting place in aboriginal and was selected (and created from scratch) as the capital when the two contenders at the time (Melbourne and Sydney) could not reach any peaceable compromise. More empty streets greeted me, so it seems peace was achieved through a boring location. I did like the way the Australian War Memorial looked at night. The National Carillon on Aspen Island was beautiful with its reflections on Lake Burley Griffin and the water feature outside the High Court building was quite nice, but the rest of the much touted architectural marvels of the city were yawn inducing. The Parliament Building in particular is unimpressive. I walked around the city for almost four hours and saw very little I would want to see again during the day.

It could be that the natural marvels we had seen in the Blue Mountains tainted my views. They certainly were enough to make me happy despite the poor showing of the capital.

August 19 Wednesday Happy Happy Happy, this is not a repeat from the previous two days.....After a bland and rather disappointing night walk through Canberra, I was ready to get out of the Australian Capital Territory as soon as possible. I told Jon I would like to visit the Australian War Memorial during daylight and see the city from one of the outlook mountains, either Black Mountain or Mt. Ainsley. Other than that let's hit the road. I am glad we went back to the War Memorial. It is an impressive building and beautiful in its own way inside. The names of all Australian soldiers to have lost their lives in any conflict are listed and flowers and an eternal flame add to the solemn feeling inside. Mt. Ainsley is slightly taller (not counting the touristy tower on Black Mountain) and it was on our way out of the city so that was our outlook mountain for the morning. And I'm glad we did do that. As boring as the city had seemed it was much more interesting to see from above like that. And it has the placement to give an unobstructed view from the War Memorial straight down the ANZAC parade, across the lake and up to the Parliament Building. There must be a rivalry between the people that maintain the Mt Ainsley lookout and the one on Black Mountain, because atop Mt Ainsley a lone stand of trees remained to obscure Black Mountain from the viewing stations.

We decided to skip a trip over to Tinbinbilla Nature Preserve, which sounded quite interesting, but was 140 km out of our way round trip. We pressed on and made it into Victoria territory in the early afternoon. We stopped at Coopracambra Nat. Park, but we could have skipped it. The Beehive Falls had no water flowing over it, so it was anticlimactic. We had a similar reaction to a stop at the intriguingly named Cabbage Leaf Palms Park, which I still have no idea where the name comes from. There were a few palms in the park, but nothing unusual. It was a pleasant 10 minute walk that we took and it would not surprise me if there were platypus in the area, but nothing special. We continued on the scenic route from Cape Conran to Marlo and did find several great things which explains the opening line for today. First we found a small group of wild kangaroos and got some nice pictures. Then on whim we stopped at a sign for Frenches Narrows. It doesn't show up in the guidebooks or on our maps, but it was beautiful. Sets of long sand dunes that flood with the high tides that just were lit fantastically in the afternoon sunlight. We continued and made our stopping point for the night shortly after sunset: Lakes Entrance. We are in a small hostel called the Riviera Backpackers. The YHA membership is already helping out with discounts at each of the last three places.

August 20 Thursday I woke up to greet the day in Lakes Entrance with high expectations. The last few days have brought all sorts of wonderful sights and surprises. I ate and loaded my bags into the car, turned in my room key and headed out to the Lakes Entrance entrance, while Jon stayed sleeping. He would meet me a while later. This is really another delta area and the years of material coming to the sea has created a 90 km earth and sand bar. A multitude of lakes exist behind this bar and the only outlet back to the ocean is at Lakes Entrance. There is a pedestrian bridge out to the sand bar and this area is supposedly the highlight of Lakes Entrance. From the footbridge there is about a 5 km walking circuit that I intended to take. The beach was nice, but as I have come to learn walking in sand is slow and the beach is endlessly long and straight so the view really does not change. The return on the circuit follows the inland side of the sand bar and has views of the Lakes Entrance marina, which did nothing to inspire me. It was also in sand. So it was long and slow and would not have been worth the time if it had not been for a group of seals at the boat channel to the ocean. They were trying to warm themselves in the morning sun with flippers and tails raised out of the water. Another thing that had irked me was that we stopped in Lakes Entrance because it was about the only place between Canberra and Wilson's Promonade that had a hostel according to our guidebooks (and we have more than one). At the hostel we stayed in there were flyers for two other hostels much closer to Wilson's Prom (one 10 kms outside the park entrance) and I really wish we had known that in hindsight.

Wilson's Promontory was our goal for the day with the plan to make it to Melbourne in the evening, but because of the distance from Lakes Entrance to the Prom everything took longer than we had planned. We made only one stop in Toora where there is a wind turbine farm on a hill with some good vantage points. No matter, it was 2 pm when we reached the Wilson's Promonade park entrance. We paid our park fee for day use and would see what we could before it got too dark. I was starting to see the time running out as we drove as far south as we possibly could. We skipped all the turn outs and turn offs on the way down so we could get as far into the park and then slowly make our way back out. That seemed logical at the start, but I kept watching the heavy overcast sky and gauging the suns position and thinking we are going to miss everything. It will be too dark when we get to the end and then all the stops on the way back will be too dark as well. BUT I should not have worried. This is now one of my most favorite natural places. We got to the end where there is a parking lot in the Telegraph Saddle, from which you can do a multitude of long hikes throughout the park. We focused on climbing Mt Oberon as it was one of the shortest options and offered the commanding views from the summit (if the light held). Shortly after starting the two mile uphill climb it began raining. Not hard, but enough to get you wet. We soldiered on. I'm a much faster walker than Jon, so I left him behind and made a beeline for the top. I passed four other hikers coming back down. It was quite cool, I was getting wet, and it was darker than I liked already in the forest. But I got to the top and hallelujah!: the rain stopped, there was still plenty of daylight, and the view was incredible. I took a lot of pictures and was jumping up and down with happiness when Jon made it to the top. We spent a while at the peak then returned down the mountain to make the most of our remaining daylight. That included a stop at Norman Beach which we had seen from the top of Mt Oberon. In the parking lot as we prepared to leave the beach a wombat waddled out of the shrubbery. It seemed completely oblivious to us as we took pictures and it let us get within a few feet of it. We stopped at a few more viewpoints, took pictures of wild emus and kangaroos along the roadside, and found that the path to the Whiskey Bay lookout (which the guidebooks say is where photographers camp out for sunsets) was blocked off. I was satisfied with what we had seen even if that last bit was a disappointment. We decided to make one more stop at a place called Cooper Lake before leaving the park. We followed a dirt road to a parking area, but no lake. We walked along a trail towards the beach and encountered many wombats, kangaroos, and wallabies. We were able to walk to within four feet of many of them and they largely ignored us. It was an incredible way to finish off our day in the park. By the time we left the park it was very late and we drove to Foster where we now knew there was a hostel, instead of pushing on to Melbourne. The hostel turned out to be a house with three bedrooms and we were the only people there.