Outside the Metropolis

As well as spending much of our time in Sydney and Melbourne, we also rented cars and explored some of the areas beyond the cities. This proved an interesting experience in lots of ways.

From Melbourne we took a car and drove one of the world’s great car journeys. The Great Ocean Road south of Melbourne passes through some great scenery. It has everything from classy neighbourhoods to Blackpool funfairs and fish and chips; but the highlight are the wonderful Twelve Apostles. At the western end of the hundred mile drive are these wonderful stacks rising out of the blue sea, and they are quite a sight.

Whilst the Great Ocean Road was a relatively short trip, we hired a car for a week when in Sydney and drove north. It took two days of driving to get the 500 miles to Byron Bay. It is very noticeable that there really are vast amounts of nothing in Australia, and where there are towns, they can be pretty small and consist of little more than a petrol station ans shop.

We stopped at Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour along the way. Although Port Macquarie has a lovely lighthouse overlooking the beaches in both directions, both places were little more than stopping points for the beautiful final destination of Byron Bay. This was a real holiday town, with lovely beaches, but small enough to be a real gem. There were only two main streets of bars, restaurants and shops, but everything was quite smart – even the YHA we stayed in.

We enjoyed time on the hidden beaches surrounding Byron Bay before heading up to the Gold Coast. We stayed overnight in the smart neighbourhood of Burleigh Heads, but did manage to see the main area of Surfers’ Paradise. This was a large town which is somehow a cross between Newquay, Blackpool and Singapore. It is an example of how varied towns can be in Australia.

So we have spent a lot of time in Australia now, and not just on this trip. We do like Sydney and Melbourne, but find the vast distances of the rest of Australia daunting. After being used to jumping on a plane and going to all sorts of places easily, it is obvious now how massive Australia really is.