31 July 2010

Last weekend’s destination:  Bulli Beach, a slightly less than two hour train ride south of Sydney.  The weather forecast was looking decent so we packed up the backpacks, grabbed the tent, and headed to the train station.  It may seem like no big deal to go camping in July, but that’s only if you live in the Northern Hemisphere.   Here, we’re drowning in the midst of an unseasonably wet and windy winter (as our weather analyses have proven) so ocean-side tenting in July was our equivalent of snow-camping in December.  Well, maybe not quite that extreme.  Maybe just renting a mountainside cabin set in a dusting of snow.  But it was clearly a bold move in these parts, evidenced by the fact that we ended up being the only tent pitched in the Tourist Park (a.k.a., campground).

Arriving at Bulli Station, we took our best guess as to which direction to head that would lead to the coast, for “someone” had not mapped out the location of the campground relative to the train station.  Loaded down with our 25+ pound packs that have not seen the light of day (literally) since Iceland last year, we turned right out of the station and made our way to the beach.  A quick ask of directions and we were in the tourist park, marveling at how the website photos showed grassy pitches with oceanfront views while in real life, what we saw before us were slightly trampled and dirt-choked pitches in front of a tombstone packed graveyard.

Fortunately, the graveyard was a lot more crowded than the tourist park and the friendly campground receptionist pointed us in the direction of the one and only available tent site with an ocean view.  Not much protection against the forecasted high winds, but given a choice between being kept awake by wind and waves or instead by midnight hauntings, we picked the natural elements over the supernatural ones.  Erring on the side of caution in both directions, we secured the tent with every stake in our bag save one, which was carefully set aside (along with the hammer) lest we have any unwelcome New Moon visitors in the middle of the night.

So up went the tent and out went the call to a local bike shop that delivered.  What they brought us were two pretty blue Townies – beach cruisers from the good old US of A.  These were our transport for touring the Bulli coastline, which boasts the longest cycleway in what has to be at least a 15,000 kilometer radius of car-centric Sydney.  Gina, initially complaining that I had received the subjectively “better” bike by virtue of its seat color, stopped her bellyaching when we reached the first big hill, where we realized that my “better” Townie was outfitted with a lowly 7 gears vs. her superior, spin-me-happily-up-the-summit 21.

Biking in Australia – the little we’ve been able to do – is not only an adventure in remembering which side of the street to pedal along, but it’s also an opportunity to practice a few new moves.  The one we’re working on right now I call the Barn Owl.  The Barn Owl has come about because those of us cyclists from the States are accustomed to looking over our left shoulder for cars, not over the right, as is required here.  After years of cycling, we’ve discovered that our neck muscles are definitively shorter and tighter on the right, making it a painful proposition to rotate that direction.  Solution?  The Barn Owl.  Turn your head naturally to the left and just keep on turning.  I’m not sure either of us has hit the possible 270 degrees (we might be a few vertebrae short of making that happen), but I’d say we’ve each put up a solid 225.

After working up an appetite cycling the Bulli coastline (all 25 km of it), it was time for an early bird dinner at Ruby’s cafe, the tourist park’s resident eatery.  Hands down, the BEST chicken sandwich and hot chips (aka, french fries) in all of New South Wales.  (So good, in fact, we ordered the same thing for lunch the very next day.)  It later proved to be a good thing that we had weighted ourselves down with a few extra pounds of saturated fats.  We needed the extra bulk to keep our tent anchored during the blustery winds that did, indeed, kick up in the middle of the night.  As luck would have it though, the tent stayed put and so did the spirits on their property next door.

01 August 2010

We awoke to an absolutely gorgeous sunrise this morning.  It definitely made the long night of howling winds and teenagers worthwhile.  It seems that there is nothing better for young Bullis to do on a Saturday night than to party until the wee hours at the house next door to the Tourist Park.  Having grown up on an island where the coolest place to be on a Saturday night was in your sister’s boyfriend’s red and white-striped Chevy Impala in the supermarket parking lot, I can relate to their predicament and wish them well on their journey toward adulthood where they too may someday be laying in a tent listening to the waves crash and the tire rubber squealing on the asphalt and they think to their middle-aged selves “damn, I wish those kids would go to bed.”  Yes, someday they’ll be there too and when that day comes, well, I’ll probably be resting in that Happily Ever After park we spotted next door.  It looked pretty crowded, though.  I wonder if that nice lady at the reception desk could get me a plot with a view?