Balmain

Balmain is a suburb on the west side of the Sydney CBD.  We explored the area when we were in Sydney for Christmas, but the suburb has been on our list of places to visit for a long time.  It is snuggled in a nice, quiet harbour.  To get there we took a ferry from Circular Quay but, perhaps because of the shape of the harbour, JB was convinced that we were on the north shore, not just west of the CBD.  There are so many inlets and small bays in the Sydney Harbour that it is very easy for people who aren't used to it to get VERY turned around!  Maybe we are just spoiled by having the mountains to the west for so many years that we just forgot how to gauge the direction!

Houses overlooking the harbour

Australia Post Office

High Street

One of many posh parts

We had a really lovely walk through the high street in Balmain, which was full of smart shops, cafes and tempting bakeries.  Just off the high street there are lots of cottages dating back to the founding of Balmain, which have been kept up in a very "English" fashion, giving the area a very genteel feel.  This area used to have a rough reputation, but it is now a very well looked after neighbourhood and is really quite charming. 

This area really showed us how little we know about Sydney and the surrounding suburbs.  We will definitely make more of an effort to explore the city.  Our next trip there is only 4 weeks away!

Noosa

We have been quite busy with work for the last few weeks, so this past weekend we took a couple of extra days and headed north to Noosa.  This was our third trip to Noosa, but our first time staying right on the beach in Noosa Heads.  It was absolutely fantastic!  We have been to the beach many times but we have never stayed in a hotel that is right on the beach.  All that separated us from the water was a swimming pool (gloriously heated), a boardwalk and the sand.  It was wonderfully relaxing to sit on our deck and stare out at the ocean.  Autumn started on 1 March, but it still felt pretty summery to us.

The weather in Queensland (and much of Australia) has been really rough for the last six weeks.  We had beautiful weather until Australia Day (26 January) and then all hell broke loose!  We had at least three days with more than 80mm of rain, there were floods in northern Queensland, storms on the Sunshine and Gold coasts, and now there is the threat of a Cyclone making landfall on the northeast coast.  We really need to make hay when the sun shines, because you really don’t know how long that sun will last!  (There is a 50% chance, of course, that the sun will shine nonstop, dry everything out and then start the whole country on fire, too.)

The beaches in Noosa have really been decimated by the bad weather.  The point where the sea has pulled away the sand is almost a metre in some places and they are piping sand more than a kilometre from the mouth of the Noosa River to the Noosa Beach.  There is a brown muck that is being sprayed out over the beach and it might not look nice now, but it should save the area from really getting torn apart.

Sunny day on the beach (beautiful!)

Cloudy day on the beach (still pretty good!)

Rainbow Lorikeets relaxing in a pub

Noosa is a beautiful spot and we were really lucky to be able to go at this time of year.  It is extremely popular at Christmas and is the kind of place where people will get up early to drive close to the beach and find a parking spot before 6 am.  Even at this time of year the parking lots were full by 8am on weekends and even on a weekday the main lots looked pretty full.   We have yet to experience Christmas on the beach but if it involves fighting crowds and battling for parking, we will stick with Christmas in the city and off-season at the beach.  The water was about 25C, the air was about 30C and that was pretty easy to take.