Although you can see the two most famous landmarks of Sydney really clearly from many different angles around the harbour, it's increasingly difficult to see either of them the further you move south into the CBD (Cental Business District, as City Centres are known over here...)

The Bridge gradually disappears between high-rise (and in some cases, quite low-rise) buildings...



...and the Sydney Tower, which boasts Sydney's Best Views, only manages to squeeze the Opera House in between a couple of skyscrapers...



But Mrs Macquarie had the right idea...

Mrs Macquarie was the wife of Major-General Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821. He has all sorts of things named after him, Lake Macquarie, Port Macquarie... even Mrs Macquarie. But she did well in Sydney with a point, a road and a chair.

The point is well visited because it has the standard postcard view of the disappearing icons...



Once you have this photo (or one like it with better, bluer skies), then your work is done and you can go home.



So it's a good job it's the last day really...

(There is a "me in front of..." shot - in fact, there are several... and a story...)

Manly is quite a posh suburb of North Sydney and, along with Bondi, it's a surf centre. It has a harbour coast and an open Pacific coast - a narrow neck of land.



You can get there on one of the many ferries which dart back and forth across the harbour all day and night as a vital link in the city's public transport system. In other places, an hour's cruise on a picturesque harbour would be a big deal, take organising and cost a packet. In Sydney, it's just like hopping on the bus.

And it was great to have a sit down after climbing the bridge...!

You arrive at Manly Wharf (the harbour side)...



...and as manly is also adjectival, there's a real play-on-words theme to the whole place. Manly Sandwiches, Manly Barbers, Manly Dresses (made the last one up...)

The Pacific beach is a five minute walk through the town...



It was getting late, so no surfers, just tourists and seagulls...



...and a great night time view of the Sydney skyline on the way back... My very poor photos didn't really do it justice - so much for the special Nightime feature on my camera - I won't post one here, look on Flickr if you're interested. Meanwhile, a woman next door with a very cheap-looking camera was happily taking the most amazingly sharp, beautifully coloured, reflecting-lights-in-the-water shots. I was tempted to nick it and push her in...

When you book accommodation from the other side of the world, you're never quite sure if it's going to be in a convenient location...

In Sydney, Mantra 2 Bond Street is perfect.

5 minutes walk from about everywhere...



So get ready for Sydney! Here I come!

...while we upgrade your highway.

The final push to Sydney!

The road gets better on the final stretch - just a couple of hours' drive and much more scenic. Views of the huge lakes and the beautiful hills you go through north of the city.

In many cases, you literally do go through them...




... there are long stretches of road where a cutting has been blasted through solid rock, leaving another wall of solid rock as the central reservation. A further cutting takes northbound traffic. It all makes for quite scary driving and is part of the upgrade work they are doing on the highway generally. Bypasses and dualling, new bridges and junctions. If I come back in five years it might be an easier drive...

But look! We made it...



...and did the iconic drive across the Harbour Bridge. Had no time to appreciate it really due to stressing about what lane we should be in, avoiding going the through the tunnel instead by accident, fumbling for the tolls and preparing for which exit to take at the other side.

(Don't worry - I was a passenger when I took the photo!)



So well done, little car! And fortunately they did take the car off our hands at Sydney, despite all the paperwork implying that we would have to take it back to Brisbane.

Past the banana.

Another 400km done today, which doesn't seem a lot, but Route 1, the Pacific Highway, bears little resemblence to what we would call a highway in the UK.

Actually, we don't call them highways at home anyway, so that's not a good comparison. Think a badly maintained country A road and you're getting there.

Never mind, we had been promised fabulous views along the entire route. Again, not so. Occasionally you get a glimpse of coast, but for the most part, it's dense forest with the road cutting a path between the trees.

Starting at Coffs Harbour bright and early, a slight detour led us to the town's most famous tourist attraction. Not, as you might think, in a prominent position on the sea front but tucked away a couple of minutes drive along the highway back the way we had come. Had totally missed it the night before because of (a) concentrating on route, (b) not expecting it to be there and (c) it being dark.

However, Tina and Chris had said that I should definitely make sure I saw it...



Good, isn't it?

Apparently the coast is littered with these huge plastic monstrosities and, indeed, we have seen a prawn and an oyster and maybe a couple of others which I've forgotten about. Anyway this is the most famous. Not sure why. I wouldn't make the effort to ever see it again...

Onwards to Port Macquarie for a brief (very brief as it turned out) stop...

Again, a nice beach...



...and an information board telling you how most of the town used to be a prison of some sorts. You're probably best reading about that yourselves...

And back in the car for another few hours down to Maitland - stop chosen because it's a good base to have a look round the vineyards of the Hunter Valley.

Despite not being the tourist mecca of Coffs Harbour or Port Macquarie, it was actually surprisingly pretty. River side walks...



...and Ye Historic Buildings...



...and a really great fish and chip shop - Froggies - just over the bridge.

I spent a while typing this entry the other day and then the computer crashed and I lost it all.

Never mind - here's what I think I was going to say...

The drive to Sydney down the Pacific Highway is a long one, taking us three days with a couple of handy stopovers on the way. The first is at Coffs Harbour and the second at Maitland, in Hunter Valley Wine Country...

On the first stretch, we stopped in at Byron Bay, which is slightly hippy and surfy...



...but has about 1001 places where you could have lunch (but only one where we did) and, it goes without saying, beautiful coastline...



Nearby is the fantastic Byron Bay Lighthouse...



...and - didn't know this until we got there -





Of course, if that particular point is only several hundred metres down a path, then you have to go there just to say you have...

And on the way, we saw Australia's Most Easterly Monitor Lizard...



...which I think they should have added to the signpost.

Not long now, then.

(Fortunately, it's over three days...)

Fraser Island is just beautiful.

It's made entirely of sand; in fact, it's the largest sand island in the world. This means that nothing should grow on it, as there's no soil, and no water should flow on it and there should be no lakes, because sand is porous.

But as Alan, our guide, pointed out. "Mother Nature finds a way..." (I think this was also Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park...) First, let's do plants. The island is virtually covered with forest...



Here's the primary school geography: this happens over thousands of years because very hardy salt-water loving plants colonise the dunes closest to the sea. They die and leave decomposing plant matter, which we all know becomes a thin layer of soil. A second wave of plants uses this to grown and so on... Eventually, the whole island is covered in many different types of forest...



Eventually, sand blown in from the eastern shore creates enormous, mile-long dunes which reclaim the forest and bury the trees...



Then we have lakes... There are two types on the island. One is formed because all the rain water which has ever fallen on the island soaks through the surface and forms a gigantic aquifer beneath the surface. Where the sand levels off to the top of the aquifer, water emerges. These are called window lakes, because they are a window on the water stored in the sand - 40 times more than all the water in Sydney Harbour.

The second type of lake is called a perched dune lake. There are only about 80 of these in the world and Fraser Island has 42 of them. The most touristy is Lake Mackenzie...



The sand is so white and the water so clear. (The sky is so blue as well, but I didn't want to start writing poetry by accident...) Perched dune lakes are high up and are formed when a sand bowl is lined with plant debris and effectively becomes waterproof. (Mr Miller, my secondary school Geography teacher would be so proud...)

All the roads on Fraser Island, or to give it its Aboriginal name, K'Gari, are sand roads and are hard going even in a 4WD. But the eastern shore, Seventy Five Mile Beach, is for all purposes, a motorway. Vehicles bomb up and down it, and legally, the rules of the road still apply - you have to drive on the left. Overtaking allowed...



The beach is also the final resting place of the SS Maheno - an Edwardian cruise liner built in Dumbarton. No-one died when she ran ashore in the thirties, but she was even more severely damaged when the Aussie Air Force used her for bombing practice...



For the moment, the wreck is stable and you can explore it close up, at least with eyes and cameras. The likelihood is that it will disintegrate and become dangerous within a few years and may have to be taken away or dismantled and buried completely. Enjoy it while you can...

OK, finally, streams - or creeks. Again, these form because of the pressure of the water held inside the island forces water out at sea level. They look strange because they have sandy river beds, but are beautifully clear. And the water is perfectly safe to drink, having been through the biggest and most effective sand filter in the world over a period of thousands of years.



There's so much to say about the island - no kangaroos, wallabies or koalas; but dingoes and monitor lizards and wolf spiders (2cm long and can kill you) in droves - all of which we saw. In the case of the spiders, on a night ranger-guided tour where you spot the spiders by shining a high-powered torch into the bush and look for the eyes shining back.

Creepy...