I think one of the ways you can get a handle on other cities is by their public transport. When you go somewhere new, you should always have a go!

For a start, if you're anywhere abroad, the chances are that your experience will be loads better than anything you could expect in Britain. In Britain, we can't really do public transport. It's dirty and slow and unreliable and crowded and the places where you get on and off are nowhere near anywhere you might get on anything else.

In Sydney, it's great. Everything links up, it's cheap, frequent and clean. You can use one ticket all week on the ferries, the buses and the trains.

And the trains are great! (Here is a lonely tourist not noticing one has arrived behind him...)



They are double decker!



We can't do this in Britain because the bridges and the tunnels weren't designed for double-decker trains and all the platforms would have to be altered - it's too late and would cost too much money now. If only someone had thought of double-decker trains to start with - we seem to be the only country (apart from Hong Kong) which has double-decker buses...

They also have five seats across rather than four which, by my maths, honed by a summer of currency conversion, means that each carriage can take two and half times as many passengers as a British train.

But if all this wasn't clever enough, they go underground too. You don't have to get off a train to get on a tube, the train becomes a tube by the simple expedient of going into a tunnel. (A very high, double-decker tunnel...)

And Circular Quay probably has one of the best views of any railway station...



But if you're commuting (easily and efficiently), you probably don't notice...

Everywhere you go and everything you do they want to take your photo. They take it, sometimes without your permission, and, by the time you've got back from whatever it was you were doing, they have it there for you ($30).

Sometimes in a souvenir pack ($60).

And sometimes with your photo in the middle of a souvenir collectors' item plate of the sort your Gran used to have with a West Island Terrier or Charles and Di. ($200 - but that was in Hong Kong, so that's really only about £15).

I'm not really sure why they do it with the Jet Boat...



Because you don't get a photo of you actually speeding round the harbour, pulling sharp 360° spins, bouncing over the wakes of the ubiquitous ferries, squinting to see what's happening as the needle-sharp spray makes tiny holes in your corneas and exfoliates your face revealing your skull, squelching uncomfortably from side to side as the water on your seat penentrates both layers of below-the-waist clothing...

What you actually get is a photo of you standing on the jetty in a massive, shapeless red-tent kagoule (waterproof in name only). They don't even put the boat or the Bridge in the background, both of which, as you can see from above, would be possible.

So I didn't buy them.

But I did go on the boat!

(Damn! How will I prove it without the photo...)

The Blue Mountains are part of the Great Dividing Range and only a couple of hours west of Sydney.

They are actually not mountains at all, but a divided plateau of sandstone. As such, the best way through them is over the plateau linking the highest points and not through valleys and gaps like in normal mountain ranges.



You can see the cliff edges and roads across the ridges really clearly.

If you try to get through these mountains by following the valleys and gaps, you just end up with sheer cliff faces in front of you and have to go back. As the orginal colonial explorers found...

Never mind, their memory lives on in some of the towns which are named after them: Wentworth Falls, Lawson, and several others which I can't remember.

Scenic World is a reasonably environmentally friendy attempt to build what is essentially a limited set of theme park rides in a World Heritage Area.

First you go across...



(The nowdays-obligatory-tourist-attraction-glass-floor...)



And the views are just spectacular...



These are the Three Sisters. They are basically sandstone eroded by the wind and rain of thousands and thousands of years but, as with everything here, there is some Aboriginal Story about how they got their name.



Then you go down...



...on the steepest inclined funicular railway in the world. So steep that the seats in the train are angled back to stop you falling out the front...

(This is a very shaky, out-of-focus shot, but that's because it was bloody scary and I as hanging on for dear life.)

And then you go back up again on some bog-standard, Swiss-built cable car, perhaps second-hand from the ski slopes...



What doesn't fill you with confidence about any of these experiences is that there is a fourth ride...



...a roller coaster which the family who owns the park built down the sheer cliff face.

You're waiting now for the story of the tragic accident which meant it was never used. Sorry, that's not coming. It was just that having commissioned, designed and built it, they realised that the annual health and safety maintenance checks would be prohibitively expensive and mothballed it. The track sits there still as some kind of Scooby Doo Ride to hell. Apparently, it was only ever used once, by the owner's daughters. Rather them than me...

...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.

When you arrive in a city late in the day, as we did in Brisbane on Sunday, there's not enough time to get your bearings and explore properly and you might be left with a less than flattering opinion of the place. (viz Hereford...)

So I apologise to Brisbane for my earlier comments comparing it to Birmingham (and to Birmingham for using it as a benchmark for badness) and am thankful for the full couple of proper exploring days before leaving for Sydney.

Brisbane is called the River City and so, in addition to the normal ways of exploring which give you the flavour of anywhere new (by walking, by public transport, eating and drinking, from somewhere high up, etc), this city has to be explored by river.

You can do this fairly easily in Brisbane, because the river is an integrated part of the public transport system. The River Cat...



...darts happily up and down the river from very early to very late. The ticket for the sightseeing bus includes unlimited river travel, so we did some unlimited river travel.

And it turns out that Brisbane is actually very nice...

Lots of desireable, and very expensive, waterfront properties...



(This one, it turns out, is not as old as it looks. It was built in 1980 by a member of the Lloyds Insurance family. He spends most of the year away on business so, as the guide told us, the live-in housekeeper and the gardeners have the whole place to themselves for much of the year.)

Brisbane has an industrial history...



(Brisbane Powerhouse: Now an arts centre à la Tate Modern)



(Now swanky apartments)

And it has old Coloninial buildings a-plenty...



...nestled in between the very new, very high and, apparently, very secure office blocks...

(Thanks to Peter, who has helpfully commented on some of my Brisbane photos to tell me what they are...!)

When we were all in New Zealand, we travelled round in a hire car and, although most of the accommodation was sorted in advance, on a few occasions we just arrived in a town and asked the people at the information centre where was good to stay. It all worked out well and most times, we ended up with high-end, luxury apartments for peanuts as it was winter and they weren't going to get filled otherwise.

While this was all very fine and wonderful, it's the closest I'm likely to come to an adventure holiday. I like to have it all organised in advance. I like to know where I am going when, how, when I am likely to get there, all in the knowledge that there will be walls and a roof (to keep the birds out), a comfortable bed and something to make some coffee with when I get there. I like to have pieces of paper to consult, phone numbers to phone.

Every last day of this holiday has its travel and accommodation documented in this way and I had expected the problem to be with JetStar out of Melbourne on the way to Brisbane. JetStar is FlyBe. It's the budget wing of QANTAS. This is worrying on several counts:

1. Last time I flew on anything similar, EasyJet stranded me in Berlin Airport for nine hours with no chair and a voucher for Bratwurst.

2. JetStar fly from Avalon airport which, continuing the Arthurian theme, is about as difficult to find as The Holy Grail. When you get there, it's like the "Let's Play Airports" Airport. For example, it has one security scanner for all passengers, which looks like someone made it out of a DIY electronics kit you get free with a magazine. "AUSTRALIAN BUDGET AIRPORT MAGAZINE: Week by week, each part gives you all the basic services and facilities you'll need for your OWN international travel gateway. 96 parts with a FREE BINDER which you won't use. First part $1.99. Subsequent parts $9.99. Next week - REAL Duty Free shop with Baileys miniatures, travel socket adaptors and a kangaroo keyring..."

3. QANTAS seem to be having difficulty keeping their full-priced wings attached to their planes, never mind the budget ones....

As it happened, that bit all went off without a hitch and so it was that the first travel problem turned out to be waiting in Harvey Bay for Dave-O and his Bus of Danger and Intolerence back to Brisbane.

Well, he didn't turn up and four of us were left sitting on our suitcases.

The Kingfisher woman explained that they didn't use that firm anymore. There had been some complaints, and what Dave-O had said about them going out of business was true, although not because the boss was terminally ill. Because the boss had been pulled over by the police and the whole firm was in some kind of financial, organisational and, possibly, criminal mess. Our journey up to Hervey Bay had been their last.

How were we supposed to get back to Brisbane, we asked. Admittedly, my suitcase had wheels and made a good emergency seat but, when I gave it a cursory once-over while packing it earlier that morning, no engine.

"No worries," said desk-woman and she sauntered off in search of an email about just this matter which she seemed to remember seeing. She returned clutching Greyhound tickets for the luxury coach leaving Hervey Bay coach station, fifteen minutes drive away, in ten minutes. Pointing out the glaringly obvious problem this posed led to our suitcases being quickly loaded onto a bright Kingfisher-blue tourist shuttle bus and a driver as mad as Dave-O, but safer, hurtling us towards the town centre, tuning his short wave radio into the frequency used by the STOP-GO lollipop turners at the roadworks, while desk-woman got on the phone to Greyhound to ask them to hold the bus.

Did we make it?



Of course! Like I would be relating this in such an easy-going, light-hearted manner if we hadn't...

The coach was only half full, and bliss compared with the theme-park ride which had been the journey north. We pulled into Brisbane right on time...

If you are undertaking a long journey such as this one, north of Brisbane on the Bruce Highway, quite a large number of kilometres along roads with those "This is a High Incident Area" signs up the sides, I suggest strongly that you don't do it driven by "Dave-O" of Suntours.

"Dave-O" is the only driver on the road who is any good at driving. Certainly no-one female or Aboriginal is better than he is and he demonstrates as much by pretending to shoot them with gun-fingers if they overtake him or sometimes even if they are just travelling in the same direction as him.

"Dave-O" is unhappy because he might be out of a job. Apparently, the boss of the firm is terminally ill and needs to spend time with her family. Thus all the drivers are being made redundant. He is hopeful that he might get a driving job somewhere else, but if he doesn't I imagine he could find a niche in the more heavy-handed, under-the-radar branches of the private security/protection racket industry.

Travelling about 3 metres behind the traffic in front at 120kph, he delivered us safely, but slightly shaken, to Hervey (pronounced "Harvey") Bay marina for the catamaran to Fraser Island.

More about Fraser Island tomorrow, and more about "Dave-O" the day after...

Sunset over the western skies as we say Goodbye to Nessie (flying back to NZ...) and to Melbourne (staying where it is...)



The star you can make out is a bit of the Southern Cross. Don't ask me which bit. Look it up.

Next Stop - Brisbane.

It was now about 4pm and I may have given up listening to the iPod by now, but I imagine it had reached something along the lines of "The Wreck of the Sloop John B".

For this was Shipwreck Coast (®) and there are three major things to see here. For now, anyway. This is because the coastline is as it is because of massive erosion of the sandstone by the relentless Southern Ocean on a big exposed bit that doesn't have the luck to be protected by Tasmania.

And so you get these massive stack formations where bit of land have been left as the cliff had tumbled into the sea around them.

The most famous is The Twelve Apostles...



...and you can guess what's coming - there are now only eleven because one of them had the temerity to fall into the sea. But hey, they only changed the name from "The Sow and her Piglets" a few years ago so that they didn't have a tourist attraction named after farm animals and now they've had the sings done, the maps printed, the helicopters painted...

It can only be a matter of time before another huge chunk of cliff disappears, probably taking a few hundred tourists with it, and they can have twelve again...

Next westward is Loch Ard Gorge...



...two inlets, one of which is protected by this (near to collapse, I should guess) lump of red rock. Apparently it looks like a question mark from the air. There are two ways to check this. One is to pay $$$ and make Jeff another small percentage by going on the ludicrously short helicopter flight. And the other is Google Maps...



Handily, the Google Maps high resolution photography extends just shy of the question mark in question, so it's either the helicopter of take Jeff's word for it... It's the bit where the shipwreck was anyway. The most famous one anyway - there were 85 over something like 60 years. (It was definitely that way round 'cos he said "that's more than one a year...") This one had a Titanic style rich boy/poor girl/other way round possibly love story attached to it where one saved the other and wanted to get married but the other one went back to Ireland and they never saw each other again. I'm inclined not to believe some of the stories told by tour guides.

Finally, and the most south and west I'm going in Australia, is London Bridge - another rock formation which looks like this:



However, prior to 1990, it looked like this...



A couple had just walked over onto the right hand bit when the first arch collapsed. Someone telephoned the police to say that "London Bridge had fallen down" and understandably, the police thought they were hoaxers and took ages getting there. In the meantime, the TV network helicopters had picked up the information on short wave radio and there was a big race to get out there. Several arrived to get the first interview, but none of them could rescue them because they wouldn't have been covered for insurance purposes - the married couple had to wait for the official rescue helicopter.

Unfortunately, it transpired that the married couple weren't actually married to each other. They were away on a little illicit getaway - and they had also pulled sickies from work. Not good when you have the helicopters from several TV networks hovering above you...

This was Jeff's story, so it could have had embellishment, although he did say that several weeks earlier, BMW had hired the land and their new range was lined up along London Bridge and shot from the air for a new advertising campaign. Trucks and cars and support vehicles had been driven over, parked, driven back again. Three weeks later, the arch collapsed...

As you head up into the trees, it's a quick stop to see where the koala (not bears) are causing environmental havoc by killing all of them. Apparently there are 537 types of Eucalyptus tree but koalas only eat three of them. (Or something like that, Jeff and Norm argued the point earlier...)

We saw plenty of koalas, but most of them had the good sense to keep just far enough back from the track so that tourists had to use the dodgy zoom feature of their digital cameras. Which is why what you see below might actually be a koala and might actually be a cuddly toy which someone put on a branch to fool Americans...



No, it seriously is a real life living koala and you can see more of my portfolio collection for the BBC HD Natural History Unit on flickr.

They had kookaburras and parrots too, but nobody was much bothered by them...



Back in the bus, we learned that for tourism and branding purposes, the Great Ocean Road is divided into three parts:

• Surf Coast
  
• Green Coast and
  
• Shipwreck Coast

By the time the iPod had reached "Weather with You", the rain had started on cue to remind us that we were high up in the rainforest. It was at this point that Jeff turned into one of those enthusiastic people off "Lost Land of the Jaguar" - sort of a cross between Steve Irwin (in fleece'n'shorts appearance...) and Scrappy Doo (in relentless enthusiasm...)

So, down the track at Mait's Rest...



Lots of ferns and unidentified noises, sunlight peering through high trees and things dripping on you. A babbling stream threaded its way downhill, unseen under the undergrowth. Many of the trees are 700 years old and the rainforest in this gully has only survived because a major forest fire jumped the gully many years ago.

It's like The Eden Project...



...but real.

If ever you're in Melbourne and you have a day spare, you should Go West and tour the Great Ocean Road...



The road is long... 243km and so is the tour. We were picked up at 7.25am and dropped off 14 hours later, so it's very good value. The first stop is the aforementioned Aboriginal Cultural Centre, then straight onto the Surf Coast...



At this point you begin to realise that the iPod linked up to the coach PA system is going to do more than play light background music. "Let's have some surfing songs!!!" enthuses Jeff, our driver. I will leave you guess what came next...

Anyway, onto the memorial for the men who built the road. It's apparently the world's largest war memorial, built in memory of the Australians who died in WWI.



In the photo below, you can see exactly how the road clings to the cliffside on this part of the road. Jeff seemed not to worry about operating the playlist on his iPod at the same time as (not) keeping his eyes on the road in order to play us...



...well, you would think "The Long and Winding Road", but Jeff is not that obvious... Any guesses?

This is just in case you had forgotten...



May need to do a print out for when we hire the car...

(Although as it's the same as the UK, it might not be too much of a problem. Confess to being slightly worried by the "stay left to turn right" rule...)

Northern coast, somewhere near Darwin.



Another four hours flying yet.

Yes.

It's that big.

14p well spent - went over on the Star Ferry from the island to Kowloon.



Actually, 28p, because we pushed the boat out and came back too. The ferries are very well designed, front-to-back symmetrical so there's no turning round necessary. They just plough back and forth across the harbour 16 hours a day, every few minutes.

Very touristy as soon as you get off, and the reminder that you are in the Olympic host country is ever present. Small cutesy characters advertise everything everywhere - so much so that it's likely that Hello Kitty is now the official emblem of Hong Kong...



Just a little further up is Nathan Road...



If you want a fake Rolex or sunglasses or luggage or anything with expensive branding but done on the cheap, this is your place. Much more Chinese, much less western. Fewer tourists, so those few get the full treatment, with traders virtually cutting your way off and chasing you down the street every few yards trying to get you to buy something.

If you wanted a fake Rolex as a present, you're going to be disappointed...

(Postscript: Didn't get Jackie Burton's recommendation of the Peking Restaurant at No. 227 until I was in Australia, so missed it. Will have Chinese takeaway in Oz to make up for it...)

Double-decker buses...



...everywhere.

Actually, I suppose we did. You can't really blame the Chinese.

Up on The Peak, some guy was hawking old black and white photos alongside a modern day colour one so you could play Hong Kong Spot the Difference. Quite developed in the fifties, but no real high-rise buildings... Now every square inch is packed with skyscrapers - office blocks...



...and apartment blocks (what the tour guide called "kissing apartments" - so close to each other, you could kiss the person in the neighbouring block...)



Before any buildings, you could imagine what the harbour looked like, sailing in, between the islands, it would have been steep, rocky hillsides, covered in forest. A real paradise. But now it's so dense...

On the plus side, you can walk between adjacent buildings and through their (thankfully air-conditioned) lobbies via covered, elevated walkways. You can get round most of the central business district like this - no-one seems to walk at street level.

After walking, the main way of getting around seems to be ferries across the harbour. The Star Ferries between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island cost HK$2 - the equivalent of about 14p. And as well as a public transport route, the harbour is a big tourist attraction. An evening cruise on a Chinese-Style Junk (pushing it, that description, really - it was a motorised, split-level boat with bar) means you can see what the city looks like as it lights up...



(*Note to self... consider travel plans more carefully when opting to go somewhere where it's hotter at 9pm than it ever gets during the summer in the UK...)

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Lots more photos on