We spent the day driving the south coast of the State of Victoria from Cann River to Inverloch. The drive took us through forest, oceanside, beaches, a national park and agriculture land. Lakes Entrance in the southeast is a pretty tourist town that also has offshore gas production facilities nearby. We continued to Wilson's Promontory National Park, the southernmost point on the Australian mainland. It is a great park for hikers and has some interesting beac...

We continued along the coast south of Sydney today. The coastal drive from Sydney to Nowra is called the Grand Pacific Drive and is spectacular. One could do the whole drive from Sydney and return in a day and we highly recommend it. From Bela on the coast we headed inland to see some of the Snowy Mountains. The drive up the range is interesting. We reached a plateau at about 1,100 meters and traveled along it to Cooma. This is not the top of the Snowy Moun...

We started the day with a visit to Scenic World, a complex near Katoomba featuring a Gondola over the Jamieson Valley, a Rail Car down into the Valley (steepest rail in the world) and a Cable car between the Valley bottom and the base operation on the top of the cliff. One $35 ticket covers travel on all rides for the day. We did them all and hiked a bit in the Valley. We should have done more hiking since the Valley is quite interesting but we wanted to get p...

Today was spent mostly in the Blue Mountains. We entered the Blue Mountain National Park from Richmond. Interesting drive up the range, through valleys and orchards (mountain apples). About half way through the park we entered the area impacted by fires in October. The evidence is certainly visible. We had expected more complete charred landscapes, but in the areas we passed through, the underbrush and trunks were blackened, but vegetation higher in the tree...

Headed south of Armidale to Tamworth and Muswellbrook. Pleasant enough drive. Mainly cattle country. Further south is Scone, the centre of the stud industry in Australia. Further along are huge open-pit coal mines north of Singleton. By 2:00pm we reached the Hunter Valley, one of the oldest wine regions in Australia. We visited the Hunter Valley Gardens. Quite nice. Not up to Butchart Gardens but close. We returned in the evening when they turned on 1.5 ...