Central Sydney as we tried to drive out of it this morning hehe. It took about 20 minutes to travel 200 metres, but we made it out of there in the end.

And this is what we were looking at 90 minutes later - the Three Sisters, a rock formation in the incredible Blue Mountains.

The Blue Mountains is a mountainous region bordering on Sydney's metropolitan area. Have you ever seen so many trees squished together in one place?! The huge eucalyptus gum trees that form that dense canopy exude a fine mist of oil which gives the range a blue tinge when viewed from a distance (you can kind of see it in the distance above, though I had to clean most of it up in Photoshop to give this shot a little more clarity - gloomy days like this are hard to work with). The Blue Mountains consist mainly of a sandstone plateau dissected by gorges up to 760 metres deep that have eroded into the stone over thousands of years. This particular valley here is the Jamison Valley. The landscape is extraordinary to say the least, and is one of Australia's most popular bushwalking destinations.

With the weather closing in fast we weren't able to explore much further than what we could access by car, including some of the gorgeous little mountain towns.

This is main drag of Leura, not far from where we're staying in Katoomba which is the largest town in the area.

After getting the shot on the left that was pretty much it for the day. The heavens opened up and dumped a huge load of the wet stuff on us, so much so the drains were struggling to swallow it all. Here's hoping for better tomorrow!

Day two of two in the Blue Mountains, and this is how it started - cold, wet, and miserable.

By early afternoon most of that crap had cleared away however, and it went from cold and miserable to hot and steamy. So we jumped our little shitbox hire car with its lawnmower engine and explored this stunning area some more.

This is a really common sight throughout the Blue Mountains towns - incredible steep up-and-down hills. Quite a sight (unless you're a cyclist).

There are a myriad of lookouts and bushwalks and waterfalls and general awesomeness throughout the Blue Mountains, and it's all best explored with a map and your own set of wheels.

This is one such lookout, and this one happened to have a bloody big rock for me to climb on and shoot from. For many of my landscape photos I shoot three separate images and create what's known as a high dynamic range (HDR) image from them (more info on that here if anyone cares). Although not always required, the resulting image is usually better if a tripod is used to shoot those three images. So I set up my flimsy tripod that I bought in Singapore (good for travelling with), got the camera settings sorted, and then the sun disappeared behind some cloud. While waiting around for it to reappear I suddenly noticed out the corner of my eye that my tripod is starting to fall and is heading straight over the rock and for the massive cliff below hahaha! Kristina had been elsewhere while I was setting up but had just happened to return, just happened to be standing beside this rock looking over the cliff, and just happened to also notice the tripod falling. I lunged for it and managed to grab a leg of the tripod, but being flimsy and crappy the section of leg just snapped clean off in my hand hehe. Kristina meanwhile threw her arms in the air like a typical girl about to catch a ball (and drop it) and managed to grab the camera as it toppled of the rock! After a bit of fumbling she saved me from having to make an insurance claim for a $500 camera, $500 lens, and $100 polarising lens filter lost some 100 metres down a cliff hehe. Actually there was a bush on the cliff edge that I think would have done the same, but either way ;)

So that was all terribly exciting and the camera is perfectly fine, but my $29.95 tripod from Singapore is a write-off. However, I still needed it so I fudged it back together just enough to get a few more shots out of it (away from the rock edge and the wind).

This is still the Jamison Valley which we were looking over yesterday from a different lookout. Abso-fucking-lutely incredible! Some inconsiderate asswipe started jabbering on his cell phone right outside our hostel room door early this morning and woke us up. During his important chat he mentioned the Blue Mountains were second in size only to the Grand Canyon. I can't find anything anywhere to confirm that so it may be true or may not be, but either way it's a massive area down there.

On the subject of the Grand Canyon, two elderly gents were standing next to me as I shot this panorama (looking totally professional with my busted tripod ) and one mentioned to the other than he felt this is actually a far more impressive sight than the Grand Canyon which he had also seen. While this is all very green and lush, the Grand Canyon is rather desolet. Hopefully I'll get a chance to be the judge of that myself one day.

Just up there on the adjacent cliffs is civilisation - the little townships of the Blue Mountains. Seriously, imagine having this as your backyard! Anyway, after we'd picked our jaws up off the floor we drove back into the main town of Katoomba to raid the camera shop hehe, and I bought myself a much bigger, much sturdier, much better tripod! It cost US$100 more than the last one and doesn't fit as nicely into my backpack but it hopefully won't end up over cliff either.

After all that action we headed back to Sydney for the night to get a head start for our drive up to Newcastle tomorrow via Sydney's gorgeous northern beaches, and the Hunter Valley - the oldest wine region in Australia. We called into The Lord Dudley pub near my Aunt's house in Sydney's eastern suburbs. This English pub has been around for over thirty years, and honestly made me feel as though I was back in London (and even had me missing it a little). A quick walk to a nearby lookout over the CBD and checking out some of the oversized spiders around here, and that was that for the day.

Not exactly beach weather but we started our day checking out Sydney's Northern Beaches, starting with the most oddly-named: Dee Why. Check out all the surfers in the water (most of them wearing wetsuits), on a Wednesday morning hehe.

A few kilometres down the road is Mona Vale, a much larger and nicer beach with much fewer people (though still plenty of surfers).

Another few down is Newport Beach, also large and impressive but apparently quite a dangerous one for swimming. Good thing there are lifeguards on hand, sometimes.

And finally, Palm Beach, used for exterior filming of Aussie soap Home and Away. By the time we got here most of the cloud had burned off so we actually stuck around to enjoy this one.

From a sunny beaches to the middle of nowhere. This is the blink-and-you'll-miss-it village of Wollombi in the Hunter Valley.

The Hunter Valley is most famous for being one of Australia's best known wine regions. We had initially planned to spend half of today checking it out before moving on to the coastal city of Newcastle for the night, but we arrived a little late to really do it any justice and came up with a new plan out the back of the Wollombi pub hehe. We're now staying put here tonight, checking it out tomorrow, and then heading back to the coast (which we'll be more or less following for the remainder of the trip).

We spent much of today getting off the beaten track in the guts of the Hunter Valley, and all that stuff below is what this place is all about - grapes! As I mentioned yesterday, this area is Aussie's best known wine region, and I thought we best check it out and compare it to New Zealand's Marlborough region hehe.

This is our little shitbox by the way - a Suzuki Swift. I'm not sure what it's got under the bonnet but it has barely enough power to pass for a lawn mower. Regardless, it's bloody good on the gas mileage!

Yesterday we bought some strawberries to snack on in the car. I took a big bite out of one and tried to throw the rest over the car, but only succeeded in throwing it on the roof. Still hasn't come off.

After a good drive around we stopped here at the Tempus Two winery in Pokolbin, one of the more popular wineries with the tourists for some reason.

That wine tasting course I did with work back in London has really paid dividends on this trip! Tempus Two is just one of dozens of vineyards in the Hunter Valley with many open to the public and offering wine tasting. Good stuff! And how does it compare to New Zealand? Well I suppose it's alright ;)

We got ourselves some nice plonk, had a feed, and hit the road (sober, despite how it looks) bound for the coastal city of Newcastle. More on that tomorrow along with kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, and other random Australian wildlife.

After a fun night of free drinks and food at the Queens Wharf Brewery in central Newcastle courtesy of our hostel (sweet!) we started today checking out Newcastle's awesome surfing beaches. Despite being the second-largest city in the state of New South Wales, Newcastle has a real laid back vibe to it and its beaches probably have a lot to do with that. I didn't get any shots of the city itself but it's also pretty easy on the eyes. Unless trivia of the day: Newcastle is the largest coal-export harbour in the world.

Surf school getting it on in the waves. I prefer to just splash about in them like a retard.

From the beaches we went to see some of these (kangaroos)...

And some of these (birds, yeah - not sure about the guy on the left but the two on the right are rainbow lorikeets)...

And some of these (lace monitors / goannas)...

(This one was trying to get the hell out)...

And some of these (wombats, sound asleep)...

And some of these (koalas, also lazy bastards).

This is the Blackbutt Wildlife Reserve on the outskirts of Newcastle, set in 182 hectares of some pretty gorgeous surroundings.

Since before even arriving in the country, Kristina has really wanted to get up close and personal with a koala. She almost wet herself when we passed one on the Great Ocean Road, but today she finally got her chance. This little guy was rudely awoken and brought out for the tourists' pleasure (notice I'm wearing my koala-coloured shirt for the occasion ;) You're even allowed to pet him, which feels just like the toy koalas you can buy in a shop hehe. We were lucky we got these shots when we did - a minute later he'd fallen back to sleep so other people have taken photos of themselves beside a sleeping koala with is head buried in those leaves hahaha!

So that was all bloody exciting. We then hit the road for the three-hour cruise through to Port Macquarie which we'll check out tomorrow. We took a 100km scenic detour off the highway to check out a bit of off-the-beaten-track Australia. The roads where riddled with potholes but the scenery was awesome! Along the way we passed this - Wallis Lake. Apart from the occasional car banging past over potholes, it all felt like the middle of nowhere :)