Greg's Visit Down Under.

My friend Greg has been visiting me for the past week. He was going to a friends wedding on Manly beach anyhow and it was just coincidental that I was going to be here in Sydney as well.

I couldn't take any more time off work so other than weekday evenings I only had one weekend to show him around.

Seeing as the weather was a bit overcast, we decided to go to see the Maritime museum on Saturday.

There is a retired submarine moored next to the museum and we got the chance to take a look around it. It was quite fascinating to be able to wonder around a real submarine.

For all you geeks out there (me included) it's an Oberon class submarine called HMAS Onslow. A diesel/electric submarine, which was in service from 1969 to 1999. Here you can see Greg with his head in the escape tube in the forward torpedo room. As you can imagine submarines aren't really designed for people over six foot tall.

This is a picture of some of the crew quarters. I really feel sorry for the bloke who had the top bunks here. There is barely enough room to turn over in the bunks.

Even for me the passages were very narrow and I could barely walk with my shoulders square on to them. There were several retired volunteers on hand to answer questions about the submarine and explain parts of it. I had plenty of questions and it was a pleasure for me to be abroad the submarine.

The following day we planned a long day trip to the Blue Mountains to see the main sights there. We caught a train out there, which is roughly a two hour train trip from the city centre. We got there around one and had a bite to eat in Katoomba and then took a good five hour walk around Echo point, to the Three Sisters and then down into the valley into Laura forest and back around the base of the Three Sisters. Then up the other side at Orphan rock and back to Katoomba.

Here you can see the steep steps down the side of the Three Sisters rock formation. I could imagine the walk up the steps being quite a good work out! Fortunately we were walking down them, if you lost your footing on the metal steps then it would have been quite a fall down.

The weather was ideal for a long walk as it was a little overcast and a little misty in the air. If it was sunny then we would have really struggled in the heat and humidity.

This middle photo is of me in the middle of the Laura forest, obviously exploring paths never trodden by any human being. Well actually there was a well-worn path throughout most of the walk. The walk around the Laura forest was not as popular though and as a result much well worn and all the better for it. We only saw one bloke going the other way in the forest, while for the rest of the walk we saw quite a few other people doing the three sisters walk.

There were plenty of tourists around the place and I really got quite annoyed when I saw some of them nonchalantly littering the path with their rubbish. So much so that Greg and I had a loud conversation about how stupid some people are who litter the place. However, they either didn't understand us or just plain ignored us



This final photo is the obligatory photo of the Three Sisters rock formation from Echo point. Once we got round here for the second time it was quite late but at least there were only a handful of tourists about the place so it made the place much more peaceful.

You can just about make out a small walkway between the first sister and the main rock headway. That was the start of the walkway down the side of the Three Sisters.

Once we got back to Katoomba we had a well deserved Thai meal in what seemed like someone’s front room. The meal tasted so good, but then again we had just walked around 7km and really needed the fill up.