Sailing

Australia has plenty of beautiful sailing spots but one of the most scenic must be the Whitsunday Islands, about 2000 km north of Sydney. That's where we headed last week with Zoe's Oma and Opa, who are in Australia for four weeks. They had initially wanted to head over to New Zealand for a week or two but we managed to talk them out of that idea, considering it's winter and already cold enough here in Australia. Actually, it was even pretty cold up at the Whitsundays - one guy we met said he hadn't experienced temperatures that low in 10 years. Just our luck. Still, with an average of 20 degrees during the day it was a lot warmer than in Sydney. And wearing a couple of jumpers, it was easily bearable on deck and even at night. It did get a bit windier than anticipated, especially on the second day, the day of our crossing of the channel between the mainland and the islands. The windspeed topped 20 knots and the boat was rolling heavily in the waves. Not a good time to be in the cabin under deck, as Vivien found out. But, somewhat surprisingly, Zoe didn't mind the motion at all, and was excitedly exclaiming "more!" after being tossed around on the bed she was supposed to be napping in. Still, I guess everyone was happy when we did finally anchor for the night in a peaceful little bay and set up our tent on terra firma. (More pics: http://picasaweb.google.de/Myjens/Whitsundays)

Autumn

In the Sydney area you don't get much of an Indian summer because most of the trees are evergreen eucalypts. But in some of the towns around the Blue Mountains people planted lots of deciduous trees. In June we spent a night in Windsor, a historic township about 50kms away from Bondi, and it was sunny and very colourful - something we appreciated all the more after two weeks of non-stop rain and storms.