blinnov’s blog

Berry is a very small town situated between Wollongong and Nowra and there is nothing special in it. Almost. We have been to it before and that was one of these occasions when you find a treasure somewhere you would not expect at all.

From one site, this is not even a town. Just a small village witch does not even have a supermarket, not mentioning MacDonalds (well, that might be rather an advantage). Population is quite low – less than 2000 citizens. Main road, Princess highway (yes, this is not a freeway), goes right through the town center what means that the speed is limited by 50 km/h. I think if they considered any other factors in addition to safety they would rather put 20 km/h signs instead – even on 50 km/h town is passed in less than one minute. And this is a big hazard – the force of sight of the old town can be compared with something really heavy knocking the windscreen. The town looks like a decoration for a good old western.

I would say once again that at the first glance there is nothing really special about this town, but… we have been just captivated by town, its vibrations, its original old buildings, original drinking bowl which is well kept and still stays at the same time where travelers only one century ago were leaving their horses going for a beer or two to the near hotel, which, in its turn is still there and they still serve beer. Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to check if they still serve exactly the same beer as hundred years ago.
Read more about Berry town…

I don’t like Zoos. I have been to the Zoo in Moscow long long time ago when I was a kid, the trees seemed higher, grass was greener and the country that takes 1/6 of all land called USSR. These things are unrelated, but the main thing I remember from my first Zoo experience was concluded in small cells made from concrete and steel where poor animals were kept. Environment far from what these animals used to live in – most of them looked far from happy.

Here in Australia there is no need to go to the Zoo. As I have already written, most of local animals can be spotted almost on the street, moreover, if you were lucky enough, some of them can be found grazing on your backyard. That is, I expected from rural Australia everything but introduction to world smallest monkeys:

These are spices of a kind of Marmoset. Taking pictures of them turned into the nightmare – at first, they are a housemates in a local version of “Big Brother” and therefore occupy large enclosure with glass walls, reflections from which do not make pictures better, at second, they moving across their home as swarm of bees not bothering to stay at one place longer than for a half a second. There were plenty of visitors with much more serious cameras than my archaic Canon A510, but they did not even try to shoot.

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Or what?

Yes, I am C++ maniac and would write everything in C++, if I could, but I am not an idiot. I have written distributed network applications in C++ before, this is why for a new project I decided to see how .Net eases such tasks.

That’s true – Windows communication foundation looks pretty good. It’s straightforward, it hides all network stuff behind and even newly released VS 2008 has sufficient project templates that make WCF services creation as easy as can be.

Read more – it is not as easy as it seemed…

Among many things I like in Australia there are some that I just excited about. For example, native Australian fauna. At first, it seems to me that the biggest and most widely spread Australian predator has a habit to laugh very loudly on mornings and is only dangerous to some insects, small lizards and stuff that people try to burn on BBQ (well, this is on ground. In the water things are not that great and it is not necessary to dive in the ocean in search for the main character of “Jaws” movie, on the north of the continent even fresh water ponds may be contaminated with something very alive and not less toothy than shark; I will come back to them later). At second, animals here still have not picked up a habit not to show to humans what puts a big question mark on the idea of going to the Zoo in order to satisfy the obsession to see Australian natives – possums nightly pass through even in areas where population density is very high, kookaburras laugh at 4am right next to the open window of bedroom, even koalas can be spotted while you are doing the bush walk. Moreover, rare spices from of rare kind of monotremes – Echidnas – still can be found in one of many Sydney’s national parks.

But let me talk about kangaroo. After a short lunch at Cambewarra lookout, we headed further south with an intention to have a dip at the famous Pebbly beach, which is situated in Murramarang national park near Ulladulla. Hope this information is sufficient should any traveler have an interest in visiting this place. In the meantime, I will try to explain what is it so special about this beach.

One famous once said something like “a picture worth thousand words”

Read more about Pebbly Beach…

I just love big creations of engineering minds. Mad minds, sometimes. At least I still can’t really understand how did they manage to build such enormous thing as Sydney Harbor Bridge in 1930′th. Of course, I have read its history and seen archive photos, but the amount of the work they did still looks enormous (and it really was enormous!) to me.

But, as it happens, Australia still has something not that gigantic but not even a bit less exciting monument of engineering genius. Before we stopped for a lunch at Cambewarra lookout, we passed Kangaroo valley, where we did not find any kangaroos (and we did not really look for them, actually), but we have found something very spectacular. That was Hampden bridge. If you follow the link, you may find that the bridge was build in the end of 19th century and it is still in use, and RTA regularly checks its condition and it is still safe. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

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Part 1.

I love traveling. Especially in a car. And it gets best when there is no any time constraints, no appointments, and, especially, no strict timetables of a kind “2pm-3pm- Muesum, then 30 minutes – group photos at a fountain, then lunch and accommodation in the hotel”. Yes, the latter acts as even better torture than compulsory study of something epic like “War and Peace” or complete works of Shakespeare on literature classes in high school, which usually develop untreatable allergy to all classic literature in persons being tortured. I am not talking about not having a plan for the trip at all, indeed it is good to have rough schedule on paper or at least in your head, but it should be something pretty abstract like “We have 5 days, want to get to that nice place and visit this museum, that park and a nice little cafe. And, if have spare time, climb that bridge”.

This was my first vacation since we moved to Down Under. I felt very tired at work and decided to take one week off, turn the computer off and escape. Just to get that nice feeling of being tourist again.

Our plan was as simple as it gets. We wanted to spend from four to six days away from Sydney and, ideally, get to Victoria, stopping everywhere where we see anything interesting as hidden gems appear much often than we usually imagine. For example, consider this spectacular view from Camgewarra lookout (it is not that far from Berry or Nowra, I will write about these little towns in a next few posts). Note – large panorama opens in a new window.

This lookout alight a little bit aside from busy roads and someone who has just to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible have very little chances to enjoy this view in real (picture above can only reflect a little fraction of landscape magnificence that is visible from 678 meters above sea level), which definitely deserves special mentioning.
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