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РусскийMiddle Ages, that left Europe with heaps of what today is mainly used as tourists attractions, did not happen to Australia. Well, the Black Death and other little happinesses of these times such as inquisition and accompanying obscurantism did not happen here too, which is some sort of luck. But Black Death is gone (forever, hopefully, despite humans keep inventing new methods of reducing its population) and Acropolis in Greece, Stonehenge in UK are left. In comparison, Down Under can offer something even more ancient - aboriginal engravings, some of which can even be found in Sydney and which age can sometimes be compared with fossil mammoth’s shit. May be, this is the reason why they did not attract crowds of tourists yet.
Things aren’t better with architectural masterpieces. Want to see baroque, renaissance, Gothic or whatever it is called - there is Versailles, Saint-Petersburg and German castles. But those who say there aren’t many historic places in Down Under are wrong - they are almost everywhere, one just need to have a look around. For example, take a look at this panoramic picture I took in one of sought after locations in Woolloomooloo
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РусскийBefore writing this post, I sent this picture to my friend in Russia and got just an awesome reply “What the hell is this?”
After a short introduction to animals’ world of Australia and a short (40-45 minutes) lecture on that topic I got a little bit more fitting description concluded in its comparison with a mole.
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РусскийThose who get to Australia first may notice certain lack of creativity in how Australians give names to streets, roads and other geographical objects. Similar names happen quite often, but, from the other side, this is not uncommon at all - I can remember Finland with their Kirkkokatu or Linnankatu in every small town, but Australia seems especially passionate about a few historical names. That is, Macquarie street is found in almost all Sydney’s suburbs, not mentioning famous Mrs Macquarie chair (remember spectacular Sydney’s NY fireworks photos?) and Macquarie Uni. And this is understandable - he happened to be the first Grosvenor of the colony and with no doubts should be threated with all possible respect. Names of other political persons as Banks, Hume, and, of course, Her Majesty are not less popular. Surprisingly, name of capt. La Perouse whose main achievement was arriving a few weeks after capt Cook is remembered more often than a Cook’s name itself. But I wanted to tell about other person from Australia’s history who’s now even got a whole national park named after him.
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РусскийIn Tilba Tilba we visited quite exciting shop.
The last thing we expected to find in a town which population hardly counts 60 inhabitants was a store where we bought very funny souvenir
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РусскийI do not know why but this name reminds me an old joke about Baden Baden 
Tilba Tilba is a place, somewhere three hundred km south from Sydney. The capital of that place, which is proudly called Central Tilba is a town with population of about 60 citizens. But somehow this place attracts so many tourists from everywhere its inhabitants are seriously concerned about problems with parking.
What potentially might be so special in a village that has only one street and a shopping center looking like this:
This is a post office, convenience store, souvenir store, cafe, chocolate shop, tourist information center and petrol station(!)
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РусскийSomething silly happened in NSW right on NY eve. Almost all beaches have been closed - lifeguards raised signs “no swimming” almost everywhere. Some say surf was up to three meters high, which is quite scary.
We did not believe when TV said that beaches are closed and decided to check it out by ourselves. It has proven true - the waves were so high that well-know Narrabeen rock pool was more suitable for surfers than swimmers.
Just believe me, it looks tremendous right there.
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РусскийI already mentioned in one of my early posts that traveling in a car is probably the best way to travel at all as one in a car has a great freedom of altering the route and stopping everywhere she or he likes. For example, a few years ago we were crossing Finland from North to South and we had to stop at a petrol station in the middle of nowhere. We spent two hours at that place which turned to be a biggest bell museum I have ever seen (I will write about it eventually).
Of course, most of places like that are well-know and there is tons of information about the in Internet or, at least, in tourists booklets and it is possible to find them all when planning the trip, classify them, draw a route and make a schedule. But this just would not work - as I already mentioned, schedule and a good holiday cannot go together. In any case, it is not possible to plan everything.
And this is what happened to us in Mogo. We were just overwhelmed by its exciting zoo and it seemed there was nothing similarly exciting. Well, there was another surprise. They have got the Museum there!
Hopefully, it is not an inquisition museum. This is Gold Rush Theme Park, or Old Mogo Town
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РусскийBerry 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.
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РусскийI 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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РусскийAmong 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”
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