Sydney to Singapore

 Kingsford Smith - yesterday.   The journey begins.

 

Flying over Indonesia (Bali to be precise), we had a wonderful view of a volcano.  A pity the photo didn't come out well, but there is a huge crater, clouds to one side of it.  And we were at cruising height...

 

Singapore NTUC supermarket - the government-run challenge to commercial companies.  Cost of living issues here too.  SMH is a company -and not Fairfax.

 

Broccoli - double the price of Coles online.

 

Really!  Labour intensive.....

Hampden Bridge

A famous structure in Kangaroo Valley is Hampden Bridge.  It was designed by Ernest De Burgh and opened in 1898.  Sydney folk will be familiar with De Burgh's Bridge over the Lane Cove River.  The current Lane Cove River bridge replaced a fire-damaged bridge that had been designed by De Burgh.

Back to Hampden Bridge.

Blurb....

How it works.....

But he didn't mention using duct tape to hold it all together...

 

View from below.

And there must be rules.  

Doesn't inspire confidence, does it. 

And it never crossed my mind!

es.

 

Kangaroo Valley

The last time we were in Kangaroo Valley , we had just come to New South Wales and Yvonne was either pre-school or had just begun school. In other words, a long time ago!

Kangaroo Valley is a small version of other delightful villages - think Bundanoon, or Leura.  Some street scenes..

 

Every NSW village needed a Court House.

It took a while to figure out what KV was.  It seemed to be a big local company that owned a lot of things...

But this police car explained it all.

We went for a walk in the nearby Morton National Park.

All the way we could see there had been bush-fires, about 2-3 years ago.  A later google search proved my estimation correct - Kangaroo Valley had suffered badly in January 2020.  It is evident in the cliff face of which  Kin Mun is taking a photo.

The last step - getting our car..

 Our journey to the West is really over now.  We picked up our car this morning.

 

Goodbye to Perth.

An uneventful flight home - exactly what you want!

Leaving Perth.

 

Eclipse day UPDATED

We were taken to our allocated viewing area.  I believe Exmouth itself was virtually locked down - if you tried to enter, you would be asked about your reasons and accommodation.  After all, thousands descending on a small town would be a health hazard for starters.

So they set up designated viewing areas.  I believe there were two - this was ours.

I discovered the land had been provided by the owners of the house next door - which belonged to the Kailis company.  They make lovely pearl jewellery, as worn by Julie Bishop.

The land had been leveled and compacted.  Designated areas were marked by yellow lines.  There were marquees down one side, and we were to go to marquee number 4.  There were marquees for lunch, ambulance and health service, and portaloos.  A lot of planning had gone into this one minute of totality!

Some pics of the area.

Taken from the air!

Rules

Your allocated marquee.

And the queue to buy souvenirs.  Yes, I was there.

There was a lot of photographic equipment and telescopes.

This lady had a telescope almost as  big as herself! I had a chat to her son.

Abandoned? Quite a few had tied a water bottle to their gear.  It was to stop it getting blown over.  It was quite windy.

Then the big moment approaches.  That weird light preceding totality - duller but with sharper shadows.

Kin Mun making crescents.

Totality - taken with my little "point and shoot" Sony.

And the TQ banner

Flight to Exmouth - and sunrise from the air

 

All went well, despite the blearingly early 3:15 pickup to go to the airport for our charter flight to Exmouth. The aircraft was an Embraer 190.

Boarding

Being so early, we were treated to sunrise - over land, to the EAST!

Exmouth - presumably.

The aircraft - an Embraer 190.  This is the one for our return journey, at Perth.  They got agitated at my taking pics at Learmonth, also an RAAF base.  All I can say is that if my camera can pick it up, it shouldn't be there.