DUTCH CYCLING INFRASTRUCTURE – NSW, you could do this too!

There’s nothing special about this cycle way in Holland. Elsewhere in the world it would be a marvel and a major tourist attraction.

The Government of NSW (it’s a place in Australia) has just announced that it will rip up one of the few separated cycleways in central Sydney and not replace it until after a new light rail line has been installed – a process that is likely to take 2-3 years! Click here for a summary of the sad story.

They could learn a thing or two from how the Dutch have organised cycling infrastructure.

Today we had to travel from Amsterdam to Beverwijk for a family lunch. It’s about a 60km round trip, it was a fine day, so I decided to do it on the bike, carrying the camera and taking a few shots along the way.

HOW COME WE’D NEVER HEARD OF THIS NATIONAL PARK?

Minnamurra Rainforest, NSW.

It’s only a short drive out of Sydney, a 400-hectare pocket of dense jungle at the foot of the escarpment. And it’s a little treasure.

SHOOTING WHITE WATER – what I learned today

Leura Cascades, Blue Mountains…but they don’t really look like this.

I took a short walk in the Blue Mountains yesterday, with camera at the hip. A storm was on its way, and I’d read that gloomy weather is ideal for taking shots of waterfalls.

I wanted to practise getting that ‘soft water’ effect, popular on postcard and poster shots. It’s phoney of course, but it’s satisfying when you can make a shot look something like what the pros can manage. A bit of photoshopping was required too – another learning experience for me.

OFF THE HUME #4 – along the old road to Gundagai

The Prince Alfred Bridge – part of the Hume Highway until 1977. Photo: Wikicommons.

Modern road-building has taken some of the fun out of crossing the Murrumbidgee at Gundagai.

As flashy Sydneysiders on our way to holidays in Victoria, we zipped down the Hume Highway from Sydney to Melbourne as fast as the speed limits would allow.

On our way back, we took time to explore the old route, meandering through towns which are now bypassed by the traffic.

CUSTOMS HOUSE, SYDNEY – finding gems under the floor

Can you spot the Opera House?

Others may also have noticed that five year olds don’t like waiting.

Birthdays, holidays, trains – they take forever to arrive. If our perception of time is governed by its relationship to the length of our lives so far, a twenty-minute wait for a Sydney ferry is, for a five year old, the rough equivalent of a four-hour wait for me. Faced with such a prospect, I would need a distraction too.

DESPERATION NSW – please come here, we’re great, no really we are!

Sandra Chipchase and one of the good things about NSW. Photo: John Reid, Sydney Morning Herald

You have to feel for Sandra Chipchase. Just appointed CEO of the new tourism body Destination NSW, she bustles over the border from Victoria with an enthusiastic plea to all New South Welsh residents to start talking up the delights their state has to offer. We can all be tourism ambassadors in our own little ways, she says.

Instead of a chorus of ‘Hear, hear, great idea Sandra!’ she gets howls of derision as everybody with a grievance takes the opportunity to tell the world why NSW is buggered. Our transport system is a joke, our service sucks, our people are unfriendly, Sydney is unaffordable and…get this one…there are too many tourists clogging the place up.