Wednesday 18^th April, 2012

We have a visitor: Rita, a rural youth friend, stopped in Sydney on the way from New Zealand to Canada. She had worked for about 9 month on two different farms in New Zealand and will soon be working in the endless plain of the prairie. I took a day off to show a bit the wider area of Sydney. Petra just started her English school an did not want to miss already in the first week. We went southwards. After the suburb ring there is the Royal National Park, with the founding year 1879 the oldest in Australia. First we looked from Bungoona Lookout over Hacking River. We were ready for everything as it was very rainy in the last few days. But the rain took a break and let even pass a bit the sun. So we could hike for about one and a half hours on the rocky sand stone cliffs between Wattamolla and Little Marley Beach without really getting wet. The vegetation is best described as bush. Back at the car we drove towards Wollongong and passed a real eucalyptus rainforest. Then we stayed at the coast road and stopped somewhere for lunch break. In Wollongong we first stopped at the light house and watched the surfer which did care about the wet and cool weather. Wollongong is 85 km south of Sydney and the third most important city in New South Wales. Most famous are the steel works and the university. In the city center we also stopped and wrote a postcard to Petra. Then we drove to Mount Keira, but it was in the cloud and thus we missed the view. It got slowly evening and we went back to Sydney over the motorway.