The container ship CMA CGM CEDRUS that is bringing my mini-excavator to Marseille was scheduled to arrive in Singapore on 30 January but as it did not leave Cai Mep in Vietnam until 29 January at 13.28 hrs local time that was impossible. Instead it arrived in Singapore one day late on 31 January at 0844 hrs.

It was originally scheduled to depart Singapore on 30 January (revised from 29 January) but actually left on 01 February at 06.41 hrs local. When I checked to see what was happening it had just cast off and was being tugged away from the port area.

So there has been one day’s slippage compared to the ship’s original schedule although at the time of typing this its ETA in Valencia, Spain remains unchanged as 26 February 15.00 hrs local. This is where it looks as though things are becoming a bit more complicated though.

As I understood it, the CMA CGM CEDRUS’s route from Singapore to Valencia was originally planned to be via the Cape of Good Hope. However, since the vessel left China, on 26 January the shipping companies began to again route traffic bound for southern Europe via the Suez Canal and it now looks as though this is the route that the CMA CGM CEDRUS will take.

However, it looks as though things are not as simple as that. The wild card is the political situation in Iran and whether that will lead to an invasion by the United States and an upsurge in armed conflict in the Middle East. I’m wondering whether the management at CMA CGM (the French owners of the CMA CGM CEDRUS) are still considering their options because for the past several hours the vessel seems to be on a bearing that’s between the direct routes to the Suez Canal and the Cape of Good Hope.

This could give the possibility of switching to either one within the next few hours so I’ll be checking again in the morning. On the other hand, the ship might just be heading for another unscheduled stop at Nacala, a city on the northern coast of Mozambique, the deepest natural port on the east coast of Africa, before continuing on around the Cape of Good Hope and thus avoiding the uncertainties arising from the Iranian situation.

I’ve now been in France for 14 years and I’ve just found that I’ve got a mouse in my car. How could it possibly have got in? It’s already nibbled a bit on the back seat. I’ve never come across such a thing… 🙁

I’ve come back to add a comment. As soon as I saw the mouse poop in the boot of the car I dashed up and bought 2 mouse traps before posting the above. I’ve just checked and BOTH have caught a mouse, so there were at least 2 mice in there. It’s late and raining now but I’ve cleared and reset them and I’ll check them again tomorrow but if they’ve bred… I daren’t think about it 🙁

Like most people, I think, when I ordered something on the internet from China through web sites such as Amazon, Aliexpress and Temu I had no idea of the intricacies of the logistics involved in getting the goods from wherever they were manufactured and into my post box. Watching the progress of my new mini excavator while it wends its way from China to Marseille has been a complete eye-opener for me and made me appreciate the complexities of what’s actually involved.

My excavator has been packed in a wooden crate which has been loaded into a 40 foot container which has itself then been loaded onto a container ship, the CMA CGM Cedrus. The complexities start from that moment on. The CMA CGM Cedrus will be calling at several ports between China and France at which containers will be offloaded and new ones taken on. My excavator’s container will remain on board to the ship’s final destination so it won’t matter if it’s on the bottom of a stack but there will be many others that will need to be accessible for offloading as required at intermediate destinations. And given that a ship like the CMA CGM Cedrus carries several thousand containers at any one time, merely loading them in the necessary order must represent quite a logistical challenge.

There’s also the problem of scheduling. Huge container ships like the CMA CGM Cedrus can’t just turn up at a port and expect to moor up to unload and take on containers. From what I’ve seen all the ports it has visited so far have been full and another vessel has not long departed vacating a berth before the CMA CGM Cedrus has arrived. This is probably not surprising given the need to maximise the usage of the huge investments in port infrastructure and ship arrivals have to be scheduled well ahead not only because of the need to ensure a berth is available but also to minimise port charges by avoiding delays. And has also been pointed out to me, arrangements also have to be made well in advance for a pilot and tugs to be on hand.

So what came as some surprise to me is that as I mentioned in an earlier post, although the route schedule of the CMA CGM Cedrus has not been formally amended, a change has actually been made. After departing Shekou in China it was then scheduled to route directly to Singapore with an ETA of 30 January. That ETA remains unchanged but instead of routing directly, its schedule was amended to include a stopover in the port of Vung Tau, one of the areas of Saigon Port, the rapidly expanding port area of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam with an ETA of 08.00 am local today, 28 January.

The CMA CGM Cedrus departed Shekou at 02.26pm local on 24 January so it had plenty of time to get to Vung Tau and indeed at one time it appeared that it could arrive a day early. However, from what I’ve said above, this wouldn’t be feasible so when I checked yesterday I found that it had come to a halt with engine stopped and probably anchored for the best part of a day off Vung Tau in the South China Sea.

When I checked again later today I expected to find the ship moored up in Vung Tau as indicated by its revised schedule.

However, to my great surprise, this was not so. Instead it was moored in Cai Mep, one of the other areas of Saigon Port slightly further inland.

It arrived today 28 January at 09.03 pm local time. I have no idea, of course, what is going on, whether containers are being loaded, offloaded or both, but what I do know is that for now, anyway, its scheduled ETA at Singapore is still 30 January. I would imagine that to meet this timing it will need to leave Cai Mep either in the early hours tonight or some time tomorrow, so I’ll be interested to see if that is so when I check tomorrow. But I’m finding it interesting looking a bit behind the scenes and am a bit gobsmacked by the probability that what is happening with the CMA CGM Cedrus is happening with thousands and thousands of similar vessels shipping goods all over the world.

I finished all the internal door frame trims, ‘baguettes’, in my house last week and got them and all of the doors varnished by Sunday afternoon, including a trip back to Leroy Merlin on Sunday to buy another can of varnish. I ran out just before completing the job, which was rather annoying, but I not only managed to do all of the room doors but also the louvre doors of the cloaks cupboard. And I’m very pleased with the results.

However, the doors got their own back on me – you could say I’ve been baguetted. The reason is that I’ve managed to injure my shoulder along the way which makes staying in one position, typing on my PC and sleeping become increasingly painful. That’s why I’m typing this at 5.00 am having got up at around 3.30. I think I know how it happened.

I varnished the doors two at a time by removing them from their hinges, carrying them into my living room and laying them flat on trestles. After I’d varnished one side I then had to flip them over to do the other and when that had dried flip them back upright, carry them back to the rooms they’d come from and remount them on their hinges. With all the flipping and carrying I think I may have slightly torn a muscle in my left shoulder.

It’s slowly getting better but I can’t sleep for more than 2 or 3 hours at a time especially when I lie flat in bed, so I’ve been grabbing the odd hour or two when I can during the day while sitting in a comfortable upright chair. I don’t know, maybe I’m getting a bit too old for this stuff after all… 🙁

At the time of writing this post, the CMA CGM CEDRUS, the container ship bringing my mini excavator from China to France, has already left Shekou on its way to its next port of call. But this isn’t Singapore as I’d anticipated but somewhere completely different which I’ll explain in my next post. Instead I want to mention some things to do with its previous stop at Shekou.

Shekou is the main port of Shenzhen which is on the Chinese mainland facing Hong Kong. I have some attachments to Hong Kong, not direct ones because I’ve never been there. However, back in the late 80s or early 90s, I can’t remember now, I had the privilege of flying a full motion flight simulator operated by the then British airline, British Caledonian. The simulator was a McDonnell Douglas DC10 and it was used to train and maintain proficiency of pilots employed by the airline.

Because I already had a Private Pilot’s Licence I was allowed to do more than just ‘play’ on the simulator and in fact the instructor set me up for a night approach into the old Hong Kong Kai Tak airport which has now gone having been replaced by a huge new, modern one at Chek Lap Kok. The landing procedure for runway 13 which all pilots had to follow involved an indirect approach with an initial descent towards an illuminated red and white checkerboard mounted on a hillside.

This involved the use of what was called the IGS (Instrument Guidance System). The IGS operated in a similar way to a normal ILS (Instrument Landing System) except it did not point towards the runway. Instead if you continued to fly the IGS beam you’d crash the aircraft into Checkerboard Hill so at the correct moment the pilot flying had to disconnect the aircraft’s autopilot and manually fly a descending 47 degree right hand turn to land on runway 13.

I was successful in completing the landing which pleased me greatly. The procedure was both exciting and demanding and it must have been a great privilege to have been qualified to actually perform it with the lives of hundreds of passengers seated in the cabin behind you. But pilots did so on thousands of occasions with very few mishaps ever occurring. But it all came to an end in 1978 after the United Kingdom handed Hong Kong back to China and Kai Tak was closed.

As I’ve mentioned many times on My Trike, I have a great interest in PC based flight simulation and although I have recently started to again do a bit of scenery design (ie digital models of airports and their surroundings which are placed in the sims) I was much more heavily involved a few years back. As a result I created highly detailed sceneries of Kai Tak for Microsoft Flight Simulators 2002 and 2004 which I uploaded onto the internet in 2003. Yup, where did 22 years go!

The scenery included all of the avionics systems together with full instructions to allow simulator pilots to fly the Checkerboard Approach to runway 13 on their PCs and also included many of the iconic buildings around the airport perimeter together with their famous advertisements that were known worldwide at the time and all with full night lighting.

It also included systems for what are described as AI (artificial intelligence) controlled aircraft to land at and take off from Kai Tak including ‘heavies’ such as Qantas and Air France Boeing 747s, light general aviation aircraft and also Concorde, although the latter only did one visit in 1976. The scenery took me quite a few months to create and in fact I never managed to fully complete it as it used the ‘default’ terminal buildings that were already in the sims and I never got around to creating replacements.

So I was very interested when I saw that CMA CGM CEDRUS’s arrival at Sheckou would take it quite close to what had been the old Kai Tak airport site.

When I looked more closely I saw that although the airport is gone, Checkerboard Hill is still there and apparently it was recently restored back to its former glory as a memorial to the historic airport. However, closer viewing still revealed that in the intervening years since I uploaded my scenery the whole area of Kowloon that was Kai Tak and its surroundings has been totally redeveloped.

Nothing is left of the old airport. Only the spit of land on which the runway was built now remains and what was the runway has now been built on with high rise flats and commercial premises. All of those iconic buildings with their advertising boards and hoardings that once surrounded the airport are no more and their like will probably never be seen again given the style and pace of the modern world.

So it was with an air of nostalgia that I managed to locate an old copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator on my PC drive which I was able to fire up for a trip down memory lane back onto the apron at Kai Tak where I took the following shots of parts of my old scenery.

While I waited an AI Government Flying Service helicopter took off from the GFS apron over on the other side of the airport and two Boeing 747s of Qantas and Air France taxied down from the main apron over the bridge to runway 31. Then a moment of pure nostalgia as the Air France 747 began its take off roll, then lifted and soared into the sky.

Flight simulation has come on a long way since 2003, a very long way. I’ve not flown into or out of Hong Kong in the latest versions but spending a few minutes in the heady days of pre 1978 Kai Tak certainly brought back a lot of old memories.

The container ship CMA CGM CEDRUS that’s bringing my mini-excavator from China arrived at Xiamen from Shanghai on 21 January as scheduled. Its ETA was 09.00 am local time and it was actually checked in at 10.16am

Its planned ETD was 22 January local time and it actually departed at 03.31 am (21 January 07.15 pm UTC) on its way to Shekou. Shekou is on the Chinese mainland adjacent to Hong Kong. This is a relatively short hop and its ETA is 23 January at 08.01am local time.

Interestingly, the ship’s original schedule showed it departing Xiamen for Nansha, which is not far from Skekou to the west, and then to Shekou with an ETA at the latter of 24 January. This now seems to have been modified with the ship heading straight for Shekou and apparently saving a day.

Its next stop after Shekou will be Singapore if the rest of the sailing plan is followed.

The main thing that has struck me while following this voyage is just how many enormous container ports China has on its eastern seaboard emphasising the huge volumes of manufactured goods that are being shipped out. The territories inland of them are massively developed and the huge wealth that is being created is reflected in the number of impressive highways, bridges, interchanges and other infrastructure that have been put in place to service them, representing a very substantial investment. China appears to me to be outpacing the rest of the world and one wonders if the rest of the world will ever be able to catch up with it. The implications of this are significant to say the least.

Early start this morning as I have to get two internal doors varnished and refitted today. I’ve just checked and the ship carrying my mini excavator from China, the CMA CGM CEDRUS, is making very good progress from Shanghai to Xiamen City.

Xiamen City is located inside the Taiwan Strait which the ship is now approaching at a speed of just over 15 knots on a heading of 213 degrees. It’s ETA is 9.00 am tomorrow (UTC +8).

Its ETD from Xiamen City is 22 January on its way to Singapore via Nansha and Shekou, so it appears that my fear of time slippage was totally unfounded.

As the ETD from Shanghai of the CMA CGM CEDRUS, the container ship bringing my excavator from China, was yesterday 18 January and it remained moored up in the Yangshan Deep Water Port all day right up until I went to bed, I’ve been curious about when it might actually depart. I had another look while I was having my lunch today and lo and behold I just caught its departure.

Prior to the first of the images shown above, at one time I spotted the three tugs shown alongside at its bow, stern and midships so surmised that it was about to depart and the next time I looked it was already under way. So it actually departed today at about 20.10 hrs local Shanghai time

The original ETD was 18 January and although its actual time of departure (ATD) is 19 January, its ETA at Xiamen, its next port of call remains unchanged as 21 January. Mind you, it appears from what I’ve found about sailing times on the internet, two days from Shanghai to Xiamen is normal.

My concern, of course, is that if ETAs start slipping my excavator will arrive in Marseille even later than the scheduled 03 March which will already be just over three months after the date on which I placed my order, and a further delay would be very annoying to say the least 🙁

I’ve just checked and this morning the container ship carrying my new excavator, the CMA CGM Cedrus, is currently moored in the Yangshan Deep Water Port in Shanghai, China, where it arrived at 18.08 hrs yesterday 17 January.

It’s scheduled to depart tomorrow with its next port of call being Xiamen on its way to Singapore via Nansha and Shekou and then on to Valencia by way of the Cape of Good Hope.

I found out yesterday that the reason why nearly all the ships routing from China to Europe go the long way round rather than via the Suez Canal is because of the activities of the Yemen Houthis in the Red Sea. The shipping company Maersk has announced that it intends to start using the Suez Canal again from later this month but we will have to wait and see if other shippers follow suit.

This morning I received more information from China concerning the shipment of my mini excavator which I find very interesting. The main information on the link that I was provided is shown below. I’ve blanked out what may or may not be sensitive information (this is new to me) such as the bill of lading number, container reference etc and it shows that my excavator (packed in a wooden crate) in a 40 foot long container was loaded onto a ship named CMA CGM Cedrus in Qingdao in 13 January and is scheduled to arrive in Marseille/Fos-sur-Mer on 03 March.

The manifest shows that there are 406 packages in the container, which I think goes some way to explaining why my delivery is taking so long as the Chinese manufacturer has presumably had to wait until he could fill a 40 foot container with goods destined just for Europe. Further delving has revealed that there is a host of web sites out there showing global details of ships, shipping, routes, shipments and tons of other stuff which boggles the mind in terms of the details and volume of information that’s available. I’ve just selected a tiny bit about my shipment, starting with the route that CMA CGM Cedrus is going to be taking.

The ship is being constantly tracked by satellite as is every other type of maritime traffic from what I can see. The map that I downloaded interestingly shows that CMA CGM Cedrus is on its way to Shanghai, not from Qingdao but from Buson in South Korea to where it must have sailed after taking on goods in Qingdao. The satellite map shows what a huge volume of seaborne traffic there is in the area and when you click on each little arrow it tells you if it’s a cargo ship, a fishing vessel, an auxiliary etc, even a private vessel.

I was astounded when I first saw the satellite view and could hardly believe the global picture when I zoomed out, more so I think than when I first viewed Flightradar24 that shows global aviation traffic. There’s also lots of information available on the CMA CGM Cedrus itself. It was built in 2024 in China and is registered in Valetta, Malta. Apparently it runs on LPG rather than heavy fuel oil which is new to me.

There are lots of photographs of the ship one of which I show below when it was in Singapore.

This is all very new to me and I’ve found it very interesting. I’ll now be following the progress of my mini excavator in real time as it wends its way to Marseille and in the meantime I’ll be figuring out how to get it cleared through customs. It looks to me as although it’ll be unloaded in Fos-sur-Mer (the main international port in Marseille) it’ll enter the EU at Valencia, but I have no idea if this is relevant or not. I’ll have to find out 😉

Earlier today I checked with the Chinese supplier to see if there’s any news on the shipping of my mini excavator and he told me that it has now been shipped. I asked how long it would take for it to get to Marseille as I need to start making arrangements to clear it through French customs and pick it up from the port and he said it would be about 50 days.

I was quite surprised by this as I thought it would only take something over 20 days, 30 at most, so I thought I’d do some checks. The port closest to the supplier’s factory is Qingdao and when I did a detailed search I found that all of the shipments from there go first to Singapore and then the long way round to Marseille via the Cape of Good Hope and not via the Suez Canal. That means they take quite a bit longer.

On delving in a bit more deeply I found that it takes 7 days 20 hours to get to Singapore, 5 days 6 hours to make a ship to ship transfer, then 33 days and 23 hours with 2 stops in Spain to get to Marseille. This means that the shortest shipment time is 47 days 2 hours and the longest 52 days 23 hours, thus confirming what the supplier told me. So that’s it then. It’ll be another 7 weeks, say end of February, before it even arrives on French soil and then there’ll be a delay of another few days for it to clear customs before I can collect it. I guess I’ll just have to be patient until at least the first week in March in that case 🙁

No, not the time for long French loaves. One of the other meanings of the word in French is for what we Brits refer to as the decorative trim that goes around door and window frames where they meet the wall. When my house was built the interior doors were installed but it was left for me to finish them off with whatever form of trim that I wanted – the baguettes. It’s some time since I painted the walls – some of the joints between the wallboard sheets are already beginning to crack up a bit as a result of expansion and contraction – but up to now I’ve never got around to fitting the baguettes.

This year I want to concentrate on the house’s exterior and garden and spend the minimum of time on its interior. In fact, the only interior jobs that are outstanding are to fit the baguettes, varnish them and the interior doors and do the tiling above the worktops in the kitchen and utility room. So I’ve decided that I need to get a move on while it’s too cold to work outside (I will need to cut tiles outside because my machine has a diamond blade that is lubricated by water that sprays a bit) and get the baguette and door work done. So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of days – and not before time!

Here’s a shot of what a door frame looks like without a baguette.

And here’s another, taken from the other side of the door, with a baguette fitted.

I hadn’t realised how much of a difference fitting baguettes would make and in fact I’d go so far as to say it has transformed the corridor leading to my bathroom and bedrooms. I knew that something was missing but hadn’t realised just how much character fitting the baguettes would add.

I’ve only completed half the work so far and will continue over the next few days. It’s not cheap – each 2.4 metre length of baguette profile costs 5,95€ and each door needs 5 lengths, except for the bathroom and separate toilet which were beautifully finished inside by the tiler with tiles right up to the door frames, so only needing 2 1/2 lengths each. So the 7 doors will cost nearly 180€ in total for the wood alone, excluding the varnish which itself is not cheap, but I think the final result will be well worth the cost and effort.

I found this poor boy outside my house after I’d finished taking my outdoor Christmas lights down. He’d been gone for some time, I don’t know why. I didn’t move him for now but I couldn’t see any wounds on him and I doubt whether the few cold nights we’ve had lately would have been bad enough to have seen him off.

Maybe someone poisoned him, but I now know who’s been taking the scraps left in the bowl overnight after I’ve fed the raggedy dog who often visits me for food and company, as she did today.

But anyway, I won’t just throw the poor little soul’s body over the fence and into the trees. I’ll give him a decent burial more fitting for an animal who’s lived his whole life, short though it was, in Nature in the wild.

Now packed and being shipped. Should be in Marseille within 60 days but should be less.

Shown are the machine itself with 400mm bucket attached, the 200mm bucket, the smooth edge 400mm bucket (could be 500mm) and the post auger. And they upgraded me to a hydraulic thumb, as shown, for free.

I think it looks great! 😀

So far, so good. It’s all mine and paid for so now I’m just waiting for it to be shipped and arrive at Marseille.

I’m looking to clear it through customs myself without using an agent as there’s no duty to pay, just 20% VAT which I’ve already settled. I intend to pick it up from the port on a flatbed vehicle recovery trailer towed by my Kia as the crate only weighs about a tonne, so similar in weight to a car.

I’m assuming there will be loading facilities at the dock eg a large forklift, and the only information I don’t have is whether this will be free or chargeable. I’ve sent two enquiries to the port authorities using their contact form but have received no reply, so no surprises there then, as this is France.

Does anyone know? If not I’ll probably have to give them a call.

It’s a better machine than the original one I ordered which was never delivered and for which I was reimbursed. As shown in the video below, it has a hydraulic ‘thumb’ (behind the bucket which is used for picking things up such as logs and rocks) whereas the other machine had a very basic mechanical one. It also has its hydraulic lines enclosed in its beam which makes them less likely to be damaged.

I intend to build a ‘garage’ for it before it arrives. It’ll just be a temporary structure with a wooden frame and tarp walls and roof covering but I don’t want it to be standing out in the weather in the open when it’s not being used. I’m very excited and can’t wait to get my hands on it. 😀

The other day I watched a video on Youtube about children who grew up in the 1950’s on which I posted a comment which I thought I might share here.

“I was born in 1946. We had a small coal fired boiler in the kitchen on which we used to dry our gloves after snow-balling until the gloves were dry and crackly and then we went out again after our fingers and toes had warmed up enough. We had a fireplace in the dining room and while I was still at primary school because mum and dad were both out at work it was my job to clear out the ashes from the previous evening and set and light the fire after I’d walked home from school.

If it was difficult getting it going I used a copy of the large ‘local’ newspaper to cover the fireplace opening to ‘draw’ the fire with the increased airflow as my dad had shown me how. Sometimes the paper caught fire and I had to put it out… and I was just 8 or 9 years old.

In the school holidays I’d have to pay the Co-Op baker when he knocked. Mum would leave the money near the front door and when I paid the baker he’d give me a little paper slip that showed the amount which mum would take to the Co-Op office to collect our ‘divi’. You had to give your ‘divi number’ when you paid. I still remember ours – it was 16212.

To go to work, my mum went by bike some 7 or 8 miles each way (I’ve just checked it) uphill and downhill and thought nothing of it, or if she did, she never let on because in those days mums never did. My big sister, who’s gone now bless her, used to suffer terribly from chilblains. She taught me to jive at a very early age when rock and roll came out because she was fed up practising just using a door handle.

When she was a bit older she used to go out dancing with a full skirt and lots of petticoats that made it stand out and every time she twirled round she showed her stocking tops. All the girls did and none of them had any problems attracting admiring young men. It’s how things were done in those days.

As well as conkers we used to have amazing marble tournaments at primary school and with honour at stake, nobody would have dreamt of cheating. We also used to have contests with our Dinky cars to see who could make theirs go the farthest across the playground which was smooth newly laid tarmac after the war.

We had a climbing frame in the playground and if you fell off and broke your arm you were whipped off to hospital and held in great esteem afterwards by all the other kids who used to sign and do silly drawings on your plaster cast. No parent would ever have thought of suing the school.

In the holidays we’d go off all day under the leadership of the ‘big boys’ and get back home at teatime with dirty knees and hands, grazes and cuts and bruises from falling down holes and out of trees and be ready to do it all again the next day. We made ‘trolleys’ out of old pram wheels and any bits of wood we could find in our dads’ sheds and go hurtling along with no brakes at breakneck speed steering the front wheels with a length of rope either until it toppled over from turning too quickly or one or more wheels fell off, throwing us on the ground grazing our knees and elbows.

We had cowboys and indians fights and also knights in armour battles, bottom of the road against the top. My dad made me a wooden sword and battle-axe, a shield out of hardboard which he painted white with a red rampant lion and a ‘helmet’ from a strip of old lino held on by elastic at the back with a visor that could be raised and lowered with springy metal studs on each side as the pivots. One day the battle became so feverish an ‘enemy’ from the top of the road whacked my shield so hard his axe came right through my hardboard shield because his dad had made it from plywood. Bad form.

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. They were great times, the best of times. Children today don’t know they are alive. I wouldn’t change a thing and remember my old friends from those days from time to time, many of whom are now probably gone. But they’re all still alive in my memories.”

An update for those who have been following the saga of me being scammed on the first Chinese excavator I ordered. I’m delighted to say that I’ve now been refunded in full.

It’s been a huge, time-consuming effort as behind the scenes I’ve been pressurising the Chinese supplier, my bank (Crédit Agricole), the supplier’s bank (JP Morgan in Luxembourg), and the Chinese embassy in London in my efforts to apply pressure from as many directions as possible.

I don’t know whether it’s been as a result of those efforts but I’m pleased to say that both of the sums I paid for the excavator (the initial deposit and the final balance) have now been repaid into my Crédit Agricole bank account.

So that’s good enough for me. I incurred some expenses in arriving at this result but I’m relieved and prepared to write those off to experience and now I can look forward to the second excavator I ordered a couple of weeks ago arriving, early in the new year I think, and getting on with the work I have planned around the house.

I have to say that a considerable weight has now been lifted off my shoulders.

At long last I’ve been able to put together a video of the last full couple of days of my Aus trip during which I explored the Great Ocean Road.

The Great Ocean Road is a highway running beside the Great Southern Ocean for 241 kilometres between Lorne in the east and Warrnambool in the west in Victoria on the southern coast of Australia. It’s one of the greatest ocean drives in the world and a fantastic tourist attraction affording spectacular views of the ocean, its beaches and the forests and cliffs that tumble down to its edge in many places along its route.

But it’s more than that as it was built between 1919 and 1932 as a memorial to their fallen comrades by Australian veterans who returned from the First World War.

The Great Ocean Road has many spectacular sights and attractions that can take many days to explore fully. However, I only had two days at the end of my Australian trip that took in Melbourne and Sidney, not enough time to do it justice but just enough to stop along the way and take in as many of the main ones as I could. My video shows each one that I stopped at, in order, driving from east to west.

I’ve had one or two comments like, ‘Why do you need to buy a machine… why don’t you just pay people to do the job’. Well, the answer is that ‘the job’ is very open-ended. I’ve done a lot of travelling this year (by my standards anyway) and I don’t intend to do any next year, apart from go to my son’s wedding in September.

The WHOLE of next year is therefore earmarked for my garden and I intend to devote all of my efforts to that end while I’ve still got the strength, capacity and motivation to do it. The land my house is built on was originally just open farmland and still looks like it. I don’t want it to stay that way.

I want to make it into a space, front and back, that’s attractive and that I want to be in so there’s a lot of work needing to be done. For a start the plot slopes the whole way down from the road 7 metres from top to bottom. A level area was created on which the house was built but the garden slopes down from the road to the house and then down further to the bottom.

So that needs to be sorted. I don’t yet know exactly how but from the researches I have done I’m going to need to create several levels and terraces and sloping paths and stepped areas joining them so a lot of earth is going to need to be shifted. I’m also going to need to bring in some large rocks etc that I’m going to need to move around to get the final result that I want.

And that’s on top of the other work I have planned, like installing the swimming pool with a retaining wall, putting a French drain in across the front of the house to take away water that pools there, putting in a concrete base for a tool store cum workshop down at the bottom of the garden plus a trench to take electricity down to it, plus extending the concrete base in the front garden for a garage later on. And then there’s the fencing – I’ve also ordered a post auger to come with the excavator.

And that’s just the stuff that comes to mind right now. I’m sure that lots of other tasks will emerge as work progresses and I may be wrong, but by my estimates having my own excavator will make it easier (and cheaper) to get things done as and when I want them and also, just as importantly, by doing the work myself, how I want them done. But only time will tell.

Here I go, for a second time. Yes, I got scammed the first time and I’m still pursuing it, but life goes on. If I don’t order another mini excavator about now I won’t have it for the spring and I then won’t be able to start the work I have lined up around my house and garden.

I’ve got the swimming pool to put in for starters plus lots of other jobs which when you add them all together would mean that having my own excavator will be less expensive than keep hiring one in, which would inevitably mean hiring a man as well at a total cost of over 200€ a day. And at the end I’ll have it to sell, probably at a profit depending on what the final cost will be of importing one and getting it delivered to my home.

This time I’ve covered myself by going for what appears to be a reputable supplier through Alibaba and using Alibaba trade insurance to secure my funds. Once everything’s signed, sealed and delivered I’ll go into the process and costs more fully but for now all I’ll say is that the machine has cost about the same as the one I was scammed on and the Alibaba insurance only $100 more, so well worth it I think.

But this morning I have to decide on the machine’s colour. This supplier offers an excellent range, including light and dark grey, black, green and blue as well as orange and yellow. I was leaning towards the yellow but now I’m not so sure. The orange does look really striking I think.

So, picking up the story once again, after dropping off my hire car I got a lift in the hire car company’s mini-bus back to Melbourne airport from where it was just a short walk to the Ibis Budget hotel. It was after arriving at the hotel that I received the email from Jetstar telling me that their flight to Changi airport, Singapore, the first leg of my flight home, had been cancelled without providing any information on what I should do to resolve the problems this created for me.

I therefore decided to try to contact Jetstar on line and what did I get? A bloody useless AI chatbot which is what these monstrosities always are and the final conclusion that I derived from the interchange was that as my booking had been made by Turkish Airlines (so this is what they mean by ‘a partner airline’) Jetstar would take no further responsibility for the upset they had caused and that I should contact Turkish Airlines instead. However, it didn’t take me long to establish that the Turkish Airlines desk at the airport was closed and would not be opening the next day, Sunday, because they had no flights.

So I tried doing an on line check in for my itinerary the following day and received the notification from the Turkish Airline’s web site that it was not possible at that time and that actually gave me some hope as it seemed to me to indicate that they were aware of the Jetstar problem and were seeking ways to get around it. By then it was already past midnight and as there was little more I could do, I decided to turn in and get some sleep and see how things would pan out later on.

I rewoke at around 4.30 am and immediately fired up my laptop to see if there had been any new developments, and there had been as I found out when I again tried to do an on line check in. To my shock and horror I found that I could – but only from Changi airport in Singapore! OK, fine, but how the heck was I supposed to get there from Melbourne in the absence of the Jetstar flight?

So I then began to search to see if I could find any telephone numbers to ring in order to speak to someone in Turkish Airlines. I found one in Sydney and the main Turkish Airlines 24 hour hotline in Istanbul but these turned out to be of no use to me because, of course, when I tried to ring them neither of the two French SIM cards I had in my phone was allowing me to make calls. My situation was therefore becoming somewhat desperate to say the least and I decided that there was nothing left to do other than to go to the airport and find someone to speak to in person, from Jetstar as I already knew that there would be no one there from Turkish Airlines, it now being Sunday.

Total madness. By now it was just gone 6.00 am so going back to bed was out of the question. I rustled up a breakfast of sorts by pouring some of the Rice Krispies I still had into a glass and adding the last of the milk that the hotel had provided because, as I mentioned previously, I’d left what I’d kept especially for the purpose in the fridge at the motel in Torquay, together with the butter I’d also kept for the crispbreads I still had. I then dumped everything that was left over in the bin in my room, repacked my bags and headed off on foot for the airport at around 6.00 am.

I arrived there shortly before 6.30 am and found out that the Jetstar service desk opened at 7.00. I therefore parked myself next to the desk and was their first customer when they opened for business. I explained my predicament to a very helpful young lady and gentleman who listened intently and told me to sit back down again while they sorted things out, so no dramas.

After about 15 minutes or so the young man came over to me with a new boarding card and check ins for the whole of my return journey to Bordeaux, in the name of Qantas. Jetstar is the low-cost subsidiary of Qantas and they’d got me onto a Qantas flight to Singapore over an hour before I was previously due to leave on Jetstar. So what a huge relief that was as it meant that I’d be able to make my connections in Changi and Istanbul as per my original plans. They’d done an outstanding job and I made sure that I gave them my sincerest thanks before leaving.

Before it all went crazy after I was informed that the first leg of my flight home had been cancelled, I’d had quite an enjoyable final day in Australia. I had plenty of time to return my hire car after leaving the wonderful Bellbrae Motel that I’d stayed in at Torquay so I thought that I’d give Corio Bay another look. I’d stayed over there several days previously in the glorified dosshouse known as the Corio Bay Motel. Corio Bay is actually part of the fine city of Geelong and I knew that that awful motel was far from representative of the city itself.

Waze took me in via the northern end of the bay where the wharves are for the ferries to and from Tasmania, not the most attractive part of the city, but I was not to be disappointed. The road took me around to the northern end of The Esplanade where I parked up for a while to enjoy the full view of the bay, in which one of the ferries was moored offshore. The weather was rather dull but as time went on it brightened up and turned into bright sunshine.

As lunchtime approached I thought I’d drive towards the southern end of the bay to see if I could find somewhere to eat and everything changed. It was Saturday and everyone was out enjoying themselves and doing the same as me and it soon became obvious that parking was at a premium. I missed one plum spot right on the front which then went to the person behind me but I was fortunate to find a spot one road back, above a beautiful trim and well-kept area with large palm trees called Transvaal Square.

I left my car and walked down the grassy slope to the road running along the front. I thought that in view of how busy it was, I’d better forgo a walk along the front and back and look straight away for somewhere to eat.

I immediately spotted the Royal Geelong Yacht Club on the opposite side of the road which was advertising its cafe, so thought I’d give it a go.

The Yacht Club was on a short roadway heading down to the quayside and due to the fall of the road, the entrance onto its decked outdoor eating area was a few steps up.

By this time the weather was very pleasant and after going inside and ordering a Garden Salad with prawns and a drink and being given a tag with a table number I went back outside to choose a table and wait for my meal to arrive. And what a pleasure it turned out to be, just the ticket for my last full day in Australia, sitting there under a parasol in the sunshine and watching the world go by.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and was fortunate to be able to savour the moment with no knowledge of the mayhem that would later erupt due to my cancelled flight. That was to come later after a drive of a couple of hours or so to return my hire car, I’d found my way to the Ibis Budget Hotel at Melbourne airport and tried to check in on line for my flight home the following day.

You can’t make this stuff up.

I still had a few Rice Krispies, some butter and some milk left after last night which I thought I’d be able to use for breakfast tomorrow in the Ibis Budget Hotel, Melbourne Airport, where I’m writing this from. However, I managed to depart from Torquay this morning and left the butter and milk there in the fridge and it’s now difficult to buy more.

I arrived at the car hire depot early this afternoon having arranged a 5.30 pm check in so plenty of time. However, the booking-in clerk noticed a small dent on the rear driver’s side door which I hadn’t previously spotted.

Luckily I’d taken loads of photos all round the car when I picked it up but it was impossible to see the mark outside in the bright sunlight. Fortunately I suggested looking at the photo again inside and then you could just make the mark out. The booking-in clerk agreed and to make sure I went and confirmed with the manager that there would be no charge.

But that was (is) the least of my worries. I’m booked right through with Turkish Airlines from Melbourne to Bordeaux via Changi and Istanbul, leaving tomorrow, the first leg being with the Australian budget airline, Jetstar. On arriving at Melbourne there was an email from Jetstar saying that their flight tomorrow is cancelled.

I’ve now got to contact them on line to find out what’s going to happen. They’ve offered hotel and living expenses but at the moment I have no idea when I’ll be leaving Australia 😕

Earlier on I booked into the best hotel I’ve stayed in during the whole of my visit to Australia. Without exception. It’s not a hotel actually, it’s a motel in Torquay and Basil Fawlty doesn’t come anywhere near it. It’s called the Bellbrae Motel, is not run by a large chain as far as I can tell but is privately owned and is beautifully appointed in a lovely position surrounded by gorgeous grounds.

Torquay is at the eastern end of the Great Ocean Road just to the east of Lorne which is officially recognised as the first town on the Great Ocean Road. It’s about 100 km west of Melbourne, about 1 1/2 hours, so I’ll have an easy final drive back to the car hire depot at Melbourne Tullamarine airport tomorrow. Maybe too easy. I think I’ll have to kill some time.

Here are some shots of the motel and my room which has everything I need – a fridge, a kettle, a microwave, crockery and cutlery all spotlessly clean and washing up stuff, just the way I like it. It’s also got a Philips Barista coffee machine which shows the level of quality we’re talking about. Plus it’s got full toiletries including a face flannel, which is always nice.

The hotel I stayed at last night was rubbish in comparison. The proprietors seemed proud of the fact that their accommodation offered no refinements, such as a kettle and tea and coffee making facilities, let alone a microwave. They said clearly in their guest notes that if you want such things you have to purchase them at the bar during opening times or at a local cafe in the area. This meant, of course, that I had to make do with my last two Marie biscuits and some of the milk I’d brought with me for breakfast before departing as the bar wasn’t open at that hour.

The room didn’t even have a chair and table let alone an en-suite bathroom and shower. The communal men’s toilets and showers were at one end of the corridor and the ladies’ at the other. There was a small hand basin in the corner of my room but some idiot had mounted the mirror above it so high I couldn’t use it for shaving this morning. And I bet I know what happens if anyone wakes for a pee during the night…

My original thinking was to take the faster direct inland route from Warrnambool to Torquay but on reflection that would get me to Torquay too early, so having missed several of the sights on the Great Ocean Road yesterday I decided that instead I’d retrace my steps in the opposite direction stopping at those I’d missed.

And I’m glad that I did because some of the ones I’d neglected (like The Grotto) turned out to be very special. I was going to do a full posting about the Great Ocean Road once I’d arrived at Torquay but I’ve decided against it. The amount of video material I’ve got is huge and it deserves to be carefully edited and sorted so I think that it’ll have to wait until I get home.

I was thinking about posting some ‘tasters’ but I’m not even going to do that because picking images at random from the huge number I’ve accumulated just wouldn’t do justice to the incredible experience that driving the Great Ocean Road, one of the best ocean drives in the world, turned out to be.

And guess what. Today I saw my first, and probably only, koala! I stopped later to see if I could find another but wasn’t lucky enough to do so, but instead I had the good fortune to be able to video a small echidna, an Australian hedgehog, with a very long nose snuffling around on the forest floor, so that was a good consolation prize.

When I arrived at the motel it was dull and gently raining. It stopped later on so I went outside again to take some exterior shots to replace the ones I’d taken earlier and there in front of me was a beautiful double rainbow which I took a photo of from inside my room. I hope that it bodes well for my upcoming trip home.

I’m typing this in the Cally Hotel in Warrnambool which is at the top of the western end of the Great Ocean Road and as far as I intend to drive before beginning to head back south towards Melbourne. This is not where I intended to be staying. I’d originally booked in at the Turn-In motel which was a complete shambles and I didn’t even get past its reception.

It’s a weird place. There’s nobody actually in reception and when you announce your presence an Indian lady wearing a headset appears on a large TV screen and starts talking to you. Her accent is very hard to understand but the idea was that when you tell her your name she checks on a computer somewhere and is then supposed to print out your booking details on a printer over to one side.

However, the printer was jammed and when I pointed this out a large, uncouth male person popped his head out from behind the screen and came round to try to correct the problem saying the printer was not 100%. He was obviously as thick as mince and had no idea what to do and when I pointed out that actually the printer was 0% he took offence, accused me of being rude and arrogant and refused me admission to his motel. If I hadn’t already paid it would have been laughable.

He told the Indian lady to credit me but she said she couldn’t and I’d have to cancel my booking on Agoda and claim a refund, which I did in their car park where I also hastily booked this hotel. But I was a bit too hasty as it doesn’t meet my requirements at all, although now it’s too late. It’s a hotel, not a motel and although it’s clean and modern it doesn’t have the facilities I need.

I’ve just eaten a massive mixed grill in the restaurant when I’d brought food for this evening. The room has a nice bed and a fridge (what for?) but doesn’t even have a table and chair. It has a small hand basin in the corner but there’s no en-suite bathroom and the toilets and shower are at the other end of the corridor. Next time I’ll look much more closely at what I’m letting myself in for when booking my overnight stays.

The day itself was a great success. I left the appalling Colio Bay motel in Geelong this morning and headed for Lorne at the southern end of the Great Ocean Road. I then wanted to drive its whole length to Warrnambool but my Waze satnav wanted to keep taking me off it and onto the fast direct inland root without offering me any other option, so it was back to following signposts.

In fact I managed to do the whole drive exactly a I’d wanted to and took in every sight that I wanted to see, many of which were absolutely spectacular and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I’d planned to do the Great Ocean Road over two days but as today has more or less completed my bucket list of things I wanted to do during my stay here in Australia I’ve got just two more ’empty’ days to go.

This may be a good thing because I’m now pretty tired. I intend to have an easy drive tomorrow to what I think will be a lovely motel in Torquay at the other end of the Great Ocean Road but this time on the direct inland route, stopping for breaks along the way. Then I’ll have a last easy drive the following day back to Melbourne to return my hire car.

As I’m having to type this in the hotel bar in far from ideal conditions I’m going to put off my full Great Ocean Road post until I get to Torquay, but to finish off, here are a few photos to be going on with.

I rolled into the Corio Bay Motel in Geelong after a drive of just over 5 3/4 hours from Wagga Wagga. However, that included two stops for a break and refreshments and a sandwich for lunch. The drive was very pleasant with bright blue skies, little wind and very little traffic. I was on the Hume Freeway and Highway connecting Sydney and Melbourne I think the whole way. The roads were excellent as they have been almost everywhere I’ve driven during my stay here, with an excellent surface, rolling green landscape on each side flanked by trees and the occasional glimpse of low mountains off to the left.

Sadly, I passed lots of dead kangaroos and other wildlife on the way south but although there were many signs showing to watch out for koalas in the road, I still haven’t seen any, dead or alive. I’m beginning to suspect that koalas are an endangered species and the only ones here in Australia are all in zoos.

With a name like ‘Corio Bay’ you might expect the motel to be on the ocean’s edge, like Lakeside where I stayed in Mallacoota, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s situated on a very busy junction as you enter Geelong and as I type this the traffic is constantly stopping at and then roaring away from the traffic lights outside my room.

My first impressions of the motel were bad and my second and third even worse. I thought that the first room I was put in at the Ibis Budget Hotel in Sydney was awful but this place beats it by a country mile.

It’s claimed to be 3* on Agoda but that’s totally false as in reality it’s a tip. My room smells and not in a nice way. It’s filthy and much of the wooden ‘furniture’ in it is damaged or broken. I wouldn’t dare touch the telephone for fear of picking up an incurable communicable disease and after walking around on the carpet I’ll have to wipe my feet before getting back into my hire car.

I’m washing everything, like the cup and spoon I’ve used to make my first cup of tea and I’ve noticed things on the floor against the wall under the shelf I’ve got my laptop on that I’m in no way going to get close to to find out what they are. Seriously, if this place was in the UK it would have been closed down long ago by the Public Health Inspector.

The room offers some special features as shown in the following pictures. Note the hole on the seat of the chair, the light fitting with no lamp cover in what’s laughingly referred to as the bathroom and the smoke detector hanging off the ceiling above the television

When I climbed the metal staircase up to my room I noticed another ‘guest’ standing outside smoking on the other landing. He looked like a homeless person who’d come in off the street for a shower and it had me thinking who the main clients of this place are. To be honest, if I hadn’t prepaid I’d have left as soon as I saw the room but as I’m only staying for one night I’ll grin and bear it as this trip was supposed to be a bit of an adventure. However, this is a bit beyond even my limits and I just hope that I don’t leave here tomorrow with a dreadful disease.

I rolled into the Junction Motel on the road out of Wagga Wagga to the west, so in the direction I think I’ll be heading tomorrow morning, just after 2.00 pm after a drive of just over 5 1/2 hours from Sydney. I stopped once for a break after 2 1/2 hours in which I took a nap of about 20 minutes as I slept so badly last night, then for a a pee and finally to buy fuel when entering Wagga Wagga.

It was dull and cool the whole way with a strong wind and I’m wondering if the wind ever drops in this corner of Australia. The roads were modern highways in excellent shape and the landscape for most of the way after leaving the urban environment of Sydney behind comprised vast open rolling tracts, some with livestock (both cattle and sheep) and mostly kept very trim and in good order.

I’ve passed by a few wineries but the Canberra wine country was sign-posted off to the left and I’ve seen no vast vineyards such as you’d see in France, for example. The terrain hasn’t been completely flat but the hills on either side of the highways have been more like humps although some have had very steep sides.

I sussed out the fuel situation after my first fill-up. My hired MG5 has phenomenal fuel consumption and with a full tank shows a range of over 960 kms. This means that I can fill up as and when I want to as none of the legs I’m driving comes anywhere near that, so I can take advantage of wherever fuel is the cheapest. I didn’t know that and on my way north from Melbourne, not knowing how frequent petrol stations would be, I made my first purchase at the rate of Au$1.895 per litre.

I didn’t know at the time that this is the highest price out there for the grade I need. The car has to be filled with L91 gasoline and when I topped the tank up in a Mobil garage on entering Wagga Wagga I paid Au$1.695 as I have done previously elsewhere, but not in the cities. By way of comparison, this equates to 1€ per litre. In France I pay around 1.63€ for diesel and 95 gasoline comes out at around 1.69€. Here the prices are reversed – diesel is considerably more expensive than gasoline – and that explains why you see considerably more 5.0 and 5.8 litre Ford Mustangs in Australia than you do in France!

Wagga Wagga is bigger than I thought it would be. It even has its own regional airport, so I suppose it’s a bit like Bergerac. The motel I’ve stopped at is quite old-fashioned, I’d say 1980s, but it’s clean and the bed seems comfortable. It has a kitchenette area so what more could you want for a stay of just 1 night?

I’ve brought with me the last of my Rice Krispies and a couple of English muffins left over from the pack I bought in Jervis Bay. They’ve been kept in the fridge except while travelling so they should be OK for breakfast tomorrow, but I’ll need to find something else along the way for the day after. I bought two large pot noodles for evening meals tonight and tomorrow, I’m also well covered for milk and tea and still have an apple from Jervis Bay, so what more could I possibly want?

I’ll be departing tomorrow morning for Geelong, another 500km, 5 hour drive. Geelong is on the Tasman Sea to the west of Melbourne so then I’ll be right back down south from where I started. I just hope that tomorrow my neck will be less painful than it was today.

I was tossing up yesterday whether I’d finish my visit to Sydney by going to either Manly on the ferry to the north or Bondi Beach to the south because I didn’t think that I could do both. However, when I checked Waze I found that Bondi is only a relatively short drive from my hotel so I decided to take an Uber this morning to Wharf 3 of the Circular Quay next to the Opera House from where the ferry departs for Manly, make a brief visit there and return in time to drive down to Bondi in the afternoon.

Everything went pretty smoothly and as usual I shot plenty of video from which I lift my still shots. However, on this occasion I’m going to be pretty sparing with my posting and let the images speak for themselves. The reason is that because almost all the hotels I’ve stayed in only provide low tables and where I’ve been bending my head working my laptop so much I’ve got the same very painful neck again that I suffered from just before I left home to come to Australia.

The contrast between Manly and Bondi was very stark. Manly was genteel, clean and very much organised as a family resort. Bondi, on the other hand, was none of those things. I don’t know what I expected of Bondi, maybe I was over-expecting as it’s an iconic location with an international reputation. After the impressive initial view I had after parking the car of the sweeping beach framed by trees I was somewhat disappointed with what I found when I got closer.

It wasn’t a help that the wind was blowing a hooley and then some and even increased in velocity while I was there. As one of my photographs shows, even the Bondi seagull squadron was grounded on the beach all with their beaks facing into the wind and the wind was blowing the sand with such force that it was stinging my legs.

I’m glad I visited Bondi but I don’t have the urge to go back. In contrast the ferry ride to Manly and the views afforded there and back of Sydney, the bay, the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge alone made the trip worthwhile without the pleasant impression left by the place itself.

So that’s it for me for Sydney. Tomorrow morning I leave for a something over 5 hour drive to Wagga Wagga on my way back south.

After losing the morning waiting for a change of hotel room (which I eventually got) I decided that I needed to make the most of the time that remained today, so ordered an Uber to take me into the city. The hotel told me that it would cost around Au$50, but it didn’t, just less than Au$30, which I thought was quite reasonable (the return journey also cost about the same).

I got the driver to drop me off at Darling Harbour Wharf 9 which seemed like a good place to start but by the time I’d walked around the corner it had begun to rain, which it did on and off during the rest of the day. While I was sheltering until the worst of the shower had passed I got talking to a very nice American couple from Boston who were leaving to return home tomorrow after being in Australia for 6 weeks, so quite a long vacation.

As soon as the rain eased off I started to walk north along the east side of Darling Harbour heading for Millers Point, The Rocks and ultimately the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Sydney’s CBD (Central Business District) has some stunning modern buildings, just as Melbourne’s has, overlooking the harbour.

At one point I stopped to ask a guy in a white shirt who I thought was a waiter from one of the restaurants on the quayside if I could get to the bridge in the direction I was going. It turned out he was also a visitor, an Aussie, and he said that the last time he was in Sydney none of the new buildings were there. When I asked how far it was to the bridge and if I could walk it, he said, ‘Too far for me mate, I’d get an Uber’.

But I kept going. The next shot shows the view looking back towards the CBD from Barangaroo Reserve. The stunning all-glass building pointing skyward is The Crown and it has a huge gold crown on its side almost at its top.

Eventually I came to Millers Point and was rewarded with my first view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The following shot wasn’t actually the first view but was the first photogenic one.

As I continued on my way to The Rocks, the oldest part of Sydney around the foot of the Harbour Bridge, it began to rain again so as it was about lunchtime, I decided to pop into a small restaurant for a steak salad. The restaurant is on one of the old quays that were originally constructed for international shipping and I guess many of the early immigrants into Australia entered through here. However, they’re no longer required for such a purpose and much the same as in London, they’ve been gentrified with modern new apartments being built on them.

I climbed up some stairs and crossed over one of the bridges mentioned in the above photo and saw my first view of The Rocks. I would imagine the houses were once occupied by the dock workers but they have long gone and been replaced by a much more gentrified type of homeowner.

Much as I would have liked to spend more time exploring The Rocks I couldn’t so just kept taking shots as I continued walking to get up to the Harbour Bridge. I did pass one place of special interest, though, namely the Hero of Waterloo pub. I didn’t have time to stop for a drink and anyway I’d only just had lunch, but I did pop in for a quick pee and also took a photograph of the inside where a small jazz combo was playing.

I then continued on up to the road that runs under the bridge itself.

I then turned a corner and walked parallel to the bridge until I came to an elevator opposite the Glenmore Hotel that took me up to the bridge walkway.

Once on the walkway I headed north until I got my first view of the Sydney Opera House. Like the bridge, the following shot wasn’t the first but it was the first photogenic one.

I don’t know if the walkway on the west side of the bridge was open or not, but if so most of the foot traffic was on the east side because that’s the side with the view of the Opera House. The next shot shows the south-side bridge towers.

The next shot shows the Opera House on the south side and Milsons Point on the north. Between the bridge and the Opera House is Circular Quay where the visiting cruise liners tie up

The next shot was approaching the centre of the bridge.

Finally, here’s the last shot I took looking back towards the Opera House from Milsons Point.

And the next shots are of Milsons Point itself.

The next shot was walking off the bridge at the Milsons Point end and shortly after I reached another elevator which took me back down to ground level.

Having completed the long walk north from Darling Harbour over the bridge I decided I’d take the easy way back to the city and go by train. Much as in London, frequent users purchase an Opal card but occasional users like me just swipe their credit or debit cards. You swipe on and off and the system calculates your fare and debits your card.

A friendly guy who was observing passengers going through the barriers told me that if I wanted to walk south through the CBD one stop would be enough and anyway, if I then wanted to continue again on public transport, I could use the trams that operate on the same principle.

I don’t know the name of the station where I caught the train but I got off at Wynyard Station’s York Street side.

I walked out of the station and sat down in some small gardens opposite to get my bearings and there was one of those pesky Ibises as bold as brass!

I decided to make my way to George Street as by walking south along it I’d be able to see all that I wanted to – the Queen Victoria Building, the Sydney Tower and Sydney’s old Town Hall. Some (most?) of the trams on George Street are incredibly long and swish through the crowds at quite a high speed.

Here’s the Sydney Tower.

Here’s the Queen Victoria Building

And finally, here’s the old Sydney Town Hall.

I picked up an Uber opposite the Town Hall outside Woolworths to return to my hotel. I’ve now seen enough of central Sydney as I just want to see (some of) the sights and get a flavour of where I’m visiting. Call me a philistine if you like but I’m not one for trawling around galleries, museums and the like. I’ve now got to decide what to do tomorrow, my final day in Sydney. I’ve got two options – visit Bondi Beach or take the ferry to Manly which has been recommended to me. I don’t think I can do both as they are in opposite directions and I’m leaning towards Manly.

This stay in the Ibis Budget Hotel in St Peters, Sydney, is turning out to be my most horrific hotel experience ever. After this trip I’ll never cross the threshold of another Ibis Hotel ever again in what remains of my sad, tortured life.

I’m now wasting half a day when I could be exploring Sydney waiting to be moved into another room that is at least barely habitable because the one I slept in last night, apart from having a comfortable bed, was not. I appreciate that disabled people need special facilities but those same facilities are a gross inconvenience for able-bodied people – toilet wise, showering and washing and shaving wise, etc.

My room is at ground level with a window with no blind or curtains that looks straight out onto a KFC outlet, so people entering it and the hotel walk right past and can see straight into my room. It appears that the Accor chain also expect you to pay in advance and eat breakfast in a pig stye with minimal facilities – the ‘buffet’ is like a bookshelf with one toaster, frozen bread straight out of the freezer and a few stale croissants. No teaspoons – little wooden paddles are good enough for their guests. And nowhere close by to drop your waste and used teabags – you are expected to walk across the room balancing your old teabag on your wooden paddle. Absolutely bloody awful.

I’ve been filling in the time making plans for my final few days in Australia. I was originally thinking about returning south via the Snowy Mountains but (a) it’s still bloody cold up there and (b) there are strict rules about carrying and using snow chains if you happen to pass above the snow line. So I’ve abandoned that idea – maybe in my next lifetime if I return to Australia.

So here’s my itinerary.

October 28 – Sydney to Wagga Wagga staying one night there.
October 29 – Wagga Wagga to Geelong, staying one night there.
October 30 – Geelong to Warrnambool, staying overnight there.
October 31 – Warrnambool to Torquay, staying overnight there… (bit pricey!)

After Torquay I’ll take a leisurely drive back to Melbourne airport to drop off my hire car on November 1, stay overnight in the Ibis Budget Airport Hotel (Yes, I know!! But I booked it a long time ago before I knew what they are like, but at least it’ll be for only one night) and then fly out on 2 November heading back via Changi, Singapore.

Warrnambool is as far north on the Great Ocean Road as I want to go and will involve driving north on part of it. That’ll give me a chance to identify places I’ll want to stop at on my way back down to Torquay.

But that’s all to come. For now I’m still wasting time waiting for my room change! The highlight so far is watching large Ibises with long black beaks strolling around in the carpark outside the KFC outside my window. Ibises, you know, the majestic birds of ancient Egypt. Trouble is, nobody told the Australian variants that because there’s also a group of them picking over the rubbish in the KFC dumpster!