When I was living in London and needed to re-charge at the weekends I headed home to my parents house. It was amazing how much longer and refreshing weekends in the countryside feel.
On Sunday I took advantage of the car I temporarily have use of, heading to Botany Bay National Park with my friend Kerensa. Being a complete dunce I hadn't realised that the national park was on the site of Captain Cooks first landing in Australia back in 1770. I just thought I was going to see some whales!
The park is quite attractive. Near the visitors centre there are some landscaped lawns, a commemorative flag pole and stone circle. We had a picnic on the lawns before setting off to walk across to the coast. The limestone cliffs are pretty dramatic with big waves crashing against the rocks.
Despite it being a record whale season we only saw the puff of a single whale breathing once. However, it was just lovely to be out of Sydney and seeing somewhere new.
Despite the national park itself being lovely there is no escaping the fact that Botany is now a very industrial part of Sydney. The Caltex oil refinery was almost always in view and if the wind was in the wrong direction it whiffed a bit too. Planes were overhead every minute as they headed into land at Sydney airport. Finally there was a very strange clanging sound in Botany Bay. I couldn't work out of it was coming from the refinery or a dredging boat.
Weekends away in the countryside do slow things down a whole lot don't they. I was just thinking yesterday that we really should be utilising more of Sydney's National Park areas, too many unvisited places for me.
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