Photos from Jurong Bird Park

Love for a home town - Biggenden.

Road to nowhere

Times visited: May 2006, April 2012.

My hometown is Biggenden, a small town 100 kilometers inland, and 330 kilometers north-west of the state capital of Brisbane. Biggenden is small and conservative, with a population of 644 spread over a few streets. There is not much to see, except for glorious Australian bush with an ample number of kangaroos, koalas, and 21 species of dangerous snakes, including eastern browns and taipans (#2 and #4 on the list of world's most venomous snakes respectively).

Complete map of my town, which is easy to traverse by foot in thirty minutes

The main street of Biggenden

Nightlife at 7.30 on a Thursday evening 

I've been twice since I left in 1988. In 2006, during a brief spell in which I stopped living in China and had yet to discover Singapore, I visited with my parents for a weekend. I found the most noticeable thing about the town was that the food was improbably delicious, far better than anything I'd tasted in Brisbane. On my repeat visit in April, 2012, I found the same, necessitating the eating of three meat pies in a very short period of time. The steaks are locally grown, and a pub dinner is not complete without gravy and chips. We stayed overnight in the local pub, in one of its four fundamental 'two-star' rooms with old hairs decorating the shower, and a checkout time of 9 am.

There seems to be only one cafe in town now - after 'Chooks' burnt down - serving food with cosmopolitan names. When I'd lived there, no-one had heard of pita bread or feta cheese.

From this...

... to this. 

The best thing to do in Biggenden is walk. The air is clean, and the scenery is beautiful. My father, who was the local pharmacist twenty-five odd years ago, kept running into people he knew. But I've managed to keep my anonymity since I no longer resemble the stick figure of my childhood, and anyway most of my classmates have flown the coup.

The newly renovated house in which I lived for fifteen years half a life-time ago.

A railway runs through the center of town. I used to ride my bike over the rickety 'overhead' bridge from which this shot was taken, on my way to school.

Each time I've visited, Biggenden has managed to pull off beautiful sunsets and sunrises for me.

A statue in Beiers Park. Despite the decline in population, Biggenden seems strangely awash with money, and much more kempt than I remember.

The old butter factory. A new electrical business moved in.

Meanwhile, the Anglican priest moved out, and they now have a locum. This is where I played organ, bore a cross in the occasional procession, and got bored by sermons (unless it was my dad who was giving them). 

The most notable scenic feature of Biggenden is Mt Walsh, locally known as the Bluff. It's home to the Taipan, a snake with an aptly coffin-shaped head.

A close-up of the peak. I love the rock structures.

A yellow-faced whip snake crosses the road at the foot of the Mt Walsh National Park. I was brave, photographing the creature whilst wearing open-toed slippers.

Weird birds, who come for closer looks at strangers rather than flying away like Singaporean birds do.

Chowey Bridge, a local attraction now fenced off from accident-prone public.

Paradise dam, built on an old gold-rush ghost-town. Widely viewed as an ecological disaster, it still seems popular with the locals.

It seems as unlikely that I will revisit my hometown as it seems improbable that I could have progressed from being a country kid to living in and as a citizen of one of the most bustling cities in the world. Whether or not I can return, I certainly won't forget this beautiful place.

武陵源 - Zhangjiajie

Times visited: May 2009, April 2012


After the first time I visited Wulingyuan, I made a joke that it only requires a 15 minute visit to the park to take in the full beauty of the thousands of karst peaks. The joke is half-rooted in the truth. Although I recommend 2.5 days, the truth is that most of the 5000 hectares in the Zhangjiajie national park that neighbours Wulingyuan are pretty similar to one another. A more important aspect of the visit is that the weather is usually terrible - with rain, or a thick haze - but rarely the beautiful vista of fully formed clouds floating in just the right places between the peaks to allow the gorgeous pictures of which tourist books are made.

My travel plan, which executed well, was as follows:

Day 0. Arrive in the evening at Zhangjiajie airport, some 40 kilometers from the main entrance to the park. I stayed locally in the city for the evening. Try to find a taxi driver to take you to Wulingyuan village at midnight and you will get chronically ripped off.

Day 1. I checked out of the Zhangjiajie hotel very early, found a taxi driver to take me to Wulingyuan for 100 yuan, and was at the excellent five-star Qinhe hotel by 8.30, ready to check in and discard baggage. A fifteen minute walk later, and I was at the park entrance, with the 245元 two day pass, ready to be finger-printed at the turnstile.

There are internal park buses at each of the main tourist sights. You must queue in the correct line to take the right bus. Without some knowledge of Chinese, this is not easy, and most of the foreign tourists joined tour parties or had individual guides. I was by myself. I took the bus to Bailong elevator, a lift that rises 330 metres to the top of the karst.

The queues for the glass elevator were pretty horrific. We passed by many posters proclaiming the similarity between some mountain in the movie Avatar, which I have never seen, and one of the forthcoming karsts. It seemed a bit tacky. The views at the top of the elevator were worthwhile. People who are afraid of heights or of standing on cliff edges with only rickety railings interposing from certain death might find some compromises in order.

This photo was taken in 2009. In 2012 there were thousands of tourists on this path.

The floor of the bridge between the two karst peaks is made of three lanes. One is solid, and two are criss-crossings of iron that permit you to see the hundreds of meters between the bottom of your feet and the ground. Most people walk on the solid plank, but there are people walking in both directions, and the plank is only one person wide. The girl ahead of me froze, terrified even on the plank. Walking on 70% of nothing helped cure me of my fear of heights for the rest of the trip.

From here, you can walk down the mountain, but I took a bus to Tianzhi - God's fingers - which is supposed to be the highlight of the park.

From Tianzhi, I took a cable car to the base of the mountain - quite an experience in itself, although the old women who comprised the other passengers in the car gossiped for the duration of the journey without a glance at the scenery.

By now it was 3.30. I took a bus back to the entrance of the park, then a local bus to Yellow Dragon cave, about which I will talk more in another blog entry.

Day 2. For forty yuan, I took a taxi to the southern entrance of the park, to visit Huang Shi, a village at the highest point of the park. Taking a taxi saved messing about with queues and buses.

At the south entrance of the park.

Another cable car later (not included in the price of the park ticket), and I was in Huang Shi, with a crowd that was ignoring signs about feeding monkeys, and feeding the monkeys (including a one-eyed youngster with a very nasty wound).

The village is not so much a village as a pagoda and a few derelict shops. Inside the pagoda, there is a minority troupe that gives regular performances. The highlight involves beautiful girls picking male members of the audience and supposedly getting married to them. I detected a few jealous girlfriends.

At the pinnacle of Huang Shi. My favourite shot I've taken of Zhangjiajie, from 2009.

It takes a few hours to walk around the top of this karst peak, with some beautiful views. It might be best to do it in the afternoon, when the sun shines on the highlights instead of against them.

From Huang shi, you can walk down the mountain, or take the return cable car. I walked down. This meant that I was quite tired for the highlight of the trip, the seven kilometer meander along Golden Whip Stream. As the views down the mountain are not that great, I recommend taking the cable car (if you can stand the queues).

Turn left from the south entrance of the park and you will arrive at the cable car to Huang Shi. Turn right, and you will end up at Golden Whip stream, a truly beautiful babbling brook that wanders along a karst valley. Chinese tourists seem genuinely happy to paddle in the stream and take photos of each other. I enjoyed the unusually large number of birds (for China) and their songs. Although my photos don't reflect it, it is one of the best beauty spots of China.

From the other end of the stream, it is a short bus ride past a reservoir back to the main entrance of the park.

Day 3.

Unless you have purchased the 7 day ticket for 298 yuan - I cannot think how to profitably spend 7 days in the park - the ticket has expired.

In the morning of day 3, I visited Bao Feng lake, to the south of Wulingyuan city, which is covered by its own ticket, and its own blog article.

In the afternoon, I returned to Zhangjiajie city, which is worth a few days by itself.