Australia Recap

[Nonny]

I've been back from Australia for several weeks now, but I finally got around to pulling my photos off my camera, and I figured I couldn't do a recap if I didn't include at least some pictures.    (I think it goes without saying, but PDQ the pics.)

Despite the setbacks of our cruise being cancelled and scrambling to find things to do in Cairns, and then later a setback of our ferry to Kangaroo Island also getting cancelled, we had a great time.

I'll try to keep this as brief as I can, but I'm sure I'll end up writing a novel.  (ETA:  Yup, it's a novel.)

The flights from SEA -> LAX -> BNE (Brisbane) -> CNS (Cairns) were uneventful, and flying Virgin Australia in "The Business" internationally and First Class domestically was awesome.  We got TSA pre-check in the US (we have NEXUS and thus precheck and global entry), and special express passes and specialty boarding with our own security lane, plus lounge access, lay flat beds, the works.  It was $$$$$$ but I'm not sad we splurged.

Once in Cairns we freshened up in our hotel's gym (no early check in) and they held our bags while we went off and got SIM cards and bought sunscreen and drinks.  On our way back from the mall we took a wrong turn on the way to the grocery (going to the grocery store is one of my top favorite things to do in other countries, because I love trying out new snacks we can't get in the US - favorite Australian snack, chicken twisties, like a combo of a cheeto and a chicken-in-a-biscuit cracker - don't judge!  ).  

We ended up outside the Cairns library, where we saw one of my absolute favorite things of the entire trip - a tree FILLED with flying foxes (mega fruit bats).  Check out this video (sound on).  I could have watched them for hours (we later saw them at night flying past our second hotel in giant flocks):



We did the night market that night, and in typical fashion we planned poorly and hadn't figured out dinner beforehand (which we know better), so we ended up having a crummy dinner of sandwiches at a coffee shop that took...forever...so...slow...not...worth...it.

The next day we switched to our free hotel, which ended up being the Pullman Cairns Casino, and did a tour that was Tjapukai Cultural Park + Hartley's (tour bus picked us up and took us to Tjapukai, then picked us again a few hours later to take us to Hartley's, and then took us back to the wrong hotel, which was OK, it was like 1/2 a block away and not worth it to correct the driver).  Loved Hartleys!  I wish we would have had more time there (the bus schedule was weird and we had a random hour at Tjapukai were nothing was going on that would have been better spent at Harleys).  I petted a baby crock at the farm, plus kangaroos, and go to feed fruit to cassowaries.  That night we actually planned out dinner and had really good Indian food.

Saturday was reef day!  I ended up booking us through Reef Magic, which took us to the outer reef to a permanently moored platform thing called Marine World, and I booked myself two snorkeling tours, and let my H babysit my bag and go out on a glass bottomed boat, while I was out looking at the fish and coral.  It was INSANELY choppy on the 1.5 hour ride out and people were puking all over the place; I felt so badly for them, and for the crew who had to keep passing out (and collecting used) barf bags.  I put on a scopolamine patch the night before as a precaution (since I'd already picked up my Rx well before the cruise was cancelled), and I'm really glad I did! 

Also, since the 3 other tours we booked didn't come anywhere close to what we'd been spending on the cruise, I paid the upsell and bought the pro photos from the trip, which I wouldn't normally do, but they got an awesome shot of me with Wally the Maori Wrasse (which I couldn't do with selfies, and I wanted this pic!):



The ride back to Cairns was just as rough, with just as much puking, and after a day of swimming and not very good (or very much) food I spend most of the trip dozing with my head in my H's lap.  We went to dinner at Indonesian restaurant that night, The Bagus Café, and I would highly recommend going there if you find yourself in need of an amazing dinner in Cairns.

Sunday we did a evening rainforest tour with Wait A While tours, and this took us SW of Cairns, so not up towards Daintree, and despite being eaten alive by mosquitos, this was a great trip and my H's favorite thing we did I think the whole time.  Our guide was not Paul the owner, it was his employee (possibly business partner?) who is a German biologist, who seemed to know everything about everything we encountered.  We tried unsuccessfully to find platypus several times, but we got to see lots of other things along the way, and had a pretty good dinner to boot that was included.  Also, because it's a small world, the other couple on our tour was from West Seattle, so we also got to chat about things back home with them.  

Monday we flew to Darwin, and got temporarily waylaid by the weather, which trapped us in the airport for about 30 minutes when they had to pull the ground crew due to lightening.

Tuesday we had talked to about doing the Litchfield tour, but we decided we needed some downtime and instead we had a tasty and relaxed brunch at a place called the Rabbithole (would also highly recommend).  We also tried to go tour the WWII oil tunnels, but we misread when they were open, and they were closed when we got there.  This was our laundry day as well.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we were on The Ghan, which was definitely a unique experience, and I'm not sorry we did it, but I can't say I'd recommend it to anyone unless you are over 60, highly social with strangers, and can basically sleep anywhere.  I'm a terrible sleeper, and sleeping on a bunk on a herky-jerky train was not particularly fun, and while I can make small talk with anyone, the communal dining for all of the meals with a different couple each meal was making my husband want to murder people by the end of the trip.  

Our first stop was in Katherine where we did the Nitmiluk Gorge tour - beautiful, but it was nearly 100 degrees and so unpleasantly hot that it kind of didn't feel worth it.

Our second stop was in Alice Springs where we had an incredibly racist tour bus driver for the day.  It was interesting when we were off the bus and seeing things without his unpleasant commentary (School of the Air, Royal Flying Doctors, a reptile house), but between that and flies it was a weird morning and afternoon.  That evening there was a big BBQ with live music and I got to ride a camel.  

Our third stop was Coober Pedy, which wasn't nearly as underground as I had been led to believe, but it was still really cool to see the opal mines.  They also took us out to the Breakaways, which were beautiful.  We saw some wild emu's along the way, and the dog fence too.


Once we got to Adelaide on Saturday that was the end of our pre-booked, guided tours and we were on our own.  We picked up our rental car and I drove us down to Cape Jervis, all the while marveling at how the area between the two cities looks exactly like southern Oregon, except with palm trees.  This is when we hit our next snag; it turned out all the ferries to Kangaroo Island were cancelled that day due to high winds, and they had sent me an email about it maybe 20 minutes after we'd gotten our car and hit the road.  If we'd gotten the email before driving down we would have likely taken the refund and stayed around Adelaide, but since we were already down there we got booked into a replacement "cabin" and onto a 10 am ferry the next morning.  And I'm glad we didn't cancel, because the island was awesome!

The replacement accommodations sucked - the bathroom was filthy, there was a millipede problem (at least it wasn't spiders), and there is literally nothing in Cape Jervis except the ferry terminal and the few random places to stay.  We ended driving to Victor Harbor, wandered around for an hour but everything closed at 5 pm so there was nothing to actually do, had dinner, and came back.  My H actually liked this part though, because he was happy to be away from all the people on the train and on our own.  LOL!  

We made it Kangaroo Island the next morning, and got a penguin tour booked at the tourist office straight away, then went to Clifford's Honey Farm for a bit, skipped the Raptor Domain due to lack of time, and then made our way to Flinder's Chase to see the Admiral's Arch (and TONS of fur seals) and the Remarkable Rocks.  We managed to time it between tour buses, and it was a windy, overcast, drizzly Sunday, so we basically had the Rocks to ourselves.



We also did get to see the Little penguins!  We saw about five of them during our tour, which was just the two of us and the guide, because no one else had signed up.  It wasn't the season for chicks, but we did, ahem, see some mating.  He also gave us a quick star gazing tour at the end (which we also got in Alice Springs at the BBQ, but the viewing was actually much better on the island).



Monday wasn't particularly exciting, as it was basically an all day travel day from Kangaroo Island to Adelaide, and then Adelaide to Sydney.  We did fly out of Adelaide at sunset though, and it was probably the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen with the way the colors were hitting above and below the clouds as we left the city.  We bought Opal cards and dinner at a Woolies Express after we got settled into our AirBnB.

Tuesday we spent the entire day walking around Sydney (we walked about 12 miles).  We went and saw the bridge and opera house first, and then wandered the Royal Botanical Gardens until we got hungry, at which point my H insisted he needed to eat Hungry Jacks (aka Burger King).  It was a shitty meal, but I humored him on the grounds that we also go to the Bavarian Pretzel house and Max Brennar Chocolate Bar over on Manly Beach, which we did and were much better even just as snacks.

On Manly Beach we watched the most clichéd, comic like act of shop lifting ever (a guy on a bike stole a shirt off a rack outside the store, and literally said, "ha HA" in a cartoon villain voice as he slowly peddled away as the shop worker protested feebly for him to bring it back).  Then we walked to Shelly Beach and watched birds, and people surfing, and then came back and watched people taking selfies with the "beach closed due to sharks" sign that was up when we got back to Manly.  We capped off the day with last minute tickets to see "The Children" at the Opera House's drama theater.

Wednesday we were pretty much dead tired from all of the walking the day before, so after bad coffee and mediocre food from a poor recommendation from our AirBnB hosts, we wandered over to Chinatown, around the Paddys Market, and people watched at Darling Harbor, before going to Hyde Park and doing even more people watching. It was a very chill day, topped with a trip to Aldi's for licorice, and an early dinner of burgers before we had to head home on Thursday.

Neither of us accomplished much sleeping on the flight back, so by the time we got back to Seattle we'd been travelling for about 35 hours on about 3 hours of sleep.  The jet lag the following few days was not fun, but we survived. I also got caught up on a lot of movies on the way home. Ha!  

One last tip that I need to remember for next time, if your international airline does you a favor and prints your boarding passes for your domestic legs, get them reprinted anyway when you land in the US.  We didn't do this when we got to LAX on our return trip, and so we didn't have TSA pre-check going through security on the way home, but after we were through security, delta reprinted out boarding passes anyway when we were getting our lounge access, and wouldn't you know, the pre-check mark was printed there.  We could have saved ourselves a LOT of hassle if we had known to do this, because general LAX security took longer than all of the other security check points during all the other legs of our trip combined.

Many thanks to everyone who helped me with my itinerary and offered up suggestions along the way, and tried to help talk me down from my melt downs when things were going wrong!

[mrsd2006]

That looks amazing. Why did your cruise get cancelled?

[Nonny]

May 14, 2018 8:56:31 GMT -5 mrsd2006 said:

That looks amazing. Why did your cruise get cancelled?

It was a small form cruise, with a max of about 40 passengers, and everyone except me, my H, and one other person cancelled, and they needed at least 6 people to sail.

We obviously don't know why all the other passengers were bailing, but we suspect it was due to the weather.  In the weekish before we were supposed to sail, there was a cyclone in the area with tons of rain and flooding.  But when we were there the floods had all receded, and there was no rain.  It was about 10-15 degrees F hotter than I was expecting (even the people who lived there were surprised by the heat at that time of year), and it was kind of cloudy/overcast a lot of the time, but really the weather was kind of perfect.  It was even less humid than I'd been anticipating.  

[wise_rita]

I'm glad it all came together!

One hell of a country this place is.

[expatjen]

Great recap! Will definitely have a look at your recommended tour companies - especially the night-time rainforest tour