Even from a very early age, I knew I didn’t want to miss out on anything life had to offer just because it might be considered dangerous. – Nicole Kidman

December 16, 2023 – January 28, 2024

Six weeks in Australia and I can sum up my time with rocks, wine, water, and wildlife. I started in Darwin in the Northern Territory, headed down to Perth in Western Australia, then to Adelaide in South Australia, Melbourne in Victoria, Sydney in New South Wales, Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands in Queensland, and then back to Sydney. I saw more of Australian than many Aussies. As Australia is just about as big as the USA, almost 3 million square miles compared to just over 3.5 million square miles, I flew from city to city. I thought to take the train from Perth to Adelaide so see more of the countryside, even though it was an expensive endeavor, but it was sold out. And although its land mass is large, its population, just over 26.5 million people, is less than 10% of the US population.

The highlight of my trip was having my friend, Kandi Simons, join me for two weeks in Melbourne, Sydney and Airlie Beach. We met as young accountants in Milwaukee and have been friends for over 40 years – gasp! That’s a long time. I love to travel with her because she is full of stories, easily engages with people, puts up with me, and we laugh a lot. That last one does cause me problems now and again. I got a nice break too, as she took over booking tours and Ubers. And as a cyclone headed towards us in Airlie Beach, she brought a lot of experience from her life and the hurricanes on the east coast of Florida. We flew back to Sydney a day early to avoid getting stuck in Airlie Beach and not making our flights to our next destinations. It was just in time, as we got the last flight from the Proserpine Airport that day and there were none the next. Cyclone Kirrily hit Townsville, 170 miles north of Airlie Beach, as a Category 3 the evening we left. Did you know that cyclones spin clockwise and hurricanes counterclockwise, otherwise they’re the same?

As the population is so small compared to its size, any where you go in Australia takes a long time. My first tour took me to Kakadu National Park to see cave paintings which was a 12 hour round trip. The paintings hidden in the rocks may be up to 22,000 years old. They were made by one of the tribes of the First Nations People. I continued to drive long distances, 8, 10 and 12 hours, to see rocks across the country – from Perth to Wave Rock and the Pinnacles, from Adelaide to the Remarkable Rocks on Kangaroo Island, and from Melbourne to the Nobbies and the Apostles. We took a helicopter ride to see the rocky coast of Sydney then walked the Bondi Beach to Coogee Trail to see the cliffs up close. I missed Ayers Rock or Uluru, as the tours to it were either booked or not running over the holidays, when I was close enough to take a flight and then a long drive to get there. The bus rides allowed me to see a lot more of the Australian countryside, hear the locals described their country and history, and meet new people.

Other long rides took me to wineries around the continent. No visit to Australia would be complete without tasting its fabulous wines. My first trip was to Swan Valley from Perth, unfortunately I missed Margaret Valley which I understand has marvelous wines. Then from Adelaide I visited the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale, the Yarra Valley from Melbourne and finally Hunter Valley from Sydney. Shiraz is the iconic Australia wine and high on my list of yummy reds. Chardonnay is another popular wine and Kandi’s favorite. I tasted many varietals I hadn’t tried before, like Verdellho, made from a Portuguese grape. I tasted wine with cheese, wine with chocolate and wine with lunch. I love lunches in vineyards, especially when you dine with fellow travelers you met in Madagascar. It was so fun to reconnect with Pamela and Frank who live in Perth. The drinking didn’t stop there much to my chagrin. I tried ginger beer which I found to be very refreshing and often imbibed on hot days with lunch. I rode a pedal tavern in Adelaide, something I always wanted to do, and although we have lots of them in Nashville, I never got a chance. I did a boozy history tour in Melbourne, visited a distillery from Sydney and a micro brewery in Manly Beach. There was lots of gin to try in Australia, thankfully I don’t like it. I may need to consider dry February.

Eighty-five percent of Australia’s population lives within 50 kilometers of the coast, 90 percent within 100 kilometers. It would take you 27 years to visit all the beaches on the Australian shoreline. So it’s no surprise that there’s a lot to do, in and around the water. One day while Kandi and I were in Manly Beach, I watched as children were taking wind surfing, snorkeling, sailing and SUP lessons. They start them early. Kandi and I were there kayaking across the Sydney Bay. Each city had brunch, lunch, dinner and sunset cruises – your choice of a boat, yacht or a tall ship. I tried them all. Ferries shuttled you across the harbors or sounds of Adelaide and Sydney and down the rivers of Perth and Melbourne – quick and easy transportation to new destinations like Fremantle, Manly Beach, Rottnest Island, Kangaroo Island, and the Docklands. All the while enjoying the sites of the city you’re in. I wanted to snorkel while I was here, but was thwarted in Darwin by the crocodiles, long distances in Perth and Adelaide and cold water in Melbourne. I finally got the opportunity in Airlie Beach and had two trips scheduled to the Great Barrier Reef. Kandi and I made the first trip to the Whitsunday Islands, swimming among hundreds of fish and along the reef but our second foray was canceled due to the weather. I was so disappointed. We got our feet wet in the ocean at Clovelly Beach in Sydney as we watched the surfers, but unfortunately didn’t have our suits as we had planned to be in the Blue Mountains that day. That trip was cancelled and our suitcases stored at a hotel, so access to our bathers was difficult. It was a very hot day so a deeper dive would have been refreshing.

My first wildlife sighting was a wallaby on my trip to Kakadu National Park. Wallabies look like kangaroos but are smaller. I expected to see kangaroos all across Australia so was rather disappointed that I didn’t see one right away. But it was hot in Darwin and they prefer the cooler hours of the day. Once I got to Adelaide and beyond, I did see them quite a bit on my trips through the countryside. Most were just laying in fields and hopping happily across the landscape. And I got to feed and pet them at a conservation center on Kangaroo Island. There are twice as many roos in Australia than people. If a roo runs across the road at dusk or dawn and you hit it with your car, you should stop and check their pouch to make sure a joey isn’t inside. If there is one, and the roo is dead, you’re supposed to remove it and take it to the nearest town and give it to a wildlife carer. Kandi and I rode on a bus for 10 hours to see the penguin parade on Phillips Island. These are the tiniest little birds which arrive on the coast around dusk, and in groups waddle across the beach and up the sand dunes to their burrows. They are adorable. It was so cold. The temperature was in the low sixties but the brisk wind off the ocean chilled us to the bone. I appreciated our guide recommending that we buy a fleece blanket at the gift shop. Given it was summer in Australia, we weren’t prepared.

An animal I hadn’t seen before but was in abundance on Rottnest Island, off the coast of Perth, were the cute little Quokkas. And no trip to Australia would be complete without seeing the koalas, they are as adorable as their pictures but very dangerous with their long claws. There are over 800 different eucalyptus species in Australia but koala only eat 10 varieties. Eucalyptus are poisonous even to baby koala, so the mothers have to feed them their feces for six months to work up a tolerance to the toxins. My first sighting was of a mother and joey in a tree behind a restaurant on Kangaroo Island. I observed sea lions resting in the sand after three days at sea and seals sunning on the rocks. I saw crocodiles of course and many unusual birds – white ibis, magpies, parrots, cockatoos and more. And I heard many very loud birds. I was a little let down when I didn’t see any emus or wild camels. Eighty percent of the animals that live in Australia cannot be found anywhere else.

Australia felt like America in many ways so it was very comfortable to travel through. As I write this, I have trouble finding really clear examples. The traffic, roads, and highways seem familiar but they drive on the opposite side of the road and use a lot more roundabouts for traffic management than we do. They speak English but often it’s hard to understand them. One guide said that Australians open their mouth about 3 cm when they speak, while most others countries open their mouth 6 cm or more. So at times it feels like they’re mumbling. And they talk fast, using different words and phrases than we do for many things. When they greet you its “How are you going?” instead of “How are you doing?” It’s especially confusing when you’re at, say an airline check in counter, and you respond Melbourne and they’re expecting you to say fine. It’s a bottleshop instead of a liquor store, stocktaking instead of inventory, chips instead of fries, chemist instead of drug store, entree instead of appetizer and your entree is a main. There are so many slang terms they have a song to explain some of them as well as have them printed on t-shirts. It’s much easier to get around here, a least easier than Nashville and I think a lot of American cities. They have all sorts of mass transportation – buses, ferries, trains, trams, many are free and the rest at very reasonable prices. They’re fast, prompt and come regularly. There are bike lanes everywhere. I used a scooter for the first time and once I got used to it, I found it very useful for short distances. However, their cellular service, at least what I was connected to, was very slow and often would disappear for minutes at a time.

One thing that I enjoyed which is popular in the US as well, is the street art. Big murals were everywhere in Darwin, Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne but not so much in Sydney – no clue why. It seems to be much more diverse here, especially in Melbourne and Sydney. Walk down any street and you see a plethora of faces from around the world. A few times I was taken aback when I heard an obviously Asian person speak Aussie English, I’m not sure why. Obviously, they were born and raised here. Mandarin, Cantonese and Vietnamese are three of the top five languages spoken in the country. The Chinese were one of the early settlers, especially during the gold rush days. The young people, from all those countries I visited- India, Nepal, Bhutan, etc., who moved to Australia for better opportunities were clearly visible on the streets and driving our Ubers. I was told that 70 to 80 percent of the population have parents who were born someplace other than Australia. I asked several people what was the one or two Aussie dishes I needed to try and they had a hard time coming up with things. Food here is globally inspired. Walk through any of the cities and you’ll find Korean, Chinese, Thai, Sri Lankan, Indian, Brazilian, Italian, French, German, Mexican – I had a lot of Mexican to make up for my months without it. When they did come up with something, chips was the number one answer for an Aussie food. I sampled them repeatedly. Meat pies, sausage rolls, fish and chips and shrimp on the barbie also popped up occasionally. Seafood of course was plentiful with barramundi as the most common, though not my favorite.

I spent more time in each city here than I have anywhere else, so had a much more ‘normal’ existence. I ate breakfast every morning in my AirBnB’s, and many nights I cooked dinner or brought some take away food home with me. I walked through many different neighborhoods; shopped for food, clothes and a suitcase; and took buses ferries, and trams to tourist attractions, the mall or the beach. I experienced life here like a local in some ways. I enjoyed each town with their unique personalities. Darwin was small, population 150,000, and felt very new. Cyclone Tracy flattened the city in 1974 so much of the construction is less than 50 years old, with a lot of mid-rise condo and apartment buildings. It was very hot and humid in Darwin. Perth, with a population of over 2 million, is known as the most isolated city in the world. It is very rich due to the mining in the area. Gold prompted its original boom but now more lithium is mined there than anywhere else in the world. Iron ore is also a major industry. Mine workers can easily earn over $200k a year working 8 days on and 8 days off. It was in the mid-90’s here but dry so I found it comfortable while the locals thought it was very hot. 

Adelaide, population just under 1.4 million, was unusual because it had a ring of parkland around the mile square CBD. Originally designed as a defensive mechanism, the parks are as wide as a cannon shot. As I was much further south, the temperature was milder. One night, I had to grab a sweater as I walked through the city. Melbourne, population of over 5 million, is known for its rich cultural life of arts, sports, food and architecture. Also, for the alleys and lanes where restaurants and bars are hidden away from the traffic of busy downtown life. It is considered the world’s most liveable city. Sydney, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane also top the list of most liveable cities. Sydney is slightly larger than Melbourne, and is famous for its opera house, harbor bridge and beaches. Kandi I did a BridgeClimb and viewed the city from 440 feet above the harbor. It was exhilarating. The bridge is the longest steel arch bridge and has 6 million rivets in it. The Eiffel Tower has 3 million in comparison. We attended a performance at the opera house as well as touring the unusual structure. An interesting tidbit – there are 3,194 billionaires in the world and 4% live in Australia even though they only make up .33% of the world population.

One thing that was uniquely Australian, was the recognition of the First Nations People. Every tour we went on, the plays we attended, and signs posted at various sites all acknowledged the ancient tribes that lived and live here and their connection to the land. The oldest existing indigenous people live in Australia and have been here for 60,000 years. Their term for a group of aboriginal people is a mob. The tribes in Australia were the first culture to do controlled burns. They were also the first culture to separate groups by skin colors to avoid marriages of closely related people. The spirit world is very important to them and you hear a lot of references to the dream world and dream stories. Knowledge is segregated. Some knowledge only woman can know, some just the elders, some only shaman and some is general knowledge that all of the mob can know, though not necessarily shared with outsiders. 

I stayed at AirbnB’s across the continent and had mixed results. Darwin and Perth were fine but nothing to write home about. The Melbourne and Airlie Beach condos were wonderful-nicely decorated, comfortable beds, nice linens and especially in Airlie Beach lovely little extras and a beautiful view of the ocean. In Sydney however, we stayed at two different places where the condos themselves were nice and fairly new but were very sparsely furnished. We obviously weren’t their target audience. In one, I think they bought a mattress set and put the box spring on one bed and the mattress on the other. I may as well have slept on the floor it was so hard. One, we called Cell 508. There was not one picture on the walls, no throw pillows to soften the room, and no extras of any sort. Usually there are extra pillows, blankets, toilet paper, etc. One odd thing did happen the day I rode a bike around Rottnest Island. I had just taken a dip to cool off in one of the bays and was eating some snacks at a picnic table off the parking lot, when I young German couple asked to sit with me. I of course agreed. We hadn’t talked too long before I started to get a weird feeling. Their questions weren’t too different than what other people asked about my trip but their intensity made me uncomfortable. My gut told me to leave so I excused myself and continued my ride around the island. I did not see them again. That’s a first on this trip.

As I love water and urban living, I could easily live in any of the major cities In Australia and feel right at home. Too bad it’s on the other side of the world and so far from my family and friends.

Book List:

A Town Like Alice by Neil Shute

The Secret River by Kate Grenville

The Picnic At Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

Cloud Street by Tim Winton

Next up: Bali, Indonesia