One place I always wanted to visit

I had always wanted to visit Australia, mainly to see koala bears, kangaroos, and Ayers Rock.  Last fall, I got my big chance – I had a free flight to Sydney and two weeks of vacation.

I arrived in Sydney on the morning of Friday, 12/18.  It was just the beginning of summer, and the weather was very much like California’s early summers – cooler and a bit foggy in the morning, and beautiful for the rest of the day.  I wandered around The Rocks, Sydney’s historical harbor area where many of Australia’s first prisons were established in the 1700s.  The Harbor Bridge and the Sydney Opera House are located in The Rocks, along with plenty of restaurants, pubs and shops.  That night, I met up with my daughter who was there on business, and we saw a ballet version of Madame Butterfly at the Opera House.

For the next two nights we stayed in Kings Cross, home to Sydney’s red light district which is particularly active on Saturday nights.  During the days, my daughter and I visited Manly Beach (via a ferry from Sydney Harbor) and took an Explorer bus tour of the city.  The Explorer Bus is a red bus that takes you to all the cool sites in Sydney and then some.  You’re allowed to get off whenever you want to see a site more closely and you can get back on another Explorer Bus (there are several running each day) and continue the tour whenever you like.  My favorite stop along the Explorer route was the Sydney Aquarium, which is at least ten times more impressive than the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California.

My daughter and I had no plans of how to get to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef, which is about 2500 kilometers (approximately. 1800 miles) north of Sydney.  We decided to rent a camper-van (“pop top”) and drive up the eastern coast.  There were several things to get used to – driving on the left side of the road, driving from the right side of the car, and operating a stick shift from the steering column.  I let my daughter do most of the driving.

After a few hours of driving north, the surroundings became more green and lush, and the air got a little warmer and stickier (this trend continued for the duration of our 10-day trek).  The beauty of the eucalyptus forests and hum of unknown bugs were broken by a siren beckoning us to pull over.  A New South Wales police officer ticketed my daughter for speeding (120 km/hr in a 100 km/hr zone, which is about 12 mph over the speed limit).  We found that to be an excellent time to stop for the night at a campground, cook spaghetti and get eaten alive by mosquitoes.

The next day we headed towards Byron Bay, a Santa Cruz-ish town that is the easternmost point in Australia.  Once again, our pleasant drive was interrupted by a siren, but my daughter wasn’t speeding this time.  It turns out that I wasn’t wearing my seat-belt properly and our latest friend in the New South Wales Police Service gave me a ticket as my daughter videotaped the event.  Lesson learned: the New South Wales Police Service is really strict.

We drove up to Hervey Bay, where one can see thousands of bats fly out for the evening.  From Hervey Bay, we took a ferry to Fraser Island, the world’s largest sand island.  Strict environmental regulations allow for limited activity on the island, but we were able to take a bus tour.  The vegetation was amazing and we spotted our first dingo on the shore by the site of the S.S. Mohino shipwreck.

We decided to make Christmas Day a very long day of driving so we could reach Airlie Beach by that night.  That was my first and last day driving the camper-van.  By this time, we were well into Queensland (the state north of New South Wales), getting closer to the equator (did I mention that the van did not have air conditioning?).  The gas gauge was on “E” and the petrol (i.e., gas) station we just stopped at displayed a sign reading, “closed for X-mas, next petrol 40 km.”  We forged ahead, and within two kilometers of the one open petrol station on the highway, the van started shuddering.  I downshifted twice until the van was just crawling along with the hazard lights on.  The petrol station was about 50 yards ahead when the gas tank went completely empty, and we barely coasted up to a pump in time.

Our Christmas dinner was less than spectacular – spaghetti, franks and beans.  Our most enjoyable day was the day after Christmas, when we went sailing to the Whitsunday Islands on Gretel, an America’s Cup challenger.  Once we arrived at Hook Island, we snorkeled for hours and saw amazing coral and fish life.

Our next and final Queensland destination was Cairns, which is probably the most popular city for tourists planning a scuba diving trip to the Great Barrier Reef. My daughter and I spent four insanely humid days in Cairns, which is north of the Tropic of Capricorn and south of the equator.  During the days we toured the town (which isn’t anything special), went to a zoo, toured the Kuranda rainforest and went scuba diving for the first time.  The zoo had animal life that I haven’t seen in any American zoo.  At the zoo we had the opportunity to hold a koala bear, a practice which is banned in some states of Australia because of the stress it places on the animals.  While tempted, we chose to admire the koalas from a distance.  We were able to hold a juvenile crocodile (he was sedated) and the kangaroos were quite friendly, probably because they are used to being hand-fed by humans.  The rainforest tour was pretty amazing.  We took gondolas across a large expanse of the forest, which provided amazing views and dropped us off in the little town of Kuranda.  The scuba diving outing was more interactive.  We were able to touch several fish, sea cucumbers and certain corals.  Breathing with scuba gear on gave me the eerie sensation of turning into Darth Vader, but once underwater, I adjusted.  Also, this may have just been in Michaelmas Cay (one of the most common spots along the Great Barrier Reef for scuba diving), but many of us snorkeling and scuba diving were repeatedly stung by sea lice.  Just like the Darth Vader sensation, though, it’s unsettling at first but you get used to it.  Our nights in Cairns were spent in the swimming pool, trying desperately to cool off so we might be able to sleep through the night.  We didn’t have much luck – the two of us averaged about four hours of sleep each night.

One bit of safety advice that I’d like to offer to anyone planning a trip to Australia is to beware of the jellyfish.  It seemed like every beach we visited had a sign with photographs showing the physical scars of a jellyfish attack.  In Sydney and the surrounding areas, this is not too much of a concern as the potent jellyfish are farther north in Queensland.  Once in Queensland, however, be very careful.  If you spot a jellyfish, get in front of it so the tentacles won’t touch you.  Most of the beaches where the box jellyfish is present have netted areas in which it is safe to swim.  Because the box jellyfish can kill an adult human with its sting, it is very wise to stay within the netted areas.  Most scuba diving and snorkeling areas along the Great Barrier Reef don’t have the box jellyfish because the water is so shallow.  We were told about another jellyfish, the Iriganji, whose migratory patterns have yet to be understood.  The Iriganji jellyfish’s sting has not yet proved lethal, but the physical effects are excruciating.

On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, we flew back to Sydney and scrambled to our hotel in the suburbs (we left New Year’s Eve hotel reservations until the last minute and thus ended up a 40-minute train ride from the city) to get ready for the festivities.  We met up with my girlfriend who happened to be in Australia at the same time and the three of us ran to the Harbor Bridge just in time to see the midnight fireworks and an entire city full of drunk people.  We continued the celebration at an Irish pub in The Rocks and stumbled back to our hotel at 3 a.m.  Our last two days in Australia were lazy, as we were exhausted from the road trip and New Year’s Eve.

Some tips for anyone planning a trip to Australia:

  • The exchange rate is very favorable.
  • There is no tipping – not waiters, bellboys or anyone else.
  • Stay away from the jellyfish!
  • Vegemite is horrific.
  • The New South Wales Police Service is extremely strict.
  • Australians drink.  A lot.
  • Capsicum = Bell Pepper.