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Australia, NZ + Tahiti

January - March 2024
Exploring our final continent Read more
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  • Australia, NZ + Tahiti
    Day 1

    And we’re off!

    January 21 in Canada ⋅ ☁️ -2 °C

    We’re now off to visit our final continent, Oceania. Huge tick on our travel wish list ✅

    Flying from Toronto Pearson to San Francisco this afternoon and then on to Brisbane, Australia. Our first flight is five and a bit hours. The second flight is 14 hours.

    Great opportunity to catch up watching movies that are potential Oscar nominees.    Read more

  • Australia, NZ + Tahiti
    Day 1

    SFO to BNE

    January 21 in the United States ⋅ 🌧 14 °C

    Arrived in San Francisco on schedule and now have a four hour wait until we board a 14-hour flight to Brisbane. Next footprint, we’ll be in Oz!

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    Day 3

    Hello, Australia! (Brisbane)

    January 23 in Australia ⋅ ☁️ 26 °C

    After a 14-hour flight from San Francisco, we arrived to an overcast Brisbane. But that didn’t dampen our excitement at having now stepped foot on all seven continents. We can now consider ourselves members of the Seven Continents Club!

    We planned this as our recovery/“get on their clock” day so had no firm plans. Brisbane is the third largest city in Australia with a population of about 2.6 million. Our hotel is in the city centre so it’s easy to walk to a number of sites. In the morning, we walked around Queen Street Mall, a pedestrian promenade, and visited Anzac Square which was opened in 1930 to honour those who died in the First World War.

    We were back to the hotel by noon and our room was ready so we were able to settle in and Brad was able to take a nap. We planned to have dinner at one of the numerous restaurants on the side of the Brisbane River. Our walk there took us through the City Botanic Gardens to the riverside. An after dinner stroll along with the riverside offered spectacular city skyline views.    Read more

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    Day 4

    Animalpalooza - Brisbane Day 2

    January 24 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    We had a private tour booked today to visit the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, the world‘s first and largest koala sanctuary, as well as other sites. The sanctuary is home to more than 100 koalas as well as other Australian species, including kangaroos and wombats.

    Our guide Christine picked us up at our hotel and we headed straight to the sanctuary in hopes of securing two of the few available tickets to hold a koala. Success! We were scheduled for later in the morning giving us plenty of time to see most everything. We started out visiting the koalas, then feeding the kangaroos and the lorikeets after which we went to see various other species.

    Our visit culminated with holding a koala. Brad and I were instructed how to position our hands to hold the koala so that it would believe we were just another tree. We were told to remain very still. The koala, Riley, was surprisingly light and incredibly soft. What an experience!

    Once we finished at the sanctuary, we visited a neighbourhood called Paddington and had a wonderful view of the city from a café. From there we carried on to an area called Kangaroo Cliff and lunch at a place called Joey. Christine then drove us through a few neighbourhoods and finished our tour at a lookout area called Mount Coot-tha Summit.

    For dinner, we walked to a neighbourhood called West End, a hip area with street art, cool cafes, indie bookshops, brewpubs, and music venues. We had dinner there at a place called The Boundary Hotel, a giant pub/restaurant that was established in 1864.

    We’ve noticed that the city rolls up the sidewalks rather early. We asked Christine our guide about this over lunch and she explained that people in Brisbane tend to get up early and go to bed early. When I was making dinner reservations, I was surprised to see that most restaurants closed at 9 PM!

    As we were walking home from dinner this evening, we walked by a theatre at about 9:15 pm and saw people cascading out. We saw a couple holding a program walking ahead of us, so I stopped them and asked them if they had just left the theatre to which they replied, yes. I then asked them what time the show had started and what they had seen. They said they saw the musical Chicago and it started at 7 pm. Quite different than our North American typical start time of 8 pm!    Read more

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    Day 5

    Brisbane Day 3

    January 25 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 29 °C

    We had no set plans for today and we were looking forward to freestyling and seeing where the mood took us on our last day here. We made our way to Lune, a world-renowned bakery that serves croissants exclusively. It was well worth seeking it out.

    From there, we meandered around The Queen Street Mall area and caught the “KittyCat.” Brisbane has a free ferry shuttle service along the river that is called the KittyCat. We hopped on to make our way to Howard Smith Wharves, a beautiful waterfront restaurant area. Our lunch at Greca, a Greek restaurant, was exceptional. From there, we got back on the KittyCat and then walked through the small rainforest park to the Brisbane sign. (After all, most every city has one!)

    By then, it was late afternoon, and we made our way back to the hotel to have a bit of a rest. Because we’d had a big lunch we weren’t looking for much of a dinner, so we went out for a bit of a stroll and wound up at a pub adjacent to the train station. It was clearly a popular hang out for locals, a perfect end to our visit in Brisbane.

    We have only good things to say about this city. It is clean, walkable, safe and interesting. Our over-arching observation after three days in this country is that Australians are among the most friendly people we have ever encountered in all of our travels. They are helpful and very quick to have a conversation with you.

    The other thing that we’ve noticed is not unexpected. The Australian vernacular is quite entertaining. We were having a chat with a woman on the KittyCat today and she said that, with Australia Day tomorrow, the Howard Smith Wharves area would be “chockers!” to which we said chockers? What does that mean? She explained that it’s the Australian way of saying chock full. We’re looking forward to learning more colloquialisms in the weeks to come.    Read more

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    Day 6

    Cairns and Cyclone Kirrily

    January 26 in Australia ⋅ ☁️ 29 °C

    While Cyclone Kirrily may not have been big news in the rest of the world, it’s been the top of the news here for days now. It made landfall south of Cairns last night (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/ja…) We’d been watching the forecast to determine whether our flight from Brisbane to Cairns would be cancelled or delayed. When we got up this morning, the flight was on schedule and we felt relieved. It’s a two-and-a-half hour flight so we arrived in Cairns in the early afternoon.

    Cairns is the city closest to the Great Barrier Reef and launchpad for most excursions to the reef. Despite the flight proceeding, we knew there might be a chance that our boat trip to the reef might be canceled because of wind. Sure enough, it was. We have now rearranged things to hopefully take a trip to the reef on Sunday instead of tomorrow. Fingers crossed. We leave here on Monday, so if Sunday doesn’t happen we’ll be out of luck.

    Once we managed to rearrange things, we set out to explore the city of about 165,000 which is a tourist town. Hotels, casinos, restaurants. There is quite a lovely waterfront and boardwalk. We had dinner at a beachfront restaurant, walked the boardwalk and went to the casino to cool off. We’re in a tropical area so it’s hot and humid here - it was 36 Celsius with 89 per cent humidity. 😫    Read more

  • Australia, NZ + Tahiti
    Day 7

    Cairns Day 2: nature + culture

    January 27 in Australia ⋅ ☁️ 29 °C

    Today was all about exploring nature and experiencing aboriginal culture. We started the day about 25 kilometres outside of Cairns at the world’s oldest rain forest (a UNESCO site) floating above its canopy in a cable car, walking through it, and venturing into its waters in an “army duck.” Next, we explored Kuranda, a village in the rainforest considered an arts and crafts hub.

    In the afternoon, we visited the Rainforestation Nature Park and were treated to traditional dances, spear-throwing demonstrations and taught how to throw a boomerang. (Brad was pretty good at it; I was not.🤣)

    It was another hot humid day so we went back to our hotel to relax and cool down before dinner.

    An update on our Great Barrier Reef cruise for tomorrow: cancelled 😫 Not wanting to leave Australia without having seen it in some way, we will be flying over it in a helicopter tomorrow. If we can’t go in it, we’ll go over it!    Read more

  • Australia, NZ + Tahiti
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    Day 8

    Bird’s eye view of Great Barrier Reef

    January 28 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    Well, we may not have been able to go to the Great Barrier Reef by boat but we managed to recover by taking a helicopter trip over the GBR this morning. We’re so glad we did! We may never travel here again and to be mere kilometres away from this UNESCO site and not see it would have been a damn shame. The pictures and video are worth a thousand words.

    It was another scorcher here so we didn’t feel like doing much after the flight. We visited a tourist information centre and their only suggestion was the aquarium which we weren’t interested in doing. But they did recommend we go for lunch at the RSL - Australia’s version of The Legion. The Legion!?! Why not.

    Our Legion sure could learn a lot from the ones here! It had an unbelievable menu, and was very contemporary in decor and attitude. And it was pretty well packed by the time we left. The food was great and reasonably priced.

    That’s something we’ve noticed - restaurant meals are somewhat more expensive than what we’re used to in Toronto. For example, a Caesar salad that is meal size with no protein is about AU$22. And we’re not talking fancy restaurants. But tipping isn’t a thing here so you need to readjust your thinking. The other interesting thing about casual restaurants in Australia is that it is quite common for you to go and place your order at a counter and pay for it. It’s then delivered to your table number. We think it may be common because of no tipping so it’s very efficient to have them ring up your order and you just tap and go.

    Wanting to escape the heat, we couldn’t really decide what to do after lunch so, when in doubt, go for manicures! We have found in our travels that whenever we’re in a beach town, manicure shops are side-by-side-by -side. Sure enough, we found a strip where there had to be at least 10 in one block. Not surprising, the young women who did our nails were from Thailand.

    The men’s final in the Australian Open Tennis was on this evening, so we went to a sports bar for dinner.    Read more

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    Day 9

    Uluru (Ayer’s Rock)

    January 29 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 41 °C

    When you’re traveling, you have to be ready for bumps in the road. And we experienced a couple this morning. We had a 5:30 a.m. pick up for a flight from Cairns to Uluru scheduled to leave at 7:50 a.m. The first hiccough was when the car prearranged to take us to the airport didn’t show up, so we took an Uber. All good.

    As we’re en route in the Uber, I pull up my boarding pass for our Qantas flight from my mobile wallet and notice that the boarding time for the flight is now 10:30 a.m. not 7:30 a.m. and my seat has changed! Puzzled, Brad pulled up his boarding pass, which has the original boarding time of 7:30 a.m. and the original seat. While he was looking at it, the boarding pass transformed to the 10:30 boarding and a different seat?!? We were in awe. Sure enough when we arrived at the airport, it turned out that the flight had been delayed because of a mechanical issue and was now scheduled for 10:50 not 7:50 a.m. Qantas gave us each a $20 breakfast voucher and we sat around the airport until it was time to go. The flight to Uluru is about 2 1/2 hours and it was quite routine.

    We knew that we were heading to the outback and to the hottest area of Australia. When we landed, it was 41 degrees Celsius. Thankfully, it’s dry heat. The hotel is part of a large resort complex with everything from a grocery store to a post office. Our room wasn’t quite ready so we went and explored the property.

    Given we’d been up since 5 a.m. we rested in the afternoon in anticipation of our sunset visit to Uluru for dinner and a light/drone show that tells an aboriginal story ( https://parksaustralia.gov.au/uluru/discover/cu… ). Uluru is a sacred site and it is seen as a resting place for ancient spirits, giving it religious stature. The show was developed with the aboriginal Anangu Working Group and photography is prohibited. It’s an incredible experience that’s beyond description.    Read more

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    Day 10

    Uluru from the sky

    January 30 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 38 °C

    We took a walk over to the Town Square this morning to poke around the shops and happened by a counter selling helicopter rides. We couldn’t resist. 🤣 So that’s what we did this morning - we took a ride around Uluru. Helicopters can’t fly over it because of it’s sacred and there’s an aboriginal village nearby.

    This afternoon, we visited a camel farm and an art gallery which displays aboriginal art.
    Camels date back to the 1840s here in Australia. They were instrumental in transporting provisions to the mining operations in the outback as well as facilitating the construction of the railway. That railway is now known as The Ghan, giving a nod to the Afghan people who cared for the camels.
    https://www.pichirichirailway.org.au/history/th…    Read more

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