I must admit (because Lindsay keeps reminding me) that I wasn’t super excited about traveling to Australia over the holidays. I don’t really know why I wasn’t excited, it’s possible it just felt like a hassle, or that we’d been moving around a lot (we’d done lots of trips in November around Tokyo). There was a lot of planning and transportation and such that went into the trip and it just felt like a lot. In the end, the trip was amazing and I have very warm / fuzzy feelings every time I think about it.
The trip had roughly four phases:
- Cairns and a live-aboard, diving the great barrier reef for three days
- Sydney
- Driving and camping from Sydney down to Melbourne over Xmas
- Melbourne
Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef
Lindsay and I recently got in a minor disagreement about what I originally had to say about going to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR from here). In my head, I said something like, “I don’t need to dive toooo many days, one would be fine” – the idea being it was more of a bucket list item I felt we should check off but didn’t care too much beyond that.
It turns out, and I can’t honestly believe this but Lindsay has proof, I said “I don’t need to go diving at all.” Honestly this is completely crazy because we had such an amazing time diving, and despite the fact that the reefs are, I know, not in great shape, I would say this was some of the best diving of my life and certainly the top 3 dive trips I’ve ever done.
We started out flying from Tokyo into Cairns. It was a red-eye, and we ended up getting to Cairns a few hours before we could check in, so we hung out in the airport and read/played Switch / I’m not sure what else.
I got some money out from the ATM (probably too much, it turned out).
We stayed in a nice backpacker hostel. I really have found I appreciate a good backpacker hostel that does a good job balancing “it’s ok if you’re older” with “fosters conversations and hang outs with people.” I feel like in Japan most hostels are very nice and extremely comfortable. I think part of the comfort is the comfort that feels like you’re not compelled to talk to anybody if you don’t want, you can just relax in a beautiful space. But a good backpacker hostel where most situations require some sort of interaction, which fosters conversation, is sort of nice. Anyway, I ended up meeting a nice French guy, Nick I believe was his name, who had a super interesting life. He lived in Cairns at this hostel half the year, and the other half of the year he worked at a huge mining site somewhere in the middle of Australia.
We didn’t spend a ton of time in Cairns although looking back it feels like a shockingly long time. We went to a farmers market type thing one day and had a great breakfast.
There was also a mall nearby that we went to a few times to buy random food. I would say this was more exciting than I thought it would be on account of all of the great custard related foods. Sort of a nice little memory of living in the UK while at the same time (to me) being totally different.
One thing we really appreciated about Cairns was that there were a lot of community places accessible for free. This square area had a big pool that was free, tons of people swimming, etc. Plus it was decorated for Christmas and starting to see Christmas related decorations along with the tropical vibes was pretty cool (I don’t think we’ve ever spent the holiday in the Southern hemisphere, at least not that I can remember).
Anyway that’s probably enough said about Cairns. In truth it was not a place I’d probably choose to stay for more than a few days, but we had a nice time for the few short days we were there (the stay at the hostel in Cairns bookended our diving trip).
Diving
We dove on a live-aboard “Divers Den” out of Cairns. The way these larger dive operations seem to work is there is essentially a large boat (yaht? ship?) that has all of the accommodation, and were all of the diving happens from. The boat just moves between dive sites on the reef, but doesn’t go back to shore very often, and instead each day a smaller (but still large!) boat takes new divers out to the main boat and exchanges laundry, staff, etc.
The boat itself was great, as was the staff. For whatever it’s worth, I’d recommend this same operation and if we went back to Australia I’d book with the same group.
We ended up diving for three days, two nights. The way that looks is the first day you do two dives from the smaller boat on the way out to the larger ship. You eat lunch on this boat, then they drop you off on the larger boat where you do an orientation and then another dive or two. I’m fairly certain we did 3 dives per day, plus a night dive.
The actual accommodation is nice, nothing super fancy, but for us at least it’s hard not to feel fancy sleeping on a boat looking out over the ocean.
Mornings before diving started we had coffee and read.
The dive setup on the boat was very well organized, a super well oiled machine. The staff was all great, gear was ready for you when it was time to jump in the water, etc.
We met a bunch of cool people on the trip, including a few people from Japan that ended up sharing some of their photos/videos with us (below). A few guys we ended up meeting up with about a week later in Melbourne actually (see below).
Looking back at photos now I realize the boat itself doesn’t look super luxurious, and I guess it probably isn’t, but it was the perfect type of people on the trip for us and the perfect amount of luxury to make you feel a bit spoiled while not worlds away from the staff. A lot of the staff on the boat were on working holiday visas, so there for free diving and modest pay, but reasonably happy to be there it seemed.
The diving itself, which I already mentioned, was really really great. Unfortunately it’s not the type of thing you can capture super well without a lot of effort and luck and skill, and even if we had those things we didn’t have a camera. That said, our friend Anna did have a camera and she shared some random photos and videos with us, this is a video from of the dive sites to give you SOME visual.
For the sake of our memories, I’ll say that we had one great night dive in which they had recently chummed the water and we were just surrounded by sharks. Not HUGE sharks, but sharks, and it was somewhat scary in part because we chose to do all but the first two dives solo (without a guide).
We were a bit nervous to do the dives without a guide as neither Lindsay or I have done much diving just as a pair (i.e. without a guide), and it was a bit stressful a few times when we were slightly lost (or when we didn’t go as far as we would have liked out of fear of getting lost), but it was very well worth it for us. Most of the time we didn’t really feel compelled to cover more area, we would find a few places / corals / walls that were pretty and just hang out there.
The second or possibly last day of diving there were a few very beautiful coral walls, probably 30 or 40 feet tall, and absolutely full of things to see. We just sort of hovered at this one little area for a good 30 minutes one day I’d say, just floating and feeling thrilled to be alive. I think we could have done this exact same dive 3 or 4 times and felt very happy.
At the end of one of our final dives Lindsay and I were just sitting in the sand near the ascent line on a large concrete block and a school of some much larger fish swam right by us, feet away. It’s pretty magical having a school of giant fish swim past I think, and this was a really nice way to end our time diving.
After the diving was over we transferred back onto the smaller transfer boat and said goodbye to our friends we had met. We went back to the hostel we had stayed at originally in Cairns as we had to wait 24 hours to fly after the diving. During this time we went to a pub and had a Guinness and a cheap hamburger and went for a run.
The next afternoon we fly from Cairns to Sydney for the next leg of our trip.
Sydney
The first thing I’ll say about Sydney is I really loved it, and I actually fell into a bit of a depression due to overwhelming emotion the first few days being there. Without a ton of thought, I’d describe it as Vancouver meets Waikiki meets San Francisco meets LA meets Seattle. Literally through the first two days I think I was sort of depressed, despite having an amazing time.
In Sydney we stayed in a nice / modern hostels, I would say it was not the backpacker type. Lindsay and I actually stayed in a private room (with shared bathroom) because it was about the same price as a shared dorm. This is the type of hostel in a city center that’s 7 floors, well organized machine, with giant shared industrial kitchens, etc.
Coming from Tokyo we felt very spoiled by all of the relatively inexpensive fruits and beautiful produce, so we ended up eating a few meals of random vegetables and fruits and salads and other foods that are somewhat unique (at least compared to Tokyo).
We of course did all of the main tourist stuff we could, e.g. we went to walk around the opera house (obviously this photo is far away, but just to prove that we at least saw it!), we walked through the Queen Victoria Building, went to a modern art museum, and a few other things.
We also did a walk, I believe it was the Spit Bridge to Manly walk, possibly called the Fairlight walk (the destination), and that was part of what originally put me into a depressive mood. Just so many great happy energetic vibes, tons of families outside swimming, etc. Just made me think about what it would have been like to live in a city like Sydney.
So this walk was one of the first days, we swam in the beach along the way, and in Manly in the depths of my despair had some amazing food at Norma’s Deli, a potentially over touristic but still very well worth it to me deli with beautiful food.
In addition to the walk, we went to the Chau Chak Wing Museum which was really nice. We walked along King Street which to be honest I was only averagely impressed by, basically it’s a very cool street / neighborhood but I wouldn’t say it’s all that unique when compared against other cool streets / neighborhoods. I’m probably under-appreciating the area but I guess I’ve walked down enough streets with cool old vintage clothing mixed with records mixed with fancy coffee mixed with street art and graffiti, etc. I’m probably being very reductive or whatever, but name a cool city and you probably have a similarly cool street.
One of the other activities we did in Sydney (and Cairns actually) was price shop different cheap camping gear. In a few short paragraphs we’ll be out of Sydney and into a car camping down the coast to Melbourne and we needed some camping gear for this.
Most of our camping equipment we ended up buying at Decathlon. If I’m honest with myself this was a bit of a waste of money, we ended up buying almost a full set of camping gear for 4 or 5 nights of camping. I’m not loosing any sleep over any of this because it was absolutely still an amazing time and not so much money lost that it was more than staying at a hotel for example, but that said we could have probably done it cheaper.
So we picked up the car, then drove to Decathlon to buy camping gear, then were on the road. Oh, the mall that the Decathlon in was quite nice and we enjoyed walking around and looking at the food and things there.
I feel like I haven’t really built a compelling narrative about our time in Sydney, so I’ll have to tell rather than show you that it was a really great few days.
Driving and camping from Sydney to Melbourne over Christmas
The thing I think about most fondly when I think back about this entire Australia trip was driving in the car with Lindsay listening to Australian Xmas songs. We did our best to make a playlist and to give you an idea here is one:
I’ve asked a few Australian friends what music they listened to during Christmas while growing up and the few (tiny sample size, feel free to offer corrections to me as I’m honestly interested in this!) people I talked to said “normal Christmas songs” (e.g. Silent Night, Jingle Bells, etc), so I’m not really sure how common the type of song above is, but we found all of them we could and listened to them while driving.
One of our first stops was a home center / big box store / Home Depot type store. I always like to look at what different tools and building materials and such are in different countries, and it wasn’t so far out of the way.
Along the drive on the first day we stopped at quite a few swimming places. This would be a bit of a theme along the drive, the fact that there seemed to be many beautiful, well maintained, and free places for people to swim. We didn’t always swim, but we always appreciated the warm and healthy outdoor community vibe.
The first night of camping we camped in Bendeela Recreation Area. This was what I’d call sort of “European style camping” which to me means “larger flat open plot of land with tents fairly close together” vs individual sites. I don’t really know if it’s fair to call this “European” but europe is the first place I’ve seen this (and there was a ton of it in Iceland, see https://www.shoelessone.com/iceland-part-2-ring-road-camping-video/)
At this campground we saw our first real kangaroos, and it was also famous for wombats. This was my first time seeing wombats in the wild and it was pretty amazing, there were giant holes all over the place, and at night, around dusk, the things would just come out and start eating grass and walking around. It felt pretty special and unique to be able to just sit in the grass, eat some food, and listen the kids getting excited about finding another wombat (we were also of course VERY excited, but just the ambiance was pretty magical for us).
Other notable memories from this first night camping were our neighbors who were super friendly and actually got us up out of our tent at one point to show us a possum eating their food, and to show us some of the stars. This was cool, although I didn’t really appreciate it until recently, because the stars are different of course than we see in the Northern hemisphere. Oh, also there was a lake / river, which the staff told us to avoid at night as there may be snakes. But then the people actually camping there said that was strange and we shouldn’t worry about snakes.
One last thing to mention here, although it was a theme throughout our trip: the birds here are pretty great. Loud, colorful, annoying, etc. But great and exciting to experience.
The next day we drove down to Jervis Bay, which was a pleasant enough drive. Continued to get into the xmas spirit listening to music and I’m sure talking about what we are doing with our lives.
I went to the Jervis Bay Maritime Museum, which I thought was amazing. Lindsay skipped it (it wasn’t that cheap and she opted to take a nap instead!), but I think it was well worth the price of admission.
I’d have to say the main attraction for the day though was the campground we stayed at, which was absolutely full of kangaroos and a beautiful beach. We had to walk a good mile in with all of our camping gear, which wasn’t that fun, but very well worth it.
I guess you get the idea. We checked off “kangaroos.”
The beach here was also quite nice, we didn’t go swimming here but it was nice just to walk on the beach and watch the sunset.
The next day was December 24th, also known as the day before Christmas. It’s always a bit strange for me (and Lindsay) to be away from friends and family on Christmas and being in a different country with a different, very non-Michigan-winter environment on Christmas is a bit disorienting. Not bad, and I think Lindsay and I were at the time feeling pretty grateful to be having such a great experience, but a bit melancholic at times.
We went to a grocery store on Christmas eve to buy some food for camping for that night and the energy of people doing last minute shopping for their parties or gatherings was “impactful.” I can’t really say why, but it’s just weird to be camping on Christmas eve in a place far away, walking through the store as people are with their families buying cakes and champaign and stuff, while you’re buying ice to pack the ol’ esky.
We made a stop at Durras Beach.
Christmas eve night we camped right near the coast at a campground called Broa Lake Campground. We setup our camping string lights and decorated with a few appropriately themed decorations and ate a few pastries we purchased try to be festive.
That night we went for a quick swim in the lake (which is brackish, right thin strip of land separating the ocean) and sat on the beach watching a group of guys catch a bunch of fish from shore.
Also, although not an important memory, one small little detail is that we could see the huge school of fish in the waves when they broke. I imagine this is what the people fishing were after, there were tons of fish. It was cool to see them through the waves.
Christmas morning, I woke up with what I would describe as a minor nightmare situation. I HATE ticks, absolutely hate them, one of the things I’m most scared of, but this is the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes in the morning:
A tick crawling on the tent. On the outside luckily, but still.
In the end I found three of four ticks, and it shook me to my core. I felt dirty and like at any second I’d find a tick buried in my scalp or something and next thing you know, Lyme disease! After I was SO careful trying to make SURE to check every possible surface for ticks, I got in the car and what was crawling on my shorts but another tick. Absolute hell. In the I don’t think I had any ticks on me but you can trust that I was doing tick checks for several days after that point.
Anyway luckily I somehow recovered from the ticks, and by 8:30AM or so we were having a really amazing swim in yet another random public beach / swimming area.
After the swim we drove to the town of Eden where we had booked a BnB for a few nights. The BnB, or B&B, or whatever was great, even if the town of Eden was perhaps a bit sleepy (it being Christmas in a small city didn’t help!). Unfortunately I don’t seem to have any great photos, but our room overlooked a bay where, apparently, killer whales used to help whalers harpoon / catch / kill whales. I guess sometimes you can still see pods of whales come into this bay.
The historic slaughter of whales aside, the fresh sea breeze and view of the ocean was really nice. Plus I was able to complete several tick checks more easily.
Like I said there wasn’t a TON going on in the town of Eden when we were there, there was a killer whale museum but it was closed for the holiday.
For dinner on Christmas we were advised ahead of time by our host that we should not plan on dinner anywhere, grocery stores and everything else was closed. That said there were a few hotels in town that hosted Christmas brunches and we ended up going to a fairly fancy placed (Hotel Australasia).
The food was pretty good, but mainly it was just nice to feel like we were doing something festive for the holiday. We aren’t religious, but (speaking for myself, though Lindsay would probably say the same) I do love the Christmas traditions. Lights, caroling, general warm / cuddly vibes.
I would say our Christmas day was fairly close to perfect. We missed friends and family and that is always hard, but I still think we had a lot of love and being in such a beautiful place and having such a great refreshing swim in the morning to start the day (and forgetting the ticks) and the adventure of being somewhere new and exciting made for a really great day.
We actually stayed in Eden for two days and the second day we did a lot of walking and some exploring of local beaches and parks.
We also wanted to take advantage of what to us is one of the best public services / features that seem common in all of the places we visited, which is these outdoor grills that are free to use and ready to use by anybody. You just hit a button and bam, you’ve got a hot griddle to barbecue on.
The following morning we set off for our last camping spot. Along the way we stopped at Raymond Island, which is a small island that has a ton of koalas on it. We saw a bunch of them, which was cool, not amazing, but enough to check off “see koalas” from the ol’ Australia bucket list.
We camped at a campground along the ocean that sort of reminded me of a US campground, except with birds. And also there was a koala in a tree near us.
Finally we got on the road for Melbourne. If you happen to be counting, or if you read the bit above where I mentioned directly that we only camped for 4 or 5 nights, you might notice we only camped for 4 or 5 nights. That said it was long enough, with enough different stops, that it felt like a fulfilling camping trip. I was really happy we decided to do this, and although I haven’t talked about the driving itself much I’d say it was very easy and stress free and enjoyable.
Also not mentioned are quite a few random stops along the way to get coffee, buy random local desserts at towns we drove through, etc.
Melbourne
For those of you who knows us, you will probably know that neither Lindsay or I are big sports fans, to say the least. I semi-aggressively don’t follow sport of I’m honest. BUT, two of the friends we met on the dive boat were specifically going to Melbourne to watch “Test cricket” and they recommended we should go.
We decided to give it a shot because the match was between India and Australia, a fairly major / significant match up, and it seemed like a cool cultural opportunity we didn’t want to miss out on. I won’t go into the details, but Test cricket is sort of the long form of cricket (as I understand it!), and matches last up to five days. It’s more of a marathon event. Anyway, we ended up going the first day and although we figured we might just watch an hour or something then leave, we ended up staying THE ENTIRE EIGHT+ HOUR DAY.
What is even crazier is we ended up going back the second day and watching a second, FULL day of cricket!
I honestly don’t even really know why. I think we just sort of let ourselves buy into the excitement, picking our team, picking our players, etc. We were also sat with a lot of the Indian fans and there was a ton of great energy. It was just fun to be around and be part of. We also met some great people along the way who explained the rules to us, and it really felt like a great culture experience.
So Test cricket is by far the main thing we ended up doing in Melbourne.
Cricket aside in Melbourne I went to the Melbourne Museum (Lindsay was doing her own thing this day I think), which was pretty great I thought. I also just walked around a lot to get a feel for the city. I would say it’s much more Chicago, Oakland, or Seattle perhaps, and less “beachy” vibes. To be honest when we first arrived I wasn’t super excited about Melbourne compared to Sydney, but it really grew on me.
We also walked around Chinatown, which was shockingly small I thought, and on our final day (New Years Eve actually) we went to a British pub complete with carpet on the floor and all.
Now for New Years Eve proper we actually ended up staying at a hotel airport because we had a 5AM flight or something silly like this. Party animals, or even mildly exciting people would have probably been out doing something on New Years eve, but Lindsay and I were sleeping well before midnight trying to get as much sleep as possible for our flight home back to the Big Sushi (aka Tokyo).
Travel home concluded without issue. The vacation felt long, rewarding, varied, and memorable. I almost immediately had a warm glow when I thought about driving through little towns looking for kangaroos in the road while listening to Christmas music. I’m grateful to have had this set of experiences, and grateful most of all for Lindsay who pushed us to go on this particular mini adventure.