Australia!
The second stop on our around-the-world trip was Australia, which checked off our final continent. Australia is a very big country—about the same size as the continental USA, and getting around it can be expensive and time consuming. So, we made a decision to stick to one area and see it well.
We were on a One World Alliance round-the-world trip ticket going west, and from Auckland we had good arrival city options. The Great Barrier Reef topped our wish list of things to see in Australia, so we chose Brisbane and the area known as the Sunshine Coast in Queensland as our anchor. And we splurged on a booking at Lady Elliot Island in the Great Barrier Reef.
Auckland to Brisbane is a four-hour flight over the Tasman Sea. It was a brilliant afternoon–blue skies outside and a sunny mood inside on our Qantas flight. They served cheesy pasta and a crisp Australian white wine for me, and beef and rice curry with a Tasmanian beer for Bryan. And then, ice cream! Woo!
We needed ETAs (Electronic Travel Authority) visas to enter Australia and we’d purchased them online for $20 AUD ($16 USD) before leaving home. Once again, no one stamped our passports. This is probably the single most disappointing thing about modern travel for me. I miss border crossings with the strange anxiety when an immigration officer holds your passport up to scrutinize your tired travel face versus the worst photo you’ve ever made in your life, and then with a sigh or a grunt, punches the stamper down about 10 times in 5 seconds in the secret confines of his desk, and hands your passport back with a flat, “Welcome. Next.” Would you believe we asked four of their TSA folks if we could somewhere get a stamp in our passports? Maybe? Please? No, nay, nada, nope. Boo. I was distracted from the missing passport stamp when we got on the “Travelator”…a moving walkway. What a great name!
Brisbane
We’d booked AirTrain transfers into the city and caught the train into the city during the evening commute. Hotel Jen is super conveniently located–next door to the busy Roma Street station, and is surprisingly quiet. It’s a modern, comfortable hotel, with a kicking buffet breakfast featuring fresh honeycombs pulled from the honeybee boxes out back. My favorite thing there was the juice machine—a large compactor contraption that took in a wide assortment of already peeled veggies and fruits and loudly smashed and squished them into your own special juice concoction. Carrot and beets and oranges. Looked like a pretty tie-dye in a glass. Yum with the eggs, beans with tomatoes, and coffee. We were still trying to figure out the differences between a flat white (basically an espresso with foaming milk) and a long black (espresso over hot water) coffee, so drank both. More often than not, hotels offered Nescafe ”sachets” in Australia.
After checking-in, we went over the Brisbane River on the Kurilpa Walking Bridge on our first evening walk in Australia. As we loitered back, watching the moon rise an hour before sunset, we tried to sort out the time difference vs New Zealand and vs Chicago. 4 a.m. Brisbane is 7 a.m. Auckland and noon yesterday in Chicago. Dialing our moms was tricky business.
February is in the heat of summer. Our first morning, it was already 74 degrees Fahrenheit at 8 a.m., on it’s way up to hot and humid. After a street cafe breakfast, we walked over the Victoria bridge to see the Wheel of Brisbane. We were sitting in the shade to cool off, when I heard creeping. I turned to see a large white bird with a long black beak and a black head tip-toeing behind me. This was our first Australian Ibis sighting (they are also known as “bin chickens”).
The day got steamy, and we walked until we were sticky and exhausted. We were sampling our way through an outdoor market—strategically staying under the stand umbrellas—when Bryan came up with a genius idea for a luxurious and cheap dinner. He bought a large piece of just-smoked salmon, a heaping tray of “vege” paella made to order, and a quart of assorted fresh fruit for a picnic in our room. For about $40 AUD plus a bottle of wine, we had a feast that would have cost us at least twice that in a restaurant. As the storm clouds rolled in and the rain poured down over Brisbane, we showered in our cool room, and spread our indoor picnic. Delicious!
North to Hervey Bay (pronounced HARVEY Bay)
A couple of days later, we took a 6-hour Greyhound bus north to Hervey Bay, a coastal town that would bookend our days on Lady Elliot Island. Greyhounds are not the tour-guide buses of New Zealand, but they are a clean, cheap, and practical way to get where you’re going and see a little landscape along the way.
Along the drive, we saw an Australia that is not so different than the USA with the many places to shop: K-Mart, IGA, KFC, 7-Eleven, ALDI, and of course, McDonald’s (or “Mackers” as they say in Australian). It falls a little short of my expectations to see too many similarities to home in a place so far away. I like foreign to be foreign, not a cookie-cutter replica of Anyplace, USA. Sure, it’s reassuring to know that you can walk into a bit of the USA all over the world and order the same Mickey D’s french fries, but I also like the little surprises–like walking into a store named Woolworths to find out it’s a supermarket here. And I got a cheap thrill out of sitting in the front row–on what would be the passenger side back home–and guessing which lane we’d turn into.
One thing that is different in Australia is the curious town names, with places like Nambour, Kybong and Gymbie. In Kybong at the traveler’s area where we stopped for lunch, there is a giant, old, metal kangaroo called Matilda. I thought I was losing my mind when I noticed Matilda was looking in a different direction. But then, she winked…with a sound like a creaking, banging garage door in motion.
Back in the bus, I started to notice the unique Australian Federation-style homes with roof-on-roof verandas, porticoed porches, Victorian gables and finials, and RV garages. I scanned the immense land, the gardens, the roads, looking for a real kangaroo. Nothing.
