Travelling in Australia

As many of you many know, before starting my job in Perth, I decided to spend some time touring in Australia with Joel so that I could see more of the country than just one city. Geographically, Perth is on the west coast of Australia whereas almost all of the other major cities are located on the east coast. Because the distance between the two about the distance from New York to A, I figured this would be one of my only chances to see the east coast during my time here. Spending the time with Joel and seeing all the fantastic sights in Australia was absolutely amazing so I figured I'd give you a recap of some of the places we went to and some of the experiences we had.

Joel and I were both a little nervous about arriving in Brisbane without a cell phone, food, place to stay and not to mention the fact that we would need to drive the rental car on the other side of the road. But immediately after we landed we were able to find all of the above within about half an hour and survived our first adventure in the car. We took all of this as a good omen and it gave us some assurance that we wouldn't be totally over our heads during the coming weeks.

The next couple of days were absolutely perfect. While the temperature was a sweltering 95 degrees most of the time, we hiked and walked through a huge variety of national parks. We started at a place called Carnarvon Gorge where we were welcome by about 3 kangaroos and at least 10 wallabies (little kangaroos). This was to be the beginning of some of the most beautiful forests, rivers, mountains and oceans I'd ever seen. We ended up spending Shabbat on a small island off the coast called Great Keppel Island. We kind of stumbled upon it in our ever-handy guidebook and made reservations not realizing just how cool of a place we were going to. It turns out, the entire island is run on generators and only 70 people at a time can be on the island. We saw some of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen and even better, there was hardly anyone there so we got one of the most unique island experiences without the major tourism. The only downside were the mosquitos and the crazy hot sun. After getting burnt, I realized just how strong the sun is in Australia. It's crazy that I get burnt even when I'm outside for half an hour and now I end up putting sunscreen on every day.

We continued on our trip and saw some more amazing sights at Fitch Hatton Gorge and then Eungulla National Park. Eungulla is known to be a great spot for seeing platypus and even though we didn't come at "prime platypus hours" Joel and I were stubborn and waited and waited until we FINALLY saw one.

The next day turned out to be one o our favorites. Cape Hillsboro National Park had some of the most amazing views that we would see over the entire trip. Joel and I later agreed it was one of the best places we'd visited. The bright blue ocean views with the beach and rocks were absolutely gorgeous. After stopping for ice cream (one of my other favorite parts of the day) we continued on to Conway National Park. Although Joel will tell you I was very grumpy because of the heat and the steep uphill climbing, it turned out to be a nice hike and the view at the top was pretty spectacular.

After again referring to our guidebook- which over the course of the trip became our bible, we stopped at Paluma Range National Park and then onto a completely remote area called Undarra. We ended up staying in a converted railways car and it was definitely a cool and unique experience. But what made Undarra so cool, and why we travelled 2 hours out of our way, were the lava tubes created millions of years ago by volcanic lava flow through the area. We signed up for the tour on Christmas day which turned out to be such good luck as no one else was at the park and we ended up getting an almost entirely private tour with just 6 other people on the tour and at the resort overall!

We finally made our way to Cairns, which was our ultimate destination point before turning the car around and doing the long treck back to Brisbane. Cairns is known to be one of the hotspots for snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef and we definitely wanted to make sure we were able to do that before leaving Australia. The biggest shocker for us was to suddenly find ourselves in a huge touristy city surrounded by so many people. After spending the last week and a half almost entirely by ourselves in remote areas of Australia, being in civilization again felt pretty weird. It was all worth it by the time we went snorkeling and saw some of the most beautiful and biggest fish I've ever seen. We even saw a shark swimming around which was really exciting for us.

Everyone in Australia has been so nice. A perfect example of this was a couple we met on the boat while we were snorkeling. They ended up having a waterproof camera and took pictures of us snorkeling and of some of the really cool fish. They emailed the pictures to us and even gave me their information because they sometimes come to Perth and invited me to go snorkeling with them on their boat if ever I want.

While there were so many other exciting things in Cairns, we eventually had to leave and Sunday morning we got back in the car and headed for a place called Barron Falls. The falls are some of the biggest in Australia with water coming over the cliffs in torrents. I can only attest to this from pictures however, because we ended up going during the dry season in Australia and while they were still pretty incredible, there was only a trickle compared to what the falls can sometimes look like in July and August. We continued driving that day to a place called Wallaman falls. I was pretty excited for this sight because it is the largest drop of any waterfall in Australia. It was absolutely incredible! Joel and I took so many pictures, but even then it was hard to get the entire waterfall to fit in the camera view because it was so big.

After everything we saw on our vacation, it was hard to believe we only had two days left of our trip and we needed those days to make the drive back to Brisbane to catch our flights. Nonetheless, we made a few stops along the way at the Capricorn caves, Caloundra, a few incredible lookouts, and finally, the Glasshouse mountains. There are around 12 or 13 mountains in the area and they are incredible to look at. They are actually considered very holy to the aboriginal people, which is why there were only 3 select mountains we were allowed to climb. We ended up hiking on of the mountains called Mt. Tiburgargan (or something like that) and it turned out to be such a perfect final hike. The views at the top were spectacular and even the heat was almost bearable compared to some of the others we'd had.

When we finally made it back into the car and made the final treck back to Brisbane, we had part of the afternoon and the rest of the evening to repack, relax and get ready for our separate trips to the airport the next morning. And of course we couldn't forget it being New Year's Eve on top of everything. There ended up being a fireworks show on the riverfront and there were a ton of people out which made for a really nice last evening.

Anyway, our trip had to end finally and Joel flew back to the States while I made my way on to Perth. I know this first blog post was exceptionally long and I congratulate you if you made it all the way through. There were just so many incredible sights and I feel like I only touched on some of the amazing things we saw and did. Either way, hopefully the next posts won't be as long as I settle myself into Perth and get into an everyday schedule. While it is slightly nerve racking to be here on my own, I'm already meeting some great people and really hope to make myself part of the community in Perth.

Well, that's all for now, I miss you all and will keep you updated on my adventures.

Talk to you all soon!