Category: Australia
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Canberra
Why is Canberra the capital of Australia? If you only visit one sight while in Canberra, make it the Old Parliament. More specifically take the tour explaining the history of the building and the city. It raises a lot more questions than it answers, like Why did anyone think this was a good idea? or…
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Attempting to remember Australia
When I set out on my big trip to Australia, I vastly underestimated how difficult it would be to find time to keep up with my work while travelling and writing about my travels at the same time. Now here I am, almost 6 months in, with most of the travelling done, and I can…
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Adelaide and Surrounds
I returned to Adelaide more than once, less out of a desire to re-visit the city than out of necessity. Great Southern Rail is based there and all their trains depart from the Parklands Terminal, so I found myself in Adelaide a grand total of 3 times. The first time, we arrived by car from…
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Uluru
After leisurely making our way up the entire East Coast over the course of a month, the last few weeks were a sudden blur of flights, trains, with a rushed visit to Uluru squeezed in between. When planning a trip around Australia, that big red rock seems to sit there like the proverbial elephant. You…
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Kakadu National Park
Kakadu National Park was the first place in Australia where we got a feel for and an appreciation of Indigenous culture. The whole topic of colonial history, Aboriginal relations, land rights and restitution is a minefield and I know better than to comment extensively on matters I only have a vague understanding of. Suffice to…
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Darwin
Many people enjoy Darwin, but I failed to see the appeal entirely. Hot, humid, swarming with disease-bearing mosquitoes. While Northern Queensland also has all of the above, at least Cairns and Port Douglas have a few things between them to recommend the towns. Darwin is architecturally unattractive, and entertainment largely consists of the kind of…
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Port Douglas
Six of us checked in to a beautiful three-bedroom holiday home in Port Douglas, 10 of us stayed for a week. After some complex calculations involving the number of nights slept in a bed, number of nights on floor or couch, number of days in a car per person, and individual travel budget restrictions, we…
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Cairns
Once we got to Cairns, north of the Tropic of Capricorn, I was well and truly out of my comfort zone. At 34°, it was hot and humid, and I was wilting. As is the case along most of the Queensland coast, swimming in the ocean is not a good idea, with sharks, crocodiles and…
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Airlie Beach
Our two days in Airlie Beach were made memorable mainly by the amazing group of people who coalesced there. It was as if all the silliest planets had aligned for a full goon party that ended up lasting over a week, taking us from Airlie to Cairns, Port Douglas and beyond. Barely an hour after…
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Fraser Island
Between Sydney and Brisbane, we had already joined what is essentially the backpacker highway, but we didn’t really get into the spirit until we hit Northern Queensland. If there is one must-do experience on the “highway” that every backpacker can agree on, it’s Fraser Island. It remains one of the best things we did on…