an_asker

Thanks for the compliments :-)

We were not too scared about the lady though, to be honest, had it been a guy, we most probably would've been!

Once we got into Manly, I left the rest of the family for some souvenir hunting. I believe they did get some snacks (I forget what). As for me, I just got some standard McD fare!!

I made a mistake and assumed that the sun would be setting at 6:30 (don't know how), and so planned to return by the next ferry (at 5:40). Imagine my surprise, once we are back on the ferry and I am wondering where the sun is, when DS says, "But you should've seen that the sun was already setting on our way out!!" Sunset was at about 5:35 or so, IIRC. Oh well, maybe we could've spent half an hour more in Manly, but definitely would've been too dark to see much of the beach.

I'll keep a note of Cafe Sydney for our next visit :-)

an_asker

As they help me form a good segue into some of my observations, I am quoting some responses from another Australia-related thread:
Boy, reading this makes me glad that we had a great experience in Sydney. Both times we were in Sydney, we had absolutely the best weather. The day after we left, it was supposed to be pouring in Sydney, but we definitely got lucky with the weather there :-)

Now, I hope my trip report also comes under this category, though I did share information about the scare we had in Sydney! (note: the quoted section was a response to the other trip report, not mine!). ss278, if you are reading this, I am going to add a photo over your hometown in the concluding segment of my trip report.

Though the above quote is about the Indian Pacific, we were also a bit apprehensive about taking the train we did (Melbourne-Sydney) as no one on the forums appeared to have taken the train in Australia, and I did not even know how punctual trains are over there. Well, we should not have worried. The trains we encountered were very punctual indeed (maybe because they had enough built in slack time)

This brings back a really funny memory. At Urban Central Accommodation, breakfast is included, and I was the first person in the family down for breakfast. The hosts provide a variety of toasted bread in a big (make that huge) basket, and huge bowls of butter, jam, and a black, treacle-like mass, and beverages such as orange juice, tea and coffee. I immediately suspected that the third bowl had vegemite in it, which we had never had before. After applying toast and jam to a couple of toasts and finishing them, I took a little bit of the vegemite and tried it. I could not stand the taste and dumped the bread crumb that I had applied it to.

A few minutes later, the rest of the family showed up. DS took a liberal smattering of the vegemite and slathered it over his bread. I should have had my camera out (but I didn't, unfortunately) because the next minute his face was all contorted. Needless to say, that whole slice of bread got dumped and he had to have a big heap of jam on his next bread! [poor kid ... but he was too quick for me to even warn him!]

an_asker

A view from the Intercontinental Double Bay, Sydney (thanks Chase IHG)






Sydney Airport - shops


Two dreamliners


Air Vanuatu


Taxiing over the road at Sydney


Landing at SFO - clouds were very low indeed!




The Great Salt Lake


Salt Lake City airport


Rockies just west of Denver - there should be many fun hikes in this area


Denver freeways and housing developments


Taking off from Denver, we just about escaped this storm!

And that is the end of my trip report, as we got back to Atlanta too late and too tired to take any photos ... plus we had to drive overnight to get back home.

In retrospect, we did most of what we set out to per our itinerary, but had to drop the planned visit to the penguins in Melbourne (not enough time), exploring Sydney downtown on our last day there (same reason!), seeing more of Melbourne's sights such as the Victoria Market, MCG, go to the top of the Skydeck, etc (too much rain ... though we did bring our ponchos with us, finally we did not end up using them).

adampenrith

your cactus is not a cactus

it is a frangipani tree

As you visted during winter - all the leave and flowers have dropped -

the most common color in white with a yellow insert - but there are pink purple and red variations as well.

The white has the best perfume

an_asker

Thanks for the info. I had originally thought it to be a tree, but then when I went close to it, I saw those bud-like things which looked like cactus flowers/buds. And, of course, it makes sense that all the leaves and flowers have dropped, just like those trees in Colac.

princeville

Thank you for taking the time to post this! My husband and I are taking our kids to Australia over Thanksgiving. We met in Melbourne in 2003 and haven't been back together since and of course we're excited to show the kids where it all started!

We've had the flights to/from the US booked for a while but we're just now starting to plan the details. I hadn't planned to do the Great Ocean Road as I've been twice and my husband once before, but your TR inspired us to shuffle things around a bit and leave open two days for the GOR. I can't wait to see it again!

Rog76

The Pacific/Indian Ocean at a distance (I originally had the misconception that this is the Pacific Ocean - look at a map. I wonder what the Aussies call this ocean?)

It's called The Southern Ocean. Separates us from Antarctica - very wild, and cold!

an_asker

You are very welcome. While on the one hand, I am glad that I was able to influence your trip plans; on the other hand, I am not so glad! Let me explain - you must have spent at least some time in Australia previously and so know the lay of the land much better than me, after our week there. But of course, the Great Ocean Road will have stuff for the kids for sure (even for you based in, if I understand correctly, LAX). Even though she was not too happy on most of the drive, my tween DD enjoyed hanging out at the kids' park/entertainment area near the Aireys Inlet lighthouse. If we had more time, DS and I might even have trekked all the way to the lighthouse leaving the ladies of the house right there entertaining themselves at that rest area.

If you don't mind, could you share your itinerary ... and obviously, I will look forward to a trip report :-) BTW, meeting in Melbourne sounds quite romantic especially if both of you are originally from the USA (unless I am mistaken)!!
Rog: Yes, thanks! Someone else up above in the thread also informed me about it. I even remembered hearing that the missing MH370 supposedly went down somewhere in the Southern Ocean.

an_asker

OK, so I wrapped up my trip report; dumped my photos with (hopefully) funny and insightful remarks and washed my hands off it. And then I discovered eightblack. The dude probably has written more in just one of his reports than I did in my entire PhD dissertation and MS combined. Though the jury is still out on which is more useful to humanity, one of eightblack's trip reports or the sum of my six years of unrewarding labour (no, I am not sharing a link to that)!

But anyway, after wading my way through eightblack's never ending trip report - and yes, folks, that is literally true, because that report is yet to reach its conclusion almost a year after it started - I decided to see if I could inject some spice (and some details thrown in too) into my trip report as well. So, then, Boys and Girls, Ladies and Gentlemen (that is a phrase I'm adopting from JetStar btw. With that attribution, I hope I'm not sued for copyright violation), strap on your seatbelts and hang on for the ride which, unlike the JetStar's vessels, will be at a more earthly (earthy?) pace.

Let me start with what happened at midnight in Cairns!

OK, to be honest, it was not really midnight, but seven pm at Cairns is probably darker and scarier for folks used to good old America! OK, at least for the shopper types, if not for all visitors from America. And especially for the hungry folks (even of the non-shopping kind). Who don't have a clue where to get their food ... or a working phone! Yes sir, that was our situation, at seven pm when we were waiting to board our shuttle bus to the rental car place.

We had landed from Sydney on time at about six pm or so, and four of us were pulling in four directions. OK, to be honest, DW was not pulling in any direction. With a bum ankle, courtesy of a misaligned sidewalk in Sydney, she probably just wanted to grow roots as soon she stepped off the plane. Unfortunately for her, I had gone cheapo and reserved an Airbnb for tonight’s stay and had to get a rental car to navigate ourselves to the place. And unfortunately for us, when I looked around the (small) airport terminal, I was unable to find SixT who I had reservations with. Upon pulling out printout #4 (for those who are interested, I had about 30 of those in all for our trip, numbered in chronological order too) from my carryon bag, I found that we needed to call them and request to be picked up to get to their off-site location.

Sitting everyone in one area, I went in search of a SIM card. You might want to note the fact that well before leaving the USA, DS and I had researched that two of our phones were compatible with Optus; and that was great, as I recalled seeing a place selling the Optus cards in the arrival area. Because of how the terminal is set up, I had to get out and get back in (I cannot give a better picture of this or how/why it is so, but I am sure someone more familiar with the airport will chime in). It was a breeze getting the card; but it was a hurricane trying to get it to work. Try as he might, DS - our tech support specialist - was unable to get the phone to work (we later were informed that there is something called unlocking a phone which, as Ringplus users, we had assumed we were not subject to). So, there we were, out in the open, with nowhere to go - when I got a brainwave. Why not ask the information folks how far it is to get to SixT, maybe I can walk over to the place? And this is where I got completely flummoxed - or I completely flummoxed the information desk, you take your pick!

Folks at Information had no clue who or where SixT was! They had never heard of the rental company. This is when I got my next brainwave. I tell you - these waves, whether in the ocean or in the brain, are unrelenting in Australia! Why not show the printout to the dude? With that in mind, I thrust the sheaf of papers at him. He looks over - and sees what I had not noticed before - a phone number. And god bless his soul, he decides to dial the number for me. The first number fails to work, but the second one does the trick. As it starts ringing, I hear the person say "East Coast Car Rentals ..." I almost started quaking in my boots when I heard that phrase. Why, you ask?

Well, here's why! While looking for the best car rental deal here in the USA, I had always gotten East Coast at the top of the list; however, they were also always at the bottom of the list as far as the reviews were concerned. So, I had skipped past them and opted for the more familiar (to me, not the Information@Cairns) SixT car rental agency, though their rates were higher. At this point though, hungry, famished, jetlagged, bedraggled, yada yada yada, I was in no mood to question who she was with or what the connection was. So, I meekly asked if she could find my reservation - and she did. I was informed to go to place X where we would be picked up and delivered (hallelujah, I went!).

Alas! If only things were as simple as they sounded. First off, I had my DW with her previously mentioned ankle who could not really locomote. Her motion was nowhere close to walking. So, asking them to continue waiting, I headed out in search of the said shuttle bus, to see if I could coax the driver to pick us up closer to where family was located. It took me a good fifteen minutes – and three separate locals – before I managed to find the correct place for pick up. Guess what? The East Coast rental van was right there. I walked over to him and said my piece. Unfortunately, he said, the van didn’t have permission to loop into the arrivals area (there was a barrier, for lack of a better explanation here, which separated the areas). So, family had no option but to mosey over here. Given that even a brisk walked would likely need three to four minutes to get there, I figured 15-20 for the family. At that point, he said that he would drop off the current occupants then come around for us. I was more than fine with that. At least no more cellular communication was required (for now!).

Back I went, the bearer of bad news, to the family. I trudged slowly back once more, with the family in tow this time. And this is where, dear readers, we were at seven pm at night (or, as my sleepy body seemed to be wanting to tell me, five am in the morning!), when what will my future be, I wondered?

In the next segment, I will describe the masterstroke of genius that I had before leaving the USA – that of taking an itsy bitsy flashlight with me! I don’t recollect ever having done that before … and suffice it to say that I will never forget to do so in the future either!

princeville

Well don't pull an eightblack and leave us hanging on your night in Cairns! I just discovered eightblack's TR the other night and hope he finishes it! We have two rentals through Sixt during our trip, so I'm really hoping the outcome was good.

Heh, yes it is a neat "how we met" story! And yes, we're both from the US. We were both in Melbourne for a semester abroad during the last term of our MBA programs, and both had jobs in LA lined up after graduation, so it worked out quite well!

Yes, I'm happy to share our itinerary, but there are still a lot of details to fill in. We just finished booking the intra-Australia flights and rental cars the other night and still need to figure out hotels or AirBnBs and of course what we'll do on each day. We'll have 10 days there - our kids have the whole week of Thanksgiving off from school, so they'll just miss 3 days.

Day 1: Arrive in Brisbane late morning. Like you, we jumped on some of the great fares that kept popping up last spring. Brisbane was quite a bit cheaper for the dates that worked for us, so we grabbed that. Initially, we planned to take 2-3 days and drive to Sydney down the Pacific Highway, but just this week we decided to scrap that and maximize our time in Sydney and Melbourne. So that we won't have to stress about our incoming flight being late, we plan to spend the rest of that day there. We'll pick up a rental car, have lunch in Southbank, head south to a beach and let the kids play, then return the car to the Gold Coast airport and take the last flight to Sydney.

Days 2-4: Explore Sydney. Nothing is actually planned yet, but will probably consist of some or all of these: eat, shop and learn some history wandering The Rocks area, walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge (no desire to climb it!), Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney Opera House tour with kids, maybe even catch a performance there without them (we have friends on an expat assignment there - hoping they can recommend a babysitter so we can have a night out and try a nice restaurant while we're at it), Sydney Tower (if the kids are interested, I could take it or leave it), beach time at Bondi and Manly (my husband dislocated his shoulder while body surfing at Manly... ahh, memories!), definitely taking a ferry somewhere, maybe the zoo, because the views are spectacular, and maybe the Blue Mountains. I've had the pleasure of riding the ZigZag Railway up there twice and recently learned it was heavily damaged in a fire and not open yet. So I need to do some more research on what else is out there and if we want to carve out the time to do it. All subject to change, of course. I've been to Sydney several times and absolutely love it, so I'm just happy wandering and eating, but do want to make sure the kiddos see enjoy some of the highlights. We'll fly to Melbourne the evening of Day 4.

Days 5-7: Again, no specific plans yet, but will spend most of our time boring the kids with our walks down memory lane... showing them our old apartments, the business school, Queen Victoria Market, Lygon Street (we actually found most of our meals there rather mediocre, but lots of memories and the pizza will be a hit), some of the other places we liked to eat, hoping to catch some type of game at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds, riding the tram and some beach time in St. Kilda. A shame we can't take them to the Crown Casino since we and our friends played many a hand of blackjack there!

Days 8-9: Great Ocean Road! The evening of day 9 we'll fly up to Brisbane.

Day 10: Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo - my daughter doesn't know yet and is going to lose her mind!

Day 11: Fly home - already sad thinking about it.

I'd love to hear your (or anyone else's) thoughts. While I have spent a good amount of time there, it's been quite a while and of course traveling with children is a totally different experience! They are 6 and 9 and experienced travelers, but they do slow the pace a bit. I do hope to write up a trip report when we return. Actually, I should write one on our summer odyssey. I'm not sure how much interest there is here in family travels, but I appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences!

adampenrith

Blue Mountains -

have a look at this website

http://www.scenicworld.com.au/

they have added and updated what was the old scenic railway

so that might be a great spot to head to - awesome views over the Jamieson Valley - and if you take the scenic railway there are some bushwalks - and you do not need to go very far to experience the serenity of the bush

princeville

Thank you!

an_asker

Let me set your mind at rest - we had a good experience with East Coast Car rentals during ... and after ... our trip! I don't know if SixT is like a rental car aggregator or whether East Coast is their face (or vice versa) in Australia. Probably the latter. The Melbourne guy was great - he gave us some tips on driving from the airport to Torquay where we spent the night and also assured us that we would not run into tolls on the way back.

Nice to hear about your "how we met" story and about your experiences back then and your travel plans. At least your plans sound a bit less rushed than ours, though ours worked out just fine as well. Re: scenic world at Katoomba, that is where we went as well. I believe I've included some photos - there are three rides to go on and they are each different from the other two.

Other than that, I don't think I can give any suggestions, as we also didn't really spend a lot of time and I'm sure we missed out on many things as well. Travelling with kids is fun ... for the others as well, especially when sometimes the kids forget to use their 'outside voice' ;-)

I do look forward to a trip report - at the very least, you could share your photos with a one-liner or two :-) Those are a lot of fun to read.

an_asker

In the last episode, we were outside Cairns airport, wondering where and when we would be going to bed and, more pressing, what would we be eating (and when!).

Here is one of the threads I had read before our trip. With that in mind, we were wondering when - and if - our shuttle bus driver would be returning to pick us up. We were in luck, because he showed up not too much later. While driving to the rental agency, I was wondering whether it might be a good idea to just jump off and go to our digs with our stuff, as we a) appeared to be headed in the general direction of the accommodation and b) hadn't yet signed any paperwork. I also started having apprehensions as to whether this was indeed SixT or some kind of devious way of getting us into a rental we didn't want (by this time, I had conveniently forgotten that I was the one that made the phone call based on the reservation information!).

Anyway, I let those thoughts rest by which time we reached the place, which is right on the main drag through town. Any idea I might have had of practicing my driving skills on the "opposite" side were dashed to the ground immediately. Also, at this time, the rest of the family had decided that there was nothing better to do than sitting on the (many) available seats and crashing. Fortunately for me, though, there was only one customer ahead of us. We were quickly taken care of and I did enquire whether they were really SixT which, apparently they were, because the paperwork I ended up signing did have SixT on it. I used my Citibank ThankYou Premier credit card as it was the only one among those in my possession which had renter's insurance as long as I declined/waived the collision damages on the rental. Per my research (please correct me if I am wrong), most (if not all) car rentals in Australia cover you for liability - it is only for damage, if any, to the rental car that you are on the hook for.

DS is the gadget king of our household. Though I am one of the last adopters of any technology that is out there - saves the wallet from flying off my pant pocket - he still is able to keep abreast by, in no proper order, chatting with friends, reading up about it online, beg/borrow/stealing from friends (OK, I made that one up). So, before we left Atlanta, I had asked him to replace the Atlanta map (which got us to the hotel there) with the Cairns map (needless to say, I haven't got him the latest smartphone with oodles of space - he can only fit one city or so at one time!).

I circled around the car to make sure there were no hidden dents or dings, and listened to their spiel about returning it with a full tank of gas, use the hand parking brake (which was located across from the brake pedal and which was more convenient to be used with the left foot), and so on (thankfully, I did not fall asleep). Armed with all this knowledge ... and the GPS navigation on DS's phone, I timidly left the car rental place with a spanking new (OK, it did have a few thousand km on it) Toyota Camry (this was much better than I had expected, though it did say on the reservation that we'd be getting a Camry or its equivalent). Once we left the confines of the agency and were on the road, after a couple of turns (following the GPS instructions), we soon were in the dark, literally! To say that it was scary to drive there was an understatement ... and this was even though there was not much traffic about.

I had GPS lady ordering me to turn, DS (front passenger) repeating it with a lag, and DW (back seat) looking out to see if we were at that intersection yet or not! With so many masters, was it surprising that in five minutes, I had dinged my car rear view mirror against something on the left side. Well, maybe it was not surprising - to me at least (though I am sure half the internet will claim that I was jet lagged). Anyway, without further mishap, we got to the address of the Airbnb place in another five minutes - yes, we could literally have walked here in ten-fifteen minutes from the rental place ... had we abandoned them and, more critically, had DW been able to walk!!

Anyone who has ever rented an Airbnb - OK, not just one, but multiple Airbnbs - will agree with me that the pendulum could swing all the way from one way to the other. People - me included - hate to give bad reviews (or stars) to the Airbnbs. The trick is to write between the lines ... and, even trickier, is to read between them! I confess, I am not good at this. If this is a male trait, I plead guilty of perpetrating the stereotype!

I don't know how or why, but I thought that there would be someone to greet us as soon as we entered the accommodation and give us our bedroom(s). What I did not know - and was definitely unprepared for - was the fact that there was a gate and, you guessed it right, it was locked. This is where my flashlight came in handy for the first time. I shone the beam of light up and down the dark gate, and saw a phone number which, I was informed in big bold letters, needed to be used by late arrivals! I did a *virtual* facepalm (or virtual *facepalm*, you decide which) and realized that our host was probably waiting behind the gate, phone in hand, for us to call :-( And we didn't have. One. Working. Phone!!

I looked up and down to see if the gate was scalable. Though the Olympics were ongoing, I had never attempted the pole vault, notwithstanding the fact that a pole was not handy either. I was resigned to our fate ... that I had to drive back towards the main road (Sheridan Street, as GPS lady had made it now known to me), past poles and fences reaching out onto the road to find a working phone to call from. While I was pacing up and down weighing my options, deliverance appeared in the form of a pair of headlights. I was about to wave the car to a stop when it stopped of its own accord ... and parked next to us. Out came a bunch of folks with bags of groceries - and they went right past us and opened the gate with the gate code. Before the last person was through, I managed to close my agape mouth and find my voice. Thankfully, they were able to understand my English (yay!) and, after a couple of minutes of indecisiveness, in which time they saw the rest of the family, they let us in and informed us that they had no clue who we could talk with. For a few minutes, we wandered around trying to find someone who could lend us a phone - by then, someone took pity on us and informed us that there was a manager who lived next door. Hearing all the commotion, the manager came out and, after a few minutes of checking through a huge logbook and leafing through sheaves of paper, he decided that we were worthy of being given the keys to a pair of rooms ... which looked exactly like those pictured on Airbnb. What was not, however, shared on Airbnb was that the place was run as a motel - with advertisements in all sorts of internet media. To me, maybe I'm old fashioned, an Airbnb is like a private accommodation that the host lets out to visitors. This place was definitely not of that kind. Oh well, lesson learned (hopefully!).

By this time, we were (OK, I was) very hungry. So, I asked the host what our options were. With a wry/sly (you take your pick) smile, he informed me that I had 30 minutes to make any purchases at a closeby Cole's before it (and apparently all of Cairns) closed down for the night ... unless I was interested in driving back to the Airport. At this point in time, there was nothing that was going to put me behind the wheels of that car. So, I immediately rushed back out to get some grub. Though I didn't exactly follow the directions of the manager, I was able to get to Cole's before it shut shop for the day and came back with something that we could munch. By this time, the family was almost out for the count ... and it had started drizzling.

When we go on trips, I check up on the weather, especially when we need the weather to cooperate. And more often than not, in our case, we've not had good luck (though sometimes, I am culpable for planning trips in off seasons). The year before last, we had had rain in Paris which, to be honest, was not too bad as we were museuming most of the time. And last year, three out of three bad weather days in the Bernese Oberland had been really upsetting. So much so that I had termed myself the Rainmaker. When I had checked the ten day forecast for Cairns, I had seen sunny days for the ten days that included the days we were in Cairns; however, as our trip neared, two cloudy, then rainy days settled right overhead on the days we planned to be there. Bright sunny days on either side, but for the two cloudy, rainy days. It did appear that our worst nightmare was about to come true - Rainmaker(s) in Australia!!

Nomad98

Great Trip report and amazing pics OP!
Thinking of adding a side trip to Australia on my trips to India for a very long time.
As a person needing entry permit to Australia, i find the instructions on their US embassy site not very concise.