Australia is a huge place. We were able to spend three weeks exploring three different cities in Australia. We visited Sydney, Cairns and Melbourne.
Because of the way our international flights were booked, we book-ended our time in Australia visiting Sydney. We arrived in Sydney on Valentines Day, and spent the afternoon getting settled in to our airbnb and going to a local pool.
For our first school day, Friday, we spent the afternoon getting to know Sydney via a harbor cruise. The first thing we learned is that Sydney Harbor is beautiful. We gazed at the Sydney Opera House, saw people climbing the harbor bridge, learned about the high prevalence of sharks in the harbor, and even saw the building that 42 Wallaby Way was modeled to look like in Finding Nemo! We were amazed to learn that the Sydney Harbor Bridge is referred to as the iron lung of Australia because it helped keep many people working through the depression when it was built. We also happened to be taking our harbor cruise on the day of a Sail GP catamaran race in Sydney Harbor. There were teams from Great Britain, the United States, Japan, China, France and Australia. We had a wonderful time identifying the catamarans based on their sails and watching the teams warm up for the race.
I spent Saturday exploring more of Sydney. I visited a district near the Sydney Harbor called the Rocks in the morning and enjoyed walking around their Saturday morning market. Knowing that the girls and I had limited time in Sydney, and having become very accustomed to seeing landmarks across each city we visit, I decided to take a bus tour in the early afternoon. My late afternoon and evening were spent at Bondi Beach, soaking up the summer sun and enjoying watching all the surfers. There must have been thousands of people at Bondi Beach, all enjoying the end of the Australian summer.
On Sunday, in addition to sleeping in and spending the morning relaxing, I spent the afternoon at the Sydney aquarium. My favorite part was observing Pig, one of only a few captive dugongs in the world. The Sydney aquarium also has a very cool prehistoric section, which contains animals that have been around since the time of the dinosaurs, including lung fish and axolotls. After enjoying the aquarium, I took advantage of the Sunday only $2.70 opal card public transportation cap and took a ferry from Sydney over to the suburb of Manly on the other side of the harbor. The ferry ride was beautiful, and dropped off very close to 4 Pines Brewery. I spent a wonderful evening at the 4 Pines Beer and Burger Bar, enjoying wonderful food, beer and atmosphere. I would highly recommend the ferry to Manly and visiting 4 Pines Brewery to anyone visiting Sydney with an evening free.
When we booked our trip to Sydney, one of the things that Audrey and Maurene wanted to ensure that we did was visit the Sydney Opera House. On Monday, we had the chance to take a tour of the Opera House. To begin our tour, we watched a video about the history of the Opera House. We learned that the design by Danish architect Jørn Utzon was chosen via a competition. It was expected to be built in four years and cost 7 million dollars. In reality, it took 14 years to complete, and cost 102 million dollars. The design Jørn Utzon submitted was not actually structurally sound, and the answer to how to make the sail design viable was found by designing them as if they were cut out of the same sphere. As we walked through, we had the chance to see four of the six performance spaces: the Joan Sutherland Theater, the Concert Hall, the Playhouse and the Utzon Room. We were highly amused at the “love it or hate it” bright purple carpet outside the Concert Hall. Because the Opera House has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, they are not allowed to change the carpet color even if they wanted to. We enjoyed standing on a balcony and looking up into the windows above while facing away from the harbor, because they act as a mirror and reflect the harbor. As we walked between the two buildings, we enjoyed seeing all ten “sails” on the opera house, and learned that there are over one million Swedish tiles covering the sails. I tried to sell Audrey and Maurene on the idea that they could join the tile checking and cleaning teams, but they did not think that was a job they wanted in the future.
On Tuesday, we visited the Royal Botanic Gardens and took an Aboriginal Heritage tour to learn more about the Cadigal tribe that lived near Sydney. Our tour was led by an aboriginal woman from one of the tribes in the northern part of Australia. As we wandered through the gardens, we learned some about the traditional uses for different plants. Our guide showed us which trees could be used for making weapons, which reeds could be made into baskets, which plants could be made into medicine, and which were a good source of food. We also learned that Sydney Harbor used to be a birthing place for whales, and because of this, only Cadigal women were allowed to fish from Sydney Harbor. We also enjoyed spotting native wildlife throughout the garden. Our most exciting animal sightings were an Australian possum, many cockatoos and several Kookaburras.
We spent Wednesday getting packed up and traveling up the East coast of Australia to Cairns. We flew with Tigerair, which I would only recommend if you are paying for checked luggage and do not need to have anything more than a tiny carry on. The carry on weight limit is 7 kg, and they use a scale as you are boarding to check the weight of your bag. Fortunately, other than their bag policy, we had a fine experience with the airline on all three inter-Australian flights.
Cairns is often called the Great Barrier Reef, which was the big purpose of this stop on the trip. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived in Cairns I was downright miserable with some sort of flu. Fortunately, Josh was able to take Thursday off and take Audrey and Maurene to the aquarium. They had a wonderful time, and I was able to rest and focus on feeling better.
Audrey, Maurene, Kris and Josh all took a day trip to Green Island on Friday, while I continued to rest and recover. They all enjoyed the family time, and I enjoyed another day of sleeping and letting my medicine do its work.
On Saturday I was so excited, because I woke up feeling much better. I spent the day visiting Green Island, utilizing all of the advice the girls had given me based on their trip the day before. Green Island is a small island located about 45 minutes off the coast of Australia within the Great Barrier Reef. Upon arrival, I immediately boarded a glass bottom boat tour to see parts of the reef that were out of bounds to snorkelers due to boats. The boat had angled glass on the bottom to prevent bubbles from interfering with the view, so the views were lovely. The water was a little murky due to the historic flooding in the area of Queensland that occurred shortly before I arrived, but was still clear enough to see the reef. We saw many giant clams, a turtle and so many fish. After the glass bottom boat, I went to Marineland Melanesia to see Cassius – the world’s largest captive saltwater crocodile. Cassius is 5.48 meters long and is estimated to be 110 years old! Overall, I was a little underwhelmed by Marineland Melanesia, but seeing Cassius and the other crocodiles was very cool, and a little terrifying. I spent the afternoon snorkeling on the reef just off the island. The sandy beach entry was wonderfully easy to snorkel from, and the sights were amazing. Even though we visited during jellyfish season, I did not have issues with them, or even see any. My favorite sights were a giant clam, an eel and a significant number of parrot fish. I’m also proud to say that I was only a little pink by the end of the day, having reapplied sunscreen what felt like a million times. I thoroughly enjoyed my day at Green Island, and was also very ready to go back to sleep and recover a little more by the end of the evening.
In addition to being known as the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, Cairns also is one of the gateways to the world’s oldest tropical rainforest – Daintree. Kris, Maurene and Audrey had mentioned wanting to see the rainforest while we were there, so I invited them to come with me for the day and explore Daintree. We began by taking the 130 year old Kuranda Scenic Railway through the Daintree rainforest to the town of Kuranda. The railway was created to ensure that famers, miners, and other workers in the forest had access to supplies when the roads were too wet to travel on. The railway climbs over 300 meters, has 15 tunnels, goes around 98 curves and crosses 40 bridges. It is a single track for almost the entire journey, with one section allowing trains to cross in opposite directions. The views from the train were absolutely stunning, even when it was down pouring.
When we reached Kuranda, we enjoyed exploring the “village in the rainforest”. I thought the name was ironic, because it seemed to be bigger than I imagine a village to be. Kuranda was full of a plethora of shops, restaurants and small activities. After window shopping for a while, we went to the Koala Gardens. Ironically, the most enjoyable part of the Koala Gardens was the wallaby exhibit. The girls had a wonderful time offering food to the wallabies, even though they did not really seem very interested in the food. They also had a very educational section explaining the differences between freshwater crocodiles and saltwater crocodiles. Both can be found in Australia!
To get back to Cairns, we took the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway, a gondola that travels through and over the Daintree forest. We learned that the forests in the movie Avatar were created using inspiration from when the Avatar creative team rode on this same skyrail. I don’t often like heights, but was enthralled with the views from the skyrail. We got off the skyrail at two different locations to walk through the rainforest, with excellent views of the immensity of the forest and Barron Falls. Rainforest exploration has always been on my bucket list, and to be able to check it off with the world’s oldest tropical rainforest was pretty amazing.
On Monday, we took a trip with the whole family to a location on the outer Great Barrier Reef to snorkel. We were provided with lycra suits to help prevent any scrapes or stings, which were hilarious to wear. Josh was already scuba certified, so he joined the company led scuba experience in the morning while we began snorkeling. Audrey and I partnered up for much of the day, and Kris and Maurene were partners for much of the day. Audrey and I enjoyed looking at the different types of coral, watching parrotfish nibble away at the reef, and searching for “nemo.” I never did see a clownfish, but loved seeing all the different species of aquatic life all around the reef. After taking a break for lunch, Audrey and I took a glass bottom boat tour and a semi-submersible boat tour. The semi-sumbersible tour was definitely the better of the two for being able to see, and we were able to spot a significant amount of coral and other aquatic life. Our favorite sights were a sea turtle, a black tipped reef shark and a epaulette shark. After the boat tours, we got back in the water for more snorkeling. We found a huge boulder coral and hypothesized that it must have been at least 500 years old, since boulder corals grow approximately 1 cm per year. Other than some small issues with Josh feeling seasick due to the choppy conditions, the day was incredible. Snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef was definitely a bucket list check mark moment and this was a day I will cherish forever. I hope to come back and scuba the Great Barrier Reef at some point.
Cairns was an absolute favorite for me, even though I was sick for a few days. The climate felt very Florida-esk to me, which I loved. Plus it has the obvious perks of the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree tropical rain forest. Cairns is definitely on my list of favorite places we visited this past year. I plan on coming back soon.
Wednesday was another travel day. This time, we flew South to Melbourne! A little over a week left in Australia!
Tales of a Traveling Teacher 