The Australia Travel Puzzle is Starting to Take Shape

I admit it—when I told the husband he could pick anywhere in the world to spend his next milestone birthday and he came back with Australia, my response was tepid. There was never anything wrong with the Land Down Under; it just never floated my boat the way other places do. But now that I’ve read all the books and blogs, watched some slightly dated travel DVDs from the library, exchanged several emails with my Australian blog buddy, and spent hours and hours on the web, my tune has changed.

I’m officially jazzed.

Here’s a rough sketch of what we’ll get up to:

Days 1-3: fly on airplane

Because of the time difference, it’ll actually be “only” 24 hours in transit, but due to the nature of non-first-class airline travel, it’ll undoubtedly feel like three days.

Days 3-6: Sydney

We’re staying in the neighborhood known as The Rocks, so we’ll be close to many things we plan to see and do: The Sydney Opera House, The Harbour Bridge climb, a harbour dinner cruise, the National Maritime Museum, Chinatown, and much more. Because we’ll be there in Australia’s winter, there won’t be any chancing of life and limb with ocean swims, but we’ll still head over to Bondi beach to brave some chilly laps in the ocean-adjacent pool.

Photo by Belle Co on Pexels.com

Days 6-8: Perth

It’s a full five-hour flight across the continent to Perth, so we’ll really just have an evening followed by a full day in this lone western metropolis. We’re staying in Perth proper where there’s a treetop walk and a little island in the Swan River with a colony of kangaroos I’m hoping to spot (and befriend). But we’ll also be spending a good part of our one full day in neighboring Fremantle, where there’s an outdoor market, another maritime museum, a shipwreck museum, and an old prison that offers tours. My biggest worry on this side of the continent is that we won’t have time to do it all.

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Days 8-11: The Indian Pacific train from Perth to Sydney

This is the first of two BPWABPs (birthday present within a birthday present). While some may find endless days trundling across the desert to be a prison-like hell, I’m anticipating this will be the most relaxing, least stressful part of the trip. We’ll have nothing to do but gaze at the scenery, eat what is reported to be very good food, drink Australian wine, play cribbage, backgammon, and cards (we travel prepared), enjoy four “off-train experiences,” and chit-chat with other passengers (most of whom, I predict, will be Australians, and thus, listening to their dialect will be part of the fun).

Photo by Sabel Blanco on Pexels.com

Days 11-14: The Blue Mountains and Mudgee

After being deposited at Sydney Central Station, we’ll pick up our rental car and drive to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. We’ll arrive in the dark, so the next day we’ll explore the Katoomba/Leura area and then make our way to Mudgee for a blog buddy meet up with Mel from Life . . . One Big Adventure, where she’s promised us some some wine tasting. I’m hoping to see (and befriend) lots of kangaroos in this neck of the Australian woods, although, concerningly, Mel tells me her region has the dubious distinction of being #1 in accidents involving car vs. kanga, so we’ll be reluctantly shelling out for the maximum level of insurance at the rental agency.

Don’t hit me.
Photo by Ethan Brooke on Pexels.com

Day 14: Back to Sydney

This will be a full and busy day. We’ll zip back to Sydney (as much as one can “zip” a four-hour drive in the mountains in winter), return the rental car, drop off our luggage at the hotel where surely it will be too early in the day to check in, train it back to The Rocks to stroll through their big weekly market, and finish with a wine and charcuterie tasting that’s part of our Go City® Sydney Card before retiring to our airport-adjacent hotel where we can watch planes take off and land from our room. Talk about packing it in!

Photo by Rijan Hamidovic on Pexels.com

Days 15-18: Uluru and the Red Centre

This is the other BPWABP. We’ll fly three hours to Yulara, the town a few miles from Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock). We’re staying at Ayers Rock Resort, which is the only accommodation available in these parts unless one wants to stay at the luxury Longitude 131 (we do) and pay AUD $4400/USD $2829 per night (we don’t). We’ll of course visit the iconic monolith, but there are also lots of other experiences the resort offers that we’ll get to enjoy pay extra to enjoy.

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Days 18-19: Ulura back to Sydney

Like with Perth, we’ll only have an evening and the following day back in Sydney. In fact, this final full day in Sydney was put in place specifically as a buffer day. Because it’s literally half the cost of a Qantas flight, we’re taking Jetstar Airlines to and from Uluru. Jetstar does not—I repeat, does not—get good reviews for reliability and efficiency. Since the idea of missing our flight home due to Jetstar’s ineptitude fills me with dread, I embedded this buffer day should the airline live up down to it’s reputation. We’ll spend this day squeezing in anything else we didn’t get to see and do at the beginning of the trip. Or maybe we’ll just collapse on our hotel bed in exhaustion.

Photo by Julia Sakelli on Pexels.com

Day 20: fly home

We’ll have many hours of discomfort in the airborne sardine can, which I’ll surely spend longing to see the pets, fondly reminiscing about our southern hemisphere adventures, and, I predict—provided I don’t think too much about the rattling sound our three remaining pennies are making in our travel piggy bank—planning our next trip to Oz.