• Menu

Archive - September 2011

Albany: Treetops, William Bay, & The Gap

Sunday, September 25th, 2011:  Albany, Australia Our final day in southwest Australia was spent in the town of Albany.  With only 29,000 people, it is still one of the larger cities in Western Australia, and allowed us access to a number of beautiful sights on the edge of Australia’s Southern Ocean. Arriving right on time at 9am to the berth number 2 in this...

Bunbury: Great Wine, Beautiful Wineries!

Saturday, September 24th, 2011:  Bunbury, Australia Bunbury is a small coastal town of about 55,000 people along the southwest Australian coast and is the gateway city for the Margaret River wine region.  That’s our focus today and we hire a car and take to the roads, headed for the world famous wineries that call this fertile grape growing region home...

Fremantle: Rottnest Island & Doing Hard Time

Friday, September 23rd, 2011:  Fremantle, Australia It’s our first of three straight port days here in on the Southwest corner of Australia.  As we explore the state of Western Australia, our first stop is the port of Fremantle.  As we dock alongside the river front (we are actually at the mouth of the Swan River), we take a short walk into town and grab a...

Bali: An Island of Beauty, Inside and Out

Monday, September 19th, 2011:  Bali, Indonesia We we’re both anticipating our arrival to Indonesia as one of many “firsts” on this journey.  It was our very first visit to Asia, and though it would be short (just one day), it would mark the 6th continent that we have travelled together, leaving only Antarctica on that list. We were up...

Darwin: Waterfalls, Litchfield, & Termites?!?

Friday, September 16, 2011:  Darwin, Autralia We’ve arrived in the Northern Territory and to Darwin, Australia, the northernmost port on our Australian itinerary, and the gateway to the Australian Outback.  Through our travels today won’t take us more than 120kms from Darwin, we will travel down the Stuart Highway, also known as the A1, which runs from...

Port Douglas: Crocs, Crocs, & More Crocs!

Tuesday, September 13th:  Port Douglas, Australia Port Douglas, located at the northern edge of the Great Barrier Reef area, is also the closest port to Cairns, the largest city in Northern Queensland.  Our shore excursion today would take us about 30 kms south of here to Hartley’s Creek, about half the distance to Cairns, and to Hartley’s Crocodile...

Airlie Beach: Sun, Snorkel, and Sand!

Sunday, September 11th:  Airlie Beach, Australia Our second port, Airlie Beach, is one of the two main jumping off points for the Great Barrier Reef (the other being Port Douglas, which we will visit in a few days), and the primary gateway for the Whitsunday Islands — a chain of 74 islands that are not only beautiful, but combine quiet and remote bush tracks on...

Brisbane: Koalas, Kangaroos, and Wombats, Oh My!

Friday, September 9th:  Brisbane, Australia Our first stop on the Australian cruise is the port of Brisbane along the east coast of the country.  Docking at the new Portside Wharf on the northeast fringes of the city meant that we would take advantage of public transportation today to see the city and to get to our stop for the day — Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary...

Sydney: Welcome to Australia!

Sunday:  Christchurch to Sydney It was an early morning as we were out the door at 7am and headed to the airport for a 9:30 flight.  The drive in was quiet and uneventful as most of Christchurch was still asleep for an early Sunday morning.  As we dropped our rental car off, we made our way inside without delay to begin our check in at Air New Zealand for our trans...

A US Traveller’s Crash Course in Metric…

It’s time to wrap our heads around another fun transition to face as we travel on the journey… The Metric System The United States is one of only 3 remaining countries on the planet not yet using the system of measurement (we join the world powerhouses of Liberia and Myanmar in this somewhat sad distinction), so in prepping for days on the road, making...

Christchurch: A City Ready to Rebuild

Friday:  Dunedin to Christchurch On Friday morning, after a late morning start (we left at 10am), we took a scenic 6+ hour drive along the Inland Scenic Route from Dunedin to Christchurch.  One of our first stops on the drive north was to the Moeraki Boulders.  This site contains 60 million year old spherical boulders that only in the last several hundred years...

South and East: Bluff, Catlins, & Dunedin

Tuesday:  Queenstown to Dunedin To say that we took the scenic route today is a bit of an understatement.  The most direct route from Queenstown to Dunedin will take you east/southeast on SH8 over a distance of just under 170 miles (280kms).  Instead, we decided to drive due south on SH6 to Invercargill and finally on SH1 to Bluff (the end of the highway on the South...

Queenstown: Snow & So Much to Do!

Sunday:  Franz Josef to Queenstown It was an early start to our day, as we had a lot of ground to cover making our way south along the west coast and into Queenstown.  As we left Franz Josef, the skies began to part and we got a better view of the snow-capped peaks surrounding the glaciers. As we continued south along SH6, we passed through the smaller and lesser...