Day 21 – Flying

Sydney to Melbourne – 1.5 hours
Melbourne to LA – 13 hours
LA to NYC – 5 hours

Thanksgiving was spent almost entirely on an airplane, but at least we got some bacon.

Kristin got quite a bit of sleeping done.
Tony watched the following on the way to LA from Melbourne

• In Bruges (very good, actually)
• Step Brothers (had its moments)
• Batman Begins (very good)
• The Happening (it's even worse than you can imagine)
• The Dark Knight (saw it in a theater, but still pretty darn good)
• 3 episodes of Family Guy
  
• 1 episode of the Simpsons
  

Day 20 – 18 hours in Sydney, Australia.

We landed and took a cab into the city.
We shopped for souvenirs and gifts.
We took a cruise of the Sydney harbor.
We walked around The Rocks and the Harbor area.
We had dinner at Tetsuya’s, which seems to be consistently listed as one of the “ten best restaurants in the world.” (It was pretty good, and the best part is, the US dollar buys quite a bit more here than in the States right now.)
We went back to the hotel, packed, slept for a couple hours, then went to the airport.

Bacon? Yes, of course

The view of Sydney Harbor from our hotel room. It was right down there that Europeans first started settling Australia in the late 18th century. And it's true that most of those people were convicts, petty criminals and grifters from England. Aborigines have been in the area for between 40,000 and 60,000 years.

This, I'm told, is where the rich people in Sydney live.
Bridge and Opera House.
Another view of the opera house:

Our final free bottle of champagne (this one with a view of the Opera House in the background). Just tell everyone you're on your honeymoon when you travel...and, voila, free champagne!
Drinks before dinner.

Day 19 – Hamilton Island

Today, the planned called for us to be in Sydney, but we ended up staying at the GBR and extra day. The weather forecast in Sydney called for cold, gray, rainy weather – and we can get plenty of that in NYC. So, the second major itinerary change was effected.

Alas, more bacon was consumed.

An interesting bird and the last kangaroo (or wallaby) that we saw...

Day 18 – Hamilton Island

Today consisted of little more than lounging about the beach and pool area.

The only other notable thing that happened today was that we witnessed someone being attacked by a giant bat. We were invited to watch the sunset with the “esteemed General Manager” of the resort where we were staying. Since free drinks were involved, we decided to attend. After the sun disappeared behind the islands in the distance, several large fruit bats began circling the area where our party was gathered. The highlight occurred when one of these bats, about the size of a Nerf football, landed on the head of some guy from Chicago. Blood was drawn, chaos ensued.

Bacon was consumed.

This pretty much sums up today:

This was the scene moments prior to the giant bat attack:

Day 17 – Great Barrier Reef

Today started with the consuming of bacon.

Finally, the weather was suitable for small aircraft flight, and we were able to take a helicopter from Hamilton Island to the Great Barrier Reef. Between the two points, we did a fly-by of Whitehaven Beach, which, according to the BBC, is the “3^rd best beach in the world.”

I got to fly in the front seat, next to the pilot. Seeing the GBR from the air was actually superior in some ways to the boat ride and the snorkeling at the reef. We looked down from 500 feet into the water where gigantic black manta rays swam in the shallow pools (only saw a couple though, no turtles…). At the reef, we dove among countless different fishes in full-body “stinger suits” which covered us from head to toe, protecting us against the world’s deadliest jellyfishes (fyi, no jellyfish were sighted, and stings are rare…but deadly nonetheless).

Whitehaven Beach from the air:
Heart reef (it's the one that's shaped like a heart...).
Some more views of the reef from the helicopter:
This bathroom is nicer than our bathroom in New York, and larger than our whole apartment, I think.
I was sort of sad to see that you really don't come across many of those giant beer cans in Australia (at least not where I was looking). Although, I did become a big fan of the Cascade Premium.
Sunset at One Tree Hill.
Hissing Rhinoceros Beetle next to Kristin's foot for comparison.

This guy made it all the way into the house. I was gonna smush him until I saw how pretty he was.

Day 16 – Hamilton Island

Some kid on the airplane this morning broke the world record of “kid crying on an airplane.” Totally shattered it. The kid was the Michael Phelps of crying on airplanes. I’ve honestly never seen anything like it. It YELLED at the top of its lungs for over an hour of a 2.25 hour flight. Unreal. And it sat in the chair directly in front of me. Perhaps this is what we get for staying in a place that doesn’t allow children.

Hamilton Island is our base to the Great Barrier Reef, as well as the “nice, sunny, beach-y” part of our honeymoon; the last stop before a brief layover in Sydney, then back to New York.

After getting settled in, we treated ourselves to massages. Well, a couple strangers did the massaging…afterwards, as we were “enjoying the view” (as we were told to do), a three and a half foot lizard walked by. Later in the evening a gigantic hissing beetle flew into our bungalow. I can't overstate how loudly this thing could hiss. Then we saw some bizarre bird with really long legs.

But no platypuses.

Also, the bad mainland weather has followed us here. It rained much of the afternoon, but it’s still very warm, in the high 80s. Wind permitting, we’re supposed to fly out to the barrier reef tomorrow morning. We’ll see…

Another free bottle of champagne...

Champagne bathrobe sunset party on the deck...that screaming kid is but a memory.

Our own little pool...

Day 15 – Melbourne

I started the day by once again exceeding the Recommended Daily Allowance of bacon, which, I understand, is 0g.

After breakfast, we left “the complex” and crossed the river to the Melbourne Aquarium, which was pretty good, but notably lacking in platypuses.

After wandering somewhat aimlessly around the shopping district (Melbourne seems to have a plethora of hidden malls), a GPS error led us on a wild goose chase in search of an Adidas store; into, and through, a little bohemian neighborhood to what turned out to be the sneaker ghetto/outlet district. We easily walked more today than any single day of hiking thus far (almost 9 hours of walking…it was at about 3k just to the shoe ghetto), but it was nice to get off the beaten tourist path, even if it was a bit too much like traveling halfway around the world to go to Greenpoint.

Bad weather (they are on the verge of a state of emergency in Victoria) forced us back to “the complex” for the remainder of our stay in Melbourne.

These things are sort of better looking alive...

They use every part of the pig...
Smith Street in Melbourne sort of reminded us of Smith Street in Brooklyn.

Lovely Melbourne....

Of course I'm not not going to stop at a place called Lord of the Fries....
Especially when they're serving Obama Sauce!

Day 14 – Great Ocean Road, then to Melbourne

As far as coastal roads go, the Great Ocean Road is up there for us. We’ve done Dingle Peninsula, Ring of Kerry, Sonoma to Mendocino, and the Road to Hana. The Great Ocean Road’s combination of coastal scenery, sub-temperate rain forest, exotic wildlife, and towns along the way make it hard to beat.

We woke up to terrible weather and that was pretty much all we had the entire day. The sun didn’t shine until we got to Warrnambool, where we turned around and headed back (via a much straighter inland road) to Melbourne.

After several consecutive days in the wilderness with no TV, internet or phone reception, it’s sort of perfect that we’re staying in some gigantic hotel, shopping, casino complex in downtown Melbourne tonite.

We believe we've eaten bacon 13 of the last 14 days. Today we actually elected to eat bacon; it wasn't forced upon us at breakfast. It didn't hit me until hours later that we split a BLT for lunch. The place didn't even have BLTs on the menu...or bacon...they had to make it special.

Still...not a single platypus.

Snail


Koala
Kill it! Kill it! Actually, it's already dead...
In 1878, a ship called the Loch Ard wrecked just off the coast here. The only two survivors were washed through that gap into this gorge where they found some caves for shelter.
More views from near the Loch Ard wreck site.
This formation is called London Bridge. It used to be joined but the center collapsed back in the 90's. No one was hurt, but two people were stranded on the far side and had to be rescued by helicopter. As it turns out, they were a couple having an extra-marital affair.
So apparently we missed whale calving season by only a few weeks...
I looked and looked for whales, but to no avail...
The art direction for the Mad Max/Road Warrior movies makes so much more sense to me now. Nearly every other vehicle you pass in Australia is a car or a truck with a converted flatbed and some other assorted paraphernalia.

Seriously, what's the point of having a TV, a bathtub, and Al-Jazeera if you can't watch Al Jazeera on the TV in your bathtub?

Day 13 – The Australian Mainland

The state of the Tasmanian roadway system, combined with the way the locals drive, conspired to bring me to my wit’s end during the two hour drive from Cradle Mountain to the airport. I was in no mood for today’s planned itinerary – driving. But the flight over took my mind off of driving when the pilot mentioned that the reason for plane was vibrating and making weird sounds was because of all the ice on the propellers flying off and hitting the sides of the plane. Happy we’re done with small aircraft for this trip (with the possible exception of a helicopter trip to the Great Barrier Reef).

When we landed in Melbourne, we discovered that our car reservations were for Melbourne, Florida and not Melbourne, Australia. The two girls at the Hertz counter had literally never even heard the word “Chevrolet” that was on the confirmation sheet we’d printed out. Either way, we got a car, a Toyota Aurion (which I’d never heard of…).

Spent the next five hours driving the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne to Apollo Bay. Not so great weather, but lots of interesting things to see along the way.

We’ve now officially seen everything but a platypus here.

Nice view along the coast:
I saw a koala bear and the koala bear looked at me...
Echidna!
These seemed a little more exotic in the wild than in the marina begging for food...
Full disclosure: we took these kangaroo pics on a golf course.
Rental cars come in all colors of the rainbow - that's us there in the middle.