Greg's Guide to Australia

by Greg Dobbs

My wife and I have taken some terrific trips -- a photo safari in Africa, rain forests in Central America, paradise islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean, the great cities of Europe ... and a few exotic places beyond. But our trip to Australia ranks up there with the best. The scenery is sensational, mother nature is abundant, native people are friendly, local food is usually quite good, local beer always is. And the language for us colonial subjects? G’Day, mate! (First lesson in pronunciation: “day” rhymes with “eye,” so phonetically it’s really “G’deye,” and “mate” is pronounced as “might,” so your greeting ought to sound like “G’deye, might.” You’ll still be a foreigner, but one who tries.)

Of course to really immerse yourself in the country, you also can buy an authentic all-roo (that’s kangaroo, mate) bush hat as I did. Mind you, most of the Australian men we saw were wearing baseball caps, not bush hats, but at least it kept the warm sub-tropical sun off my head.

That sun is another fabulous feature of the country. It shines a lot, evidently all over the continent. That’s why the hilarious travel writer Bill Bryson titled his highly recommended book about Australia, “In A Sunburned Country.” It’s fun to read, and close to the mark.

This guide to Australia, however, is not a comprehensive book. It’s just a description of what we did, and where we went -- and stayed, and ate. These are far from the only options for each destination we reached, let alone each hotel or each restaurant we chose. But through a combination of recommendations and dumb luck, we loved just about everything. We didn’t even consider a so-called “side trip” to New Zealand, by the way, which many visitors do. That’s because New Zealand is too full and beautiful to be a side trip. It’s a separate trip, some day down the road.

Meanwhile, if there’s a single Australian experience we didn’t have and might like to next time, it’s the “outback,” which as Bill Bryson writes is like the bush, but even emptier. Most of the country in fact is outback -- look at a map and you’ll see that virtually all of Australia’s handful of “principal” cities are along the water -- so there’s no “best” place to go to be in the outback. But the closest place from which the typical tourist might mount a modest expedition would be the once bustling mining town of Broken Hill, in the state of New South Wales, which is where hundreds of miles to the east you find Sydney, which because all flights from North America end there, is where we started.

But before I start telling you about Sydney, perhaps it would be instructive to tell you about New South Wales. It’s one of six Australian states -- what would logically be the seventh state is the “Northern Territory,” which really is only a territory, meaning it has no voting representation in Parliament. Think Puerto Rico, or Guam. But this isn’t some distant island; it’s the vast northern center of the country, including the city of Darwin, and surrounded on three sides by the rest of Australia! Toward the end of the 1990s, the people of the Northern Territory had a referendum on becoming a full fledged state. Resoundingly, they turned it down. So, with a mere territory right smack dab in the middle of the country, Australia’s states are New South Wales (the center of the east coast, including Sydney), Queensland (northeast, including the Great Barrier Reef), Victoria (southeast, including Melbourne), Southern Australia (Adelaide), and Western Australia (Perth, way out west). Oh, and Tasmania, which is in fact a magnificent and not-too-distant island just south of the Australian continent.

By the way, apparently no one knows why the state of New South Wales -- which is how the whole country was known before they came up with “Australia” -- is so-named. British explorers shaped Australia politically and culturally, but why “New South Wales” rather than just “New Wales,” or for that matter, why “New Wales” rather than “New England,” or “New Britain,” or something so new that it didn’t have an old British name? Apparently the answers are lost to history.

Okay, since this isn’t meant to be a travel book, and certainly not a history book, we’ll get on to “Greg’s Guide to Australia”... at least what worked for us! Since you’re going to be sealed in an airplane for a minimum of 14 hours and maybe more, just to reach Australia from the American west coast, starting in Sydney is advisable. And lovely, because scenically, Sydney is one of the greatest cities on earth. The city’s centre (a spelling oddity common to the British commonwealth, but the oddity is why we Americans changed it around) is built around a harbour (history also doesn’t record why the Australians didn’t drop the extra vowel in a few words the way we Americans did, but they don’t apologise for it, nor did they turn the word into “apologize” as we did, so once again, the question becomes, why did we?).

Sydney’s typical postcard views focus on two landmarks at the harbour: the famous and wonderful Opera House, built on a priceless point of land which once inexplicably housed the city’s streetcar barn, and the Harbour Bridge, 30,000 tons of iron connecting the north and south shores of the harbour, constructed in the early 1930s (as a depression work project, not unlike the Golden Gate Bridge). Seeing them both with one full sweep of the eye is an incomparable introduction to the city.

We saw them that way right away, because of the first stroke of dumb luck to which I earlier referred: we chose a small and slightly quirky hotel in the downtown neighborhood (they’d spell it “neighbourhood,” but I’ll dispense with that now) called “The Rocks,” and if “location, location, location” is an important goal, we struck it rich. It is the Russell Hotel (from the U.S.: 011-612-9241-3543, info@therussell.com.au ). The rooms aren’t deeply luxurious a la Ritz Carlton, but each is different and perfectly adequate, and the small staff is very helpful with whatever you need, and the breakfast in the restaurant on the ground level (included in the price) offers the best coffee in Australia.

But mainly, step out the front door of the Russell Hotel and simply look left and there’s the Harbour Bridge. Step across the street -- George Street, with boutiques and cafes -- cross a small park and look dead ahead and there’s the Opera House. Walk not a city block and you’re at the heart of the Circular Quay (pronounced “Key”), from which ferries take you to several of the places you’ll want to go. Location, location, location. Just to acquaint ourselves on our first morning in Sydney, we strolled over to the Opera House and ate at the outdoor restaurant right at its base. We had a sensational meal with the Opera House to our right, the harbour in the foreground and the bridge dominating the skyline. Welcome to Sydney!

Wander past the various ticket booths lining Circular Quay and you’ll see plenty of sightseeing boats. Some serve lunch, or dinner, or drinks. They might be delightful, but our experience was that there’s no reason to take a sightseeing boat when half the places you go require a ferry ride anyway, so you get the views just getting from one point to another. And as every single boat from Circular Quay comes and goes between the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge, they become a common sight on every trip.

Examples? One day we went north (although Sydney is built up on both sides of the water, the main part of the city is on the south side) to the Taronga Zoo, which like so many sights is on a hill from which you’ll get beautiful views of the harbour. It’s a wonderful zoo. In one section you climb ramps to be close to the koalas hugging the eucalyptus trees. In another you go through a pair of gates to walk freely amongst the kangaroos and wallabies (please don’t ask the difference!). One feature not to miss: the “Birds of Prey” show. You sit in an open bowl (with the harbour in the background, naturally) as remarkable big birds do remarkable things right over your head and in front of your eyes.

Another example: Manly. This is a suburb at the far eastern edge of the north shore, not quite half an hour by ferry from Circular Quay. We rented bikes in the morning (I think the address of the shop was 36 Pennington Road, 3 or 4 blocks from the Manly ferry terminal) and rode up to “North Head,” from which you look out at the entrance from the Tasman Sea into Sydney Harbour (where does the Pacific meet the Tasman? Another mystery). You also can ride along the miles and miles of sidewalk behind the beaches that make Manly famous, on the bay side and the ocean side both. We went to Manly Ocean Beach, which is a couple of miles long and makes for great people-watching.

There can be a catch to your fun in the water though: as Bill Bryson writes, of the ten most lethal creatures on earth, all are in Australia. This includes the well known crocodiles and sharks, as well as a horrible jellyfish; yes, the box-jellyfish. It is said that of all deadly stings, this guy’s is the most agonizing. And there is no antidote. But I digress. There are no box-jellyfish off Manly’s beaches. But there are bluebottle jellyfish, and the lifeguard on the public address system announced around the time we hit the sand that they happened to be washing ashore today, and to avoid a painful albeit not deadly sting, people might want to leave the water. For the record, many people didn’t and we didn’t hear any blood-curdling screams, but when we jogged along the beach a bit later, these painful little ping-pong ball-sized creatures had washed up on the sand every few yards or so.

Incidentally, since man does not live by bread-and-jellyfish alone, dumb luck again (maybe with a dose of good visual judgment) led us to a wonderful restaurant across the South Steyne Road from Manly Beach: it’s called Rimini. My wife had a penne with salmon that she still counts as one of her favorite (their spelling: favourite) meals of our trip, and my tuna nicoise salad was sensational.

What else in Sydney? The Queen’s Botanic Gardens. She is still the head of state, you know, so she still gets her name on the Gardens, and they’re spectacular, bordering the bay right behind the Opera House and sloping up the hill for views all around. You’ll see splendid tropical plants and walk through rain forest terrain. I’d tell you to look up a lot to see the bats, which hang from the upper reaches of many trees, but just as we were looking up, and my schoolteacher wife was charitably explaining the important role bats actually play in the food chain, one vicious creature dropped a load on my leg -- oh what a difference an inch makes. (Look for the restaurant in the gardens, which was closed when we were strolling through but reportedly is quite good.)

I have saved two of Sydney’s best attractions for last... and alas, we didn’t get to do either. The interior of the Opera House looks as special as the outside (there are two main concert halls), but by the time we checked performance dates (on the internet; easy), there was nothing available for the period we’d be in the city. We went personally to the ticket office once we were there, but still, no luck. Plan ahead!

The other is the Bridge Climb. About 20 years ago, an entrepreneur came up with the idea of charging people a king’s ransom to climb the spans of the Harbour Bridge. It has become one of the most popular tourist attractions, and all hours of the day and some hours of the night, you’ll see what look like groups of ants on these guided climbs. People do it for the views and the sheer experience of climbing to the top of a great bridge. The mistake I made was waiting too long to call and reserve a spot. By the time I did, we had just three days left in the city and all slots were full. So call further in advance: 011-612-8274-7777, or go online: www.bridgeclimb.com . On our final day in the city, we did stroll across the bridge on the roadway level, and that alone was beautiful.

Before moving away from Sydney, here are a few other restaurants we enjoyed, although obviously I can’t vouch for them every day, every meal: The Waterfront, which is on the bridge side of the harbour with views of the bridge and the Opera House; Café Sydney, which is on the top floor of the old Customs House, behind Circular Quay, with views of the same; the Oyster Bar, which is on the Opera House side of the harbour, where you sit a few feet from the water with the bridge commanding your view. And for the single best meal we had, on our last night in the country, Alfredo at Bulletin Place. About a block behind Circular Quay, across an alley from the Marriott Hotel. My wife loved her Spaghetti Vongole, and I savored every bite of my rack of lamb.

We took one side trip from Sydney, into the Blue Mountains, a couple of hours west. You can drive but we took the train (from Central Station) to the main town of Katoomba. They are called the Blue Mountains because there’s a blue tinge in the distant views, reportedly from the way the sunlight hits the vapors of the gum (eucalyptus) trees. But here’s what’s remarkable: Katoomba, and the nearby more upscale village of Leura, are pleasant and arguably bustling towns that give you no hint that you’re on the very edge of Australia’s version of the Grand Canyon. I mean, we got off the train and bought tickets on something called the Explorer Bus (old London double-deckers) from which you can get on and off wherever you like, and when we got off at our first destination, Katoomba Falls, we left a tidy little neighborhood and literally within a minute by foot had descended into a rainforest on the downside of this huge ragged canyon. Its walls are more wooded than the Grand Canyon, but it’s on the same spectacular scale. Dress for humidity and heat, at least that’s how it was the December day we went, and to hike. There are steep climbs and lots of ups and downs if you follow a few of the canyon’s paths. And carry a camera because some lookouts give you beautiful views.

We ended up at something called “Scenic World,” which isn’t really as Disneylandesque as it sounds, but in a way, it is. There’s a “scenic railway,” actually a rejuvenated coalminers’ tram which descends into the canyon (or ascends from) as steeply as 57 degrees, and that sounds pretty cool, and there’s a huge gondola to take you either up or down in the other direction, so as the Aussies say, “no worries.” The trouble is, everyone ends up there, and it was hot, and we waited in lines to go both directions, and all in all we regretted the experience. We’d had great views from the paths and lookouts, whereas on the gondola we could barely see over all our fellow travelers, and we took the scenic train up instead of down which was, excuse the pun, a downer. We’d recommend skipping the whole thing, which was the only “tourist trappy” experience we had.

On the positive side, we’d recommend a restaurant as charming as anything we’ve visited anywhere: the Paragon Restaurant, which is on Katoomba Street little more than a block from the Katoomba train station. You feel like you’re stepping back in time; real tea, homemade pastries, fine chocolates, a cordial slow atmosphere. I had an “open melt” for lunch by the way, chicken and avocado covered in melted cheese on fine toasted french bread. It was succulent. We stopped midday at another restaurant just at the edge of the canyon (near the Bridal Veil lookout) and only had drinks, but it’s called “Solitude” and felt delightful.

Now, although on our trip we next went north along the coast from Sydney, which we’ll get to later, I’m going to take you to Australia’s other great city, Melbourne. The two are rivals, although from the standpoint of both tourism and finance, I think Sydney’s winning. However, Melbourne’s a great city in other ways. It’s the one with ethnic restaurants (we had a wonderful dinner in the area called “the Docklands” at an Indian restaurant called Bhoj; everyone also had enthusiastically recommended a place in the Docklands called Live Bait, but the night we tried to go, it was closed; we discovered Lygan Street in the neighborhood just north of downtown called Carlton, which is lined with Italian restaurants). Melbourne’s the city with elegant shopping (visit the various “arcades” off “The Mall” in “The City,” which is what they call downtown Melbourne). It’s the one too with the Queen Victoria Market at the northwest corner of The City, with hundreds of open air stalls, where you can buy clothes, and crafts, and souvenirs, and fruit and vegetables, and most important, my hat! Melbourne’s the one with the free “City Circle” tram, which is what they call a streetcar. It makes a loop around The City and lets you get on and off wherever you like. It’s the city with a zoo that has everything Sydney’s has plus more; you walk through Melbourne’s zoo feeling like there already was this wonderful environment (rain forests, etc) and they simply found places to put the animals. If you go, don’t miss the huge and exotic aviary. And likewise, Melbourne’s vast Royal Botanic Gardens, which are just south from The City, across the Yarra River. We walked through half a dozen different worlds in our couple of hours there.

Melbourne built something called Federation Square, also on the southern border of The City, which apparently was meant to rival Sydney’s Opera House as a visual attraction. It doesn’t, but its Ian Potter Gallery (we’d call it a museum) houses a brilliant and fascinating collection of aboriginal art. Then, just across the river and the main St. Kilda Road is the Victoria Arts Centre. Time left us unable to tour it, but we were there long enough to touch its famous “Wall of Water.” It’s all part of a large arts complex, including the performing arts complex called Melbourne Concert Hall, and from the looks of the programs, there’s plenty of music all year long. By the way, along the walkways on the river--- again, south side--- you can rent bikes, or jump a water taxi to show you the sights.

Finally, Melbourne’s the city with the most ridiculous right turn rule in the world. We had rented (“hired”) a car for our next destination, the Great Ocean Road west of Melbourne, so we also used it for some of our trips within the city. And here’s the deal: you drive, of course, on the left; that’s true all over Australia. But when you’re in The City, with streetcar tracks on your right (running down the left side of the middle, consistent with traffic) and with a couple of lanes for the cars, when you want to make a right turn you swing altogether around to the left side of the intersection, so that while you’re waiting to make your right turn, you’re not blocking any traffic, or streetcars, that want to go straight through. Okay, so you’re sitting there, watching for all the traffic to clear so you can cross two lanes and the tracks all going in your direction and execute your turn. But wait! Even when the coast is clear and a turn is perfectly safe, you still just sit there (in effect in the crosswalk of the cross street), with a car or two or three piling up behind you also waiting to turn right, and then, when your green light turns yellow, you all make a mad dash to complete the turn before the cross traffic begins to move. Do not try this at home!

And one more note about cars and, for that matter, bikes: a few things are turned around. As you probably know, when you drive on the left, you steer on the right, because as in all Commonwealth countries, the driver’s side is opposite ours. That’s not hard to get used to, but the one thing that kept tripping me up was that the windshield wiper lever and the turn signal indicator coming out of the steering column were reversed too. So every time I wanted to signal a turn, I inadvertently turned on the windshield wipers instead. Eventually I got it right but that was only when I had a moment to think; my wife still knew when I was in a bit of panic from driving on the wrong side because the wipers suddenly started going on a perfectly dry day! As for bikes, their brakes are reversed, which means if you’re used to emphasizing your rear brake with your right hand in the USA, be careful not to squeeze the right hand first in Australia or your front brake may lock and you might go head over heels. Just thought you’d like to know.

Now, briefly, a couple of side trips, both just south of Melbourne. One is called St. Kilda, which is only about 10 minutes from the central city but you’ll feel like you’re in a beach community south of Los Angeles. The other starts just south of St. Kilda; it’s called the Mornington Peninsula. Lots of people who live in Melbourne go down to the Peninsula to get away from town. It has abundant beaches and beach communities.

As with Sydney, we’d chosen a bed-and-breakfast in Melbourne from a guidebook. It sounded good, but turned out to be even better. It’s called Robinson’s In The City (011-613-9534-2683, wendyr@alphalink.com.au ), and its front door is just a block’s walk from the City Circle, so it’s convenient as could be. Better yet, the people who run it -- Wendy and Jonathan -- are so warm and so solicitous to your every need that they become fast friends. Their daily breakfast (also, part of the price) is second to none -- eggs as you like them, sausage and bacon and mushrooms and grilled tomatoes and fresh juice and fresh bread and cereals and yogurt. The dining room is in what was the original bakery in Melbourne; come down when you like, eat what you like, this is what we like about beds-and-breakfasts. The place is warmly furnished, and we were about as comfortable there as we are in our own home.

Now then, the Great Ocean Road. We had heard that it’s the equivalent of California’s Highway 1 around Carmel. I’d say, it’s even better. You drive about a hundred miles west from Melbourne, then eventually you’re driving along the sea, and from a lighthouse known as “Separation Point,” you begin to see the most dazzling coastline, with water the color of turquoise, crashing against limestone cliffs. The road has more curves than straightaways, so you might want to stop from time to time to let the driver can take in the beauty too. There are towns along the way -- we didn’t find them special, but they gave us places to eat -- and we’d advise either booking a room somewhere in advance, which we didn’t, or grabbing a decent bed-and-breakfast along the way, which we didn’t either. We came close, in fact, to sleeping in someone’s secondhand trailer, but that’s another story. Anyway, you do need two full days, which means you need someplace to stay overnight.

Some tourists drive in both directions along the Great Ocean Road, but you don’t have to; you can do it in just one direction between Torquay and Port Campbell and do the other direction on a faster road (called the “A-1”) a bit further north. If you go just one way along the ocean, we’d suggest doing it westbound, simply because by driving on the left side, you’re a little closer to the views. We’d also suggest not just speeding through the Victoria State Park west of Apollo Bay, where the road leaves the water and rises into another jungle of eucalyptus. To the contrary, stop and hike through the rainforest that’s clearly marked with signs. It’s only about a kilometer -- that’s less than a mile -- and I did it in my flip-flops, so it’s more of a walk than a hike. But it’s gorgeous, and you feel lost in a remote jungle even though you’re never very far from the highway.

Then, further west (just east of Port Campbell), the biggest attraction: the Twelve Apostles. These once were part of the limestone oceanfront, but the pounding surf eventually ate away at the base and left these towers standing alone in the sea, not a hundred yards off the mainland. Some day they’ll be gone, but new ones -- perhaps from the coastline where you can stand right now -- will take their place. Don’t worry about finding a great place to see them -- the state has provided it and it’s clearly marked. The state also has provided something only about a kilometer east of the Twelve Apostles that isn’t so prominently marked but which you shouldn’t miss. It’s called “Gibson’s Steps;” it is steps carved into the cliffs that you can take maybe a hundred or two hundred feet down to a long, dramatic, stunning beach. You won’t see any shipwrecks along this stretch, but apparently there were more than a hundred in the 1800s alone, and they’re down there somewhere.

Now, we’re going to jump out of the state of Victoria and bypass New South Wales to take you into Queensland. Remember, that’s on Australia’s east coast, roughly from Brisbane (pronounced more like “Briz-bin”) north. It’s the jumping off point for the Great Barrier Reef. But before jumping there, there’s Fraser Island, which is the biggest sand island in the world. How big? Up to 20 miles wide and 90 miles long. But don’t picture a big flat atoll. To the contrary, Fraser Island is hilly (all sand), with freshwater lakes so pure that swimmers are asked not to apply suntan lotion or even deodorant before going in. And it’s jungly (but still, all sand). One day we went canoeing along the western shore, penetrating a swamp of mangroves. The next day -- and this is really why people go to Fraser Island -- we rented a heavy duty 4-wheel drive to traverse the island.

It was easy through our resort -- the luxury place to stay on the island -- called Kingfisher Bay Resort (011-617-4120-3333, reservations@kingfisherbay.com ). (You reach it by flying to Hervey Bay, then taking a big catamaran across the channel to Fraser Island.) The resort itself is interesting; all the rooms for example, for environmental protection, are built on stilts to minimize impact on the land. Virtually everything used at the resort is recycled. At one of our dinners, we had the sampler plate appetizer that convinced us we really were in the bush: kangaroo, crocodile and emu. Not great, not bad, just different.

Anyhow, we spent all day in the 4WD, slipping and sliding through the narrow sandy lanes that go up and down all over the island. When you reach the long eastern beach, it’s not soft sand anymore; you can race along up to the speed limit of 80 kph (about 55 mph). Maybe 15 or 20 miles up there’s an old shipwreck sinking in the sand; a little closer is a cool freshwater creek in which you can float back to the ocean. This was the day of my most important discovery, by the way: the “Magnum Ego” ice cream bar; it is high quality chocolate on the outside, with caramel just inside that coat, then more chocolate, then vanilla ice cream in the middle. If you do nothing else in Australia, try one of these. It’s the best!

On our final day at Fraser Island, we happened upon something no one had told us or written about. On the beach outside the resort, there were hundreds of thousands -- maybe millions -- of soldier crabs. The big ones are the size of a ping-pong ball; the small ones more the size of a thimble. And they are everywhere. For one thing, you’ve never seen so much of one living species in one place in all your life. For another, when we’d get within maybe 10 or 15 feet of a pack (which might be a few thousand), they’d sense the direction from which we were coming and start running the other way. Since we could outrun them of course, we’d catch them, but they’d all quickly dig a spiral into the sand and disappear. I mean, they are there one moment and gone the next. It was one of the most amazing things we saw.

But the single most amazing thing was the Great Barrier Reef. Some say it’s the biggest living thing on the planet, since it stretches about a thousand miles off Australia’s eastern and northern shores. Others say it’s not really the biggest, because it’s really just thousands of individual pieces of coral. No matter, it’s amazing. There are plenty of places to go to experience the reef, and plenty of ways to do it. Because December is the height of summer heat, and because the further north you go, the hotter it gets, we decided against the most popular launching point, the city of Cairns, and chose instead the region of the Whitsunday Islands, where the heat wouldn’t be torrid (and it wasn’t; average temps, maybe about 80 degrees). And although there are resorts that’ll take you out to different sections of the reef to snorkel or to dive (or just to see things through a glass bottom boat), we chose to live for three days on a big comfortable catamaran that carried about 20 passengers who were there for the same reason we were. We ate and slept on the boat, and were very happy with it all. It’s called the Reef Odyssey (011-617-4946-1777, res@barefootcruises.com.au ). We flew to Hamilton Island and got on there.

Every day -- twice every day -- we were put in the water above a different section of coral, or taken by a small launch to a sandy beach from which to snorkel to the coral. You have to realize, this isn’t dead coral, it’s live coral. As such, we saw colors and varieties of plants and fish that we’ve never seen snorkeling anywhere before. Huge underwater acreage, a lime green garden here, a cobalt blue garden up against it, purples and pinks and oranges and yellows and magentas all around, each a different kind of plant, each swaying in the current. I usually don’t like the concept of life imitating art, but if you’ve seen the animated film “Finding Nemo,” believe it or not, the real thing looks pretty much like what they created in the movie (which, incidentally, takes place in the Great Barrier Reef). Depending on the tides, sometimes you’re maybe a dozen feet above it (hold your breath, kick your legs and dive), sometimes you’re close enough to touch it. The boat provides “stinger” suits, you’ll be glad to know, which cover just about every square inch of your body, to protect against the jellyfish.

And on that note, I’ll end this narrative. No matter how good the trip, it’s never hard to come home ... but when it comes to Australia, it won’t be hard to go back!

BoomerCafé co-founder Greg Dobbs
lives near Denver, Colorado.

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