Maps of my road trips:
Sorry these are a bit late, it didn't occur to me till recently that you might not realize the scale of some of the drives. Just remember that Australia is about the same size as mainland U.S.
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| So technically I drove from Adelaide to Melbourne (and not on the exact route shown) with a friend last June. Then I flew back to Adelaide and bought my car and drove north to Darwin. Along the way we took many side trips, so the total km/miles shown on this map don't reflect all that we did. (3753km=2332miles) And the actual trip took a few weeks. |
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| After spending a few months working in Darwin I FLEW to Cairns and then sailed from Cairns (the red dot), up and over the tip of Cape York, across the Sea of Carpentaria, back to Darwin. THEN I drove this route to Cairns over a week's period. Again with a few detours along the way. (2850km=1770miles) |
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| And now for this post I drove from Cairns to Melbourne over several weeks. The following pictures are from this trip. (3672km=2281miles) |
Cairns to Melbourne
(considering how far behind I am I had to cut out a LOT of amazing pictures. I tried to give a very concise overview of a very eventful trip)
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| Bombs away!!!!!!!!!!!! My first order of business in Cairns was to book myself on a 3 day scuba diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef in which myself and about 20 other people plus dive masters and the ship's staff lived aboard. |
Over these 3 days I dove 15 times in several different locations, including 2 night dives. I had rented an underwater camera and tried to capture a bit of what I saw but I can't even begin to explain how amazing it is to swim among these beautiful creatures. Sometimes when I look at the prices of such trips I think, "Hey, I could just youtube it." But it's definitely NOT the same.
Pictured here are: a white tipped reef shark, a sea turtle (I actually won a photo contest on board for this picture!), a potato cod (normally 6-8ft long), me-can you feel my excitement??, coral reef and all of the colors that come with it and.......NEMO! We found him!
I am really NOT a museum person. I try here and there but I usually just end up quickly bypassing artifacts and not taking anything in. However, when I saw that there was a coffee museum attached to a chocolate shop in Mareeba (close to Cairns) I thought I'd give it a shot. I found the most intricate, delicious-looking chocolate sculptures as well as lots and lots of samples of the chocolates, coffees, teas and liqueurs.
And the coffee museum (one of the largest in the world) had some impressive collections of coffee pots as well as (what I thought were) extremely interesting facts about coffee throughout history: TIPS means: To Insure Prompt Service; Women in London petition against coffee because they thought it made men sexually inactive and claimed "the entire race is in danger of extinction" or maaaaaaybe just because they weren't allowed in coffee houses; while on the other hand in Germany women were in charge of coffee and participated in "kaffeeklatsch" or coffee gossip and men claimed reputations were destroyed and scandals started because of this.
I thoroughly enjoyed every chocolate sample and every fact at this place.
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| In the Daintree Rainforest just north of Cairns I attempted to spot a cassowary, the 3rd largest bird in the world and a deadly one at that. They have a characteristic large, hallow casque on their head which may or may not have an acoustic function. Cassowaries are also very very shy, so spotting them is difficult and the closest I got was this speed bump turned cassowary sign in the park. |
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| Still riding high from the last diving trip, I went and booked another one-day dive, this time to see the SS Yongala, a ship that sunk 105 years ago, thereby creating an artificial reef on an otherwise desolate ocean floor. Here you can see the site map, something that the dive instructor will do for each dive to let the divers know what to expect through the dive, how to enter and exit and what to see. Although it's clearly outlined here, once down below we could barely see the ship since it is completely covered in sea weed and coral. There were lots of sea snakes, eels, turtles munching on the seaweed and thousands of fish. (I did NOT see the whale unfortunately) |
I moved onto Airlie Beach, a popular hot stop on the east coast. I was lucky enough to get invited on a jet ski tour for the day through a Hash contact (a running group I got involved with this past year). We drove around the coast and saw the house the Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman stayed while filming Australia. Later that night I met up with some friends I met on the recent SS Yongala dive. As in most places, it's common to repeatedly cross paths with the same travelers as you follow similar routes. It's nice to see familiar faces even if you've only known them a short time. I later traveled with one of these girls through all of Tasmania.
At another popular beach called Noosa just north of Brisbane I hiked along the coastline for about 10km or 6miles. Each time I came out of the bush I'd come upon a view much like this one on the left. Walking along the beach I found hundreds of rocks like these covered with little shelled creatures which slowly opened and closed while sticking out little feathery bits. I was mesmerized and watched for quite a while.
The Gold Coast-where the city meets the beach. I was fortunate enough to be hosted by a friend's friend who showed me around and took me to this great bar with at least 20 beers on tap.
From there I went to Byron Bay, just down the road from the Gold Coast, known for being very relaxed and a good place to just pass some time. I had already visited this one lookout the day before but I decided that the best way to really appreciate the eastern most point of Oz was to run up there at sunrise. And I feel like I was right ;)
Looking at the map-the next most likely destination would be Sydney, but with my car I decided to bypass the city and headed inland through the Blue Mountains to see some caves. Currently some of the oldest known caves in the world, I reached the Jenolan Caves in a foggy mist through beautiful curvy mountain roads. The entrance to the cave that I toured was like a horror film-a huge vaulted door opened and then one by one lights flicked on illuminating the long entrance.
Possibly named for an indigenous word meaning "high place" and used by several local tribes throughout time for the healing properties of the underground water, the limestone caves stretch 40km/24miles, although I probably only explored a few hundred meters or so. The most impressive part of this particular tour were the "ribbon" helictites which while growing change their axis from vertical to horizontal making it look like curly fries.
Christmas in Melbourne!!!! My second hot Christmas (the first in Buenos Aires) was spent having a BBQ and swimming in my friends' pool. I also experienced my first Christmas cracker-which is a small cardboard roll filled with little prizes and wrapped so that two people need to pull the two ends to open it. (kind of a like a wishbone). I got this beautiful paper crown, some little trinket and a joke that read, "What does an angry kangaroo do? - Get hopping mad."
This tree was in downtown Melbourne. It's made entirely of legos and is very Aussiefied-there was a Santa with a surfboard, a kangaroo, kookaburra and an elf with a cricket bat.
The day after Christmas I caught up with a friend I'd met in Spain 11 years ago! I had happened to see her pictures just before Christmas and could tell she was in the area. The sunset picture is my friend who I met in Mexico 8 years ago with her brother and one of the reasons I was intent on going to Australia. We spent New Year's Eve on a rooftop bar overlooking the city.
