With a boundless affinity for the sun, this winter we are chasing it half a world away to the ‘Land Down Under’, where today is already tomorrow. Marooned from the rest of the world, Australia is an outdoorsy kind of place offering unique wildlife found nowhere else on the planet and we are enthused about checking it out.
Our first lodging is at the Sydney Youth Hostel. I’m fully aware this may sound strange, but the truth of the matter is we just couldn’t seem to find an ‘oldth’ hostel. Straddling an archaeological excavation called the ‘Big Dig’, the odd building’s redeeming feature is a rooftop deck perfect for sun devotees and the sweeping views of the bustling harbor and creatively designed Sydney Opera House.
Trying to adjust to our new time zone we ferry to the beach-side suburb of Manly for a windy clifftop stroll from Watson Bay to Lady Bay Beach. Crossing by Sydney Heads on the return from Manly feels more like crossing the North Atlantic as it batters the boat sending giant walls of water up and over its top.
Those outside, including Christine and I, are getting wetter than an otter’s pocket and frantically struggle to get back inside the rockin’ and rollin’ boat. Soggily ashore and in need of a mouth guard to stop our teeth from violently chattering like a Gatling gun we’re hell-bent for a hot shower, keen to test the capacity of the hostel’s hot water tank!
Today, after exploring Sydney’s Miller point, Nurses Walk, and Barangaroo, we stop to munch brunch at Phillips Foote Restaurant; aghast by the outright robbery that would have a pirate blushing. It’s $8 for a beer, $20 for a salad, and if you’re considering animal flesh you had best be prepared to sell an internal organ. s, Australia’s convict past is clearly reflected by the whimpering wallets, and I’m convinced the sounds we hear are their buccaneering ancestors proudly applauding from the grave!
Walking the shoreline of the famed Bondi to Coogee Coastal Walk we pass sun-browned bodies sprinkled over the blonde sand, and on Tamarama Beach a life-size sculpture of a rhinoceros is partially buried upside down with head, horn, and hooves all reaching for sky.
Wandering from the inner-city’s Kings Cross area to Woolloomooloo, we wonder if the aboriginals were smoking wacky-tobaccy out of their digeridoos when coming up with this voluminous-voweled variant. Out of the ‘o-zone’ we roam the sprawling Botanic Gardens before introducing our bums to a chair in the 175 year old Lord Nelson Brewery.
During our seven days in Sydney we’ve logged over 20 kilometers of walking every day and visited the outlying areas of Enmore, Newtown, Paramatta, and the odd Vietnamese town of Cabramatta where our insides get a warm hug from a tasty bowl of Pho nearly the size of a manhole cover.
After a jerky flight to Adelaide we encounter much more than an arrogant breeze. The knifelike wind is the strongest the city has had in over a quarter century! Rubbing grit from our eyes we use a 45 degree lean into the pant-flapping gale as we search for a hotel said to be somewhere in the proximity of the Rundle Mall and its life-size bronze pigs.
After a crisp morning run along the Torrens River I collect Christine to cycle to the protruding piers of Henley Beach along a path lined with stately red gum trees. We are scolded by cacophonous cockatoos, that like ourselves, are probably hoping for the fickle sun to uncloak itself in this th-awful weather.
Today, with ‘Wind-elaide’ minimizing in our rearview mirror we chase the heat further north to Tanunda in the wine- famous Barossa Valley. At our funky cabin in the vineyards of the 20 acre Blickinstal Retreat an obliging sun beams down from a faded denim sky, and our mornings wakeup calls are courtesy of clever magpies asserting amusing vocal gymnastics.
Lamenting to Christine about not yet having a kangaroo sighting after a couple of days, I say to her ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could spot one near the vineyards’. Ten minutes later as if by magic we witness what almost seems a hoptical illusion. Illuminated by the soft afternoon light, a large kangaroo suddenly rears up from between the aisles of grapevines to give us a full-on inspection!
Learning there are plenty more ‘roos’, as they’re called here, in nearby Kaiserstuhl Conservation Park, we arrive at dawn and have the park entirely to ourselves. Almost immediately we spot a motherlode of the zany marsupials, and even some cute little ‘pouch potatoes’ peeking out from mama’s kid-cradling pocket.
Lovely licorice eyes, and lashes longer than a Canadian winter, would suggest they are very peaceable, but with preposterously huge hind feet that make Michael Jordan’s sneakers seem like baby-booties, they’re capable of delivering a bone-breaking kick if in a dim frame of mind.
Venturing too close to a family of the laughable limbs I spot a huge alpha male not exactly quaking at my proximity. Positively pissed at my provocation it postures up on rear legs, and at eyeball to eyeball height is menacingly parading bulging pectoral muscles and projecting an unmistakable ‘test me and you shall learn the meaning of regret’ vibe. Reviewing the bad boy’s enormous hind feet proximity to my testicular vulnerabilities, I quickly decide to beat a retreat and leave the truculent ‘roo’ to its morning meal.
Known here as ‘laughing jackasses’, a pair of Kookaburras seem to enjoy my confrontation with the cantankerous kangaroo and taunt me with a maniacal ‘hohoho-hahaha’ laugh that one might associate with an inmate breaking out an insane asylum!
Amidst their raucous ridicule we have an unusual visit from a spiny echidna; a critter one part Pinocchio and two parts porcupine. Not known for outward displays of emotion or a broad vocabulary, the long- snouted chap seems a well-mannered sort and politely noses on by without passing further judgment.
The Barossa Valley is clearly the cherry on the cake of Adelaide but it’s time for a flight north. At the airport in Cairns we rent a car, and soon the exotic corpses of an archipelago of bug splatters turn the windshield into a Jackson Pollock-like mess. The gooey memorial of bug martyrdom requires constant cleaning while driving a ribbon of road called the Cook Highway, the only thing separating the rainforest from the reef.
Stretching out our cramped legs on a beach on the drive to Port Douglas, a dolphin gracefully glides by shore as if offering a welcome. At the Lazy Lizard Motel we drop our bags and immediately head to gorgeous Four Mile Beach and prowl about for seashells beneath flamboyant red Poinciana trees hosting posh-plumaged rainbow lorikeets. Our only disappointment is the posted warning signs banning swimming due to an influx of poisonous jellyfish known as ‘stingers’.
Headed for Daintree National Park before the sun wakes we are escorted out of town by giant fruit bats folding and unfolding their wings in our car’s headlights, and fifty kilometers later, our car is winched across Daintree River by a cable ferry into the 1,200 sq km park. Around 180 million years old and 10 million years older than the Amazon, it said to be the earth’s oldest tropical rainforest, and contain more tree species than in the whole of North America and Europe combined!
The park’s anorexic roads have caution signs posted on behalf of the legendary Cassowaries. Looking like a turkey and a velociraptor got together and had an angry kid, the world’s most dangerous bird have been known to occasionally kill humans. Failing to catch a glimpse of the solitary throwbacks on several hikes we realize they’re better at hide-and-seek than ‘Bigfoot’, and continue on to Cape Tribulation.
For our next hunt of the phantom jungle-bird we plan a hike in Mossman Gorge. Arriving at a locked gate blocking access until 8 am, but keen to get started, we go rogue and trudge up a side road for an illicit foray into the gorge and follow a river carving through car-size granite boulders in a rainforest rife with strangler figs, gigantic sun-shy ferns, and tree-swallowing vines.
Tempted by a clearer than crystal pool in the river I can’t resist a dip in the exotic jungle spa. Sitting on a rock is a stoic Boyd Forest Lizard, and watching him watching me, I enjoy a good soak listening to exotic bird calls hauntingly wafting out of a curtain of vines in the pristine 180,000,000 year old rainforest.
With no fashion police on duty, I then decide to go into Cassowary doppelganger mode and pull out a red trimmed ball cap and matching red necktie in hopes of attracting one of the elusive zoological mysteries with my infinite charm and sense of style. Yup, I think senility is going to be a fairly easy transition for me!
Slaloming through the Survivor-ish setting Christine lags several paces behind. Perhaps this is to avoid a potential encounter with the menacing bird, but more likely it’s to disassociate herself from the flamboyant avian-wanna be jitterbugging through the ahead of her.
Once again there are no Cassowary sightings today; only a couple of Brush Turkeys, or three if you count the stud-muffin so fetchingly rocking the cap and tie! We return to Port Douglas to see about booking a snorkeling trip to Great Barrier Reef, but it turns out the boat would be far too congested for my liking.
Oh yes, and in the domain of the Great White Shark, my yearning to go swimming always diminishes with the possibility of leaving the planet as a high-protein lunch! Sharks are built to chomp, and in millions of years have not changed their agenda. Called ‘The Man in the Grey Suit’ by locals, they’re always up for a slaughter in the water and keen to sink their 300 pearly whites into anything with a pulse that should happen to stray into their salty pond!
A more likely concern however is ‘stingers’, as even these venomous beyond reason Box and Irukandji jellyfish seem to have caught the ‘we hate humanity’ virus. Their sting can cause cardiac arrest and leave about three minutes before you become unable to breathe, paralyzed, and communicating with eye blinks. Apparently the slimy vessels of pain kill more people in Australia than sharks and crocodiles combined!
Now, while possibly forcing myself to come to grips with all these evil entities capable of sending me to the coroner for a final checkup, there is an even more serious show-stopper! It is mandatory for anybody entering the water to wear a poofy-looking head-to-toe Lycra ‘stinger suit’ that comes in only two Day-Glow colors; a revolting fuchsia-pink or nauseous chartreuse-green!
To me, paddling about with fellow floaters and all pimped out in a giant condom so appallingly bright that it can be seen from outer space has about the same appeal as being water-boarded at Guantanamo Bay! Factoring in that Christine is in possession of a camera it’s a no-brainer to forgo this ludicrous aqua fiasco!
On the morning of my birthday my lungs breathe in the fresh sunrise and my feet grope the squeaking sands of Four Mile Beach. After a day of exploring we luxuriate during happy hour at a Port Douglas waterfront bar called ‘Barbados’, and kicking off our shoes we sprawl out on a lounge while blessed by the breeze of the largest oscillating fan we’ve ever seen.
Sniffing the air like hungry bears as the sun begins to slide into the sea we follow a symphony of swell smells to the ‘Bel Cibo’ Café on Macrossan Street. During a succulent Barramundi dinner an implausible ‘Hitchcockian’ scene unfolds when a gargantuan gathering of screeching lorikeets lands in a huge tree beside us. Though the absurd volume of bird squawk impairs conversation, it makes for a B-day shout-out like none other!
Then, just when we think the evening couldn’t get any more bizarre here in the ‘twitter capital’ of Australia, we learn the United States just elected the self-serving parasite Donald Trump as president! What the frog? We both give our passports a great big hug, ever so happy to be Canadians.
Crouched on the water’s edge in front of a scenic Port Douglas cane shed waiting to take a photo at the sun’s first rays, I’m treated to a different kind of ray. A stingray surprisingly erupts from the sea and glides through the air in front of me. Who knew these water pancakes could fly?
Passing an attractive viewpoint on the drive to the Atherton Tablelands, Christine and I stop in a parking area and walk back around the road’s corner for a long look. Appreciating the view I suddenly have an uneasy premonition about our belongings and rush back to the car. Two bad guys quickly jump into a non- plated van that spits gravel from beneath the tires as it fishtails onto the road and flees the scene. Whew!
Continuing on to the Tablelands we stop for the night in the town of Yungaburra, and after chatting with the owner of our little cabin we rush off in pursuit of the elusive platypus rumored to inhabit a nearby creek.
In less than an hour we spot telltale bubbles rising to the surface, followed by two beady little eyes and a bill that looks as if it should quack. It appears that a very clever surgeon has grafted the duck-like bill onto the face of a daft critter with a furry otter-like body, webbed feet, and a beaver-like tail.
We have just stumbled upon the world’s most puzzling mammal; the duck-billed platypus! I’m so excited trying to capture a picture that I slide down the river bank and really ‘stick my landing’, with both shoes and ankles disappearing into the swampy mud!
If it’s laughter you’re after this cartoonish hodgepodge with a questionable gene pool should certainly do the trick. It looks like it was designed by a committee, in a pub, and assembled from a box of leftover bits and pieces.
Not often observed in nature, the wacky mammal lays eggs like a bird, walks over ground on its knuckles, has no stomach, hunts via electricity, and is armed with venom delivered from a spur behind its hind feet. Well of course it does, here on the absurd Aussie turf absolutely everything seems to be armed!
While decanting Peterson Creek’s mud and water from my shoes a panicky Water Dragon Lizard leaps into the water and joins a pair of ‘bum-breathing turtles’ with the peculiar capacity of being able to stay underwater for three days without surfacing! Again, we’d expect no less from this cockamamie country!
Ambling through the adjoining woods of Nerada Tea Factory searching for timid tree kangaroos known to frequent the area, I tell Christine to be on the lookout for a long dog-like tail hanging down from the trees. Sacrilegiously fumbling with her iPhone and not closely attending to my words she responds in undisguised wonder; ‘They eat dogs’?
Hmm, nobody ever told me that when you get a wife the ears are sold separately! Trying to keep the smile out of my voice, I quip; ‘Why yes my darling, and I believe they have a preference for Great Danes!’ Call me callous but I simply cannot restrain myself.
Sure enough we spot one of the portly fuzz-balls curled up in a tree, but since it seems content to just snooze we just let it be and sit down for tea. Walking back to the car brings us nose to beak with a wild sulphur-crested cockatoo suddenly swooping down and getting up close and personal with my camera. However, trying to give the flirtatious parrot’s head a gentle stroke its large yellow head feathers stand up like fingers and it lets loose the ear-agitating wail of a large unoiled hinge. Beautiful bird, vile vocals!
Next stop is Curtain Fig Tree National Park, so-named for a massive fig tree with extensive vertical roots dropping 15 meters to the forest floor and forming a ‘curtain’. The approximately 50 meter tall tree is estimated to be over 500 years old and has a trunk circumference of 39 meters!
An elevated boardwalk protects the tree from people, and people from the bordering Gympie-Gympie plant. Touching the ‘world’s most painful plant’ can invoke an excruciating pain lasting for months, and is said to feel like being burned by acid and electrocuted at the same time. It can also trigger an intense allergic reaction capable of causing anaphylactic shock. Once again we are reminded that this country is chock-full of butt-clenching peril – even in the form of a stationary shrub!
Hiking near a campground at Etty Beach hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive Cassowary, suddenly out of the haystack the needle appears when one of the feathered apparitions struts out of the rainforest beside us. The humongous forest dwellers are about as rare as a visitation by Halley’s Comet, and up to 6 ½’ tall and 160 pounds, should probably have been wiped out with the dinosaurs but somehow missed the memo!
Clearly deluged with demonic hormones the hostile fowl telegraphs a sinister ‘I’m not to be trifled with so don’t test me’ kind of glare. With excitement coursing through my bloodstream I risk a photo, then quickly change direction to veer out of its way, but the blue-throated Queen of Mean suddenly shows an uncomfortable interest and begins to follow.
Attached to the bizarre behemoth’s powerful legs are immense three-toed feet with dagger-like claws capable of disemboweling its enemies. It also has an odd strut with backward bending knees, but even as a runner for nearly forty years I do not want this dinosaur descendant in pursuit as they’re capable of running at speeds up to 50 km per hour; a pace that would make Usain Bolt look rather sluggish!
Verging on an anxiety disorder I again circle away from my feathered phobia with purpose in my steps. Then as swiftly as my stalker appeared, it suddenly ghosts back into the rainforest leaving behind only footprints in the dust. Totally stunned, Christine and I try to drag our jaws up out of the dirt.
Later discussing our cross-species drama with the campground owner we learn that Cassowaries are not known for having a scintillating intellect. Possessing a brain about the size of a garbanzo bean, the belligerent bullies are extremely territorial, and even known to attack cars should they see their own reflection!
She tells us a Cassowary once came after her and as she ran inside a cabin to hide it went berserk, ramming the walls with its bone-like helmet. She also relates an incident about a woman who left her cabin door open while taking a shower and had a Cassowary with a Goldilocks complex wander in. Apparently the bird flopped down atop the bed and kept the terrified lady prisoner in the shower for three hours by lunging at her every time she tried to get out!
Yes, this Darwinian-defying ‘bonehead’ is meaner than a three day hangover, and its shared ancestry with dinosaurs offers a true sense of what was wandering the planet 65 million years ago!
Without ‘feather’ ado we aim the car towards Wooroonooran National Park. Stopping at Babinda Boulders to stretch our legs we take a gorgeous rainforest hike, where as part of their million year mission a tumble of water-smoothed granite boulders up to four meters high bathe in a photogenic creek.
Our next layover is at the Tabu B & B located in a suburb of Cairns called Freshwater. The owner Mark is a professional landscaper, and his manicured gardens shout their lushness. Showing us to our detached cabin, his wife Farley says ‘you have a gecko over the bed, and a frog in your closet, is it OK’? Now that’s something we’ve never been asked before!
We inform her that both of the cold blooded cuties are indeed welcome to stay as they’re fun to watch and may also prove helpful allies in tongue-slapping any intrusive bugs. Back in our room after a dinner we spot an enormous green frog more than twice the size of our original closet dweller sticking to our outdoor bathroom wall.
Closing up the windows for the night it’s time for our smaller roomie to come out of the closet. I sock up and deftly grab ahold of him squeezing just firm enough to stop his hop before escorting ‘his greenness’ outside to bug-munch with his gargantuan web-toed brother.
Tonight at Freshwater Railway Station we uniquely dine in the romance of a bygone era, inside a turn of century train now functioning as a restaurant. Having the luxury of the entire train to ourselves we choose to eat in the ‘MacArthur Car’ named after the General who actually rode in it back in the day.
Flying on to the Gold Coast we collect a rental SUV and drive to Byron Bay. The beach town is overrun by a tatted up crowd of dreadlocked Woodstock wannabes with so many piercings on their facial appendages it looks as if they lost an argument with a nail gun!
After watching sunup at Cape Byron lighthouse we drive 70 km inland to a trippy little village called Nimbin, where familiar fumes have my nostrils twitching before even seeing the place. This happens to be ‘weed town’, the cannabis capital of Australia!
Less than four hundred, the ‘Nimbinites’ are an eclectic crowd of pot-sozzled and grey-haired mavericks so laid back they’re almost horizontal. Set up by hippies in the 60’s, the alternative commune was the site of the ten-day Aquarius Festival in 1973 and many of those same festival goers have lived here ever since.
Main Street, and pretty much the only street, is a ripe-with-reefer avenue lined with frontier-style building facades, including a feature building called the Hemp Embassy. Banners calling for the legalization of cannabis are plastered in abundance and colorfully painted stores are filled to the gills with cannabis paraphernalia. Hazy little cafes indulge patrons turning ganja into ashes, and as the Aussie’s say, many seem to have a few ‘roos’ loose in the top paddock! After a groovy afternoon we make our way back to Byron Bay via the macadamia nut growing areas of Channon and Dunoon.
As the car swallows the kilometers to our next destination, we stop for breakfast along the Clarence River in the town of Yamba and have a pair of audacious myna birds pogoing about our tabletop and acting as crumb janitors cleaning up any errant muffin spillage.
We plan to spend the next few days ‘glamping’ just south of Coffs Harbour at Emerald Beach Campground. However we are somewhat dubious about what we may find as the cabin’s description states ‘bathroom with toilet’. To us, it always seems a little disconcerting when management figures that a great marketing feature is that guests don’t have to take a crap in the sink!
Sulphur-crested and pink cockatoos have been bountiful throughout our Aussie travels but today we’re entertained by the beautiful yellow-tailed black ‘cockies’ at the ‘Look-At-Me-Now’ headlands. By the way, isn’t that a great name? Apparently back in the day some young pompous British captain slipped and fell in the mud, angrily exclaiming ‘look at me now’; and like the mud, the name stuck.
On postcard-perfect beaches along the Solitary Islands Costal Walk we race spiky tumbleweeds impelled by the wind and in the town of Woolgoolga, or Woopie to locals, Christine stops for a coffee. Given I’m not a coffee drinker I am crestfallen to learn the Bottle O shop recently closed meaning there is no beer. Life can be so cruel, a moment of silence please.
As I’m lamenting my plight to Christine in close to a shoulder-shaking sob one of the locals kindly offers up a solution. ‘Come with me’ he says, ‘I’ll take you to a bottle shop and drop you back off’. So with an offer I can’t refuse I eagerly hop into my savior’s Audi TT sports car and we blaze away on the trail of ale.
On my return Christine and I enjoy the comradery of a couple of good old local boys and learn amongst other things that wombat poo is cube shape. Evidently the Mr. Magoo-like marsupials have the eyesight of an oyster, and their cube-shape crap allows it to be stacked high to attract other amorous wombats. Man, the things one can learn over a bottle of beer!
Late afternoon on the seashore the sinking sun’s salmon sunset stretches our thirty foot silhouettes out like warm taffy. Taking photos we’re on guard for any lurking Marble Cone Snails, another of Australia’s deadly medley. Though the pokiest of predators, the calcium cased escargot is a serious little badass with a barbed harpoon-like spear capable of injecting venom – even through a toenail!
Apparently they have been responsible for 20 deaths in recent years. The numbers would likely be higher, but after all, it is only a dawdling mollusk. Seriously people, we’re talking about death from a fricking snail! Beyond a doubt the Australian book of ‘Harmless Creatures’ is one very slim volume with so many critters capable of playing a starring role in your obituary!
With the pink of morning spreading across the sky we clamber up the headlands to share sunrise with a mob of ‘roos’. As the ludicrous leapers skip over the ground like a flat stone across still water we realize that gobsmackingingly beautiful Emerald Beach is our favorite spot on the trip so far. However, with still more turf to tread, it’s time for us to make like the springy ‘roos’ and bounce.
With nowhere to be and all day to get there in Port Macquarie, we watch the day wake up at the lighthouse then opt to walk the 9 km Costal Walk Path. It’s said adventure comes to those who walk, and we can certainly attest to that today after coming within inches of a near fatal blunder in the Land Down Under.
Stopping on a wide sidewalk near Flynn Beach and putting my eyes in the trees to follow the captivating cackle of a Kookaburra turns out to be a divine intervention. Hearing a fearful shriek, I turn and see Christine perfectly mimicking the Karate Kid with her foot frozen midair in premature rigor mortis. The potentially life-saving maneuver avoids her treading down onto the back of a sinewy four foot long and not-to-be-fucked-with Eastern Brown.
Despite the rather lame name, this scaly menace possesses a cocktail of poisons that’s the second-most toxic of all snake venoms in the world! If not treated with anti-venom within 30 minutes the ‘Da Vinci of Death’ will have you laying on a cold slab, dressed in nothing more than a toe-tag.
With my thumping heart threatening to leap out through my shirt and onto the ground, I test my camera’s optical stabilization feature with a quick picture of the toxic terror tasting the air with its fiendishly forked tongue. Then quickly regaining possession of my mind I race away with my sandal soles sounding like enthusiastic applause as I attempt to catch up to Christine who is already fleeing in full Olympian mode!
Gasping like a fish dragged to shore we finally stop and try to calm our hammering heart, and in doing so, there is a rustle in the dry leaves beside us. My beloved, still unquestionably shaken, grabs my arm squeezing it like she’s wringing out laundry, but fortunately the noise is only the reptilian scuttle of a large Lace Monitor Lizard disappearing into the bush.
I’m afraid the ever-so-lucky Christine is finished with sightseeing on this walk with her viewing options now reduced to the toes of her shoes. It’s time to return to our lodging for a strong shower, a change of underwear, and a liquid lunch!
Seriously folks, here in ‘The ‘Land of Venom’, the saying of ‘No worries mate’ or it’s cousin ‘no wucking furries’, seem a great fallacy given the minefield of silent assassins that walk, crawl, swim, or slither. They are all eager to make your birth certificate a worthless document, and here we are, a couple of tender fleshy bipeds from Canada roaming about in the presence of peril, criminally unprepared and vulnerable with our soft unarmored skin, clipped nails, fang-less flat teeth, clawless limbs, and inadequate non-poisonous spit!
It has indeed been an emotional day but there is yet one more surprise in store. Walking home from dinner we spot two elusive Koalas perched up in separate eucalyptus trees near our Bed & Breakfast. It’s difficult to get a good photo with their faces mostly hidden in the leafy branches, but one fuzzy-eared tree-hugger lifts his big black nose skyward and makes a grunting sound like a little pig.
Channeling my Dr. Doolittle I try imitating it, and low and behold it seems there’s a new Koala whisperer in town! Likely assessing my ‘koala-fications’ the leaf-muncher exposes its face, and moving like molasses, dozily peers down at me. These little dudes are at the very top of the cute-meter and offer a perfect ending to an incredible twelve hours. From killer to Koala – truly a day for the ages!
On the move again today we stop for walks in the National Parks of Diamond Head and Crowdy Bay, and visit Stockton Sand Dunes in Port Stephen before arriving at our lodging in Nelson Bay. A feast of fresh prawns fuels the final hike of the day to the summit of Tomaree Head Lookout for sunset.
Our exhausting day culminates with a romantic candle-lit soak in our B & B’s private outdoor spa. Submerged to our chins, I fire up a spliff from Nimbin and we steep like a pair of tea bags in the swirling warmth of the hot tub while being reduced to two puddles of contentment.
Returning to Sydney we squeeze in a couple of final walks to Manly and Mosman before Mother Nature gets her knickers in a knot. With the punishing H2O now a serious happiness-retardant, my strategy is to forfeit any last minute outings and immerse myself between the pages of a good novel while enjoying the company of a tasty bottle of Zinfandel.
Dear Christine on the other hand, bless her heart, suddenly becomes a magician. Pulling an umbrella out of her suitcase she proclaims she’s going out to brave the elements and plunder the shops. I should know better after 35 years of experience, but foolishly I ask her to reconsider.
Not surprisingly this is like trying to unscramble an omelet; it’s just never going to happen. There is no weather on this planet capable of denying my darling diminutive diva’s quest to separate herself from her cash! As the door closes I am left alone with my book. The wine helps.
With our exhilarating and exotic trip at end, we have gone from surviving to thriving in checking this captivating continent off our bucket list. And heading for home in lingering awe of our Aussie adventures we both agree that while many countries in the world would rate only a limp clap, Australia is different. This, after all, is a check-all-the-boxes kind of destination deserving of nothing less than a full standing O!
Mark Colegrave 2016