Remember the feeling of setting foot on a new continent? Into a world with creatures outlandish to your foreign eyes, a land yet to be explored? Well, I’ve recently realized that for the past eight-ish years I had completely forgotten what this feeling was like. Now you may be wondering “Isn’t this guy traveling right around the world right now?” and you would be correct. But the part that I had forgotten to mention was that my family and I had been traveling since I was very young, and apparently, that was the last time that I stepped foot on a new continent. Crazy as it may seem, I’ve only been to 3 continents, despite having traveled for the past few years of my life. However, that was all about to change when we got onto the airplane headed straight from Sydney.
We had just come from Bali and were surprised when we found out that the temperature was a lot cooler than anticipated. Sure, it was still in the 20s but having come from Indonesia it felt almost as if we were back in Europe. We only spent a day in Sydney, and since my parents were architects they made sure we spent a good chunk of the day looking at the Sydney Opera House. We also took a ferry to Manly, which had a chill beachside/surf vibe. We even saw the infamous parakeet. Speaking of which, I forgot to mention how bizarre animals sound in this country. In short, all birds sound like mammals and vice versa, and the parakeet didn’t get it easy either. It sounds similar to a normal parrot only that it appears to be going through a tough time in its voice change period. I could write a whole thesis about them, and believe me, I would, but sadly I don’t have that sort of free time so that is all you are getting for now.
After Sydney, our trip to Australia took it up a notch. Since we were approaching the end of this trip, we decided to do something memorable during our stay in Australia. Naturally, the only logical idea we came up with was a massive road trip spanned out for the next 6 weeks taking us around the beautiful coasts and rugged Outbacks. We planned on going south along the coast then up through the Outbacks before finally going back down to Sydney. On the topic of this trip, I will probably split this massive road trip into three blogs, the first of which is this one.
I want to point out that Australia is much more beautiful than I could have imagined. On our first day, we went to a canyon called Blue Mountain. If I were to describe it in four words it would have to be ‘Grand Canyon with trees’. The landscape brought back memories of when I was in America, in all of its mammoth scale. Cascading off the cliff was a beautiful waterfall that, you could hike over if you trek along the canyon. There were also a lot of beautiful birds with an array of vibrant shades of blues and reds. Sadly, the rain started pouring down so we had to beeline towards our car.
The rest of the drive became a blur, as the serene ocean views zipped past my window from the backseat of our car. It was truly breathtaking and somewhat shocking to see so many pristine beaches back to back. In other countries, these would be enough to attract thousands but here, they were empty. Just us and the ocean. After a few days, we turned inland, to the world-renowned Outback. But for now, that will be for another day.
***Bonus Challenge: We gave ourselves a challenge to see how many wild koalas we could spot by the end of our road trip (our final result was 54!).