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Picton, New Zealand – A Great Cruise Stop

Cathy Laurenzi — Sat, 29 Jul 2023 18:54:41 +0000

The Travel Sage

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Picton, New Zealand – A Great Cruise Stop

Heads Up: This page includes affiliate links, which are marked by an “*”. If you click and purchase, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. But rest assured – my opinions are my own, I would never recommend something I haven’t or wouldn’t purchase for myself.

One of my favorite stops on our 14 day cruise of Australia and New Zealand was Picton, NZ. This town sits on the northeastern tip of New Zealand’s south island in an area called Marlborough Sounds. Marlborough Sounds is actually made up of many individual sounds, the largest of which is Queen Charlotte Sound. The geography here is pretty unique; the coastline juts out in irregular ways forming a maze of waterways.

Mark and I and our friend Dave had two cruise excursions planned that day. The first one was a private flight over Marlborough Sounds in a small, single-engine plane. The company, Pelorus Air, offers 3 different flight options, a 20 minute flight, a 45 minute flight with a remote beach landing, and a 1 hour 15 minute flight with beach landing. We took the middle option. You can book directly on their website, but if you book the same excursion through Viator*, for essentially the same price, you don’t pay until 2 days before the flight, you can get a full refund up to 24 hours before departure, and you pay directly in U.S. dollars.

The owner of the company, Chris, who was our pilot/guide, met us at the information center in Picton, where the ship’s shuttle dropped us off. Chris drove us 10 minutes to the “Picton Airport” which was more like a landing strip with a few hangers than an actual airport.

Mark got to be co-pilot, but we all felt pretty official in our head gear.

The takeoff was smooth and we started the flight with a flyover of our ship.

The scenery was stunning and I was amazed that most of the land was uninhabited.

The white water in the photo below are rapids that are formed by tides due to the narrow channel between these two pieces of land.

We started descending as we got near our landing spot.

At first it appeared we were just going to fly into the side of the mountain, but then the strip of grass came into view. It was a smooth landing!

After landing, our pilot Chris parked the plane just over the sand dune from the beach. It turns out that the property we landed on belongs to Chris’ parents. While we explored the beach, he walked down a wooded path to visit his parents at their house. The beach was covered in smooth flat rocks and we found a few treasures.

After about 20 minutes of exploring the beach, we had another smooth takeoff. And the scenery was just as stunning on the way back.

After landing back at the tiny airport we were driven back to the Picton visitor’s center. From there we headed over to the waterfront where we picked up our next cruise excursion, a mailboat cruise*. Well, if you’ve never heard of a “mailboat cruise”, you aren’t alone, but it’s a thing in the Marlborough Sounds. Because of the geography here, many homes are hours from the nearest town by car, but maybe only 15 minutes by boat; so delivering the mail by boat makes more sense. However, people are so dispersed that it really isn’t feasible to deliver the mail by boat every day, so each location gets two deliveries a week. And to make mail delivery even more economical, they have combined it with tourism. Instead of delivering the mail in small boats, they use bigger passenger boats and provide commentary along the way. From the crowds on our boat, they are clearly making a profit – at least in summer. Our tour was about 4 hours in the afternoon (they also have a morning run/tour). I really wanted to love it, but honestly, I was kind of disappointed. I was not expecting there to be that many people and I expected more outdoor seating. The experience would have been much better if you weren’t viewing everything from inside a big room where most seats were not near a window. There was an outdoor bench in the back of the boat that seated about 6 people, but the fumes from the engine were pretty bad back there. Thankfully, I was still wearing my Covid mask, so I was able to tolerate it. The photos of the tour online show a boat with rooftop seating, but sadly ours didn’t have that. Despite my disappointment, I still enjoyed the experience. We learned quite a bit and got to see a lot of unique wildlife.

There was one drop off for each cove, and someone was always there to accept the mail and give the outgoing mail. I guess that person had to coordinate with the other people who lived in the cove.

Sometimes we were greeted by dogs.

There was one stop where we were able to get off the boat and wander around for a little while. The place we stopped was called “Ship Cove” and it was the first place that the native Maori people spent a significant amount of time with the Europeans. I enjoyed taking some wildlife photos.

I enjoyed watching the birds and taking photos. My favorite bird was the western weka. I was amazed at how this flightless bird lifted rather large rocks with it’s beak in order to get to the critters hiding underneath.

Throughout the excursion we saw wildlife – much of which I’d never seen before. But I think the highlight was seeing the Hectors Dolphins. These endangered dolphins (estimated population of 7,000) are the smallest dolphins in the world and are only found in the waters off New Zealand.

I also got to see a rare bird – New Zealand’s King Shag. One feature that distinguishes this species from other shags/cormorants is the orange swelling found in front of their eye.

There were a lot of seals to be found. Some on rocks, other hanging out around the docks hoping for some free fish.

And although it wasn’t unique to New Zealand, having Bottlenose Dolphin play in your boat’s wake is always a thrill. And I was thrilled to get a photo (with my phone) of two dolphin jumping out of the water at the same time!

After getting back to the harbor we walked along Picton’s picturesque waterfront to the ship’s shuttle bus stop. Picton made for an excellent cruise stop that I highly recommend. If I ever find myself back in New Zealand, I’d love to spend a few days in the this area.

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Holland America New Zealand Cruise

Cathy Laurenzi — Tue, 16 May 2023 20:08:02 +0000

The Travel Sage

Holland America New Zealand Cruise

Heads Up: This page includes affiliate links. If you click and purchase, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. But rest assured – my opinions are my own, I would never recommend something I haven’t or wouldn’t purchase for myself.

On February 11th, 2023 Mark and I and our friend Dave set sail on a cruise from Sydney, Australia to Auckland, New Zealand. This 14 night cruise on Holland America’s ms Noordam was set in the middle of our 5 1/2 week trip that began with a short stop in Oahu.

A few days before the cruise, while were staying in Sydney, we learned that a cyclone was headed toward the north island of New Zealand at a time when Auckland was still recovering from record flooding. I was concerned that our cruise could get canceled but thankfully the storm only resulted in two of our scheduled ports closing and a date change on another port. Luckily, the ports we missed weren’t ones I was especially excited about, and Holland America replaced one of those ports with a stop in Wellington, which is New Zealand’s capital. So other than me having to scramble to reschedule our plans around the new itinerary, all was well.

Our first full day on the ms Noordam was at sea, which was nice since it gave us a chance to rest a little and get acquainted with the ship. On our second day the ship docked in Melbourne, which would have been an awesome stop if we hadn’t just spent a week there. Ships dock in the town of Port Melbourne which is just south of downtown. We could have easily reached Melbourne on one of the shuttle buses but instead we opted just to walk around the vicinity of the ship.

The 3rd full day of our cruise was spent in Tasmania, which is an Australian island state directly south of Melbourne. The largest city in Tasmania is by far Hobart on the southeastern side of the island, but our cruise docked in Burnie which is on the northern Tasmanian coast. Options for things to do there were fairly limited, so we chose to take a day tour out of Burnie to see Cradle Mountain. There were quite a few tour operators offering day trips to Cradle Mountain, but we chose Cradle Coast Tours which we booked through Viator. We chose this particular tour because it had great reviews and a maximum of 7 passengers. Well, as it turned out, there were twice that many people on the tour and we didn’t think our guide was as wonderful as most of the reviewers did. Despite the few disappointments, we saw some beautiful scenery.

Our first tour stop was Fern Glade Platypus Reserve. We didn’t get a glimpse of any platypuses, but we did see some cute little marsupials called pademelons.

Photo taken by Ali M Saeed

We drove quite a while through the countryside before arriving at our tour’s primary destination – Table Mountain.

After Cradle Mountain, we took a stroll on a nearby trail called “Enchanted Walk”. The area was dotted with wombat dens. Unfortunately, no wombats were out and about during the middle of the day, but it was a pretty trail.

Tasmania was our last stop in Australia on this cruise. When we left port that day we set sail for New Zealand. We had 2 full days at sea while our ship crossed the Tasman Sea. I enjoy sea days because they are a chance to relax between busy sightseeing days, but my ideal cruise itinerary doesn’t have more than one sea day in a row. Thankfully, this was the only time we had multiple sea days lumped together. Mark and I spent most of our time lounging around on our balcony – him reading and me writing my travel blog.

I really like ships that have pools with retractable glass roofs. It’s a great place to relax on a sea day especially when its cold and sunny.

The ship’s captain gave a lecture about the ship’s mechanical systems. I found the information somewhat interesting but the highlight for me was his dry humor.

Early in the morning after our second day at sea we reached our first destination in New Zealand – Milford Sound! This was the place I was most looking forward to seeing in New Zealand, even though we were only cruising around the sound and not actually getting off the ship there. (However, if you have a few extra thousand dollars to spare you can take a ship’s excursion that lets you off at Milford Sound and does an overnight on land and then meets back up with the ship the next day.) It was before dawn as we approached and I headed to the ship’s bow to get a good look. My initial reaction was confusion since it looked like we were headed directly into a stone wall. But as we got closer, I could see a narrow channel opening up in front of us.

I was amazed at how narrow the channel was and how tall the fjords were that towered all around us.

Milford sound was just the first part of our day of scenic cruising. Our next destination was Doubtful Sound followed by Dusty Sound, but the views were beautiful all day – even en route to our destinations.

We spent the day going back and forth between watching the scenery from our balcony and the various decks of the ship.

After our relaxed day of scenic cruising, the next stop was Port Chalmers, which is just outside of Dunedin. We opted for a great tour that gave us a very brief overview of Dunedin and then headed out of town and into the country. That was a pretty busy day so I’m going to make a separate trip report for it (coming soon).

The following day our ship stopped in the small town of Timaru, New Zealand. There wasn’t really much to do there so we just visited the little craft festival that was going on and then walked through the city to Timaru Botanical Gardens. It wasn’t the kind of Botanical Gardens that I’m used to, it was more like a nice city park. But it was a pleasant place to walk and look for birds.

After we left the gardens we walked through the nearby cemetery because, strangely, I find cemeteries very beautiful and interesting. The cemetery was close to the coast so from there we caught a trail called Hectors’ Coastal Track, (In New Zealand they call trails “tracks”.) and headed back toward our ship.

The walk along the coast wasn’t as pretty as I had hoped and when we got off the track to get back to the ship we had to walk through a rather unpleasant industrial area. I was starting to think we would have been better off visiting the Timaru’s most popular spot instead – Caroline Bay Beach. But after we got back on the ship, I realized that the view from our balcony was looking out at Caroline Bay, the towns’ “best” beach, which was situated right next to the port. Overall, I’d say this was my least favorite port stop of the trip. However, our friend who was cruising with us, spent the day on his own in Timaru and fell in love with the little town.

The port after Tiramu, was my favorite stop of the cruise. We docked in Picton, which is on the northern tip of New Zealand’s south island – this town is located in a maze of waterways called Marlborough Sounds, which is actually made up of 3 sounds – Queen Charlotte Sound, Kenepuru Sound and Pelorus Sound.

I knew that the scenery coming into Picton was going to be spectacular so I got up before dawn that day to watch it from my balcony. I was not disappointed!

Me, Mark and our friend Dave had two excursions planned that day. The morning tour was a private flight over Marlborough Sounds in a small, single-engine plane, and it included a 20 minute stop at a remote beach. Our afternoon excursion was a “mail boat cruise“. The people who live in the more remote areas receive there mail via boat since traveling by car would to get to these places would take way too long. So, the local government had the ingenious idea to use large tourist boats to deliver the mail so that us tourists could pay for the mail service. Our day in Picton, NZ was too eventful to try to include in this already long post, so check out the separate trip report I created for our cruise stop in Picton. Below are a couple preview photos of that post.

The ship left Picton in the early evening and headed across the Cook Strait to Wellington which is New Zealand’s capital. Wellington wasn’t on our original itinerary; the stop was added when two of our scheduled ports were cancelled due to the typhoon. Luckily, Wellington was a more interesting destination than the places we missed! According to Trip Advisor, at the time of this writing, the top 3 things to do in Wellington are 1) The New Zealand Museum (Te Papa Tongarewa) 2) Zealandia Ecosanctuary and 3) the Wellington Cable Car. We had hoped to do all 3 of those things while in port. We decided to make Zealandia our priority of the day since it is a unique place; the first of its kind in the world. Zealandia is a 500+ acre fenced sanctuary that was created in order to give native animals, especially birds, a predator-free place to thrive. New Zealand, as well as Australia, has a huge problem with non-native mammals, that were brought into the country by settlers, decimating their population of birds. The birds in Zealandia are wild but they choose to stay because all of the non-native vermin have been removed from the site and are kept out by a specialized designed fence over 5 miles long.

Given that Mark and I like to bird, this place did not disappoint! And in addition to rare birds, Zealandia had some beautiful scenery.

Wellington operates a free shuttle to and from Zealandia, making it really easy to access the park. On the way there we caught the shuttle stop at Wellington’s waterfront, but on the way back we took the shuttle to the other stop which is at the top of the cable car. I had thought about taking the cable car both up and back but the line was outrageous going from the bottom up – probably due to the 2,000+ people on our ship! I’m really glad we didn’t wait in line because the cable car was a disappointment. It was a very short ride and you only got a good view for an instant. Much of the ride was underground, but at least they decorated the tunnels with lights.

After exiting the cable car it was a short walk along the waterfront to the New Zealand Museum. We didn’t have a lot of time left but we figured we’d check out a little of the museum, since it was free. Unfortunately, by the time we finished in the gift shop it was just too late to get started. It’s too bad, because we heard really great things about it. I guess this is a good reason to have to come back to Wellington.

The day after Wellington was my 20th wedding anniversary. I had planned out a fun, relaxing day in port with dinner in a nice local restaurant. But when the typhoon screwed up our itinerary, our anniversary became a day at sea. So, for something special, I made reservations for one of the ship’s specialty dining restaurants – Canaletto. The food was very good throughout the cruise, so I was primarily looking to find a restaurant with atmosphere that would feel special. Well, a few days before our anniversary, we were eating in the buffet for dinner and it dawned on me that the corner of the buffet seating that is blocked off in the evening was actually the Canaletto. That’s the opposite of the special atmosphere I had in mind.

Luckily the hostess in the main dining room was willing to reserve a window table for our anniversary, and that turned out to be a little special.

The night of our anniversary was also Noordam’s “Orange Party”. Apparently it’s a thing Holland America does because the Dutch wear orange.

At this point there were only 2 days left in the cruise – the port of Tauranga followed by a day at sea. In reality, the Port of Tauranga was in the small neighboring beach town of Mt. Maunganui. Most of the tours offered from this port took visitors to locations over an hour away. One of the most popular tours was the Hobbiton movie set tour for the Lord of the Rings fans. Most of the other tours went to the town of Rotorua and its surrounding attractions. We debated between exploring Mt. Maunganui on our own or taking a Rotorua Highlights tour which included a stop at Whakarewarewa, which is the only traditional living Maori village still in existence. I really wanted to visit the village, so the only reason for the debate was that we were spending two nights in Rotorua after the cruise and I didn’t know whether we’d have time to do everything we wanted while we were there. I’m really glad we opted to take the tour from the cruise stop, because as it turned out, I was too sick to do much of anything during our stay in Rotorua. I’ll be creating a separate trip report for this Rotorua tour, but I’ve included a couple of preview photos below.

The last day of the cruise was advertised as “scenic cruising” in the Bay of Plenty. Thankfully, I didn’t expect much so I wasn’t too disappointed when all we saw were a couple of points of interest from quite far away. But Mark managed to get a good zoomed-in photo of Whakaari / White Island which is an active marine volcano with 70% of its mass below sea level. On December 9th, 2019 a massive eruption of the volcano killed 22 people who were touring the island on foot. Land tours are no longer offered but you can take a tour that flies over White Island.

On this last day of our cruise I was coughing a lot but I figured it was just my allergies. But that night I kept waking up coughing. We were disembarking that next morning, so I took a Covid test just in case it was positive; then I could get a note from the ship’s doctor which would allow me to file a claim with my travel insurance if our travel plans got messed up. Unfortunately, it was positive, but fortunately, we were able to stay in the Airbnb’s that we had booked, and our flight home was scheduled for the first day the new CDC guidelines allowed me to travel. It was a bummer that I missed out on the activities I had planned to do on New Zealand’s north island, but I guess I was lucky I didn’t get sick sooner and have to be in quarantine on the ship.

Overall, it was a great cruise. The food was great, the ship wasn’t too crowded and we loved our cabin! It was a great way to see New Zealand.

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A Little Bit of Sydney

Cathy Laurenzi — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 18:33:04 +0000

The Travel Sage

A Little Bit of Sydney

Heads Up: This page includes some affiliate links. If you click and purchase, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. But rest assured – my opinions are my own, I would never recommend something I haven’t or wouldn’t purchase for myself.

After Kangaroo Island, we stayed 5 nights and 4 days in Sydney. This was the third place we stayed on the trip with a full kitchen, and by this point we had our routine down – the first thing you do after you arrive is go to the grocery store and the liquor store (but not in that order)! After traveling all day, that was pretty much all we had the energy to do.

Our first full day in Sydney was actually spent outside of the city on a day tour from Sydney to see kangaroos and wombats. So that left us really only 3 days in Sydney. On our first day in the city, we walked down to the popular and historic area of called “The Rocks”. We started by visiting The Rocks Discovery Museum. It was a nice little free museum housed in a historic building with exhibits about the history of the area.5

Our next stop in The Rocks was the Lord Nelson Brewery which is the oldest pub brewery in Australia. It was Mark’s mission to try one of their award-winning beers. And what better to go with that beer then a traditional Aussie meat pie with mashed potatoes and smashed peas!

After lunch we checked out nearby Barangaroo Reserve. I’m not sure exactly what I expected but, although there were nice views, wandering around the park on our own wasn’t very interesting. Perhaps I should have signed up for an aboriginal heritage tour or a historical tour about The Rocks being a penal colony when the area was first settled.

The next destination on our walk was to see the iconic Sydney Opera house. My first impression was that it seemed smaller in person.

The harbour that the Opera House sits on is called Circular Quay. This is a major tourist hub with lots of dining options.

Although I was already exhausted at this point, we decided to walk back to our apartment through Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden.

We also walked half of the way through Hyde Park.

That was the end to a long day of walking. Rain was forecast for our 3rd day in Sydney and we decided that was a great reason to stay in and rest. Given that our entire trip was going to be over 5 weeks, we were trying to pace ourselves. For our 4th and final day in Sydney we decided to see the outskirts of town and try out their mass transportation system.

I was very impressed with the many options for getting around Sydney and the outlying area. The trains, buses and ferries all had an easy system of automatically charging riders by having them tap on and off. Unlike most major cities I’ve visited, you didn’t have to purchase and replenish a special card for your fare. You could use any credit card for the same price; you just needed to be sure to use the same card when tapping on and off. And there is a cap on how much they will charge you over a certain period of time. You can use all of the modes of transportation as much as you want and never pay more than $16.80 on a weekday, $8.40 on Saturday/Sunday/holiday, and $50 in a week. (Prices as of April 2023.)

We had thought about taking a harbour cruise or signing up for a hop on, hop off boat, but then we realized that riding the ferries would be much more economical and flexible on times. So, on our final full day in Sydney we mapped out an itinerary that ended the day with 3 ferry rides. Our day began with a train ride to Sydney’s Olympic Park which was originally created to house the 2000 Olympic games. I chose this park because I heard that it was a good birding spot with nice nature walks, but I also chose it because there was a ferry terminal at one end of the park. This allowed us to take a train there and a ferry back to downtown Sydney.

Olympic Park was massive with a lot of different sections. We tried to stay mainly along the water and in the more green parts.

We came across a couple of old ships that were grown over with trees. I looked it up and the place is called Shipwreck Lookout in Homebush Bay. However, “ship graveyard” is probably a more appropriate name since the ships didn’t actually wreck here, they were just laid to rest here.

After a very long walk through the park, we made it to the Olympic Park ferry terminal just as a ferry was pulling up. I was really impressed with the ferries. They had comfortable seating inside plus plenty of places to take in the views from out on the deck. Unfortunately, none of the other ferries we took were as empty as this one.

It was quite a long ferry ride from Olympic Park to Circular Quay in downtown Sydney, followed by a ferry to Manly Wharf. Below is a map of the ferry routes we took, starting from the left. Mark mostly slept while I snapped photos.

Look closely for the people on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the photo below. Not only can you walk across the bridge, for a fee, you can walk over the bridge!

The photo below was taken coming in to downtown Sydney, where we switched to another ferry heading to Manly Beach.

Manly is one of Sydney’s more popular suburbs. It’s a trendy area with a relaxed vibe that is popular with surfers and sunbathers due to it’s nice long stretch of sandy beach. The ferry from downtown Sydney takes you to Manly Wharf and from there it is just a short walk to shops, cafes and Manly Beach. I thought the building murals with old headlines were pretty cool.

One of the nice things about Manly was that it had many pedestrian only streets and alleys.

This situation perplexes me a bit…

We ended our day with a ferry ride back to Sydney.

The next day we were leaving Sydney on a 14 night Holland America cruise that ended in Auckland, New Zealand. I was really looking forward to it. I love cruising and hadn’t been on one in 5 years, primarily due to the pandemic. We had some time to kill between hotel checkout and cruise check-in, so we walked around a part of Sydney we hadn’t been to yet. We walked to Darling Harbour and then crossed over the river on the Pyrmont Pedestrian Bridge.

We had beautiful weather for our ship’s departure out of Sydney Harbour. Be sure to check out our trip report of our cruise on the ms Noordam.

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Day Tour from Sydney

Cathy Laurenzi — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:28:47 +0000

The Travel Sage

Day Tour from Sydney

Heads Up: This page includes one affiliate link, which is marked by an “*”. If you click and purchase, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. But rest assured – my opinions are my own, I would never recommend something I haven’t or wouldn’t purchase for myself.

I arranged for us to be in Sydney for 4 full days and 5 nights before we embarked on our cruise to New Zealand. Knowing that Mark and I tend to like nature more than big cities, we decided to plan a full day in the less developed areas of New South Wales. Viator listed a lot of day trip options out of Sydney but most of them involved going to the Grampian Mountains – which appeared to be where most of Sydney’s day trippers went to get some nature. It is such a popular destination that the Grampians even feature an attraction called “Scenic World“. Wanting to go to a less touristy destination, we opted for the “Wild Wombat and Kangaroo Day Tour*” by Perfect Day Sydney – a small group tour with a maximum of 13 passengers that departs Sydney around noon. Dave is the owner of the company and he was our driver/guide. He was good about communicating with us about when and where to meet. Dave was a great tour guide and the most incredible host!

We drove south out of Sydney through the sprawling suburbs. Our first stop was Sublime Point overlooking Wollongong. As we took in the views and did some birding, Dave laid out a spread of breakfast pastries and drinks.

After the overlook, we headed southwest to the “famous” Robertson’s pie shop to get a taste of genuine Aussie pies. Our tour guide treated us each to our choice of pie (there were lots of options both savory and sweet).

Our next stop was Carrington Falls in Budderoo National Park. It was a short leisurely walk to the various overlooks, one of which was at the top of the falls.

The next item on our itinerary was Fitzroy Falls in nearby Morton National Park. Unfortunately the weather turned incredibly foggy at this point and the skies were threatening rain. Our fabulous host had plenty of umbrellas on hand just in case! We managed to avoid a downpour, and the walk was pretty, but the view of the falls was almost non-existent.

Despite the fog, it was an interesting walk. I was amazed at the size of some of the termite mounds!

We were hoping to find a Superb Lyrebird here since they are known to frequent this park. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see one, but check out this video to find out why these birds are incredible!

Our final stop on this tour was Bendeela Recreation Area along the Kangaroo River. In addition to having countless kangaroos, this spot is home to a lot of wombats that come out at dusk.

While we mingled with the kangaroos our host fired up the barbie! We had a choice of hamburgers, chicken burgers or veggie burgers. But we also got to try grilled kangaroo thighs.

The kangaroo meat was surprisingly delicious! It had a unique flavor but it wasn’t gamey at all. And it was incredibly moist and tender. I had previously learned Australians don’t tend to eat kangaroo, but once I tasted how delicious it is, I was really surprised that it wasn’t a popular food. I asked our guide why that was the case and he said that he thinks it is because Australia’s First People (that is what they call the native aboriginals) ate kangaroo. And he believes that since the natives ate it, the British settlers thought it was beneath them.

After we all finished our dinner and our dessert of Aussie Tim Tams (cookies), it was time for the main event – meeting some wombats!

Not all the wombats would allow people to come up close to them, but Dave knew where the friendlier wombats hung out. One thing I learned that was very surprising is that these short-legged stocky animals can run fast – up to 25 miles per hour! At one point I separated from the group and walked along the river for a few minutes. As I found my way back to the others it was almost completely dark. I was scared to death when I suddenly heard loud sounds and thought I was being charged by some animal. As it turned out two wombats were spooked by me and ran past me to get to their burrow. It was really dark when I took the photo below but I was able to lighten it.

Mark and I were really glad we took this tour. If you enjoy nature and wildlife and would like to have a relaxing day outside of Sydney, we highly recommend the “Wild Wombat and Kangaroo Day Tour*” by Perfect Day Sydney!

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Kangaroo Island on Our Own

Cathy Laurenzi — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 06:20:09 +0000

The Travel Sage

Kangaroo Island on Our Own

After spending 7 nights in Melbourne, Australia, we flew to Kangaroo Island. I chose this location because it was as close to the “outback” that we could reasonably get to on this trip. The island is sparsely populated and full of wildlife. After arriving at the tiny airport, I got the impression that most people come by ferry, not airplane. We flew in on a puddle jumper through Adelaide which is the only connecting airport.

Knowing that my phone may not have any service on this rather remote island, I had planned ahead of time on what we would do until it was late enough for us to check into our Airbnb. We got our rental car at the airport and Mark was the designated driver. This was his first time driving on the wrong side (left) of the road, so it was a bit stressful for him. But we figured if he was going to learn to do this, doing it where there is almost no traffic was a better place to learn than in a city.

It was a very short drive from the airport to our first stop at Duck Lagoon where we took a short walk along the water in hopes of spotting some birds. We did get two new birds here, but what was more exciting is that I spotted a koala in a tree! I had my long lens with me so I ended getting a very close-up shot.

Just as we were finishing our walk, the weather turned strange – it would be sunny one second and then raining the next. The clouds were blowing by so fast we couldn’t really predict what was coming at any moment. We mostly managed to dodge the rain and headed over to a cafe at Emu Bay Lavender Farm for lunch. It was a cute place and the food was great.

After lunch we headed into the town of Kingscote to go grocery shopping. We needed to get enough food for the 4 days we’d be on the island because it was nearly an hour drive to any real stores from where we would be staying in Vivonne Bay. Here’s the photo of Vivonne Bay’s General Store (the only store within hour drive). It looks big enough, but inside the shelves are almost empty. And their refrigerated section literally had one apple, one bag of carrots and a couple of other items. I would have taken a photo inside but I didn’t want to insult the owner.

Once you drive a little past the general store, the rest of Vivonne Bay was just dirt roads. The directions were confusing and the homes were mostly tucked in behind the bushes and trees, so it took us quite a while to find our rental. Eventually I got out of the car and walked around until I found a house that matched the photo on Airbnb.

We were exhausted after having woken up at 3am to make our flight out of Melbourne, so we mainly just chilled the rest of the day as the wind and rain started picking up. We had read that the weather the next day was supposed to be even worse so we decided we would just take that day off and catch up on our rest. And the weather that next day was crazy! It was windier than any of the tropical storm winds we had recently experienced back in Florida. And the rain would come and go in a matter of seconds. Early that afternoon I decided that if the weather stayed reasonably nice for 30 minutes straight, I would go down and check out the local beach which was less than a 10 minute walk away. Eventually my wish came true and it had been somewhat calm and sunny for over 30 minutes. So we ventured out on foot, but as soon as we stepped onto the beach sand it began to sprinkle, and by the time we climbed back up the stairs to the road it was pouring! I brought my poncho, but Mark got drenched!

The weather was looking a little better again that afternoon so we tried to go to the beach again. To be safe we drove that time. But alas, as soon as we got out of the car it started raining. That evening the weather was beautiful out on our deck and Mark spotted our first wallaby in our yard just below the deck. And the next morning we saw more of them from our kitchen window.

The weather was predicted to be better that next day and thankfully it was. We drove to Flinders Chase National Park on the west side of the island. Many portions of the park were still closed due to the devastating fires of early 2020, and a couple other areas of the park were recommended only for 4 wheel drive vehicles. But the two places in the park we were able to visit were spectacular!

The first walk we did was at Admiral’s Arch. This is at the very southwest tip of Kangaroo Island where you can see over the cliffs to the coast in three directions. What made this place extra special was all of the fur seals and sea lions on the rocks below us.

The caves that were carved into the rocks were also very cool to explore and made for some nice photo opportunities.

The second place we visited at Flinders Chase was the aptly named “Remarkable Rocks”. We had noticed these unusual rocks in the distance, but we didn’t realize that is where we were headed next.

These strangely shaped rocks are made of granite and partially covered in orange lichen.

On our way home from Flinders Chase, we drove down a street that took us to the other side of Vivonne Bay which is separated from our house by the Harriet River. We walked on the pier.

We drove a little farther down from the pier and found an overlook called Point Ellen and the Vivonne Bay Rock Pool where you could explore the pools in the rocks and watch the waves crashing. It was a great end to the day.

I would like to make a note here that in the 2 ½ days we were in our Airbnb at this point we had occasionally heard a strange noise that we joked might be a kangaroo, but we knew that was absurd. We decided the sound was likely coming from our neighbor’s cisterns which were just outside our living room wall. It appeared that every house in the area had three of these cisterns (or whatever they are called). These things were huge and attached to the gutters of the house. I really wanted to know how the water was being processed and what it was being used for. I don’t know the answer, so I tried not to drink too much water from the faucets in the house.

On our last day on the island we thought about driving an hour+ to Penneshaw which is the touristy area of the island that includes several attractions, but instead we opted for a tour of a nearby private wildlife reserve called “Hanson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary”. Prior to the fires it was open to the public in addition to offering private tours, but for now you could only visit if you booked a tour or were staying at one of their cabins that survived the fire. Our guide, Peter, was an interesting character who lived on the property in a rustic cabin and had to use a long drop (that’s Aussie for outhouse) at night. He was telling us about this because he said that a tiger snake had been living in the area between his cabin and the long drop, and he had to be very careful going out at night because the tiger snake is the 7th most venomous snake in the world. During the tour we happened across Peter’s snake, but lucky for us, although these snakes are deadly, they are very docile.

The main purposes of this tour were to spot wildlife (especially koalas), learn about them and the local vegetation, and to learn about the fires and how they affected the area. We were lucky enough to spot a lot of koalas and kangaroos on the tour. I love the fuzzy ears on the Koalas.

Peter was telling us that it was mating season for the koalas and that the males make a sound/growl that you would never believe came out of a cuddly-looking koala. At that moment the lightbulb came on for me and Mark. Perhaps that strange sound that we had been hearing at the house was a male koala? And then right on cue, a nearby male koala started growling. It was that sound all right! Be sure to have your sound turned on when you watch the video. (Video compliments of the Taronga Zoo in Sydney.)

Later that evening I was lying on the couch and from there I could see a big koala in the tree in our backyard. I guess he was the one making all the noise!

After resting for a couple of hours we decided to take one last shot at exploring our beach. It was low tide and I held out hope that possibly I would find a shell or two despite not seeing any on our previous two brief beach experiences. We walked down the beach toward the outlet to the Harriet River. It wasn’t too exciting since the water wasn’t actually flowing out or in. Perhaps it only flows at high tide or when there is a significant amount of rain.

Then we walked back the other way toward some rocks. There were lots of piles of interesting seaweed including some pink seaweed. There were no shells, other than a few broken pieces, but there were these strange things of various sizes that felt just like dense styrofoam. We later learned that these things were the ”bone” of Giant Cuttlefish.

After a short walk, we arrived at the rocky area of the beach which was very scenic. But more importantly, those rocks were hiding a jackpot of shells!

Mark and I found quite a few shells, but here is a photo of a few of my favorites after I boiled them to make sure they were clean and safe enough to smuggle (ooops, I mean “bring”) into the country.

Finding those shells was a great way to end our visit to Kangaroo Island. We were both really glad we stayed on the island – it was a totally different experience from our other stops around Australia. The next morning we flew to our next destination – Sydney!

Kangaroo Island & Koalas

Koala’s were originally only on the mainland of Australia but about 100 years ago they were introduced to Kangaroo Island in order to protect the species. (Someone had the foresight to realize that the Koala’s habitat was shrinking in Australia as the human population was expanding.) By the time the devastating fires hit Kangaroo Island in late 2019/early 2020 there were approximately 80,000 koalas on the island which was considered to be an extreme overpopulation. (Scientists later determined that the island could only sustain about 30,000.) There was a risk of koalas starving because they had over-foraged the eucalyptus trees. During that time, female koalas were being rounded up and sterilized to try to solve the problem. After the fires only about 8,000 to 10,000 koalas remained.

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Great Ocean Road Day Tour

Cathy Laurenzi — Sun, 12 Feb 2023 20:19:10 +0000

The Travel Sage

Great Ocean Road Day Tour

During our one week stay in Melbourne, Australia my husband, Mark, and I tooks several single-day tours outside of the city. After having a few days to recover from a 15 hour Grampians Tour , we did a small-group tour of the Great Ocean Road with Hit the Road Tours. It took about two hours of driving through the countryside and past dairy farms, before reached the incredible views along the Great Ocean Road. Our first stop along the coast was to see the “12 Apostles”. Apparently, the area was renamed in the 1960’s from “Sow and Pigs” to the more appealing name of “Apostles”. But shortly after that, someone decided that the “12 Apostles” sounded even better – no matter that there were only 9 rock formations at that time. In July, 2005 one of the the Apostles (know as “Judas”) collapsed rather suddenly, and then in 2009 another smaller Apostle fell in extreme weather. So now there are seven “12 Apostles”.

After leaving the Apostles, our tour guide let us off in a parking lot where we could access both Loch Ard Gorge (where we were able to walk down to the beach). And an overlook of a rock formation called the Razorback. In my opinion, this stop had the most incredible scenery of all the places we visited along the Great Ocean Road. Judge for yourself in these photos.

After leaving the coast, our next tour stop was a beautiful temperate rain forest called “Maits Nest”.

Many of the oldest and largest trees were called “Mountain Ash” trees. Apparently, termites love these trees and they eat them from the inside out. Here is one that is still alive.

This tree fell after having the entire inside eaten by termites. It’s hard to tell how big this tree is from the photos but the hollowed out trunk is tall enough for a person to stand in it without ducking.

Next we stopped for lunch in Apollo Bay. It had a nice beach and here I saw a Galah for the first time.

After a quick photo stop at Cape Patton Lookout (the highest point on the Great Ocean Road), our tour guide drove us to a place where koalas had been seen recently. And thankfully two of them were still there. This was our first time seeing koalas in the wild. They spend most of their time sleeping, so we were lucky that one of them was awake and eating.

Our last stop of the day was at Lorne Beach. It was a pretty little beach with an enormous number of obnoxious Sulphur-crested Cockatoos.

Although I wish the guide had been a little more knowledgeable and easier to understand, overall it was a good tour. I felt that the stunning scenery at Loch Ard Gorge alone made this trip worthwhile.

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Grampians Day Tour

Cathy Laurenzi — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 23:34:43 +0000

The Travel Sage

Grampians Day Tour

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While staying in Melbourne, we took a Grampians National Park day tour. The Grampians is a mountain range about 3 hours from the city. Our guide, Sherif, was was from Egypt but had lived in Melbourne for 8 years. He started our tour by demonstrating an aboriginal musical instrument called a didgeridoo which is considered one of the oldest musical instruments in the world. Traditionally the instrument was made from Eucalyptus trees. The didgeridoo requires that the player use a circular breathing technique which entails breathing in through their nose while simultaneously blowing air out of their mouth using air stored in their cheeks. Our guide said it took him 2 years to learn how to do it.

After a stop along the road for some pound cakes and hot beverages, we drove into the Grampians. These mountains are made of sandstone and are believed to be formed by continental shift compressing the shoreline sand (that’s my layperson’s abbreviated interpretation).

Our first stop in the Grampians National Park was to do a hike to Splitters Falls. It was a short hike but not the easiest one. The “path” was mostly rocks and while the waterfall was at the same elevation as the trail head, the entire hike was fairly steep, either walking up or down. It just so happens that after all of the elevation changes you end up at the same level you started on. After walking on slippery rocks for a while, we came upon a beautiful area with unique rocks and a water pool. From there you could see that a ladder went up to the rocks above.

I was already pretty tired at this point so I decided to just hang out in this pretty spot and not feel miserable for the rest of the day. I felt like such a weakling when everyone else continued on, but I was happy to have to place all to my self!

Mark continued on to the Falls and fortunately for me, I didn’t miss much – they weren’t too impressive. I felt a little less like a wimp when Mark told me that the hike exhausted him.

Our next stop on the tour was for lunch at the town of Halls Gap at the base of the park. Here we saw some parrot-like birds for the first time. And our reaction was, “oh, those must be someone’s pet”. After the fourth bird showed up, the lightbulb came on for me and I realized that these birds are wild – they are native to Australia. The type of parrot-like bird that seemed to be the most plentiful in all of our travels around southern Australia was the Sulpher-crested Cockatoo, but the Crimson Rosella was a close runner up. We saw both of these birds in Halls Gap.

After lunch we were taken to Boroka Lookout which provided some spectacular views. Apparently, the rock that sticks out here is a popular place for people to pose in their attempt for a cool photo. Some people have been crazy enough to do yoga poses and even back flips. It doesn’t always end well.

Our next stop was kind of disappointing. We went to MacKenzie Falls, which I see from photos on the web is quite impressive. Our guide told us there was an overlook at the top of the falls, another overlook half-way down, and you could hike all the way to the bottom if you were up to it. Mark and I decided that the view from the top would be just fine, but when we got there we found that the top overlook was closed. While most of the others on our tour did the hike to the bottom of MacKenzie Falls, we instead walked a short way to the not-so-impressive Broken Falls. The view was mostly blocked by trees. But we still managed to enjoy this stop by doing some birding. The Emus were hard to miss.

Our last stop in the Grampians was at Reed Lookout.

On our way out of the mountains we saw our first echidna. The first photo is the one we took from the bus and the second is one I downloaded from the web, so you can see it’s face. The echidna has spines somewhat like a porcupine, and eats like an ant-eater, but these other critters are not related. The only other animal that the echidna is directly related to is the platypus. Those are the only two mammals that lay eggs.

At the beginning of our tour, our guide promised that we’d see kangaroos (a lot of them) on our way home. He managed to find a field full of them (a group is called a “mob”), but they were pretty far away. You’ll have to just trust me that those lumpy things in the photo are actually kangaroos. I’ll provide some up close photos in our trip report from Kangaroo Island.

Overall we enjoyed our tour, but it was a painfully long day. (It’s a 3 hour drive from Melbourne.) We got picked up at 7am and dropped off at 10pm! We barely had energy to walk around Melbourne the next day. But we recovered enough to take another all-day tour (but only 11 hours) a couple of days later. That tour took us to the scenic Great Ocean Road. Be sure to check out that trip report here.

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A Week in Melbourne, Australia

Cathy Laurenzi — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 06:22:45 +0000

The Travel Sage

A Week in Melbourne, Australia

Mark and I stayed in Melbourne for 7 nights (6 days), and I arranged for us to spend every other day in the city with day tours out of the city on the days in between. Our day trips included a 15 hour excursion to the Grampian Mountains, a tour of the Great Ocean Road, and a full day of birding with a professional birding guide. Check out the trip reports for those day tours in the links above. In this article I’m just going to focus on the city of Melbourne.

We rented an apartment through Airbnb that was in a great location for us, within a 5 minute walk to the airport’s shuttle bus terminal, two tram stops, a supermarket and a ton of restaurants. Melbourne has a great transportation system and their trams are free within the CBD (Central Business District). This photo is the view from our apartment balcony at sunset.

Our first activity in the city was a 3 hour guided walking tour of Melbourne with “I’m Free Walking Tours“. The idea behind this company and others like it is that at the end of the tour you pay the guide whatever you think it was worth. You meet at a designated time and place, but they ask you to sign up in advance so they know how many guides to send out that day. Our guide was a local hipster grad student with a wonderful Aussie accent. He pointed out historical landmarks and places to visit while he talked about the history and culture of the city. We ended the tour at a spot with great views of the city’s skyline.

During the tour our guide repeatedly told us that we should explore alleys and explained that many things like trendy bars were somewhat hidden and required research to find. The entrance to this historic, upscale shopping “arcade” is the archway squeezed between the 2 buildings on the left of the second photo.

Melbourne is big on street art, much of which is commissioned by the city. The women’s face in the top left of the image below is one of these commissioned works. Apparently, it is of a local woman from the neighborhood.

According to our guide, although you can find Kangaroo on some menus, it isn’t really a local Melbourne favorite. Locals tend to go more for the multi-cultural cuisine.

Our guide pointed out Federation Square which is a gathering point for locals during various events. This day a handful of people were watching a large TV screen that was displaying the Australian Open (tennis) which was being held in Melbourne while we were there.

The walking tour gave us a good overview of the city, which we then had 2 1/2 days to explore on our own. That afternoon we spent some more time walking along the Yarra River and discovered a zip line which, of course we didn’t do because we are wimps. But if I ever do a zip line, I think over a river might be a little less scary than over a mountain! You can see the landing platform for the zip line in the bottom center of the image below.

For dinner that night we wandered down an alley and found a nice Italian restaurant called Il Solito Posto.

We took it pretty easy during our second free day in the city. We started with a self-guided tour of the State Library which was interesting on the outside and pretty impressive inside.

The outside of the library seemed like a popular place to hang out. The library was located just down the street from one of Melbourne’s 2 Universities – RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) and the Melbourne University.

After leaving the library we went to the Queen Victoria Market which has been around since 1878. We didn’t stay long, it was a bit overwhelming. But we did stay long enough to have some very unhealthy street food. Apparently, Canadians are known for their hot dogs because the “Canadian Hot Dog” place was popular!

On our last free day in the city we visited the Melbourne Museum and found this cute Kangaroo statue in the park outside the museum. The museum had several sections including one on natural history, an educational garden, and a section for Melbourne’s history. I found it funny that the Museum seemed to be most proud of its 85% complete Triceratops which was found in Montana!

That evening we attended a play at the historic Princess Theatre where we saw Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The play is only showing in 6 theaters in the World (in the U.S. it’s on Broadway). We didn’t know what to expect but we ended up really enjoying it. The best part of it was the special effects – they were incredible! If you have a chance to see it somewhere, be sure to bring binoculars so that you can watch the effects up close.

Throughout our stay in Melbourne, we enjoyed taking in the unique architecture found throughout the city.

Fun Fact: Melbourne’s original name was “Batmania”! It was named after John Batman who tricked the local aboriginal people into signing a contract to sell him the land that Melbourne now sits on. Thankfully, when it officially became a city in 1837, it was renamed “Melbourne” after Lord Melbourne who was the British Prime Minister at that time.

Melbourne is a somewhat unique city that grew up very quickly due to the discovery of a massive amount of gold in the 1850’s. This brought in people from all over the world and the city continues to house people of all ethnicities. It’s also a city of young people – the median age of its residents is only 31. This is considerably younger that U.S. cities such as New York (37), L.A. (36), and Chicago (35). Despite feeling like old folks, we really enjoyed our visit there. And we’re looking forward to our visit to Sydney to see how it compares. But, we have one more stop before Sydney – Kangaroo Island here we come!

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