Places we missed

With such a vast trip, it’s hard to feel like you have covered everything. I liked working out the itinerary for someone else going to the North Island, and reviewing the South Island as a whole made sense after that. It also feels like it makes sense to do a nice blog summing up Australia. It’s just so much harder.

I’ve decided the way to do it is to create a few itineraries with different themes, rather than trying to do it so much by region. If you are planning your own trip it would probably make more sense to pick a few items from each itinerary, rather than having one that is all animals or all geographic marvels and hiking, but that will vary by taste. You can’t see it all without being gone a long time. Yes, Australia is the smallest continent, but it is still a pretty big country, and you will miss some things. That actually leads to two good points.

One thing that became clear as we spent time in New Zealand was that it would be totally worth getting a car. Things are close to each other, and you can see a lot more that way. This does not hold true for Australia. There are some places where driving can be good if the area is scenic and the distance not too bad (the Great Ocean Road comes to mind), but overall you will just spend hours and days driving. That’s not to say that it won’t be beautiful or interesting, but it may not be the best use of your time.

The other point was that we did miss things, so before stringing together itineraries including things we saw and things we didn’t, I wanted to go over some of the places that we missed.

First of all, we did not make it to the West Coast at all, or really any of the Western half. Most of what we did centered along the East Coast, though Adelaide and Uluru are central. Now, part of that is because when I was going over the places that we wanted to see, there were just more places in the East, and a several hours flight without a real objective didn’t make much sense. However, I can’t help but feel that we were missing something, because I am sure there are differences between the two coasts and I know nothing about them. Given a chance, I wouldn’t mind spending some time in Perth, Darwin, and Shark Bay.

Also more in the Northwest, the Bungle Bungles (Purnululu). They are rather like enormous orange and black striped beehives made out of rock. People didn’t even know they were there until the 80’s, so it’s almost still frontier out here, but basically I would want to go because they look cool.

Coober Pedy: Coober Pedy is fairly central. One attraction is that if you wanted to do a camping trip on camelback, most of those tours start from here. Also, the guy who inspired Crocodile Dundee lived here, and you can see his house, and it’s the opal capital of the world, so you can buy opals and learn about the mining.

Kakadu National Park: This place has it all— waterfalls and gorges, biodiversity, rock art—just tons to see and do. Actually, there’s a uranium mine too, though I’m not sure that you really visit that part, or should. However, it is fairly primitive. You will be hiking in and camping, and you have a long drive in.

Kuranda: The sad thing is we did have easy access, and could have easily gotten transportation from our Port Douglas lodgings, but there was just too much to do, and we had already scheduled other things. There is a sky rail and gondola for transportation, and then when you get to the village you can watch Aboriginal performances and view art, and we heard good things about it.

Brisbane/Gold Coast: Actually, I’m not sure that we would have wanted to go here so much. We looked at this area because there were a couple of big park/zoo things, including Steve Irwin’s. Ultimately I guess we decided that they seemed too touristy. I mean, we ended up seeing plenty of crocodiles in other places, and sure, seeing tigers is cool, but Australia is not really the place to look for them.

Fraser Island: This is a world heritage site off the Southern coast of Queensland. You can spot a lot of sharks, and explore dunes and really beautiful terrain.

Lady Elliott Island: This seems like a nice spot to stay and get in some good snorkeling. When I wrote about the Great Barrier Reef I think I mentioned that I didn’t really like snorkeling off a boat, but the Great Barrier Reef is too far off shore for you to wade in anywhere off the mainland. Still, there are several smaller islands where you can wade in, and I think that’s the way to go. And you’d be crazy to wade in off of Fraser Island.

Hanging Rock: Again, this is a place where we were nearby, but we just didn’t have the time to make it happen. But, you know, I’ve seen the movie now, and I want to go even more.

Launceston: Now that we know that there is both a platypus place and a sea horse place, how can we not want to go?

Sydney: Yes, we went to Sydney, and we saw some things, but we missed the Royal Botanical Gardens, and I think a stop at the Rocks would have been good. Honestly, I don’t feel at all drawn to the bridge climb.

I’m sure there are other things that I’m not even thinking about, but those are at least some.