Fire, Flood, Pestilence

When we first embarked upon our three month voyage to Australia and New Zealand in 2019, I thought it would be a good idea to commit a few thoughts to paper or, as it turned out to laptop, so we wouldn't forget all the wonderful places we were going to visit and all the new and exciting things we intended to do.

For us this was to be a 'bucket list' extravaganza; a holiday of a lifetime par excellence, so we wanted to remember every precious moment of it.

We had planned an exciting, vibrant activities programme which among other things included looking after alpacas and exercising dogs and horses.

It was going to be amazing

But then following several meteorological events totally beyond our control, we were obliged to make significant changes to our meticulously detailed schedule no fewer than three times in the first two weeks alone.

It was at the point, where we were obliged to scrap a planned itinerary altogether and make on the spot decisions about where we could stay and what we could do at any given time, that I wondered whether my ramblings would, in some way, be amusing if not useful to other aspiring 'do-it-yourself' Antipodean voyagers.

It wasn't quite so extreme at the start of our holiday; for a while we veered from one itinerary to another, which we actually enjoyed as we had prepared for our trip pretty well prior to departure; we had already thought about plans B, C and D, lest plan A would need to be scrapped for whatever reason. 
It's when we got to plans X, Y and Z that we realised that planning anything in advance would no longer work.

It does help to be prepared though; researching well, areas one plans to visit on any trip is definitely essential.

Travel novels and online diaries written by others who had travelled down under in the months or weeks preceding our departure, had proved extremely beneficial to us in the planning stages of our trip, far more than some of the expensive guides we had purchased or had been given by kind friends who had embraced those Antipodean lands long before we did.

I suppose when you're reading someone's recent travel log, you're getting far more than a simple review; you're actually being given an up-to-date first hand account of a very personal experience of a particular town, city, area, region, restaurant, winery, festival, beach, pub, café, etc etc.

What we found especially useful when we arrived in a new location, were the recommendations of where to stay, what to eat, what the local specialities were and, more importantly what should be avoided at all costs.

When you know absolutely nothing about an area you are planning to visit, all this is truly invaluable advice and can make all the difference.

I spent months researching and planning for our trip; I honestly believed that I hadn't left any stone unturned and that I was armed and ready for all eventualities

It didn't take us long after arriving in Sydney in late December 2019, to realise that I couldn't have been less prepared for what we found there on those hot, dry, dusty summer days.

Australia had, for some time already, been in the throes of forest fires, the likes of which had not been seen there for a very long time if ever at all and there appeared to be no end in sight.....at least not then.

We had read about this back in the UK, of course, but UK media coverage of Australian wildfires was still quite limited in November and December 2019; though I doubt that anything we could have seen in print before our travels, would have really prepared us for what we experienced ourselves from early January onwards. 

The fires began to abate in mid to late February, but the Southern Hemisphere wasn't out of danger yet; it was around that time when certain areas of both Australia and New Zealand fell victim to unprecedented rainfalls followed by devastating floods which wreaked destruction on farmland and highways bringing some areas to a complete standstill for days or even weeks.

Obviously our travel plans had to change yet again at that point, but by then we were so accustomed to schedule changes that we were relatively unfazed by them. 

The best advice I was given when we decided that this would be a completely do-it-yourself travel experience, was to be as flexible as possible, to always remain positive and prepare ourselves mentally for the unexpected as we would certainly have to experience it at some point.

And experience it we did, over and over and over again.

After a while we took these changes in our stride and almost expected them.

I don't think we became complacent exactly but after managing to deal with cancellation after cancellation and still thoroughly enjoying everything we did, we started believing that nothing fate or the weather could throw at us would ever ruin our mega holiday experience. 

Come what may, we were convinced that we would take it all in our stride and still have the best trip ever.

But then, out of the blue, with a force such as the modern world had never seen before, we were engulfed by a deadly virus which changed everything, everywhere for all of us.

To find oneself on the other side of the world at a time like that was challenging and frightening.

We certainly weren't ready for anything like that.

But then how could one prepare for an eventuality that you couldn't even begin to imagine would happen?

To say that Covid 19 had a dramatic effect on foreign travel as we knew it then is putting it mildly.

As we continue to emerge from the darkness of what we now speak of as the Covid years, those first few months where no one really knew what was happening, followed by lockdown, after lockdown, led to our having to come to terms with a completely new 'normal'.

But at that time we knew none of all this.

I wrote about our experience of the various stages of this virus as they unfolded in whatever location we happened to be in.

I recounted how the media delivered it to us and how we 'survived' one day at a time as the pandemic tightened its grip on our safety, freedoms and civil liberties which many of us in the free world have always had and consequently had always taken for granted.

At that point my travel log inevitably morphed into something completely different.

It turned into a diary of Covid events from the perspective of two bemused and later terrified stranded travellers.

Embarking upon a long journey home, from one hemisphere to another at a time when travel of any kind was no longer being encouraged, was not a prospect we wanted to dwell upon.

Within just a few weeks, the pandemic put a sudden and complete stop to all foreign travel, flights were cancelled all over the world, countries, states and regions closed their borders, and as a consequence, costly, unpleasant quarantine laws were starting to be imposed which almost overnight rendered foreign travel both alien and hostile.

We had to face the very real possibility of having to remain for an undetermined period of time in New Zealand, Australia or any transit country on our route home should we succeed in securing a return flight back to the UK.

Fortunately for us, we didn't feel the full impact of Covid 19 until the final few weeks of our voyage.

Others were not so lucky.

I do refer to the virus occasionally in the early part of my travel log, but I had no idea then how significant its impact would be not only on our travels but on life as we all knew it in every corner of the globe. 

Those initial itinerary changes enforced upon us by dramatic, climactic occurrences, were in themselves tragic for some and totally overwhelming for everyone else living through them, but the emergence of a global pandemic was a complete game changer.

In this diary I have included written accounts and photos of how all these events affected our travel plans both in Australia and New Zealand as well as our return back to the UK during the initial stages of that first worldwide lockdown.

But I also never lost sight of the fact that we may never have the opportunity to return to the Southern Hemisphere again so in spite of everything, the main focus of this log remained on the places we saw and the new experiences we were able to enjoy, even though these became increasingly diminished during the latter stages of our trip when social distancing was beginning to be implemented.

This log is still primarily an account of our extraordinary voyage of discovery where, as others did before, I describe in detail where we went, what we saw, where we stayed, where we ate, what we learnt about the history and culture of a particular town or area, what we loved and would do again and what we believe should be avoided.

Hopefully, my recounting of our Antipodean Odyssey will be an ok read if nothing else, after all there can't have been many people travelling anywhere in March 2020, let alone from one hemisphere to another.

If you do find it interesting and wish to know more about any or several aspects of our trip then do contact me. I will happily respond 

Why DOWN UNDER?

A trip ‘down under’ had never really been on the cards for us before 2019. 

I came close to booking a trip to New Zealand many years ago when a good friend of mine took part in a teacher exchange programme in Nelson, South Island for one UK academic year, but loved it so much and did such a great job at the school she was working in (which didn't surprise me at all), that they offered her a permanent position with a promotion and generous remuneration package which she immediately accepted.

She wanted me to visit her in Nelson the following summer as she was keen on our doing some travelling together in NZ and Australia, so suggested that I should spend my entire summer break down under.

I would have loved that SO much and I did look into it, but having just returned to full time teaching after a three year study break in the US, there were definitely no available funds for a holiday anywhere let alone on the other side of the world. 

Another opportunity presented itself several years later, following an encounter with the Head of an excellent school in Perth Western Australia who told me about a vacancy in her MFL faculty for the following academic year, which she suggested I should consider applying for.

I had often thought about teaching down under myself, since my friend who had moved to New Zealand all those years before, told me about all the opportunities she had been given there, which had not been available to her in London and as a result her career appeared to go from strength to strength. 

Our children were still very young and my husband would have been more than happy to consider a career change at that point, so it was very tempting indeed, but we both had aging parents and Australia was so very far away; journeys back home to visit family would be long and pricey, so unfortunately for us all, we decided against it.

Allowing those opportunities to slip through the net, really felt as if I would never have the chance or the funds to visit those lands ever again.

But many years later, when our grown up elder daughter and her then boyfriend (now her husband), announced that they had decided to go and spend a year in Australia and New Zealand with the prospect of maybe staying there longer, everything changed again.

A few weeks after they set off in early January 2019, our younger daughter announced that she would be spending the following Christmas and New Year with her sister in Sydney.

She suggested that we should go as well so we wouldn't be on our own for the holidays.

Before I knew it, I booked a single flight for the the three of us with Singapore Airlines leaving on Christmas Day 2019.

We booked a return flight much later after we had planned our 3 month epic voyage taking in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Of course very little of what we planned in advance was able to happen but nevertheless, it was still the best decision we ever made.  

In spite of all the unexpected and unwelcome obstacles which we encountered whilst there, it remains one of the best travel experiences of our lives

When our younger daughter first asked us whether we would like to travel with her to Australia to spend the following Christmas with our elder daughter in Sydney, I did not hesitate, I threw caution to the wind and booked flights before I had the chance to talk myself out of it.

I had missed opportunities to visit the southern hemisphere before by listening to that little voice of reason deep inside my head telling me why it would not be a good idea to even consider such a trip.

So this time I booked and paid for our flights to Sydney before overthinking any of it.

And I am so glad I did.

I would have undoubtedly decided against it had I looked closely at our finances prior to booking.

But by the time I did examine our budget and checked our latest bank statements, our flights were paid for, and they were not cheap so we were fully committed. We were definitely doing this. 

Scary? Daunting?

Yes, definitely.

We had never embarked upon anything like this before.

That cautious little voice kept asking itself how much would we need to spend once there to render this trip successful yet affordable. 

What would we do for three whole months down under and what exactly would it cost?????

We knew that we would be spending Christmas and New Year with our daughters in Sydney, but we had no idea what we would do after that.

Our younger daughter would need to return to the UK after just two weeks as work beckoned but we were planning to stay much longer than that.

Luckily we booked those flights 10 months before we were due to travel so we would have plenty of time to sort out an itinerary and save up the considerable sum required for such a holiday to work.

We were also lucky that our daughter, who lived in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide at various points during her first year there, was able to advise us based on her own Antipodean experiences and even recommend a few websites to us which proved invaluable on so many levels. 

She also planned a Christmas and New Year itinerary for us all which could not have been more amazing.

Inevitably, the wild fires in Australia, the floods in New Zealand and finally Covid 19 did disrupt our travels significantly and cause us to change plans and bookings on more than one occasion but even if plans have to change, it definitely pays to do your research and to familiarise yourself as much as possible with areas you intend to visit.

Being well informed, definitely helps when itineraries need to change. 

It was during the planning stages of our trip, that we eventually came to the conclusion that as the Southern Hemisphere is as far away from Surrey as you can get, it made sense to stay the full 90 days permitted by our travel insurance and see as much as we could whilst there.

Australia and New Zealand are wonderful countries to explore on an extended travel break, but unlike other often less spectacular destinations, they do tend to hide their lights under rather large bushels so we had to do quite a lot of research before we were able to come up with a tentative itinerary.

Of course this is mainly due to our own ignorance at not having read that much about them over the years. No excuse at all for that.

But we definitely made up for it in 2019

As well as the usual run-of-the-mill travel guides, what I found particularly helpful that year were the many blogs, websites, online diaries, travel programs, video clips etc of people who had embarked upon trips of this kind before us; quite frankly I don't know what we would have done without them.

Our daughter recommended a few of these to us, but the rest I just found myself by surfing the web (now that's an expression that one doesn't hear any more).

Planning and research are the key to a really successful do-it-yourself travel itinerary or as in our case, itineraries.

If you are thinking of a do-it-yourself trip down under at some point, then make sure you plan a variety of alternative trips / excursions / activities so that last minute changes for whatever reason are already built into your schedule and won't cause you too much angst if you have to do something completely different from what you had originally set your heart on, especially as you really do NOT know what could happen when you're there and you always need to be prepared to change your travel plans accordingly.

I don't know whether these ramblings of mine are destined to be part of a travel guide or not, but if they amuse just one person or help someone make a crucial decision about a booking, a tour or even a day out then that's good enough for me.

One issue I am hoping to address if I can, is the comparatively scarce online advice for older travellers embarking upon trips of this kind.

So much is aimed at 18 to 30 somethings on their statutory round-the-world gap year tours or on their working holidays in the Southern Hemisphere whilst deciding what to do with the rest of their lives, but very little addresses the needs of older travellers like us, who now make up a significant percentage of do-it-yourself voyagers, so although we would probably not want to bungee jump from the top of the Harbour Bridge on New Year's Eve, we totally appreciated all the transport advice, hotel information, itinerary suggestions, restaurant recommendations and above all else the many money saving tips these sites provided.

Not all 50 somethings want to go on a cruise.

Cruises certainly have their place in the travel world; we've been on a few mini ones ourselves and are hoping to go on another for my husband's birthday next year, but now we're in the post Covid era and we have experienced how truly awful a deadly virus can be, we can't help but wonder how one would safely manage to socially distance on a large, over crowded ship should an outbreak of covid or something even worse were to descend upon us all again. 

Besides, we know lots of older people like us, who actually prefer a do it yourself travel experience.

We had a set travel budget which we had to stick to as much as we could, so we were very happy to take all the advice we could get on how to make a little go a long way.

By budget I don't mean shoestring.

It's not worth going at all if you're not prepared to spend some money, especially if you are older and certain comforts are less of a choice and more of a necessity, but I suppose it couldn't be 5 star all the way for three full months.

Sometimes it helps just knowing how different cities and communities function so that you don't waste time and money having to work that out when you're there.

So although this log isn't solely aimed at assisting older travellers, I am hoping that it will feel more inclusive and encourage 50+ travellers who are thinking about a trip of this kind to take the plunge and GO FOR IT.

We loved every single minute that we spent in Australia and New Zealand and in spite of Fire, Flood and Pestilence, we cannot wait to go back

There is nothing that can really compare to the first time you travel to Circular Quay.

I will never forget the moment our train rolled into that station and one of the most beautiful views in the world appeared before us while we were still sitting on the train.

It was so unexpected and for that reason it felt even more extraordinary.

This is the location of Sydney harbour with its iconic Opera House and its magnificent Harbour Bridge.

To say we were overwhelmed is very much an understatement.

The entire Circular Quay area is buzzing with life: bars, harbourside restaurants, street theatre, cruise liners, ferries coming and going, water taxis, hoards of tourists and visitors and seagulls, so, so many seagulls.

This is not a quiet area of the city. The gulls alone see to that.

On this our first of many trips there we sat at a waterside table in the opera bar drinking cocktails, basking in the summer sunshine and enjoying the view.

It was as perfect a moment as any could be and we will always be grateful to our lovely daughter for planning it and booking it all in advance for us so all we had to do was get there and enjoy it.

After a lovely lunch at the bistro on Ettalong Beach, we said goodbye to our daughter's friends who were due to host a Christmas family gathering at home later that day.

Christmas seemed so out of place somehow in this swealtering summer setting.

Although we were at that beautiful Midnight Mass in Croydon Minster just four days before, to us it was now an age away.

I felt a little nostalgia for our traditional English Christmases, but those glorious summer beach days more than compensated for that loss.

Later that afternoon it was decided that we would take a ferry from Ettalong to Palm Beach.

Palm Beach is where that iconic Australian export Home and Away is set and filmed.

I say iconic as quite a few people we know in the UK watch it or have watched it, even if we haven't ourselves.

The ferry journey across was lovely; a little choppy in places but the warm sea breeze was a welcome change after the intense heat on Ettalong beach.

Palm Beach was delightful; a long expanse of sand with very few people on it, certainly fewer than Ettalong.

We went for a swim, admired the 20 million dollar penthouse apartments overlooking the sea and had aperitivo in a beachside pub quirkily called Palm Beach hotel even though it wasn't a hotel at all.

I discovered later that pubs in Australia tend to be called hotels even if they had never been hotels in the past.

At the time I didn't know that and I thought that the Palm Beach hotel would be a lovely place for the two of us to come and spend a few nights on a beach break after the girls had set off for Perth.

We returned home to Newtown from Palm Beach by bus and though crowded (mainly with a group of what seemed to be a party of French school pupils and their teachers), it took less time to get to Newtown than the train took to get us to Woy Woy early that morning.

We noticed how friendly and welcoming our bus driver was when people boarded the bus at various stops en route, which is rare now in the UK for Health and Safety reasons but that driver and so many others we met later on our travels was super friendly and really easy going.

He wished us a great holiday and hoped he'd see us again.

He even told us that his name was Bruce, though that didn't surprise us at all somehow 

Bring Your Own Bottle 

Once back in Newtown, our daughter suggested that we should have dinner in a family run Indian restaurant which was one of the many excellent yet very reasonably priced restaurants in Newtown's King Street.

This one actually allowed you to bring your own bottle and did not charge for corkage.

I ordered a delicious aubergine Jalfrezi with coconut naan. I was not disappointed.

Newtown is an excellent place to stay and / or eat in Sydney if you are on a budget.

The many family run restaurants are superb and quite a few of them allow you to bring your own alcohol, though water is provided free if you are happy with that.

We returned to the Newtown area several times later in our trip for lunch, dinner or just a coffee in the piazza where we could enjoy the wonderful diversity and multicultural vibe that this area has to offer.

The coastal walk from Coogee beach to Bondi has to be one of the most beautiful walks in the world and Waverley Council Cemetery is the highest point on that iconic Coogee to Bondi walk way.

I have never seen a cemetery in a more beautiful location anywhere else in the world.

This is definitely where the Great and the Good in Australia have their family mausoleums, though I expect it would be cheaper to buy a penthouse flat on Palm Beach than secure an eternal resting place in that heritage site

The Bondi Icebergs Club is a revamped old swimming club complex which overlooks Bondi Beach and now includes a stylish Italian restaurant and several more casual bars.

Due to its unique corner position on the cliffs above Bondi, it is the first place you come to in Bondi when you're arriving from Coogee on the cliff walk.

There is still a swimming complex in the building with two huge pools that you see even before you see the beach but I think they are separate from the bar and restaurant now.

The bars themselves looks directly across the beach and water, so if you're looking for somewhere to have a drink with a sea view, then this is probably as good as it gets.

We were meeting friends of our younger daughter there for early evening drinks and as they would be coming with other family members including their adorable baby niece, took a while for a table large enough for all of us to be released but it was definitely worth the wait. 

We got back to Newtown from Bondi later than expected so we struggled finding somewhere to eat with any availability before 11:00 pm.

Fortunately for us a rather unusual Chinese restaurant on King Street, had had a cancellation minutes before we were passing so they were able to accommodate us in the 'dining display' meal which was about to start.

The food was cooked on a large hot plate in front of us in a pretty explosive way (I did wonder about their Health and Safety provision at one point).

When the food was ready the chef served it to us by throwing it skilfully across the grill to each of us in turn and we had to catch it on plates, in our hands and on two occasions in our mouths.

The raw egg throwing was particularly interesting, and as for the rice.........

I am sure restaurants like this are not unique to Sydney but I had never experienced anything like it before so I will always associate it with the quirkiness of Newtown - just remember not to wear your best holiday outfit for this one 🤣

Manly Beach is one of Sydney's most spectacular Northern Beaches.

This was a particularly popular day for sea bathers as the weather was perfect, the sea water was warm and there was less evidence of smoke pollution - at least compared to what we experienced in Coogee and Bondi the day before.

What I found especially impressive in Manly are the many sea pools they have there.

This is where a section of sea is fenced off into a pool so sea bathers (especially children) can't be tempted to swim too far out or get swept off by cross currents.

We heard lots of gory shark stories everywhere in Australia, Manly is no exception. 

The most recent one as reported in the Daily Telegraph in July 2019 was when the former English Channel swimmer Peter Schultz was attacked by a shark and was reported as being 'extremely lucky to be alive after being mauled during an early morning swim off the coast at Manly'.

This, I was told, happened at almost the exact same spot that we had selected for our mid morning dip.

Of course a shark attack is a very real danger in Australia but most fatal beach related accidents on Australian beaches tend to be down to inexperienced swimmers venturing out further than they are able to swim back or unlucky bathers getting pulled under by cross currents.

These sea pools are an excellent idea for reducing those risks but more adventurous swimmers are likely to hate them.

We did see a large group of snorkellers swimming out quite far at one point and I remember thinking then that we didn't see any of them swimming back 😧

It was unanimously decided that a visit to the 4 Pines microbrewery in Manly would be a good idea.

After all, it's not as if we would be in Manly every day.

We were very impressed with all the breweries and microbreweries that we went to in Australia and New Zealand.

These microbreweries tend to employ passionate and knowledgable serving staff who are always willing to provide information on their products and make suitable recommendations regardless of how busy they are.

This one was established in 2008 and our friends had a family connection with one of the original founders so that strengthened our resolve to visit it (not that it needed strengthening if I am to be honest).

In 2014 4 Pines Brewing Company and Two Birds Brewing were named joint winners of the 'Bintani Champion Large Brewery Award', with the company also winning the 'Champion Pale Ale' for its ESB, so definitely a must if you go to Manly.