AUSTRALIA

Have you ever dreamed of visiting the land down under? Do you speak’a my language? Are you brave enough to try a vegemite sandwich?

I know when I say “Australia”, you’re thinking of dusky orange sands, croaking didgeridoos, and rock formations rising from the earth like alien masonic temples. That would be Uluru (aka Ayers Rock), located in the center of Australia in the Northern Territory. Trust me, as someone who’s lived in the Mojave Desert: don’t fly alllll that way just to stay in the desert. Ain’t nothin’ to do except visit that rock, hike around, and stare at lizards.

INSTEAD, why not visit the spectacular Queensland? Hike through prehistoric rainforests, skim the edge of volcanic rims that exploded and sank into the sea 23 million years ago, smell the fresh, green scent of eucalyptus forests, and maybe spot a koala attempting to climb from branch to branch. And don’t worry: you’ll see plenty of kangaroos.

PLANNING WHEN TO GO AND WHERE TO STAY

Before we begin, it’s important to plan your trip around Queensland’s geography and climate. Australia is like the hot version of Canada: in the same way that most Canadians live far south in cities along the Canadian-US border because the Arctic tundra of Canada is nearly uninhabitable, most Australians live along the east coast of the continent. Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, and Cairns are located in the east, where the water is warmer and the climate is more forgivable. This is also where the Great Barrier Reef is located. But, if you remember from Finding Nemo, the Great Barrier Reef is not close to Sydney. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend visiting Sydney at all on your first trip to Australia. Sydney and Melbourne are like New York and Boston: they’re big cities that are a bit colder, because they’re far south and closer to Antarctica.

Which leads me to my second point: remember Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere, so everything will be flip-flopped. The further south you go, the colder it will get. Our summer months are their winter months (but don’t worry—if you go to Queensland, the weather will be temperate and lovely, kind of like a Florida/Caribbean winter). Because they’re a British commonwealth, they even drive on the other side of the road. 

But if you stay in Queensland, none of this will be a major issue. Visiting Queensland in the winter (June–August) means the weather will actually be around 70–80 degrees Fahrenheit, and during the summer (November–January) it gets humid, rainy, and too hot to go outside, plus there are eight million mosquitos and gnats buzzing around you. So, basically like Alabama in July. In Queensland, there’s a mountain range that borders the coast, so if you stay on the beach, it will be warmer, and if you go into the mountains, which are called the Hinterlands, it will be about ten to twenty degrees cooler, depending on how sunny it is. You will need to rent a car: most of the places on this list are about a two-hour drive’s distance from each other, but don’t freak out about driving on the other side of the road. Unlike England, where it’s notoriously difficult to drive on the other side of the car/the road because the roads are all tiny one-lane nightmares and the parking spaces are hilariously small, Australia is more spread-out and rural, which makes practicing driving much easier. You’ll get the hang of it in no time!

You’ll more than likely fly from San Francisco or LAX to Sydney or Melbourne, and from SYD/MEL to Gold Coast’s airport, OOD. PLEASE do not make our mistake of flying to Brisbane. Skip Brisbane altogether, for real. How can I explain this: it’s like planning a Florida Emerald Coast/30A beach vacation and flying in to Tallahassee. Like… why are you doing that to yourself. You are NOT going to see Tallahassee, girl. The traffic around the area is a nightmare, I mean it DOUBLES the drive time, and Brisbane looks cool on Google, but truthfully it’s just a city. Most of Australia’s major cities are quite new. They had a weird tourism boom in the 80s (I guess because of Crocodile Dundee and INXS??), so most of their skyscrapers are like brand-new because the tourism flushed their economy for 40 years. But like……… did you travel 27 hours on the longest flight of your life to see skyscrapers? We have skyscrapers at home! Go stay in the Hinterlands and hit up the beaches at Gold Coast for a day trip, and see all the wildlife and spectacular nature that Queensland is famous for.

We stayed at this AirBnB, truly the greatest AirBnB I’ve ever stayed at in my life, even better than the apartment in Paris with the Eiffel Tower view. Sharon was the sweetest, friendliest, most conscientious host I’ve ever met: she brought us fresh-baked bread and eggs from her coop every morning! This treehouse is perched on a mountainside with a breathtaking view of two national parks: Lamington and Springbrook. It was so much fun hiking around these amazing forests and waterfalls, getting some dinner, and then kicking back and relaxing in the hot tub with a view of the Milky Way. In the morning, cockatoos soar across the valley and perch on the trees near the balcony to be fed by a kindly neighbor. We also saw at least one kangaroo or wallaby on our morning drive every day.

WHAT I SAW

Australia Zoo

As a True Child of the Nineties, I love and cherish Steve Irwin, his legacy, and his family. When we started planning this trip, the whole reason we picked Queensland in the first place is it is the location of the Australia Zoo, owned by the late-great Crocodile Hunter. This zoo is incredible, as is the continuation of Steve Irwin’s vision to make zoos environmentally-friendly, bringing habitat conservation, wildlife rescue, and animal education together.

While the zoo features the heavy-hitters like elephants, tigers, zebras, giraffes, and rhinos, the Australian animals make this zoo special. There are multiple enclosures where you can see koalas, wombats, dingos, and wallabies up-close, but I think the most impressive part of the zoo was the walk-through enclosures, where you can feed and pet kangaroos. Now, I know some of you might be like “oh I already did that at the Nashville Zoo” but Nashville has NOTHING on this place. At the Nashville Zoo, you have to stay on the path and wait for the roos to come to yous. (And usually they don’t.) But at Australia Zoo, there are two large enclosures with three or four times as many kangaroos of all different ages, very chilled out and used to humans. You can pet any kangaroo in the enclosure unless they’ve hopped over to the “I need a break from all this stimulation” area, and there are several zoo employees posted nearby in case a kid gets too handsy and freaks an animal out. But I noticed this wasn’t an issue because all the kids were weirdly well-behaved. I think Australians might just be more relaxed, less litigious, and might value conservation a little more than Americans, because there were so many opportunities to interact with wildlife in a way that you just don’t see in America these days. I’ll talk more about that later.

Definitely take advantage of Australia Zoo’s opportunities to cuddle a koala in a private photo session. At $134 per person, this was one of the more expensive parts of our vacation, but totally worth it. Holding a koala and looking into its brown marble eyes as it nonverbally shares the infinite knowledge of all the universe with you and is also a little bit stinky because it has a pheromone blaster gland in its chest will be one of the greatest experiences of your life.

Make sure when you buy your Cuddle a Koala tickets to plan around the Wildlife Warriors show in the Crocoseum, which starts at 1:15 PM and ends at around 2:05. This is Steve Irwin’s famous show which features the feeding of absolutely gargantuan crocodiles, still run by Terri, Robert, and Bindi Irwin, and well as Bindi’s husband Chandler. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to see Robert and Chandler do the show (we did, and I nearly lost my mind), but be aware that the Irwin family travels the globe in their habitat conservation efforts.

Australia Zoo is located in the northern part of the Brisbane/Gold Coast area, closer to Sunshine Coast. It takes about three hours to get there (going through Brisbane traffic) so make sure to get up early. You think you’ll be able to see all of it in one day, but the zoo is surprisingly big. We went from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, stopping for a sneak peak of the zoo’s wildlife hospital, which is free with your cuddle a koala ticket, and had just enough time to catch the sunset over the panoramic Glass House Mountains on our way back. 

Restaurants: Australia Zoo’s Croc Cafe is weirdly delicious for a cafeteria, lots of vegan options. For dinner: Thaitanic in Narang on our way back.

Lamington

Lamington National Park is one of the largest national parks in the area (there’s plenty of them; Queensland is kind of like the Yosemite/Pacific northwest/Yellowstone region), and similar to Yellowstone, there are multiple areas to drive to where you can access different trails and waterfalls. It’s the site of a prehistoric rainforest, and looks like something out of Star Wars, with moss-covered towering tree trunks. In almost every national park in the area, you’ll see the strangler fig: it looks like a gigantic sequoia-sized tree, but it’s actually a vine that starts as a seed from bird pop in the tree tops, then works its way down to the forest floor, where it grows larger and larger, until it becomes one gigantic alien tube of a vine, which eventually suffocates and destroys the tree underneath (toxic relationships, amirite?).

I would recommend driving to O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat and hiking to Elabana Falls. A friend of mine told me about AllTrails, an app that tracks hiking trails and comes with a feature where you can download maps offline. I liked using AllTrails, although I will say all of the trails we hiked were easy to navigate and clearly marked. The hike to Elabana Falls was about three hours, easy to moderate, although there were some switchbacks at the end of the trail that became a little steeper, but very doable for anyone who is moderately fit. We also hiked to Moran Falls. I read that you can hike to Moran Falls to watch the sunset sitting right on the waterfall (it’s more of a creek that flows off a very tall cliff on the rim of a canyon), but locals told me they wouldn’t recommend it because it gets pretty cold at night. The day we went, it was quite windy, so we decided to head home after looking over the edge of the waterfall. 

Most of these waterfalls are easily accessible, and many Aussies like to go swimming in the cold waterfall pools in the humid summer.

Restaurant: Picnic sandwiches and snacks for lunch, Canungra Hotel for dinner (very local dive bar vibe, don’t worry about being muddy).

Springbrook

I liked Springbrook National Park a little more than Lamington because a) it didn’t take quite so long to drive to one trailhead, and b) the trails were all around an hour, which meant we could see more in one day. (Alex and I like hiking, but a four to five hour hike down into one area isn’t our vibe.) We started at Best of All Lookout, which provides a beautiful view of the volcanic rim of a shield volcano that exploded 23 million years ago and washed out to sea, then we drove over to the Twin Falls trailhead, where we picnicked and walked behind two waterfalls. Near the trailhead was Canyon Falls lookout, where you can see the waterfall and the ocean.

Finally, we went to Natural Bridge, which was a very easy hike, and decided to come back later after sunset with our headlamps to see the glow worms in the cave. Obviously, you can’t use any light when you walk down the stairs to go under the wide mouth of the cave that makes up the natural bridge, because 1) you won’t be able to see the glow worms and 2) it’s damaging to them and freaks them out, but it also gives your eyes the opportunity to get used to the dark and focus on the teeny little galaxy-like glow clusters. So cool!

Restaurant: Picnic lunch, The Tropic at Burleigh Pavillion on Gold Coast for dinner.

Whale Watching

We drove up to Redcliffe, the home of the Bee Gees, to go on a five-hour humpback whale-watching expedition. During June–August, humpback whales migrate from the chilly Antarctic and Arctic regions towards the equator. Brisbane Whale Watching Tours is a great experience, and they offer VIP tickets so you can have an inside reserved table for five hours instead of trying to wobble around finding a bench. I would say, if I had to rank these days, this one would be last, NOT because it wasn’t amazing, it was, but it took a long time to drive there and back, and we wound up seeing humpback whales the next day at Byron Bay. But this is great if you want to see them up-close!

Restaurant: Some random burger beach joint at Surfers Paradise; lots of places open late. Honestly, wasn’t that impressed with Surfers Paradise, but glad we stopped for dinner so I could see it.

Byron Bay

This was one of my favorite days of the trip, and originally it wasn’t on my radar. Alex wanted to go because it’s the easternmost point in Australia, but what attracted me to the location was it’s an eclectic coastal town, kind of like Seaside in Florida. Plus, the Hemsworths purportedly live here! We didn’t see them, but we DID see a koala in the wild! That was really cool, because they’re very reclusive and hard to see, since they spend most of their time sleeping in the forest canopy, hidden from view by white eucalyptus trees.

We had breakfast, hiked to the lighthouse and back on the nature trail (this is where you can see humpback whales breaching, as well as dolphins and sea turtles), then we had oysters for lunch, spent some time reading on the beach, and then we went swimming. The water was perfect! At 5:00, everyone gathered to watch the sunset on the beach, and then we had dinner at a restaurant on the water. After dinner, we went to Souk, which was a very cool Moroccan-themed bar. I would recommend making reservations, because even though Byron Bay looks like a hippie haven, it’s actually quite chic.

Restaurants: Fishheads, very pretty beachside cafe, lunch at The Balcony Oyster Bar, dinner back at Fishheads because we liked it so much and wanted to see the sunset, dinner was some amazing shrimp and barramundi.

Mount Tamborine

Our last day in Australia was open, but we needed to re-pack our suitcases and wanted to spend one last night stargazing in the hot tub, so we did a short trip to the nearby mountain town of Mount Tamborine. The trails around Mount Tamborine are short and easy, in particular Curtis Falls and Cedar Creek Falls. None of these waterfalls mentioned are absolute gushers, they’re more like creeks that spray down into lovely swimming holes. Mount Tamborine is a big tourist attraction on the weekends, (carrying busloads of tourists, if you get my meaning), but I wouldn’t call it a tourist trap. There’s a lot of holistic health shops, local honey and essential oil stores, tarot readings and chakra alignment, juice bars—I love that kind of stuff. I mean, if you’re going to be a hippie mountaintop community, lean into it, you know? But they also have more normal mountainy stores that sell cuckoo clocks, local tea bags, opals and handmade jewelry, and a really cool distillery. (Try the herbal liqueur; it’s made with eucalyptus and I regret not bringing back three big bottles in my suitcase.)

We ended our Australia trip at one of the many western lookout spots facing the Hinterlands, and gathered with some friendly locals and watched the sun set. A cockatoo flew across the sky, and a little girl shouted in a perfectly charming Aussie accent, “Good night, Southern Hemisphere!” 😭

Restaurants: The Monkey Tree in Mount Tamborine (this place was alright, although I’ve also heard Wild Plum is good and has vegan options). Dinner was the Laurel Cottage Garden Cafe in Beechmont, it was like having a buffet-style dinner in someone’s cottage, very quaint and an excellent way to end our trip. Service at EVERY one of these restaurants was excellent; very sweet people!

WHAT I ATE

Australians are like “what if we made British food but actually seasoned it so it tasted good” and that’s Australian cuisine in a nutshell. You’re gonna see crumpets, you’re gonna see baked beans for breakfast, you’re gonna see fish and chips. But I promise, they know what salt, pepper, and spices are, and they use it.

SO MUCH SO that they invented Vegemite, which is like if you took salt and somehow made it like the consistency of Hershey’s syrup. Take my advice: a little goes a long way, and have a glass of water nearby after you try it. I guess Vegemite was invented because Australians had a vitamin B deficiency in the 1920s?? Anyway, it’s full of vitamins and TONS of sodium.

That being said, Australia’s snack game is next-level. One of my favorite parts of a trip, especially a vacation where there’s a lot of driving involved, is shopping for snacks unique to the region. Australia, like France, has discovered the savory excellence of chicken chips (why can’t we get on that train?? Americans love chicken!), but they also have Funion-shaped snacks called Burger Rings that are savory. A popular cracker that you can get on Amazon and everywhere in Australia is Arnott’s Shapes. Try the Vegemite and Cheese flavor; the cracker is shaped like Australia! And you can’t leave OZ without trying Tim-Tams, which are like a chocolate-covered chocolate Oreo.

A WORD OF CAUTION: In the Hinterlands, there aren’t many restaurants open for dinner, especially in the winter. So you’ll need to go down into villages like Canungra and Narang for dinner, but they close around 7 or 8. Most places are casual, so honestly no point in driving all the way back home after hiking to shower and go out to eat. This was honestly one of the chillest vacations we’ve ever taken, also the first vacation where we just got a to-go pizza and brought it back to the house. Not planning our trip around making reservations was kind of a relief, and it allowed us to enjoy the treehouse more.

HOW I PACKED

This was tricky. I prided myself on packing for South America, where I fit all my leggings and slinky spaghetti strap sundresses into one tiny carry-on. For this trip, I was pushing 50 pounds in my suitcase before I even got there, and it was a pain trying to fit all my tchotchkes in at the end of the trip without going overweight. But the climate can be very different, depending on what area you’re staying in. During the beginning of the week, it was 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the mountains, plus it said it was going to rain every day, but it turned out it only rained in the middle of the night. Towards the end of the week, it was 75–80 degrees in Byron Bay and Gold Coast during the day, but at night the temperature dropped quickly. Here’s what wound up in the suitcase, and I’m omitting anything I didn’t wind up wearing:

LAMINGTON AND SPRINGBROOK

• 2 pairs of weatherproof joggers

• 2 lightweight hiking long sleeve shirts with hoods, pockets, and thumb-holes

• 1 flannel shirt (I wore this in the tree house and 2 days hiking)

• 1 crop top sports bra (I tied the fleece around my waist when it got too warm)

• 1 leather jacket (only wore to Lamington, only one day was cold and windy)

• 1 lightweight raincoat that I never wound up needing

• My comfiest, cutest walking shoes which got ruined with mud 😦 

WHALE-WATCHING

• Cardigan, jeans, long sleeve shirt, sneakers

AUSTRALIA ZOO

• Lightweight long-sleeve shirt for cover-up, tank top, linen pants, CLOSED-TOE SHOES***

BYRON BAY

• Swimsuit, flowy dry-fast pants, Tivas. 4 towels, 2 sturdy for laying on sand, 2 thin for drying off.

• Also packed a long-sleeve top and jeans when it got cold and my clothes were wet.

TAMBORINE MOUNTAIN

• Linen shirt and pants matching set.

AIRPLANE

• Just remember the trip takes two days, so pack an extra set of clothes and underwear in your carry-on, plus compression socks and a little bag with deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, extra contacts if you wear them, hair brush, eye mask and earplugs (people be snorin’), and plenty of moisturizer because riding on that airplane for so long (multiple long flights) is going to dry you out. You will be parched, greasy, and grimy, so the little refresher bag and the extra change of clothes will come in handy halfway through the trip.

Make sure to leave some room in your suitcase for the didgeridoo!