Australia, Oz, the land down under, our home country is one of beauty and with a lifestyle that just can’t be matched. To many travelers, it’s on the bucket list but also at the top of the too hard list. Come on people, don’t you know what you’re missing out on? From America, the flight is a little long, clocking in at up to 22 hours from the eastern-most point, but more commonly you can be there in 18 hours (or what’s also known as about nine movies and three meals). It’s basically having a snooze in an undersized armchair, so honestly, get over it because the reward outweighs the pain of travel.
As a country, Australia is a land of extremes. Extremely fresh, tasty food, extremely chill, yet welcoming people and extremely dangerous wildlife – almost everything can bite, sting, poison or maim you. It is also extremely large. Somewhere along the line, the cartographers got things very, very wrong. Most visitors assume that it’s a smallish island. That’s what they were taught in middle school geography. It is in fact almost as large as the United States. In the same state you can experience jungles, alps and deserts. Distances are massive between capital cities, usually taking up to 15 hours to drive. Whatever the experience and no matter where they come from, no one who visits Australia leaves disappointed. Below you will find some of our favorite experiences with a little local “know-how”.
“The Breakfast Creek Hotel is up for sale”. You know a pub is iconic when legendary Australian band, Midnight Oil name checks it in a song. The Breakfast Creek Hotel, known by locals simply as the “Brekky Creek” is part of the very fabric of tropical Brisbane. It has lived through fires, floods and more than its share of bar fights over its 128 years. In that time...
Montville is a charming hilltop village in the Blackall Ranges nestled above the Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. When the stifling heat, humidity and near perfect beaches get too much for you (yeah right!) there is a place you can escape too. Imagine a tropical haven where the temperature drops cool enough to enjoy a hot chocolate or Devonshire tea – even in summer...
As a ginger, Buderim Ginger Factory is Jess’s spiritual home. It’s home to some great-tasting food and offers a chance to chill in its quiet rainforest grounds. Heading north towards the Sunshine Coast from Brisbane, you will pass through Buderim, a small, sleepy, hinterland town. Just off the highway, in a semi-industrial area is the Buderim Ginger Factory. As a...
Brisbane is a beautiful river city and one of the best ways to see it for cheap is to ride one of its CityCat catamarans. The CityCat ferry service is an iconic part of the city, transporting tens of thousands to work every day. They run upstream and down, servicing as far down as Hamilton (close to the Brisbane Airport) and as far up as the University of Queensland...
Every city has its marketplace and Doomben Markets is the epicenter for Brisbane’s artisan foods, crafts and farm-fresh produce. There’s definitely been a global shift back to honest-to-goodness, organic, farm-to-table shopping. We’ve seen it in New York, Prague, Barbados, Philly, Finland and Sweden. Prior to leaving our home in Brisbane, this movement was just...
As Australians, seeing the Sydney Opera House in person always brings an instant hit of patriotism (and possibly a little tear – though we’ll tell you it’s just a bit of dust). The last time we were in Sydney was when we were going through the process of getting our US Green Cards at the United States embassy. Flying into Sydney, the plane...