Australia: Down Under with Fish, Family, and Flat Whites

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Rachel and Gil’s Travels

6 min readNov 29, 2019

Rachel and I have always dreamed of visiting Australia. Both of us have family connections to Australia and were excited to explore the land down under (especially after nearly 2 months in South East Asia.) We spent time adventuring in North Queensland, relaxing in Sydney, and taking in the Melbourne culture.

North Queensland

Our first stop in Aussie was in tropical North Queensland. We stayed in the beach town of Palm Cove and used it as a jumping point to explore the region. Since everything is a drive away, we decided to rent a car to get around and practice driving on the other side before our campervan in New Zealand (and I successfully managed the feat!)

Scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef: This was an incredible experience to check off of our bucket lists. After a couple shaky scuba experiences, Rachel was a bit hesitant to continue diving, but after our first successful dive on the reef we were both hooked. We ended up doing all three available dives of the day on the Agincourt Reef (and wish we had more time to dive.) We saw colorful reef and all of our friends from Finding Nemo (Nemo, Dory, Squirt, Gil and so many many more…)

Eating brekkies of avo toast: We found an a strip of adorable Aussie cafes and began enjoying a daily avo toast— a very welcome change from the rice and chicken we have been eating almost 3x a day in SE Asia.

Cuddling koalas and spotting crocodiles: Went to Hartley’s Crocodile Adventure — a zoo with koalas, kangaroos, tamarins and all of the animals you look for down under. We also went on their river cruise which felt exactly like a Disney ride, but the guide was feeding real raw chickens to real live crocs (all hands and feet willingly stayed inside the vehicle.)

Jet skiing in the ocean: We both had never jet skied and after meeting a friendly Aussie on the beach we decided to give it a go! We took a tour up and down the coast and circled a few barrier islands — Rachel screamed in terror for 27 of the 30 minutes.

Exploring the Daintree Rainforest: We drove our car up to the tropical rainforest where we went for walks at different elevations to see the changing vegetation, spotted wild Cassowaries which were terrifying (!!!), and tasted ice creams made from the rainforest fruits.

Sydney

Sydney was a period of recharging and relaxing with family. Rachel has countless relatives in Sydney who took great care of us and did not let us go an hour without a flat white and slice of chocolate/cinnamon/banana cake. A big thank you to the Spyrides, Goodman, Hirschowitz, Cohen, and Chilchik families — we are so grateful for your warm welcome and hospitality, and hope to be back soon! We miss you (and your dogs) already.

We spent most of our time in the Bondi area where our family lives— we did as the locals do by walking/running from Bondi to Bronte 3x during our week there, had flat whites 4x a day, tasted as many trendy restaurants and gelaterias as possible, enjoyed the 100s of Sydney bays by boat (thanks Avi & Ariella for the ride!) and relaxed to take in the chill culture.

Most of our time in Sydney was spent eating with family (friends: let us know if you need any restaurant recommendations,) but we also made sure to check out the Opera House, botanical gardens, art museum, rocks area, shopping arcades, and take a walking tour.

Melbourne

Melbourne had an awesome energy that reminded us most of our home in NY. The city center (referred to by Aussies as the CBD — Central Business District) is extremely walkable, buzzing with coffee shops and welcoming nightlife, highly multicultural and friendly.

We happened to be in Melbourne for their most important week of the year — The Melbourne Cup. We dressed up (aka went shopping first as we didn’t travel with the fascinator and attire you’ll see below…) After learning how the betting systems worked (and messing up our first round,) we bet a few AUDs on each of the races to keep it exciting. We won a few, lost a few more, and had an awesome time! A few days later we checked out the Crown Casino (which was a surprisingly impressive complex) with our gambling buzz and continued our losing streak with craps.

Melbourne is really famous for (and proud of) their coffee and cuisine. We had our morning (and mid-morning, and afternoon…) coffees at different places each day to try to taste them all. We also had incredible Japanese, Chinese, Greek and Italian (again, let us know if you need any recommendations at all.)

After our recharge in Sydney we were excited to be tourists again in Melbourne. We took a free walking tour and learned about Melbourne’s rich gold rush history, visited the Queen Victoria Market, and took a day trip to see the natural beauty along the Great Ocean Road.

My father’s family lived in Melbourne until he was 8 years old so we also made sure to check out the university that my grandfather had attended and the department store that my grandmother used to frequent. Wish they were all there with us!