The Positive side of OZ
All is not bad in the land down under, as I have mentioned Perth & Adelaide are pretty nice cities, Alice Springs still remains sensible despite all the tourists mainly because it is the agricultural hub for a vast area of the Outback so there is still enough local industry to keep a balance. Kununurra is pretty cool & laid back & Brisbane has a Hop-on-off bus so it can’t be all bad, any city with Hop-on-off bus service is worth investigating.
A hot air balloon ride over the Outback is an absolutely amazing experience, should be on everyone’s “Bucket List”, kind of makes the whole trip down under worth while.
OZ is also a great place for the younger backpackers to replenish their finances so they can keep traveling, have met some that have been on the road 3 or more years & make their travel money in the farm fields of Australia picking crops.
Found out today that even though the red seats on Saturday’s Indian Pacific from Sydney to Adelaide show, unavailable online, by going to the station they magically become available so have one reserved along with one Monday on the Overland to Melbourne so I will be able to complete my Australian tour as planned (mostly).
Touring Brisbane tomorrow & the Hop-on-off bus pass even includes using the river cats, which should be interesting. Then going to stretch my luck again & ride the “Hound Dog” back north a bit to catch a look at the Great Barrier Reef for a couple days before heading to Sydney & the train rides.
Checked the weather in Tasmania & it’s pretty cool so think I will just take the ferry over one night & back the next, cheaper than a room anyway, to wrap up my OZ experience. Think if I had to do it over again I would have gone up the west coast from Perth to Broome & then on to Darwin. Would have been more interesting than the train ride across the Nullarbor Plain.
By the time I leave I will have traveled 136 hrs on the Grey Hound Dog, 101 hrs by train, the best part of an hr in the basket of a balloon + various side trips so even though I found some things to rant about & it was EXPENSIVE it was an experience!
Oh yeah the Brisbane City Backpackers is a pretty neat place to stay!
Trivia for today is that Burger King is called Hungry Jacks here.
Tags: Travel
busman7
Haven’t written in a long time but you are having a great adventure, with candid comments on all those things that most people don’t know how to spell out or are too shy to mention. Keep it up, it makes for entertaining reading as we look forward to one of those Ontario summers of traffic jams, heat and no one going to BJ games. You will love this, G8 is going to cost the tax payers $1 billion for 3 days of meetings and going to Huntsville?! It is nice, but not that outstanding.
Certainly interested in your thoughts about Asia and it sounds like a place to visit. Friendly people and so much to see.
SE Asia is absolutely amazing, it just takes a bit to get tuned into it & stop judging it by western standards. You might remember when I first arrived I considered cutting my time there short but a visit to Myanmar (Burma) then a couple months living in Bangkok taking the TEFL course changed that.
Experiences like when doing our practice teaching we had a class of Burmese nuns in training who, upon learning that myself & another trainee, could speak a bit of Spanish were really pleased as they were fluent in Spanish & we could really communicate using a mix of their limited English & our limited Spanish. It’s the little things like that which are unforgettable & make travel so enjoyable.