• Sydney: 2 days
• Cairnes: 5 days (3D2N Liveaboard)
• Melbourn: 4 days (Oceans Road, penguins)
• Sydney: 2 days

We got lucky and got cheap tickets to Australia this summer, so that was our summer vacation. We flew from Toronto Sydney with Qantas airline. There was suppose to be a short lay-over at LAX, but it got delayed by 2 hours. The first leg of the flight on on WestJet and that felt long; there was no food, no entertainment other than the ones I had on my phone. The second leg of the flight was much better as it was wth Qantas. My SO passed out for the entire flight, but I was used to flying and was hungry. The food was actually good so I kept going back to eat their food (they had some snack that was like some deep fried empanada that I went for seconds...and ate my SO's while she slept :) )

When we landed in Sydney we went through quarantine. They brought out a little doggo that came to sniff our stuff. There were two controls in front of us to ensure the dog was doing their job; they would sit down if they found anything. Australia has some strict rules to avoid biological damage to their ecosystem; makes sense since they are such an enclosed ecosystem that anything foreign could cause some severe changes to the continent. We took the local train from Sydney airport to the central station, then walked to the docks then to our rental apartment. The area was full of construction and wasn't as nice of a walk as we thought it would be. It got better once we got to the port area. From first impression, Sydney was weird as there were purple trees everywhere...and people drove on the left.

Sydney has a pretty nice transportation system where they have an Opal system that covers all modes of transport in the city (Trains, buses, and ferries). We got the 50 AUD opal car from the airport; it was exactly enough for a round trip to Sydney downtown from the airport and a day pass on the local system. The local transport was pretty expensive and it was zone based, but what's nice about it is that once you hit a certain number of trips in the day it converts to a day pass where any subsequent trip is free. We took full advantage of that and floated all around the dock area on the ferries taking pictures.

Sydney was also pretty expensive as we found out pretty quickly on the first day. We had dinner at Harajuku Gyoza (it had a lot of high reviews. A lot of restaurants in Sydney had high reviews), but we were a bit disappointed. We got gyozas that weren't too entirely special, but spent 35$ for the 12 of them. We tried another highly rated place afterwards and found out it wasn't too special either. After that, I voted for eating pies (their version of street hot dogs) for the rest of the trip -.- The pies were actually good and I could be eating them all day.

We took a tour at the Sydney fish market for a behind the scene tour. Our guide was really good and made the tour quite entertaining. He showed us about the reverse dutch trade auction, and taught us how to pick crab or lobsters; the harder the shell the better the crustacean. Press down on the 3rd vertebrae and you should not be able to push down on it. He also had stories about each of the fish e.g. the Black Jew Fish; originally the fish's collar bone was used in the past for jewelry as you can polish the bone to make it look like a jewel, hence it was called a Jewel fish. And there's a northern one and southern one with one being darker in colour than the other, so it was then called the Black Jewel Fish, then it later got shorted to the Black Jew Fish for brevity. He was also passionate about soft shell crabs and how they are horrible and should not be eaten demonstrating how people hunt them. He also said that if you ever need to knock out an underwater creature, for example eels because they are known to be escape artists, submerge them in clove oil + vodka. He gave us recommendations for fresh fish in the market and in the city; we opted to bring back fresh fish from the market for dinner.

We flew to Cains for the main portion of the trip where we'd be diving in the Great Barrier Reefs. I did not know they were one hour behind so was a bit confused at what happened when we landed. It was incredibly hot the minute we stepped out of the plane. We checked into our hotel, and stayed there until the evening sun came out. We walked along the esplanade and found an indoors market place that sold tourists souvenirs and memorabilia. It was also lined with some food stalls, which were still expensive but better than Sydney. We also found free BBQs that you can use along the esplanade and a supermarket nearby. Next time we opted to just do a BBQ outdoors if we come back. The day was a bit stressed as Zoe forgot her diving referral book in Sydney. We called the hotel we stayed at to try and have them mail it to us and tried to call to dive shop to email us the referral documents, but with the timezone difference we wouldn't know if we got it until the day we board the liveaboard.

Luckily we got it all sorted, and we could board the liveaboard and Zoe could do her open water diving tests. The boat ride was pretty choppy and Zoe got really sea sick. It was her first time experiencing it and it was horrible for her. They had ginger tablets, but they did not seem to help. I felt really bad for her since this was her first real diving experience and she was combating sea sickness for the 3 days. The liveaboard was a fun experience, but I felt the tour was ran too much of a get-in-get out experience. There wasn't much apart form eat, dive sleep. I thought they would do more education about the great barrier reef and how it's dieing like the Manta Diving in Hawaii, or more about the different areas we'll be diving, but they were fussy about everything; rushing people to get equipped and taking off the gear, they even got fussy that one of the crew told me of where to get the hot chocolate and moved it the next day...like seriously. At any rate, my dive log can be found here.

My Zoe successfully got her Open water certificate (yay!) and we managed to do 3 more dives together. We worked on a system for me to help her out with her buoyancy; I was her tug boat =] Hopefully she'll learn to not need me as a tug boat (more for safety than anything), even though it's fun, but the last 3 dives wasn't focused on learning; I wanted her to see the reefs and get that experience of seeing the underwater world. Unfortunately we couldn't find a sea turtle, but we did see a few sharks, rays, and giant clams.

Dive Log Book:

Australia Great Barrier Reefs Dives

On the dives, I saw;

• Moral eel and a GT fish fighting
• Lots of reef sharks floating around
• Lots of sea turtles whom got really close to me
• Some flat worms and nudibranch
• Really big clams, which I thought was fantasy. Like these are big enough that I could sit in them
• Lots of fishes; I tormented some poor clown fishes
• Lots of dead coral; it was really sad to see how much coral was bleached and turned into graveyards
• Dove through a swim-through, which I now understand why it's a specialty to do cave diving. There's a lot of focus on buoyancy; I kept banging myself against the walls since my buoyancy sucks
• Moral eel with fish cleaning mouth
• Lots of lion fishes (5 of them) with lots of little transparent fishes
• Did a night dive and pointed a light on a red fish hiding below coral. A GT fish attacked it

We returned to Cains and went straight to the car rental to pick up our car. I drove on the wrong side of the road a few times after doing a turn, it was really confusing at the beginning. We stayed that night at Lilly Bank B&B. The place is okay overall, but there isn't much of a breakfast as I was hoping. They only provided instant oats, coffee, and cup fruit. We met some rich traveling couple from Kitchener, ON. Canada who seemed quite bitter about the place; we took it in strides.

We drove up to Kuranda where we spent the day sight-seeing. We went to the Kuranda gardens where we got to hold a koala, and got to see them hanging out in trees. We got there early, so we actually got to seem them foraging for food, as opposed to sleeping. There were grey kangaroos that we got to feed; its amusing to see them hop around. We also got to see a wombat pace back and forth; it's so chunky and adorable. We concluded that most of the terrestrial animals that we saw that day must be some variant of a rodent. We also went into the nearby bird kingdom where we got to feed birds. They would also land on you and eat off your hand or whenever you decided to leave the food. I got to hold a huge macaw that I thought was cool, but the stupid macaw ate 3 buttons off my shirt without me realizing it and I had to wack it a few times and eventually threw it off my arm to get rid of it. There was also a smaller yellow one that was tearing up my camera bag. The market place was nice, with a lot of different crafts. My SO got a pair of white and black pearl studs. We also went for a short hike afterwards to explore the area, and went to Baron's gorge waterfall. We saw people hanging out on the falls itself by walking along the train tracks. I opted to not do it as I'd prefer not to walk on an active railway track.

Cairns overall felt like a mix of Hawaii and Thailand. The wooden boardwalk is nice with a lagoon, palm trees, and patios, very hawaii-esque. The market felt more like Thailand with a mix of food stalls, souvenir shops and overall touristy stuff, except everything costed so much in comparison. I think on average food at restaurants is 2x North American prices, with smaller portions

The last leg of our trip went down to Melbourne where we opted to dive along Ocean's road. We stayed midway at Melba Gully where we drive through some very thick fog; you could barely see 3 meters in front of you. With the unfamiliarity of the road and region, and the thick fog, it was a pretty stressful drive. We got to our B&B, which was in the middle of nowhere and seemed all very horror film-like. The host however was very nice and had two very big dogs that were gentle giants. The host told us about the glow worms and that they were actually just down the road from where we were staying and that it was worth seeing. We decided to go down when it was dark, and it was really neat to see. The area was so dark except the glow worms and they gave off a light blue glow. I tried to touch it but couldn't really find the source; it was a bit trippy. I also freaked out a few times because I didn't know people were beside me as I was taking pictures.

The B&B was nice and the host was helpful. She gave us a tip on where to go along Ocean road and told us to drive past the 12 Apostle and go straight to Loch Ard Gorge; it was less touristy and more intimate. She was right and Loch Ard Gorge was a quiet area that acted as a small inlet where the ocean moved in. Almost no one was there yet and we could roam around freely. We went to the 12 Apostles afterwards and although the view was impressive, it was busy as tourist area gets. The view is definitely impressive and worth seeing, but I could do without crowds. We drove back to Melbourne and I was a bit disappointed in that the road wasn't as scenic as I'd hope it would be. We got to Melbourne and stayed there for the night.

We toured the city in the morning before heading to Philip Island. The city is nicer than Sydney in my opinion, with more culture and more character in general. But I had to pay 90$ for 3-hrs of parking, which annoyed me; I didn't read the fine enough prints for early-bird parking, which was suppose to be ~20$. We drove out to Philip Island for the Penguin Parade in the afternoon. We got there early to walk along the boardwalk. It's a really nice coastline and we found out that the boardwalk was actually on top of the little penguin's dens. It kind of reminded me of Iceland where they had a boardwalk just beside the Puffin dens. We got to see some penguins still hanging out in their den. I saw one with its butt sticking out so I poked it with a stick and got to see it waddle off. We also got to see one face to face.

When evening came around, we went to the Penguin Parade. We got the Parade Plus ticket so we could get a more secluded view of the penguins. It was a good choice as the normal tickets were pretty far from the beach and it is crowded. With the Parade Plus ticket you would be right beside the penguins as they head towards their dens. We were also lucky that that evening there was some rain that day, so there was a small pool of water right in front of us. So as the penguin came back, they would line up right before the pool, and dive in then waddle out; there were so many of them!

We drove back to Melbourne and took a flight back to Sydney to complete the tour. The last day we stopped by the National park that was along the southern coast. At first we got a bit lost, but we eventually found a trail that brought us to the coastline and spent the sunset there. It was a good way to end the trip.