Our trip is winding up, our last ports of call are cities, Melbourne and Sydney.

These two cities have a rivalry not unlike Montréal and Toronto. Each one claims to be the most livable. What do I think – I liked them both for different reasons. Continue reading Modern Melbourne and Spectacular Sydney →

With its narrow laneways overtaken by cafés, restaurants and boutiques, Melbourne has a unique vibe.

What’s really fun is that the laneways are not only for tourists, they’re full of locals heading to and from work, stopping at their usual place for a flat white coffee or sitting with friends. Continue reading Making friends in Melbourne →

The feeling I got when we arrived at the 12 Apostles was similar to how I felt when we arrived at the Grand Canyon. First, like at the Grand Canyon, the landscape around is mostly flat and you’ve got to walk to the edge of a cliff to take in the view. Secondly, there’s the parking lot filled with cars, camper vans and tour buses of all sizes arriving and leaving. Finally, there’s the people, streaming towards the viewing platforms or returning from them. Continue reading Pilgrimage to the 12 Apostles →

Coastal northern Queensland is a tropical rainforest. Essentially there are two seasons: hot and still hot but also wet. Our visit was during the second. When I first figured this out before we left Ottawa, I was bummed. How can we sit on a beach and swim in the Coral Sea if it’s raining all the time? Continue reading Visiting a rainforest in the wet season – what were we thinking? →

When the captain of the dive boat puts on a mask and jumps into the water with us tourists, you know what you’re seeing is special. Continue reading The Great Barrier Reef →

Driving the coastal Captain Cook Highway north of Cairns in Queensland state is an exercise requiring full-on attention. Here, the steep mountains fall right into the Coral Sea forcing the road to bend and twist in order to cling to the coast. Every few kilometers, a white sand beach squeezes itself in, creating spectacular views.  Continue reading The Daintree rainforest – link to prehistory →

The beauty of traveling with a camper van is that you can stop anywhere you want and your home is right there. You can even park on a street and spend the night, which is what we did for two nights after picking up our rental van. But on night three, we needed power to recharge the batteries and our various devices. Continue reading Discoveries at the end of the road →

One of the things I was really looking forward to in Tasmania was a night-time visit to a little penguins habitat. They are referred to as fairy penguins in Australia because of their size, they are the smallest of the penguins at only 33cm high. Continue reading No little penguins, but Wineglass Bay →

Should we really be walking out to a promontory 300 metres above the Tasman Sea in gale-force wind and driving rain? That’s the question we briefly asked ourselves at a junction in the trail on the last day of our Three Capes Track adventure. Continue reading Cape Hauy →

We’re in Tasmania, the island state of Australia. We’ve come here to hike the Three Capes Track, a 46 km trail on the southern Tasman Peninsula. It starts from a beach and traverses rainforests, eucalypt woodland, coastal heathland, and climbs rocky cliff tops with dizzying vertical drops to the sea. Only 48 permits per day are issued for the Track; we reserved our spot last November. Continue reading Tasmanian Trekking →