Australia

[Written by Elizabeth Leonardis for our old blog, So Civilized]

Similar to the previous countries we’ve visited, we began our visit to Australia staying with a couchsurfer. Matt and his lovely dogs, were our fantastic couchsurfing hosts for our first few days in Sydney. We used this time to organize a campervan and explore the city of Sydney.

We both appreciated being back in a city for a few days and found Sydney to be an easy and enjoyable place to explore. We did the obligatory trip downtown to view the infamous opera house and took a ferry ride to Manly to walk the scenic beach path.

Once we departed Sydney in our Australian campervan, we headed for Featherdale Wildlife Park so I could see some Australian animals. Most of you know I am a big animal lover, so Alex had to tear me away from all the cute fuzzy animals. I could have stayed all day.

Learning our lesson from New Zealand, where we tried to cover too much ground, we chose to stay close to Sydney and keep driving to a minimum. We headed for the Blue Mountains, where we encountered rain and fog, completely obscuring any glimpse of the mountains. Moving on, we made our way a few hours south of Sydney, to a town called Nowra. A local rock climber in Sydney had recommended Nowra for sport climbing, where he assured us there would be plenty of easy routes. Nowra ended up being a perfect spot for us. We settled into a caravan park that provided a camp ground just across the river from the climbing spot, Thompson’s point. They loaned us a canoe we could use for accessing the rock and the weather finally cooperated with blue skies and sun for the next few days. We spent our mornings running and climbing, with afternoons in town at a local coffee shop where Alex could work while I made friends with the owner. Niryan, owner of the Tea Club Cafe was so good to us. He opened his shop when they were suppose to be closed (so we could use his wifi), had us testing his new batch of chai tea and sent us home with all sorts of vegetarian goodies leftover from dinner the previous night. If you ever find yourself in Nowra the tea club should be a definite stop.

We ended our time in Australia with a few more days in Sydney. We stayed with Greg and Katie whom we had met at Palmer Station, during a sailing trip they had taken to the Antarctic Peninsula. Greg is the CEO of WWF (World Wildlife Federation) Australia and he invited Alex to give a short presentation about our work in Antarctica. What better audience than a bunch of environmentally friendly NGO workers, with whom to discuss climate change. We had a wonderful visit with them in their beautiful home and we all talked longingly of our time in Antarctica. Katie & Greg’s unborn baby may be one of the few children that can claim a trip to Antarctica, albeit in utero.