Sunday, June 06th, 2010 /
admin
Southern Australia is an vast area of great contrasts with the land ranges from desert to plains to fertile wine-growing areas set amid rolling hills.
Melbourne
Capital of Victoria and Australia’s second-largest city, Melbourne is often voted the most livable city in the world. For one thing, it’s sited on the Yarra River and scenic Port Philip Bay. Plus, it’s Australia’s vanguard city for sport, fashion, shopping, cuisines, music and nightlife, and is home to a host of museums, galleries and theaters, and large parks and gardens.
Transport:getting there and getting away
Melbourne’s centre for domestic and international flights is Tullamarine Airport. It’s located 14 miles northwest of the city center and accessible by skybus. Spencer Street Railway Station is served by interstate trains. The Sydney-Melbourne XPT runs between Australia’s two largest cities daily. The trip takes 10 1/2 hours. The Overland connects with Adelaide daily. The trip time is 12 hours.
Bus services connect Melbourne with other major cities and regional areas of Victoria. Melbourne’s public transport system, known as Metlink offers a wide range of options for getting around the city. These include trams, trains, and buses. Melbourne has the world’s oldest tram network which now runs over 200 miles of track. Trams are the most popular with tourists and locals alike for travel around the city and inner suburbs. Taxis are plentiful and Melbourne has an excellent network of bike paths.
more…
Friday, October 30th, 2009 /
admin
Does this sound familiar? You’re speaking with someone who has just arrived back from a trip overseas. They share all of these great stories with you of adventures and experiences that they had on their vacation. You then start wishing that those sorts of things could happen to you, but you believe that they probably won’t.
The touristy things that other sites or travel guides tell you to go and do aren’t necessarily the most exciting and everyone else has done them to death anyway. Don’t get me wrong! Those things can be fantastic, especially to give you insight into the culture of the place that you’re visiting, but they’re rarely the experiences that you would get from a more ‘local’ perspective or give you a feel of what it would be like to actually live there. You may think that you can’t get that kind of travel experience unless you are very lucky and happen to be in the right place at the right time.
more…
Sunday, September 06th, 2009 /
admin
After planning a weekend away to get some sunshine at the beach along the east coast of Australia, the weather decided to turn miserable. We had to find somewhere else to go and a friend suggested we take a trip to The Entrance. We were only 15 minutes away by car as we were staying at Avoca Beach.
When we arrived we found a nice stretch along the water filled with restaurants and bars, where we had a few drinks and some lunch. It was a lovely way to kill some time as we waited for the daily pelican feed, which occurs at 3.30pm. One thing we didn’t realize was that the Entrance is called the Pelican Capital of Australia.
As the time approached, we found a good spot to watch and suddenly lots of pelicans began to gather to await for the fish frenzy! This has been going on now for over 20 years and the pelicans all know when and where to come for their lunch. The crowd was ecstatic as we all watched the feeders throwing fish at them. As soon as one lot of fish disappeared down their gullets, all eyes would be back onto the feeders.
more…
Thursday, August 20th, 2009 /
admin
During my childhood, which was quite a while ago now, my father would take us to Uncle Tom’s Cabins, which were on Walaga Lake about ten minutes out of Bermagui. For you non-aussies out there, this is about four and a half hours drive south of Sydney. I recently decided to go back there since I have such fond memories of the place. I really wanted to see if it was a terrific as I remembered. Much to my delight, I actually found it better.
Before you go searching for Uncle Tom’s Cabins, they’ve now changed the name to Regatta Point Holiday Park, and I’m guessing that old Uncle Tom has sold it to a big corporation and is now living the high life somewhere else. The park is simple a caravan park and camp site with cabins along side a large lake. It’s also only a short drive to the nearest local beach, called Camel Rock Beach, and about twenty minutes away from the amazing country towns of Tilba Tilba and Central Tilba.
What is fantastic about it is that during the off-peak season, you have huge camp sites all to your self for very reasonable rates. Although it may sound like a setting for a horror flick, the facilities are in excellent order and the staff are extremely friendly.
more…
