Here at Free Range Hobo… we’re less than a month away now from leaving for Australia… and the days always seem to speed up the closer you get. This trip feels different than the last few… it feels… easier. I have no gear to order, I don’t have to worry about shots from the doctor (I have them all at this point) or malaria medication… and really most of the planning is already done save for some days we’ve left open in Sydney on purpose. There’s no liability waivers to sign (well, maybe one for diving, but I don’t think any of us have signed up for training for that…), no frozen wastelands… just a long flight to a country that also speaks English. It’s not that I am not excited, or ungrateful for the opportunity, but I can’t help but feel like this trip is rather tame. I need to shake that feeling, quickly. There is always packing to do, preparation is required no matter how tame I feel a trip may be… and we have a lot of work to do ahead of time!
Our first stop after flying into Sydney for only a brief period of time will be to get right back on a plane and head into the Queensland state of Australia to visit the Great Barrier Reef. We’ll be headed to Cairns (map), and then to Port Douglas (just North, but here you go if you want: map). We’re traveling to Port Douglas by coastal highway, and while Cairns has nearly 150,000 inhabitants… Port Douglas is just over 3,200. This will be the most-remote location of our trip, but we are hardly roughing it. Port Douglas will give us time to see the Great Barrier Reef while it is still alive, something that we may not be able to repeat and our eventual children will have to be told about in stories… and at the same time we’ll get some time in the rainforest learning about the aboriginal tribes. Port Douglas is also known for being close to the Daintree Rainforest (which I think we’ll see), and its monsoon season (which we’ll miss). It’s too bad we’re so far out of season… I’d love to catch a monsoon in a rainforest someday! I’ll have to put that on a list for after this seventh continent!
I do think I have some things to focus on now for packing. I should probably bring a swimsuit of some sort… just in case I decide to get in the water at the Great Barrier Reef, and some more-comfortable shoes than the ones I wore to New York… that’s a start! After Port Douglas, we head down to Melbourne to continue our trip… more to come on that!
