One of the most anticipated stops on our world tour was the Great Barrier Reef. Both of our sons, Andrew and Mark, were here diving the reef in 2019. How did they get here before we did? Sadly, we are not as young as we used to be, and well, Cindy realized late in life …

Actually, it’s pronounced Bris-ben, which doesn’t really rhyme, but for the first time in two months, we dealt with rain that put a damper on some of our plans. Brisbane is tropical and lush and gets lots of rain to keep it that way. There were more dry hours than rainy ones, but those hours …

We returned to Sydney for a nine-day stay. In addition to seeing some of the sights we missed during our New Year’s visit, we figured it would be a good time to chill for awhile. The next 6 weeks are going to be very hectic and hot as we’ll be heading to the tropics. Other …

Melbourne is Australia’s second largest city and reminded us a lot of Chicago. The city is bustling with high rises buildings, large sport venues, major museums and cultural institutions, prominent theaters and numerous universities. The location is along Port Phillip Bay and even has a repurposed dockland with a large Ferris wheel. As an international …

For our stay in Melbourne, we rented a one-bedroom apartment on the 61st floor in a high rise building through Airbnb with an expansive view. We had clear days and other days with thick haze from the Australian bush fires. At street level, it wasn’t as obvious, but we did notice a bit of a …

One of the highlights of our trip so far was the opportunity to see some Aussies that we met during a tour of central Europe in 2010. We departed Christchurch and headed to Adelaide in South Australia. Adelaide is Australia’s 5th largest city (who knew?) with a population of 1.35 million. Our friends, Dave and …

As you probably know, New Zealand and Australia have wildlife not seen elsewhere in the world. During our stay in Adelaide, our friends took us to the Cleland Wildlife Park, which is home to species indigenous to Australia. Of course, the first one that comes to mind is the kangaroo. Our friends, Dave and Liz, …

So many adjectives to describe this special country and its people. Everything is clean and orderly and runs on time. So clean in fact that we saw many people out and about walking down the sidewalks barefoot! And truly we have never felt as safe anywhere as we did in New Zealand. We were mesmerized …

As previously mentioned, we rented a car to travers the North Island. Our trip from Rotorua to Christchurch to Queensland was a series of one night stays and involved planes, trains, automobiles and a ferry. We watched our beloved Packers lose from a comfy guesthouse in Taupo, which is a gorgeous area similar to Lake …

We decided that to properly tour the North Island, we need to rent a car. Gulp. It was Steve’s first experience driving on the left side of the road. We’ll spare you our Go-Pro video of the first 10 minutes since it’s just too embarrassing. After an initial problem finding our way out of the …