Australia Journal 2025

We're back home and reflecting on our 19th visit to Australia, an almost-annual tradition for us that started in 2007.

Most of our trips have been made largely for the purpose of attending the annual FlyerTalk Oz Fest, a "Do" that's one of the longest-running and most successful of the get-togethers organized in various parts of the world by and for members of FlyerTalk. 

We've flown in excess of 250,000 miles to and from Oz over the years, roughly 10% of our total flight miles. We've visited most if not all of the major cities, and have been fortunate enough to see more of Australia than many Australians have. 

Australia is a vast country that's much more varied geographically than one might imagine. We've experienced Sydney, Melbourne, Broome, Darwin, Tasmania, Hamilton Island, the Red Centre and Uluru (Ayers Rock), an overnight stay on a tourist pontoon on the Great Barrier Reef, a tour of the Outback, a helicopter ride over the Great Ocean Road and much more, including wine regions ranging from Hunter Valley to Barossa to McLaren Vale to the Mornington Peninsula.

Australia is not a cheap country to visit. At the moment the exchange rate is favorable to U.S. (and even to Canadian) visitors, which helps us tourists considerably. If we calculate two thirds of the price of something in Australian dollars, we end up with the approximate equivalent in U.S. dollars. 

Australians themselves are friendly and hospitable. They are confident of their identity and comfortable with their place in the world. Our visits to Oz Fest are reunions with friends, some of whom we've known for nearly 20 years. We've also had more than a dozen members and their families visit us over the  years. 

What did we do in Australia this year? Quite a bit for a short visit. It started with friends helping us out as we carried on a day late after our diverted and cancelled LAX-SYD flight, as mentioned in our previous post.

Qantas flew us from Los Angeles to Brisbane to Sydney, as per their agreement with American, but would not change our destination to Melbourne. This would cause us to miss our plane, train and bus connections to Sale, the small town about a four-hour drive from Melbourne where we were planning to visit old friends Bill and Sue. 

Bill was a Royal Australian Air Force pilot and flight instructor, and subsequently the Chief Pilot for Esso Australia, flying helicopters to offshore oil rigs. Does he have stories!

Damon, another friend and an organizer of this particular Oz Fest, paid us back too generously for some U.S. flight arrangements we'd made for him by arranging tickets for us on a Qantas Brisbane to Melbourne non-stop flight.

Damon, a high-powered business consultant in real life who travels to many parts of the world, also made time to pick us up at the Melbourne Airport and drive us to Sale, where we all went out for dinner with Bill and Sue. Our understanding hosts made us comfortable and realized that what we needed most was sleep. Two days later after a low-key visit, just what we needed, they drove us to the nearest train station, saving us a bus ride, and we quite enjoyed riding the small commuter train back to Melbourne. 

Sue waved goodbye from the platform.

From the Southern Cross train station, we first tried to travel to our hotel by tram (streetcars are still popular and well used here), before giving up and catching and booking an Uber. We found Ubers plentiful and reasonably priced in Melbourne.

The Next Hotel, part of the Curio Collection by Hilton, had upgraded us in advance to an attractive suite. 

We made good use of the Executive Lounge for evening drinks and appetizers, and for morning Cappuccinos. The location was excellent, nearby Melbourne's cute little Chinatown, and a plethora of tempting Asian restaurants. 

During our stay, we mainly wandered around the downtown core, and met another FlyerTalk friend, Iain and his wife, for an enjoyable dumpling lunch in one of the restaurants only a block or so from our hotel. 

The menu included our favorites, Xaio Long Bao, or Soup Dumplings. 

The food was so tasty that we returned the next day for an encore. Asian food tends to be reasonably priced in Australia and of good quality. 

Yum Cha (literally "drink tea") lunches in Australia are like the Dim Sum (literally "touch the heart" to describe the small food items accompanying tea) lunches we find at home, a variety of dumplings and other food items (chicken feet, anyone?) offered as mid-day meals. 

We also took Damon to lunch at Flower Drum, one of the most venerable Cantonese restaurants in Melbourne, featuring elegant service provided by well-dressed waiters.

Damon reciprocated by taking us to dinner at France-Soir, a boisterous bistro or brasserie more French than France with excellent food and a dictionary-sized wine list perused here by our host.

During our Melbourne stay, we also rode the free tourist tram, checked out the Queen Victoria Market, and spent a couple of pleasant hours strolling around the Melbourne Botanical Gardens. The weather was generally good throughout our trip. 

We flew to Adelaide on Virgin Australia, staying at the Adelaide Hilton for the second and last time before it undergoes a sale and a brand change. The Adelaide Central Market was a short walk from the Hilton and seemed livelier than Melbourne’s.

Truth in advertising…

We enjoyed all of the Oz Fest activities, including a Saturday bus trip to a wildlife park and a couple of wineries, along with three tasty group dinners that included a round of Happy Birthday to Kathy and a candle on her dessert Saturday night.

We didn’t know that feral camels, introduced as beasts of burden in the 19th century, still roam Australia, creating problems necessitating a major culling program in 2009, slaughtering 160,000 while sparing 300,000, including these lucky ones.

An observant meerkat caught our eye.

The best place to spot a koala is a zoo.

A charming young Italian led us through a D’Anenberg wine tasting at their newish Cube building.

“Happy Birthday to you…”

We returned to Sydney Monday in the first and only bad weather we saw during our entire stay. There was some risk of flight delays but the weather eased off and our flight was close to on time.

We spent the last night at the Rydges Sydney Airport property located directly across from the International Terminal. The hotel's restaurant and bar both appeared mediocre and over-priced (maybe we were just spoiled by all of the good food we'd been enjoying) but a little joint named Mach 2, located landside in the International Terminal, was rated as the Number One area restaurant by Trip Advisor, and we walked over there for an enjoyable and reasonably priced Italian dinner.

Kathy was up much of the night, trying to conquer time zones and eventually changing our next day’s 12-hour layover at SEA to a more manageable 3 hours, thanks to an online chat with an Alaska agent.

We checked in for our American (AA) flight early enough to enjoy Eggs Benedict, along with the view and a glass of Champagne, in the Qantas First Lounge before our 9:30 AM departure.

Our flights home - SYD-LAX-SEA-BLI - were largely uneventful. Alaska provided complimentary upgrades to First on our flight from LAX to SEA, a good time to score them after our 13-hour transoceanic flight. 

Eventually we found ourselves flying past islands during the short hop from Seattle to Bellingham on a gorgeous Northwest day.

Our next-door neighbors picked us up at BLI and delivered us to our doorstep on a sunny afternoon. Thanks Bob and Carmen, and thanks Laurie, our other neighbor who drove us to the airport way back on May 13.

Three days later we're still adjusting our sleep patterns, sleeping and napping whenever we feel like it. 

It's always good to be back home in our own bed, with plans for the 2026 Oz Fest in Darwin already percolating.