Australia

In the last post, you saw the most important parts of Australia (20 photos of koalas), but here are a few other highlights, such as the Sydney Opera House. We took a tour inside which, fittingly for an opera house, was long and boring.

On the outskirts of Sydney we went to visit some kangaroos, or possibly wallabies, or maybe wallaroos. We obviously don’t know the difference, but we are suspicious that the Australians don’t either.

We definitely do know the difference between the ‘roos and the wombats. It’s an easy trick: is the animal fat? Like, really fat?

So fat that he can’t even jump?

Like, so fat that when he hides, he can only fit his snout into the hole? Then, you’re looking at a wombat. An adorable, cube-pooping wombat.

Moving away from marsupials, we traveled to Cairns on the warm Northern coast, to find this view from our balcony.

You may not know Cairns, but you do know what lies off its coast: the Great Barrier Reef. We went out for a long day of snorkeling and sun and thankfully no sharks.

The sea floor is bursting with life, filled with colorful coral and home to huge schools of iridescent fish.

One of the rarities of the Great Barrier Reef are the giant clams. This one was about 3 feet in diameter.

Whenever the boat stopped, fish would gather underneath to try to get some snacks. And where snacks are being served, you can usually find Phil.

We didn’t see this sign until after we were done snorkeling.

There is a rainforest right outside of Cairns so we took a very reliable looking train up into the mountains to explore it.

With views like this, the appeal of the train is more about the journey than the destination.

But the destination had koalas, so Jessie wanted to be done with the journey. Koalas eat eucalyptus but we are suspicious that they may have fed this guy some different grass.

The rainforest also had cute little marsupials called gliders who glide from treetop to treetop using extra skin between their limbs,

as well as a cute tourist attraction called SkyRail which glided from treetop to treetop using cables and pulleys.

Back on the beach, Jessie fell for the classic “will you hold my fish up for a moment?” trick.

While Phil went with a classic “make your own smoothie” trick.

Our last stop in Australia was Melbourne, and for a change, we saw some koalas!

For an actual change, we got close enough to wallabies to see the joeys in their pouches.

Turns out that Tasmanian Devils are well-named, with their beady little eyes, aggressive temperament, and strong jaws, but we didn’t see them do any cyclones.

We went to Phillip Island to see the famous flying penguin parade.

Just joking, those are seagulls, don’t you know the difference? As they say in Australia: That’s not a penguin, THIS is a penguin:

The penguin parade takes place at night, as penguins come in from a long day at sea and have to wait for the cover of darkness to make the dangerous trek across the open beach to their nests. Being the smallest penguins in the world, they gather in groups to give themselves safety in numbers. It’s about an hour long process of penguins huddling up, strategizing the crossing, falling down repeatedly, and waddling adorably. Because the penguins are sensitive to light (and noise), cameras are not allowed, but our photos would have looked like this:

Next up was the Great Ocean Road, home to some of the greatest surfing beaches in the world.

As well as some of the sassiest birds in the world, judging by their behavior.

We even found a kookaburra, but instead of an old gum tree, he was chilling in some dude’s truck bed.

These famous limestone formations are called the Twelve Apostles, despite the fact that there are nine of them and they have nothing to do with the New Testament. Marketers decided that anything would be better than the original name, “Sow and Piglets”.

The coast had lots of beautiful scenery and hidden coves, like this one that had some famous story about a shipwreck. You try sitting in a van for 10 hours and listening to stories and then tell us what you remember.