Australia

We haven’t rented a car for this portion of the trip, so we took the bus to the Gallery of Modern Art. I guess we hadn’t communicated that to Millie because while we were waiting at the bus stop she said “uh, why did we stop walking and we’re just standing here?” It was a…

We are staying in a neighborhood of Brisbane called New Farm. I’m not sure why it’s called that because the buildings are neither new nor farm like, but regardless it is a great neighborhood. After some breakfast and playing we walked down to New Farm Park and headed straight to the playground. It was packed…

The usual morning of packing up an Airbnb. Millie did some drawing and painting of Australian animals. We had a bunch of food leftover in the fridge so I made us sandwiches and wraps for the travel day. We checked out at 11AM and rushed over to Kmart. Kmarts here seem to be the go-to…

Quite a boring day today, but we were all happy not to be in a car. Halfway through our lazy morning I went out solo to try to get a walk-in appointment with an optometrist. I went to two offices and called three more. All were fully booked for the day. I miss Asian healthcare.…

We had a surprisingly good breakfast in the pub this morning. It’s been over a week of Nick’s breakfast of choice (high fiber cereal) so I was happy to have my favorite (very filling egg sandwich). We filled up the tank and were on the road by 10. We drove straight through for 5 hours…

Millie was up somewhat early and spent the morning making us “cards” with inspired messages. She is at the ultimate age for potty humor, as am I. I couldn’t stop laughing at the concept and illustration of Nick eating cereal with his butt. We checked out at 10am, and began our drive of the day.…

Our first stop of the day was Alice Springs Desert Park, which is a sort of educational botanical garden. As we were buying tickets, the guy at the front desk told us that if we hurried to the amphitheater, we’d make it for the bird show. So we did just that, and were let in…

Somewhat boring day today. We packed up and checked out of our hotel in Uluru, Millie FaceTimed with my mom for a while and drew a picture of us on our hike yesterday, complete with our fly masks and the flies. So accurate. The drive to Alice Springs was 4.5 hours and we did it…

We skipped hotel breakfast because it was a very steep $50 each. After our hotel room PB&Js we made the short ~20 minute drive to Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock). Driving up to it was impressive. I’m so glad we decided to drive here instead of fly, because after 12 hours of driving across…

We had so much driving to do today that I had to set an alarm to make sure we got on the road a reasonable hour so we could arrive before nightfall. As I set my alarm for 7:30 I thought about how that was considered sleeping in for the last ~5 years of our…