All posts tagged: Australia

Launceston & Sheffield, Tasmania

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This is the last post of our trip to Tasmania. I know I am taking my sweet time to write these travel posts. Please forgive me for that. I really love doing it slowly. It’s like I relive the trip and the good time I spent with my mother. 🙂 Bay of Fire After a good rest at Bicheno, we left the beautiful town in the early morning and headed to Bay of Fire. (If you haven’t seen my post of Bicheno, you can check it here). It was about 90 minutes drive from Bicheno. Similar to Bicheno, it has orange-covered granite boulders. It’s one of the most popular conservation reserves in Australia with miles and miles of beautiful white sand beach. Unfortunately, we only had time for a quick look. My photos don’t justify the beauty of the place at all. I wish I could have better photo taking skills. Launceston Launceston was our last stop of the trip. When we arrived in the afternoon, it was raining heavily. After checked in and unpacked our …

Love at first sight, Bicheno, Tasmania

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We had a stopover in Bicheno, and I fell in love right away with this place. We arrived in the holiday house we booked in the afternoon. Wild rabbits jumped away to avoid my car. There was a pond and a lot of green area in front of our room, duck mother was taking a stroll with her little ducks. 🙂 Bicheno is a little town on the east coast of Tasmania, about 182km from Hobart. If you leave from Hobart, there are plenty to see on the way, Wineglass Bay, Berry Farm, Marine Farm, and so on. We didn’t go to Wineglass Bay because it requires a lot of hiking. We stopped at Coles Bay to have a quick look and enjoyed fresh seafood lunch at the Freycinet Marine Farm. Bicheno is really tiny. Its township was established in 1866. According to Wikipedia, it’s only about 151.1 km2 with population of 853. However, it has amazing wildlife, little/fairy penguins, kangaroos, Tasmanian devils and more. It also has some best diving spots in Australia. After settled in, we took the …

Hobart, Tasmania, Australia – 2

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The first night at Hobart turned out to be a disaster. I booked three nights at a B&B in the city for us. I usually like to stay in B&B because most of them have style and characters. This one was no exception. However, in my opinion, it really needs some serious maintenance. We could see cracks everywhere, on the walls and ceilings. It was impossible to close the windows properly. We couldn’t get any sleep because the pedestrian crossing walk signal alert was beeping every five minutes outside of the window. We had to move out and find a new place to stay. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to get any rest at all. (Of course, the owner refused to refund us for the two nights we have paid!). Anyway, that changed our plan on the second day. Because I didn’t get much sleep, we decided that we should just go to some places close by without too much driving. We cancelled our trip to Mt Field National Park. After breakfast, we booked another place …

Fraser Island – the paradise (2)

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Hey guys, here is my second post of Fraser Island. Just want to put together some highlights of our trip and few things you need to pay attention when you travel to the island. If you go to Fraser Island, wherever you travel inland, you can only see sand tracks. Nothing else! Fraser Island actually is the only place on our planet that rain forest grows on the sand! (If I’m wrong there, please correct me.) This is truly amazing! I have never seen anything like that. Apart from relaxing on the beautiful beach, there are many things you can do on the island. If hiking is your thing,  there are plenty of options, hiking to Lake McKenzie, taking a lake walk, or just having a short bush walk to see the vegetation and sand dunes. Fishing is a must-do for us on the island. When it’s high tide, there is not much you can do. You can either chill out at your rented house/resort/camping site or go hiking inland. However, we love fishing. So we wouldn’t miss …

Fraser Island – the paradise

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Last week, we had a getaway weekend to Fraser Island, the biggest sand island in the world. I can’t believe we didn’t go there earlier. The beauty of the island is breathtaking without a single bit of exaggeration. No surprise it is World Heritage listed. The only regret was that we couldn’t stay longer than a weekend this time. It was a bit of drive to get to the island from Brisbane. It took us about three hours to Rainbow Beach. We got our hired car there, and we were off to take the ferry. You need a proper 4WD vehicle to drive around on the island. Since there are no proper roads on the island, you have to drive on the beach during low tide. The inland tracks are all soft sand. No way you can drive your normal car there without damage it or get stuck. While we were on the ferry, everyone was already awed for the view of the island. You really can’t blame them, the blue sky, white clouds, white sand, green vegetation at …

Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers

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We made a last-minute decision to go to the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers last Sunday. After moving to Brisbane for over four years, we finally made it to the festival at the very last day.  The weather wasn’t very good, windy and rainy. We did get a little bit of the sun occasionally. Well, it’s the Spring. I am not complaining! We always love a road trip, even it’s a very short one. We get to talk about everything, from the home renovation, dinner plan to future travel plans, which involves a lot of good laugh. It might be rainy outside, but it’s always sunny inside of the car. Toowoomba is located in the west of Brisbane, about 90 minutes drive. It is known as “the Garden city”, and it’s the biggest inland city in Australia. Some says the name is originated from the Aboriginal word of “The Swamp”. Its history can be dated back to 1827 when an English explorer discovered a rich farming land, Darling Downs. Toowoomba is considered as the commercial center of …