Darwin

Following Broome, we were off to Darwin (with a minor layover in Kununurra - a tiny little village with a population of 4575 in the middle of nowhere).

Darwin is known for its crocs, and was made "Hollywood famous" with Crocodile Dundee. As we have seen crocs many times before, we really didn't feel the need to see them again. Instead, we did a walking tour of the city and its wharfs (in 44 degree weather nonetheless), and spent the rest of our time relaxing on the deck belonging to our swim up room.

Darwin is a cute little place, frequented mostly by folks in the military. We're glad we finally had the opportunity to experience the city that many of our colleagues speak frequently of.

Swim up room!

Enjoying the pool

Other part of the pool

A typical Darwin mangrove

Down at the wharf

A plaque commemorating the bombing of the wharf in 1942

Roo, Croc, or Camel anyone?

The swimming lagoon - the only 'safe' place to swim in Darwin

Broome

Following Darwin, we boarded a plane and headed to Broome (on the coast of the Kimberley). We were about to start the more relaxing/beach holiday part of our trip! We had minimal plans and tours scheduled for Broome, which we were super happy about after having a rather hectic several months. Other than swimming in the pool or laying at the beach, the only other activities we planned included a visit to the world famous Cable Beach to see its sunset and camels, and a quick half day aircraft tour over the Kimberley.

Here are some pictures from our visit:

Where we spent 90% of our time

How we spent 90% of our time

The famous Cable Beach

Camels heading out

Camels returning home

The reason to go to Cable Beach - the famous sunsets!

Here are some shots of the aerial tour of the Kimberley and its Coast that Blair did. Note that he acted as "co-pilot" in the little Cessna aircraft. Also take note of the landing strip out in the Kimberley!

Blair sat as "co-pilot"

Blair's view as "co-pilot"

Overlooking Broome from the air

Beautiful beaches

Beautiful water

The famous Horizontal Waterfall

The Horizontal Waterfall from another angle

Looking towards the sun

Check out the landing strip in the top right corner

The Cessna after it landed

Private beach for an hour

Perth

After lots of research on Perth, we decided there really wasn't much (for us) to do there. Because of this, we limited our time there to 3 nights. We spent our first day exploring the city on foot, the second day visiting the coast, and the third day driving around the city visiting a few outlook points, in addition to heading to Fremantle to visit the prison (the best part of our visit to Perth by the way - they offered a super cool tour).

Perth is known for being the second most isolated capital city in the world (with Honolulu being the most, apparently). Although it has a population of almost 1.7 million, this city felt a tad barren to us. Although we certainly thought there were some pretty parts of the city, it is not one we could ever imagine living in. We did enjoy stopping for lunch at a cafe on the water on our foot tour of the city. We also loved discovering some of the cool European-style laneways and shopping centers.

Lunch on the water

City view from the water

Stroll along the waterfront

Cool laneway with lots of cafes

Bell Tower

Our second day consisted of driving around to some of the main outlook points of the city, as well as heading to the coast to checkout some of the famous Perth beaches we had heard so much about.

Perth skyline

King's Park Outlook and War Memorial

King's Park outlook

Beautiful beach

Day 3 was the coolest of all days in Perth as we visited the Fremantle Prison. This prison is considered a heritage site as it is the most intact of all Australian convict sites. We did the "Doing Time" tour and were able to explore the prison from its convict origins in the 1950's until its closure as a maximum security gaol in 1991. We toured the 4 main cell blocks, prison kitchen, the prison yards, chapel, whipping post, gallows, and solitary cells.
 

Fremantle Prison

Main cell block

Bucket used as toilet until mid-1980's

Standard prison cell

Stacy's Birthday Trip

For Stacy's birthday trip this year (the big 35), we were at a loss of where to go. We were thinking about heading to Fiji, but we had just returned from an overseas trip to NZ two weeks prior.  We even talked about heading to Thailand, but thought it best to leave that one until Matty is a bit older and better vaccinated. We then started talking about heading to Perth, but we both knew that Perth alone wouldn't be a great vacation for us (from what we could gather, there didn't seem to be much to do there).

One night, with Perth still on our mind, we decided to see if it would be possible to tack on both Broome and Darwin to this trip. As Perth, Broome, and Darwin were the last three major cities/town on our "Must Visit" list before moving back to Canada, we thought this may be a good option to "kill two three birds with one stone". You see, to get to each of these places individually would take lots of time and money. So to minimize these factors, we decided it would be cool to do a 'minor' circumnavigation of Australia. From Canberra, we would head to Sydney and then onwards to Perth. After a handful of days in Perth, we would depart for Broome and the Kimberley. Finally, we would finish up in Darwin before heading back to Sydney. After checking flight schedules and costs, it pretty much seemed like a no-brainer, so we booked everything at once.

---For those wondering, the complete distance of this circumnavigation comes in at 12261 KM (by car) or 10500 KM by air!

Since there are quite a few pictures for this trip, we will dedicate a separate blog post to it!

Canberra Balloon Spectacular

The Canberra Balloon Spectacular is an annual festival considered to be one of the best hot air balloon events in the world. It features over 50 hot air balloons that are shipped in from all over the world.

The balloons all launch from the the grounds in front of Canberra's Old Parliament House. The event itself lasts about a week and anyone can purchase a (rather expensive!) ticket for a balloon ride.

The balloons take off each day at about 6:30 AM, so we decided to get up early one Sunday morning to watch all them take off. We made it just in time to set up at the end of Anzac Parade, across from the lake so that we could see the balloons flying over the government buildings.

First few balloons take flight!

The Skywhale balloon!

Within 30 minutes, we could see balloons everywhere!

YIKES!!!


The Skywhale balloon was a featured balloon this year. It, however, happened to make headlines before the festival for crashing into someones back yard!











Another cool balloon that made headlines was Pegleg Pete, which came crashing down onto the highway outside of Belconnen Town Centre! 

Canberra Enlighten Festival

Let's face it, Canberra isn't exactly a tourist hotbed. It's a great place to live and raise a family, but if you're only here as a visitor for a few days/weeks/months, Canberra can get boring pretty quick. There are, however, a few events throughout the year that tend to attract a lot of visitors to the city; the annual Enlighten Festival is one of them.

The Enlighten Festival is an outdoor art exhibition and cultural festival which features architectural projections on several buildings in Canberra. It also features musical shows, food tastings, and film events. We missed out on the festival last year and decided that we (at the very least) needed to see the projections on parliament this year.

The projections on the front of parliament change approximately every minute or two, rotating through a series of different artful images. They turned out to be very cool and we were able to snap some great photos of a few of them.