Category: Australia
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Understanding Serendipity
Before WordPress, I used to run my blog on a system called Serendipity. Sometimes, you know what a word means but it isn’t actually real to you. It’s a dictionary definition- a clinical expression of a word’s value. Serendipity was one of those long words that other people use but wasn’t in my vernacular –…
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Home in Sydney
I’ve received a lot of questions on where I was living in Sydney during my stay. I didn’t stay in a hotel as that would have been prohibitively expensive for a three month stay in Sydney. Searching for housing from overseas was a bit chaotic, but wasn’t impossible. I first started with AirBnB, but got…
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Sydney Harbour Bridge Pylon Lookout
I loved the BridgeClimb but was bummed out that I couldn’t bring a campera up to the top. I decided to climb up the Sydney Harbour Bridge Pylon Lookout as you could bring your camera. I wondered why as the main driver from not bringing cameras on the climb was people dropping them. The pylons were…
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Kuranda Sky Rail
They (being folklore in the States) say everything in Australia tries to kill you. I’m not sure that’s fully true, but I will say there were some things that spooked me in this post. Warning: If spiders creep you out, this post is not for you. Because the bus left for the airport at 4…
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Kuranda: Butterflies, Birds, and Kangaroos
Butterflies I had about four hours to spend up in Kuranda. It instantly became clear to me why Kuranda was such a popular destination for hotel guests. It was very much geared for families with kids. As a single guy, it was a bit harder to find a home run activity, but I was determined…
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Kuranda Scenic Railway
Saturday was a total wash for me. I felt sick all day. Usually I’m pretty resilient to seasickness, but I think the duration and intensity finally got to me. The bus was flying around corners and sitting in the back didn’t help. The rough waters to and from the dock at Agincourt Reef added to…
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Great Barrier Reef: Going Underwater
The next three hours were truly divine once I arrived to the reef (part 1). Here I was 90 minutes out to sea and ready to jump into the abyss below. I had no idea how deep the water was. Given that it was a reef, I assumed it would be somewhere between 5 and…
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A three hour tour to the Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef is one of “the things” to do here in Australia. Spanning over 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles) there are a myriad of options to choose from. I choose Cairns as it was the largest city along the Great Barrier Reef, but other locations would’ve been Port Douglas as well as Airlie Beach.…
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Cairns, Australia
The motorcycle trip across southeastern Australia was truly awesome. My time is winding down here, so it’s important to get off my tail and go see the things I wanted to do in my spare time. Australia is about as big as the United States, and the Great Barrier Reef is in northeastern Australia. I…
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Sydney Harbour BridgeClimb – Bridge Awesome!
When asking around at work what are the interesting things to do, the bridge climb came up a number of times. Having walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, I’ve often wondered what it would be like to actually be one of the guys who works on the bridge. I won’t say that I’m afraid of…
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Touring the Sydney Opera House
I know I ramble on about the Sydney Opera House, but it really is the pinnacle thing for me that signifies all things Australia. I’ve read so much about it year after year in school that seeing it in full color makes me smile still after nearly three months here in Australia. I wanted to…
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Vince is 40
I’ve always been interested in networks of people. I can remember when the internet first came mainstream the site SixDegrees ran under the principle that everyone is connected within 6 degrees of each other. Simply put, there is a path that includes no more than 6 people from me to anyone on the planet. Kevin…
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Bronte Pools: 5 tips for long exposure photography
The photographer’s day really begins well before sunrise. The early morning hours are critical in getting great photos as the most color change happens the hours around sunrise and sunset. One of the Meetup groups, Not Only Black and White, had a sunrise shoot out at Bronte pools. The photographer’s day really begins well before…
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Hillsong
After my experience at Glebe Café Chruch, I wanted to check out Hillsong. Hillsong is one of Sydney’s larger churches. By American standards, it would be clearly in the mega church category. Hillsong has campuses all over Australia and a few spots throughout the world. Hillsong and I crossed paths in 2006 during my time…
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5 tips from a newbie in the studio
One of the pleasant surprises here in Sydney is that it has a very vibrant culture of Meetup groups. I thought Meetup, being a New York corporation would have very limited presence here. The opposite couldn’t have been more true. I’ve found groups that do photography, PHP development, WordPress, and more. It’s been easy to…
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Saint Patrick’s Moon
I remember a meetup about a month ago where the focus was to take photos of the Opera House with the moon coming over the horizon. That meetup got rained out. I checked to see if the moon would be in the same position a month later and it turned out I was in luck!…
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Rain, Rain, Rain
Whenever I travel, I love to experience weather. California has no weather. After the latest “cold snap” (below room temperature for the rest of the world (60F)) in California, Jimmy Kimmel aggregated the local weather reports. You got to love the parts about “the leaves blowing around” causing problems. Really? The leaves blowing around. I’ll…
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Taming the Illawarra Highway: Cooma to Sydney
I had a decision to make. I’d rented the bike for 4 days but had the option to spend an extra day on the motorcycle. I was planning to take a few days up in Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef so wanted to save some time for that. I figured if I wandered…
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Alpine Country: Motorcycling in Thredbo!
I slept hard last night. I think I crashed at about 8:30 pm and woke up a little after 8 am. I’ll admit, yesterday afternoon was not fun at all. I was overtired and needed the sleep. Calling the United States is a bit of a challenge as the window of opportunity is in the…
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The Hume Highway: Port Campbell to Wangaratta
Usually day two is the hardest for me on motorcycle trips. The first day is powered by adrenaline and the second day my body is being beaten into submission on the bike. Since my first day was only 50 kilometers I was wondering how today was going to go. The plan was to go back…
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The Great Ocean Road: Melbourne to Port Campbell
I slept in. It was great. The bed of the hotel was super comfortable and I was out like a light. Today was actually going to be fairly short ride to get used to traveling in Australia and experience The Great Ocean Road. Whenever I’ve mentioned motorcycling here in Australia, The Great Ocean Road always…
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Aussie Moto Adventure: Starting in Melbourne
For me, I get to know an area by motorcycling. There’s something about traveling over land in seeing all of the parts of the environment up close that help me come to know a particular place. Last time I was in Australia I didn’t have the time (or the confidence) to hop on a bike…
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Watsons Bay: A three hour tour!
I’d been hearing a lot about Watsons Bay as one of the pretty spots in Sydney. The problem was though it was a fair hike from my place to get there. I was stoked to find out that we were all headed out to Watsons Bay for the JIRA 6.2 launch celebration. JIRA 6.2 was…
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Happy Birthday Mark
I met Mark the first time I was here in Australia. I was super grateful for his expertise as it made this traveler’s journey much easier being fresh from the states. Now coming back to Sydney, it was great seeing a familiar face in the context of a new adventure. Mark was celebrating his 43rd…
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An authentic Australian bush dance
Fair Day was the kickoff of all things Mardi Gras. I stumbled across the Southern Cross Outdoors Group in the area that had all of the community organizations. The name at least sounded interesting so I grabbed a brochure from the unmanned booth. Looking in a little deeper, one of the events they had going…
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Surfing in Manly
No Australian experience can be complete without a day of surfing. As the resident Californian of the group, a few were surprised that I had never been surfing. After an explanation that summer was cold, surfing always requires a wetsuit, and I just never dug into the opportunity, the group accepted that I was a…
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Glebe Cafe Church
Fair Day had a number of religious organizations in the community section. I was curious to see what church was like here in Australia and how it may be similar or different to the experience I’ve been exposed to in the United States. I’m looking for answers in the spiritual realm. I don’t think the…
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Suzuki Heaven
My roommate had mentioned he left his motorcycle at his mates place last night so that he wouldn’t have to ride home under the influence of alcohol. New South Wales has fairly strict guidelines for what constitutes a DUI. Here in New South Wales the legal limit is 0.05 whereas in the United States it’s…
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A gander to Woolworths
The stars aligned and my roommate needed to go to the grocery store at the same time that I did. A seemingly small detail to most, but it was huge for me. That meant we were going to the cool grocery store in a car. I didn’t have to haul groceries of many flights of…
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Calling Dan – I’m 10 digits away
How to call Dan I’ve been asked a few times how people back in the States can get a hold of me. It’s actually pretty simple. I use Google Voice. Google Voice gives me a US number that patches through the internet over to Australia. It works like any US phone number. There are no…