Author: Emre Girici

Australia has always been an exciting place to visit, but I’ve never had solid plans to make it real. Reasons could be; time, distance, cost, having easier/better options, and so on. This time, my job came in handy, and I packed my bag for a trip destined to down under, attending an industry trade show being the primary reason. That would be stupid not to extend the stay with a week-long time-off. And that’s how started to work on the blueprints of a holiday after a looooong time.

The travel was tough as I expected, but long-haul flights get less challenging in time as you travel more frequently. I had the first chance to try award-winning Malaysian Airlines, not as great as i expect, but much better than European airline companies, and far better than KLM. Once again, quality service and customer care in air transportation is an Asian thing, and will not be achieved by Western world soon.

After 12 + 8 hours of flight time, and 3 hours of transfer wait in Kuala Lumpur, I landed at Melbourne Tullamarine Airport. It was 10PM when I arrived at my hotel, and I was feeling sleepy already. That’s great since you’ll be sleeping at local conventional hours, which means no jet lag. But I had to wake up at 3AM for a conference call, which ruined all the plans, and supported my sleeping disorder that’s going on for the last couple of months. My first wake up in Melbourne, was also the wake up to my first day ever in the southern hemisphere. It was a bright day outside, a sunny and warm late-summer-early-autumn day to make this man happy to leave Dutch winter behind.

At the first glimpse, Melbourne reminded me of San Francisco, or a city with Western European looks, good weather and nice landscapes. That’s no wonder that it’s been chosen the best city to live in The Economist’s 2011 ranking. The city has an immense vibe, dynamism and attraction. It’s quite normal to see people leaving high business plazas in their running gear, or racing bikes speeding amongst taxis and buses. Yarra River works like the aorta giving life to this active city, with bunch of rowing clubs situated alongside the river, and people jogging in the park that surrounds the river base.
But the city is stylish and elegant in the same place as well. Probably thanks to being a rather newly designed and built city, streets and building are spacious and trendy. I tend to develop a new habit lately: taking pictures of cafe/restaurant/bar interiors and studying the styles. I captured very nice pictures during my stay. (It might help me with building my own bar in the future, or doesn’t help with anything at all, who knows). During the long exhausting days at the convention center, me and my colleagues had enough chance to enjoy the restaurants by the Crown Promenade. It was not easy to find a seat in those restaurants, probably due to the crowd that’s been brought in by the Formula 1 Grand Prix. I have lost my interest in F1 races long time ago, but it would be nice to find a seat at Albert Park that weekend.. tough luck.

After the initial week and a half that’s been occupied by work in Melbourne, finally the weekend came over and I set free on my holiday, which was the first since last August. There were many options for destinations for this week: the great metropole Sydney; Hobart, the capital of Tasmania; two beautiful cities, Brisbane and Adelaide (I love how they sound); tropical destinations up in the north, Darwin and Cairns; the real Aussie outback, world-famous Ayers Rock; and the last but not the least, Perth. Sydney had secured its place long time ago, it wouldn’t make any sense at all to miss the chance to visit this beautiful metropolis. There was a big fight for the second spot, and Perth was the winner. Having a sunny weather forecast for 15 days in a row helped here pretty much. That’s probably what anybody coming out of a European winter would opt for.

My first night in Sydney was not the best that I would expect. Not enough study for accommodation, and going unnecessarily cheap; I ended up at a youth hostel in Kings Cross; which stands for the Red Light District in Amsterdam. I mean, I’m OK to stay in hostels, but this was a party hostel with extreme noise even at 3AM. I think my level of fun has downshifted as I’m on the edge of my 30s. Somehow, I made through the night (thanks to the noise-canceling Sennheiser earphones plugged in my ears, never thought that I’d use them with any purpose apart from listening to music), and I booked a proper hotel 200-300m down on the same street in the very next morning.

Sydney is different than Melbourne. It’s bigger, more crowded and more multinational. It overtook Melbourne in early 20th century in the race for growth, and probably didn’t put the foot on the brake since then. The city is still quite organized and neat though, probably the Olympic Games in 2000 had a big effect on that. The most interesting attraction points I visited were; Taronga Zoo (seeing kangaroos, koalas, Tasmanian devils and a Komodo dragon for the first time, priceless), Manly Beach (didn’t bring swimming gear and missed the chance of swimming in Pacific Ocean, damn) and Art Museum of New South Wales. It’s weird to be on holidays on your own, and I’m not a big supporter of that. But I had good time planning my own daily list of activities. A big thanks here to Australia Travel Guide iPad/iPhone application by Triposo. It has lots of good content for recommendations and detailed maps for all big cities. And it works all offline, and it’s free!

It was three nights already in Sydney and I was ready to depart to my next destination, Perth. My flight with Jetstar got cancelled, and I was luckily transferred to Qantas flight that would take off only an hour later. 4.5 hours of flight came and passed in an eye blink, owing big thanks to Family Guy Season 8 and several Top Gear episodes on the in-flight entertainment system. Finally landed in town and arrived at the hostel (this time, a pretty good one). Perth is a really interesting city. It’s the capital and the biggest city of the state of Western Australia (it’s probably because there’s no other proper city in WA). It also has a fame of being the 2nd most isolated metropolis in the world. Its nearest city of at least one million population is Adelaide, which is 2139 kilometers away (Number one is Auckland in NZ). It seems that city’s newest tourism marketing slogan “Get to know me” is trying to break this remote outback image a bit. 3 days in Perth was really laid-back, lazy and lacking any push for doing any sightseeing stuff. I spent the 3 days in Perth, by just walking, visiting 2 of the nicest beaches to swim in Indian Ocean (Scarborough and Cottesloe), and reading. That was probably what I needed badly for the last 7-8 months. So, I had a good chilled mood when I was ready to leave Australia this Sunday.

After coming back home after a killer ~25-hour journey (Perth > Melbourne > Kuala Lumpur > Amsterdam), I opened up my suitcases, and, surprise!, my camera is not there anymore! It was the first time ever that I had to squeeze my camera in my check-in luggage, and I managed to get it stolen. One point that helped things go less dramatic, is that I copied all the pictures to the laptop (except a few last ones from Perth’s beaches).