After a brief stop in Hong Kong, we reached our seventh continent!
All the classic highlights (Melbourne, Sydney, Uluru, and the Great Barrier Reef) with the added bonus of spending time with family and friends.
We suppose that for most people, Antarctica would be the final continent of the world that they’d reach in a lifetime of travels. For “stamp collectors” (passport stamps that is), there’s not even a reason to visit Antarctica since it’s not an official UN country. However, in our zig-zag journey around the globe, Australia was the final continent the we visited to complete the set.
Our trip to Australia was also notable for another milestone reached (at least for one of us). We’re both inveterate campers, and after camping in the Australian outback one of us has camped in every continent of the world. Note that the dictionary definition of camping is “the act of staying and sleeping in an outside area for one or more days and nights, usually in a tent”. Passing out on a park bench is sleeping outside, but it’s not camping!
Our shelter when camping near Uluru was a swag. If you’ve ever listened to Waltzing Matilda and wondered what a swagman is (or was) here are some some definitions from the comments section of the YouTube video below:
Waltzing Matilda explained:
- Swagman = An itinerant worker, who travelled around on foot carrying his belongings (his swag).
- Matilda = The swagman’s bedroll, so named because it’s “the only woman he sleeps with”.
- Waltzing Matilda = The bedroll was often carried at the hip, so it swung back and forth as the swagman walked along. The movement was similar in some respects to the way a man would swing a woman around during a lively waltz, hence to walk around while carrying one’s bedroll was called “waltzing Matilda”
We did our camping trip with “The Rock Tour” (www.facebook.com/therocktournt), a really fun way to visit Uluru from Alice Springs. UPDATE 2023: looks like The Rock Tour was a victim of COVID; the website is down and their Facebook Page hasn’t been updated for a year. Too bad.
Posts for this trip:
Australian Coffee Culture
Click below for a really long slide show on Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/100countries/sets/72157655170681879
