Australia 8/19/2022 - 9/6/2022

Prologue

After 2.5 years of very limited travel due to the pandemic, we decided in early June that it was soon time to return to Australia to visit our Bhutanese son Sonam Tshering and his dear wife Sonam Choki again in Perth.

We knew that we wanted to visit Australia in their wintertime, when the weather was cooler. Hot weather is not compatible with Craig's multiple sclerosis, so our time window was limited. We wanted to go in August, so that gave us a lot less lead time than we usually give ourselves for such a major trip. But we were feeling the wanderlust.

Since our last visit in 2019, Sonam Choki has finished her master's in education, and the couple is able to stay in Australia for several more years on their current visas.

We learned that Uluru, which Craig and I had visited in 2019, is a sacred site to the Bhutanese, as they believe that their beloved Guru Rinpoche visited and left a footprint behind in the rock. Craig and I felt that we hadn't had enough time to adequately explore Uluru on our last visit, so we planned to return to Uluru, this time with the Sonams.

We also wanted to visit our other Bhutanese friends, Tshering Om and her husband Tshering Wangchuk, who live in Adelaide. They had moved to Australia at around the same time as the Sonams, for Tshering Om to study nursing. She finished her nursing degree, and they got Australian residency, which allowed them to bring their 7-year-old son Rigsel to join them after several years apart. He just arrived from Bhutan in July of 2022.

We planned the trip so that we would start with a few days in Adelaide, then continue on to Perth. We would then travel to Uluru with the Sonams, and return to Perth for a few more days before heading back home. Because of the season (the tail end of winter), there were no direct flights from Perth to Uluru. We would wind up crisscrossing the country to get there, logging many flight hours. But that's just something we had to accept in order to have the itinerary that we wanted.

Uluru, if you don't rent a car (and we had no intentions of renting a car), is the kind of place where activities are very structured. You stay in the resort town of Yulara, and buses pick you up and drop you off at your hotel. It is best to book activities in advance so they don't sell out. We booked rooms at the Desert Gardens Hotel, and spent a lot of time poring over various activity options, finally finding a schedule that incorporated everything that we and the Sonams wanted to do over a 3 day stay. I booked everything online, including buying the national park passes necessary to visit Uluru and Kata Tjuta themselves.

The only non-Uluru activity that was booked ahead of time was the Fremantle Prison Tunnels Tour. This was something we had wanted to do since our last visit, and the tour that we wanted was only available on certain days. You had to call to book the tour package, so Sonam Tshering took care of that for us.

Friday 8/19/2022 - Saturday 8/20/2022- Boston to Dallas to Sydney

I took the day off from work today and we had a leisurely morning to make sure that we had packed everthing that we needed. Logan Way car service picked us up at 2:30 p.m.

When we got to Logan airport, we checked in and went through TSA pre-check. Since our first flight was Boston to Dallas, we knew that we would not get fed on that leg. We sought out some airport food and were delighted that there was a Kelly's Roast Beef at our terminal. This local favorite translates well to an airport setting, and we each got a delicious roast beef sandwich to kick off our holiday.

Our flight was delayed taking off for approximately an hour, which meant that we arrived in Dallas/ Fort Worth at 9:50 p.m, with our next flight starting boarding at 10:05. The connection was tight, but since we got a wheelchair for Craig and used the Skytrain, we made it to the gate in time.

We boarded our Qantas flight. Even though the plane was a Boeing 787, the seats were tight. It made it hard to do anything (forget typing on a laptop). There was a mask mandate on the flight, but not in Australian airports.

For dinner, Craig had green curry and I had Irish stew. We had ginger ale to drink. We then settled in and listened to Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hours on the iPod. Before we knew it, half the 16 hour flight had gone by.

They came around with toasted cheese sandwiches and later with Twix. Then at breakfast we had eggs, hash browns, sausage, Chobani yogurt, and a pumpkin spice muffin with coffee.

Sunday 8/21/2022 - Sydney to Adelaide

We landed at 6 a.m. local time in Sydney. A woman took Craig and another passenger in a motorized double wheelchair. We got our luggage and rechecked it, and then a guy in a van drove us to the other terminal so we didn't have to take the bus. We were met by another woman with a wheelchair who took us to our gate. Craig was grateful for the assistance, as his legs lock up when flying, especially after 16 hours!

I got Craig a capuccino. We were supposed to take off at 8:40 a.m., but our plane's first officer was ill and they needed to find a replacement. So the flight was delayed by 2 hours.

Thursday night, we had heard about a Covid-19 testing requirement for international travelers to South Australia that was just instituted three days before. We didn't know if we would have to test before or after flying into Adelaide, but we saw no sign of it at the Sydney airport.

I got online at Sydney airport and posted that we had arrived safely, and I was able to contact Tshering Om to tell her that the flight is delayed by 2 hours. They were planning to pick us up at the airport in Adelaide, and we told them that we would contact them when we arrived.

As we waited for our flight, we got a Proper National Pies steak and pepper pie at the Sydney airport. We love our Australian meat pies!

There is a 30 minute time difference between Sydney and Adelaide. We got fed an egg and ham toastee on the flight. It was a two hour flight, and we arrived in Adelaide at 12:05 p.m. We collected our luggage (both of our bags made it this time as opposed to 3 years ago, yay!) and I got on the wifi to tell Tshering Om we were ready to be picked up. We saw nothing about Covid testing in the airport. We went outside, where the temperature was pleasantly cool, and waited at the curb at 12:34 p.m.

Around 15 minutes later, we heard someone call out. We turned around, and there were Tshering Om and Rigsel, flowers in hand, followed by Tshering Wangchuk. It was so great to finally meet them after being online friends for years. They were so kind, friendly, and hospitable! We got into their car and it was about a 15 minute drive to their house. Rigsel was very shy, and didn't say much on the ride.

They have a cozy little apartment in a suburban house. They gave us chicken and spinach dumplings made by Tshering Wangchuk that were delicious. And coffee. Coffee was very important to stave off our jet lag. Actually, we were surprised at how good we felt, considering how long we had been traveling. We had warned Tshering Om that we were likely to be catatonic after the long flights, but hapily that wasn't the case.

We video chatted with Sonam Tshering and Sonam Choki, whom we would be seeing in three days. Then we watched Rigsel play Minecraft. None of us adults understood what was going on and we had a lot of laughs about it. They gave us presents that Tshering Wangchuk had purchsed in Bhutan when he recently returned to retrieve Rigsel: nice T-shirts, wallets, and key chains.

As it approached 4 p.m., we knew that we had to check in at our hotel (the front desk closes at 5). The Rex Hotel is a quirky little hotel with slot machines in a casino room off the lobby. There was nobody at the front desk, but a sign told us to ask at the cashier's booth in the casino. We did so, and someone promptly came to check us in. Our room was like a little dorm room, but was perfect for what we needed: two twin beds and a small bathroom. And wi-fi. The location is just 4 minutes from their home, making it very easy for them to drive us back and forth. We quickly got settled in room #6, grateful that we were able to finally change out of the compression socks that we had been wearing since leaving our house. They are a necessary evil when on long haul flights, but it sure felt good to take them off and change into regular more comfortable socks!

We met the family back at the car. They wanted to take us to the coast to watch sunset. During the drive, Rigsel was by now quite comfortable and talking up a storm. His spoken English is quite good, especially since he has only recently begun learning.

We drove to Hallett Cove on the coast, which has a lot of interesting geological features. There was a nice walking path here and signage which told the geological history of the area. It felt really good to stretch our legs and take a nice walk after so many hours crammed into a plane.

The geology of Hallett Cove dates back to the Precambrian Period (600 million years ago), and spans the Permian (ice age 280 million years ago), Pliocene, and Quarternary periods. Over the course of the past 600 million years, Hallett Cove has been part of a river flood plain, part of a mountain range, beneath a shallow sea, and under a thick ice sheet.

The late afternoon sunlight shed a golden glow on the landscape. We studied a geological structure known as Sugarloaf. According to Discovery Trails:

The Sugarloaf is composed of sediments deposited in a lake formed as the ice sheet melted about 280 million years ago and is capped by a thin layer of alluvial clay deposited a few million years ago. Its conical shape is a result of erosion from wind and rain acting on soft glacial sediments.

We continued up to a lookout point where we watched the gorgeous sun set at 5:45 p.m. Glacial striations are visible as scratches on the cliffs. Black Cliff shows such scratches which were caused by an ice sheet moving northwest about 280 million years ago.

Then we went back to their apartment, and Rigsel played Minecraft. Tshering Om served us coffee, juice, rice, Bhutanese peppers with potatoes, peas, and cheese, and scrambled egg. It was all delicious, but we were crashing and only had room for so much food.

We gave them our gifts (Australia puzzle and books and a Boston pencil case for Rigsel, and a tea towel for the parents).

Shortly after 8 p.m. we asked them to drive us back to the hotel. It had been 38 hours since we had left our house, and we were very much in need of sleep. We slept from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. after doing a short Facebook and Instagram post.

Hallett Cove