Piersons Trip Around the World
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Piersons Trip Around the World
The first country on our Around-the-World family tour
With the help of our Premier Preferred Partner, Southern World, we organized three and a half weeks of exciting tours and experiences.
For a little over three weeks, we explored much of Southeastern Australia and then made the trip to the center to see Uluru. Australia is a big country. The most efficient way to travel between cities is by plane, and we took our share of flights as we traveled around the country.
Australia is really cool because there are lots of animals. You can see Platypus, feed kangaroos, pat wallaby’s and go in the pen with the meercats. I recommend you should go there.
I also recommend going to Australia. There are so many fun things to do like feed kangaroos, ride camels, eat good yogurt, and listen to stories.
It’s been great to experience Australia as a family, there is so much to see and do. Even after my third trip to this amazing country, there are still places high on my list to visit like the Kimberly and Tasmania. We will definitely be back one day.
A month in to our adventure, I’m finally getting used to driving on the other side of the road and only turning on the windshield wipers rather than the turn signal every third turn. All in all, life in Australia is pretty similar to life in the states.
We spent our first five nights in Australia exploring the city of Melbourne. While Mom and Ma were busy attending Virtuoso meetings, Eric and the girls took advantage of the free “Hop on & Hop off” trams and explored all over the city.
After five nights of life in the city, we hopped on a plane and flew up to Tamworth where we picked up our rental car and drove another hour and a half out to the Yarrandaba Cattle station. We thoroughly enjoyed our time on the farm herding cattle, riding horses, hiking on the property and visiting with the McMurtries. It was our favorite stop in Australia and we were sad to leave.
From the cattle stations, we flew up to Brisbane, picked up another rental car and drove out to the small seaside town of Bribe Island. On Bribe we were fortunate to have another friend, Lee Price be our personal escort as we explored the local community and the Australia Zoo.
For three days and three nights, we explored Uluru and Kata Tjuta National park and saw Uluru in every light of day. Each experience gave us a different perspective of the impressive rock formations as we toured the national park at Sunrise, Sunset, in the middle of day, by car, on foot and on the back of a camel. While touring, we learned the history of the rock, how it was formed as well as stories of the native Aboriginal people.
We finished our time in Australia with a few nights in Sydney and a few nights in the Blue Mountains. We really enjoyed our Wild Experience in the Toranga Zoo, seeing the lights of Vivid, and our short trip to the cooler weather in the Blue Mountains.
We arranged for most of our family touring in Australia through Southern World, our preferred inbound tour operator for Australia & New Zealand. We like exploring new destinations by all methods of travel – cruising, touring, or on our own. The thing we like best about private custom tours is that we can collaborate with and design our experience exactly the way we want, under the expert guidance of a trusted local operator.
With mom in meetings for our time in Melbourne, we didn’t schedule any formal tours until arriving in Uluru. Even though we didn’t have anything formally organized with Southern World for a few weeks after we arrived, they were kind enough to send an abundance of local touring options we could explore on our own during our first couple of weeks in Australia. The information was waiting for us when we arrived in Melbourne, especially nice that we didn’t receive it at home and have one more thing to pack
There are several options for cruising around the perimeter of Australia – Large ship, small ship, expedition. The cruises are a great way to see the sections of the country you may like to return to at a later date. With as long as it takes to get to Australia from the States, we recommend also organizing some pre-or post touring to explore some of the interior of the country as well.
Taking a tour with a small group provides the opportunity to experience the sites of Australia with other like-minded travelers on popular pre-designed itineraries.
