We left Sydney very early Thursday morning and flew to Brisbane, Queensland, where we met up with our friend, Dana. We then travelled south to Byron Bay, New South Wales, where we chilled all day at the Blues and Roots Festival, which is a five day music festival that happens every Easter in Byron. Thursday had acts such as Keb Mo’, Xavier Rudd, Keith Urban and John Butler. All of them were outstanding.
On Friday, we checked out Byron Bay seeing as though it was our first time visiting the area. We went to the beach, did some shopping and checked out the famous lighthouse. Byron is such a great cruisey, hippy-chic beach town. It was a really lovely charming little town and such a nice place to skip away to for a weekend.
Friday night we drove back to Brisbane and boarded a plane to Darwin, Northern Territory… next up: Kakadu National Park. Kakadu is a world heritage listed park for it Aboriginal culture and its environment. The park covers an area of almost 4.9 million acres of land… it’s just so massive and so unusual… I don’t think there’s anything else quite like it. The name Kakadu comes from the mispronunciation of ‘Gagudju’ which is the name of an Aboriginal language spoken in the northern part of the Park. The Aboriginal people, which are the traditional land owners, have occupied Kakadu for at least 40,000 years and the park is chockers full of Aboriginal culture, ancient drawing sites, natural wonders and of course, those beastly crocs! We went on a 2 day camping safari during the ‘wet season’ which means most of Kakadu is flooded and the usual site like Ubirr and Twin Fall and Jim Jim Falls are in accessible. I saw them all before with my sister so it was actually quite nice to see Kakdu during the wet season b/c I was able to see different areas of the park that aren’t normally the main attractions. We did visit the cultural centers, Nourlangie Rock, Gunlom falls and went for a dip in one of the swimming pools. At night we camped in a permanent tent so we weren’t exactly roughing it but it was still an adventure. We got serenaded all night by dingos in our camp. There was also a massive, vibrant thunderstorm at night which was quite cool but we also managed to get wet through our tent… all part of the fun.
Sunday night we returned to Darwin, checked out a few of the bars and restaurants, and caught our flight back to Brisbane. Monday we traveled yet again to Byron Bay to take in the musical festival. Acts such as Rodrigo Y Gabriela, KT Tunstall, the Black Crows, and John Fogerty rocked out on stage all night. It was such a great festival… good music, great new and old talent and a really chill, groovin’ atmosphere.
The next day, we drove back up to Brisbane and spent the day on Stradbroke Island. What a gorgeous place- so much natural wild life. We saw dolphins having a bit of a surf, and heaps of sea turtles and manta rays just cruising along the seas.
Tuesday night we boarded our flight to Sydney and arrived home absolutely exhausted. On our trip our sleep was very minimal, and with so much travelling and our sore, sunburned bodies we just crashed when we got home. Looking back on our trip, yes, we were crazy for squeezing in basically half of Australia in to just a few days. Even the Qantas attendants and check-in crew thought we were absolutely mad and couldn’t fathom how we thought doing all of that traveling was a good idea, but in the end, it was definitely worth it to us and we’d do it all over again in a heart beat!
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