A Trip to Australia: 2026 Edition

A few weeks ago, I got back from a trip to Australia. My first trip there was about 20 years ago and was the reason I started this blog.

This time, my wife and I had an 11-year-old daughter with us, a big change from the last trip. Our itinerary would take us to:

• Melbourne
• Phillip Island
• Brisbane
• Tamborine
• Gold Coast

Also different: We visited in the dead of Australian winter. We got massively cheated on our winter in Arizona, and we were about to head into our stupidly hot season. The idea of cloudy, rainy skies really tickled us.

So what did we want out of this trip to Australia? Some animal encounters for sure!

Ever since we’ve been traveling with our daughter, the main goal has been exposing her to new experiences, places, people and food (we’re struggling with that last one – she’s not a super-adventurous eater).

She’s an animal lover, so we knew she’d have fun in Australia.

We hit a bunch of animal sanctuaries and zoos. We also spotted a few critters out in the wild. Not quite what we saw on our last trip, which took us through the Northern Territory.

This time, we saw penguins emerge from the sea at Phillip Island, a sanctuary for just about every type of Australian creature, a place where you could pet koalas and even a camel farm.

More to come on the animal encounters in a future post.

What else did we want to do?

Well, speaking for myself, I remember baristas in Australia being particularly skilled. That’s still true, but I wanted to verify it by going to good coffee shops as often as possible. I think Melbourne had the most-impressive concentration of top-flight coffee shops I’ve ever seen.

Even though I’d been here before, it still took awhile to settle back into how coffee shops here do things … again, more on that in a future post.

I also just wanted to roam in a city where you can see something cool every few feet. In Phoenix, you can walk miles before reaching anything fun. Melbourne had alleys full of oddball shops, nice public parks, great transit and an array of Asian dining that I can’t wrap my head around. Brisbane had some of the best pedestrian infrastructure I’ve ever seen, a city catamaran transit system and the hugest brewpub I’ve ever seen. Even the tiny town of Cowes on Phillip Island had some great places to grab coffee, interesting shops and great seashore walking.

My wife wanted to run, and she discovered some great places to get her miles in. Being our chief planner, she arranged a few special things. She and the daughter headed to a ropes course while I dug around for thundereggs at a nearby mine.

Other than that, we kept things relatively open to spontaneity.

Overall, how was it?

Yet again, Australia was well worth the long flight.

The country has an overall positive vibe, at least from what we could see. The day-to-day realities might not be as sunny to someone living there. Maybe some find the growth — and it’s noticeable — a bit much. But the quality of life seems high, and there’s no shortage of things to do.

I noticed that brick-and-mortar shopping hasn’t died. Malls and similar areas still provide somewhere to be besides work, home, school or the gym. I also felt like each area had some events going on, and none of them were a ludicrous rip-off.

OK, that’s all for now. Stand by for some upcoming posts about where we stayed, my favorite places for a coffee, all the animal encounters and various other interesting bits.