Fred asked me to post about my uncharacteristically extended (27-day) recent trip Down Under.  Actually, he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse (Mario Puzo fans will get the reference).  Nancy graciously ceded her Tuesday blog slot to me.  Mitch helpfully gave me a tutorial on the technicalities of posting to the Gotham blog.  It took a village.  Please feel free to read as much or as little of what follows as you prefer.  

My wife (Daryle) and I retired in 2023, which allowed us to travel this extensively for the first time in decades.  For particulars on the cause of my reluctant early retirement, feel free to see my March 1, 2023 posts on Facebook or LinkedIn. 

Trip summary: starting on Dec. 18, one day of straight travel on Qantas flight #4 from JFK NY to Sydney, Australia – 22 hours, 35 minutes flight time, including crossing over the International Date Line; 8 days in Sydney (where my father was born and I still have many relatives and friends from my 7 prior trips there between 1963 and 1999); 7 days in the Melbourne area, including 3 days in the Yarra River Wine Valley for a family wedding + 2 days at the beautiful Shoreham (Melb. suburb) beach house of the parents of the bride + 2 days in a hotel in central Melb. as tourists; 3 days in Queenstown (South Island of New Zealand), 3 days in Christchurch (South Island of NZ); 3 days in LA, where 3 of my lifelong friends live; then home to NY.  We left on Dec. 18, and returned home on Jan. 13.

Highlights and lowlights: H: It was exciting to make the decision in October to actually try to do this and then actually to do it.  L: Loooong flight.  H: Our daughter Rachel accompanied us on the flight from JFK to SYD.  L: Even a 22+ hour looooong flight can get delayed.  H: We got to see many people we care about but get to see all too infrequently. L: It rained 7 of the 8 days we were in Sydney.  H: We visited my cousin’s beautiful country home in Berry, 2 hours south of Sydney.  L: On my third full day in Sydney, I tested positive for Covid, and quarantined for the next 5 days, until I tested negative a couple of days in a row (I missed several events, including the large family dinner party thrown by my cousin mostly in our honor). From then on, it was mostly highlights….  

We flew from Sydney to Melbourne, a city I’d never visited before, despite numerous trips to Australia.  Melb. is beautiful, clean, easily walkable, has great civic outdoor art and many green parks dotted throughout the city, excellent free museums and galleries, and has some of the best restaurants in the world.  I found driving on the left side of the road, with the steering wheel on the right side of the car, fairly easy to adjust to, as I had 25 years ago (think: stay to the left, make wide right turns and tight left turns, the right lane is the fast lane, most exits are on the left, etc.).  We stayed at a beautiful private membership club in the Yarra Valley, about an hour from Melb., and one evening a group of about 40+ wild kangaroos took over the golf course right outside our club hotel room patio.  The family wedding at a nearby winery in Yarra was joyful, beautiful, perfect (and I rarely say that about such celebrations, due to my Grinch-like nature and the needless excesses of some folks).  Rachel’s fiancé joined her in Melb. and Yarra for the family wedding, after which they spent a couple of weeks in the South Island of NZ, being adventurous.       

The beach house stay included a private tour & tasting at a nearby winery (closed for the day) – our host’s father had started the winery owner in that business a couple of decades ago, and he remains graciously thankful for that opportunity.  We also rang in the New Year about 16 hours earlier than did our NY friends.  Our two days thereafter playing tourist in Melb. were luxurious, unscheduled, and relaxing, with waaaaay too much good food.  We were sorry to relinquish the rental car (BTW, Sixt – a relatively new venture -- is the best rental car company we’ve experienced, in Las Vegas, Melb., and the South Island of NZ) and fly out of Australia, but were eager to get to the South Island of New Zealand, where I had very fond memories from my trip there over 41 years ago.

Upon arrival in Queenstown, NZ, we picked up our Sixt rental car, and found our way to our beautiful hotel part way up a mountain overlooking Lake Wakitipu and the city of Queenstown.  The scenery in the South Island is spectacular, striking, and stimulating.  We kept telling each other: “look over there,” “look at that,” “wow, did you see that?” It’s a microcosm of the rest of the world but nowhere in the world has all this in one place.  Queenstown had grown by leaps and bounds since I was there 4 decades ago, but the countryside remained pristine.  Queenstown is the home base for adventure-seeking travelers: bungee-jumping, jet-boat-riding, mountain-climbing, extreme hiking, you name it. 

But it also has more pedestrian offerings, such as a cable-tram ride to the peak of a mountain, from which we could survey the nearby mountains and lakes (as well as the extreme cyclists racing down the mountain).  We did take a 9-seater Kodiak airplane ride to the Milford Sound (a Norwegian-like fjord), where we cruised the Sound in a tour boat before returning to the Queenstown airport via our Kodiak plane.  Daryle stepped outside her comfort zone for that one, and was glad she did.  On our plane-cruise-plane trip, we met a young woman (yes, 45 is young to me) from Barcelona named Raquel who was traveling alone – she was very nice, quite interesting, works in IT for a large multinational company, and we ended up spending the next day or two connecting with her.  She provided excellent recommendations of things we could do in the area, and I provided chauffeuring services (and a dinner that was better than the fare to which she’d been restricting herself).  I believe that Daryle invited her to visit us next time she’s in NY.

After 3 days in that area, I drove Daryle and myself through Lake Tekapo (where I’d gone skiing in August 1982 – it was winter in the Southern Hemisphere then), where we stopped for lunch and a bit of sightseeing, and on to Christchurch, the largest city in the South Island – a 6-hour drive overall, plus time for stops.  We checked into our very nice hotel there, and resumed our city tourist roles, dining out at some excellent restaurants and taking in the sights.  We were sorry, once again, to leave the South Island, but had a flight to catch and old friends to see in LA. 

We stayed in our favorite hotel in LA (yes, all of this trip was a major splurge), dined out for lunch and dinner each day with 3 of my long-term friends (one I’ve known since I was 8, one since I was 7, and one since I was a week old).  I’m not a fan of LA as a city, but love several of its residents.

We returned home after a Southern Hemisphere summer vacation to some snow in NY on Sunday (Jan. 14), which was, I guess, a worthy welcome back.

Sorry for the length of this tome, but you don’t sum up 27 days on the other side of the world in a paragraph or two, and I’ve left out a bunch of stuff.  I’ve posted a few photos of the thousand we took.  It was the trip of a lifetime.  But it’s still nice to be home in NY. 

David Abeshouse