When we first mentioned to family and friends that we were going to visit Australia and New Zealand their instinctive reaction was to ask “What cruise line - or what tour company - are you going with?” So when we told them it was a roadtrip, 90 days long, and that we were planning it ourselves, they were ‘a wee bit’ surprised, to say the least!
Surfers Paradise, Gold Coast.
A week ago I finished the last of 42 posts describing our trip, and based on some replies I got I thought some of you might like a bit more information on how we planned the trip. But first a caveat: I’m a retired old guy, living in North America (Central Canada, to be precise), so my perspective will be different than that of a young backpacker. I’d like to be young and spontaneous, but those days are long past - just so we’re on the same page to start…
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Moorea, seen from our Tahitian apartment.
Papaette.
And also, to start, a confession: our roadtrip wasn’t exactly 90 days! brightonbonnie and I left Canada Feb. 2, 2016, and returned April 25th. So 84 days to be exact (it was a leap-year, in case you are checking the math!), but I thought '84 day roadtrip' was a bit awkward to say, and '90 day' just rolled off the tongue so much better…
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Sydney Opera House.
We started planning our trip almost 2 years in advance. There were two reasons for this. First, we’d never been to this part of the world, and I wanted to do a ‘rehearsal’ of our trip. What I mean by that is the year before we traveled I wanted to have a ‘first draft’ of our itinerary in sufficient detail so that every few days I could check what would be happening the following year on our trip. On Feb. 10, 2015, for example, I checked what the weather was like in Tahiti, and how easy it would be to book a flight Feb. 17 from Sydney to Perth, and also rent a car and find accommodation at our destination. This rehearsal gave us a lot of information about the environment we could expect on our trip, but also served a second purpose – identifying arrangements that we had to make well in advance, and couldn’t just book on a whim a few days prior.
Uluru - and flynets!
Our overnight accommodation - cooler than Uluru, no flys, great food!
Researching our trip we did the things you would expect, using traditional print guidebooks and the internet for example. But if I was doing the research now I would probably start with #steemitworldmap, which is proving to be a great travel resource! The best resource we had was two couples who had done some traveling in Oz and/or New Zealand. They suggested using caravan parks for much of our trip, and wisely warned us not to expect any great wine deals since taxes (go figure) made the wines as expensive at point of origin as we paid for them in Canada! They had many other useful suggestions about our itinerary and tips on what to expect along the way, and also, after our rehearsal, went through our itinerary in detail, suggesting a few tweaks.
Oz caravan park cabin (in New Zealand, a 'motel').
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Feeding kangaroos at Cleland Wildlife Park, Adelaide.
The first of three wine regions we visited - The Barossa.
Twelve Apostles on the Great Ocean Road.
Once we were happy with our itinerary I booked the long lead-time items we’d identified. The key factor actually was locking-in accommodation in Tahiti. I’d kept an eye on an apartment that looked promising in Pana’auia, a small town a short distance from the capital Papaette. It had consistently great reviews and was very reasonably priced compared to most places I’d investigated. But in order to book it I had to make sure we could get to Tahiti, and from there to Oz. As best I could determine then there was really only one way to get to Tahiti from North America, and that was using Air Tahiti Nui (a great airline!) from Los Angeles. Fortunately they are partnered with Air New Zealand, so that drove our choice of airline, and meant that to get to Tahiti we also locked-in our round-trip flight from Toronto to Sydney, with a week-long stopover in Tahiti, returning from Cairns to Auckland and then, after a 4 week stopover in New Zealand, back to Toronto.
Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
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Stop on the national surfing championship, Snapper Rocks - Surfers Paradise on the horizon.
The second long lead-time item was accommodation in Sydney. After I’d done much of my research on Oz I had a few unanswered questions where local knowledge might be useful, so contacted the sister of a very good friend who has lived there for many years. In response to my three very simple questions, e.g ‘what’s a good car rental company?’, her husband sent me about 10 pages of notes on Oz, and much of that concerned Sydney, where they lived. On my list of places to stay I had Manly, and he had this suburb very high on his list of places to visit, so I took another look at accommodation there. To my surprise there was very little available, so I decided it would be prudent to book the best available then and there. I’m glad we did, because if I’d delayed even a bit I’m convinced we wouldn’t have found anything decent.
On the glass-bottomed boat, Great Barrier Reef, about to leave Oz...
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... for South Island, New Zealand, our 'land of the orcs' road from Queenstown to Glenorchy.
On the Crown Range, heading to Haast on the west coast. Cooler than Oz, and at this precise moment, not raining!
Fox Glacier.
The last long lead-time booking was Alice Springs and Uluru. Partly this was due to the number of visitors year-round, partly due to the complexity of our plan: fly in from Perth, stay for a few days including a (very long) one-day tour out to Uluru, then take the overnight train, The Ghan, to Adelaide, partly as a reward for roughing it in Uluru (46 Celsius on the day!), partly because we love train travel!
Pancake Rocks, Punakaiki.
Seal Colony, Cape Foulwind.
Leaving Marlborough Sound to cross Cook Strait.
View from our cottage, Island Bay, Wellington. Early next morning I saw the Southern Cross for the first time (thank you Crosby, Stills, and Nash).
Great visit to the Hobbiton set!
Other than these three long lead-time items most of our 90 day roadtrip was booked en route, looking out about 7 to 10 days and booking caravan parks, rental cars, and even internal flights (from Sydney to Perth for example). Thus while we had an overall plan we still had some flexibility. The following example requires an apology in advance to my Aussie readers: the original plan included a week in Tasmania, but as we began traveling in Oz I began to question whether we’d allowed enough time for New Zealand. Tasmania didn’t just take a week, because traveling there and back cost us two additional days flying, dropping/picking up rentals, and arranging accommodation near the airport on the mainland so we didn’t face too long a drive. Based on all this we made a decision in Alice Springs to scrub the Tasmanian part of our trip in order to add another week to New Zealand. And we are glad we did.
Bay of Islands, Russell, celebrating brightonbonnie's birthday.
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Auckland, seen from the ferry quay at Devonport.
If you haven’t already read my posts you can see the outcome of all this planning by starting the three series here:
https://steemit.com/travel/@brightongreg/tahiti-1-getting-familiar-with-the-island
https://steemit.com/travel/@brightongreg/australia-1-manly-new-south-wales
Or you can easily find the Oz and New Zealand series on #steemitworldmap.
brightonbonnie and I had a lot of fun on this trip, and I also had a lot of fun doing these posts. A good steem friend @nolasco introduced me to the Portuguese expression ‘recordar é viver’ - to remember is to re-live, and sharing these posts with you has allowed us to do this!
So on your travels take lots of photos and keep a journal, so you can re-live your journeys, and share them with us!
read me!
You can find this, and other exciting adventures from some great travelling Steemians at Steemit Worldmap -
!steemitworldmap -17.630260 lat -149.605600 long Tahiti d3scr
Looks like a trip of a lifetime! Beautiful shots. I would love to go to New Zealand's North Island.
It certainly was. Glad we did it when you did, as health issues would definitely get in the way right now, not serious, just enough to make 12 hours in a plane very uncomfortable! thanks for feedback.
I've been tied up for a while, getting back to steem now. Not traveling this winter so may be pushed to find original content - unless it's photos of snow! Take care.
Loved reading your posts. Planning is key to getting the best out of any trip. When I travel into the outback I always come across travellers who have done very little planning. Because of the vast distances here in Aus, planning is a MUST.
I am very happy you had a good time down under. If you return to my city Adelaide, please let me know. Would be great to catch up.
Hi @brightongreg! @tattoodjay is sending you 0.1 SBD tip and @tipU upvote
!
@tipU - send tips by writing tip! in the comment, get share of the service profit :)
awesome! you took the ghan! i was thinking about it back in aus but never did it. next time ill definitely give it a shot. great blogpost
Thanks for the feedback!
WoW! Amazing fotos! I see you have also visited the fox glacier :) its crazy, i thought on my images it was at least 3 times the size, i wonder if it was climatechange or just another angle when i took it. I followed you back since i really like your travelblog! Lets keep in touch :)
Glad you like the posts. Not traveling much right now so no new content, but hoping to do a big trip next winter to escape Canadian winter again!
I feel ya, pretty much the same in switzerland here :) My stepfather is canadian, vancouver is one off the nicest citys i have been in my life so far!! ...Wouldnt mind spending a winter there ;)
Van can be a bit dreary and damp in the winter, but the mountains are close by! I've spent some time there and like it better in the spring and summer. Cheers.
Wow great post. Lots of excellent information. I'd like to go some day.
It is great to see how much planning you did. When I was in the Outback I was surprised at how many visitor didn't do enough planning. They didn't realise how big the country is. I would so love to do the Ghan. That looks amazing. It's been on my bucket list for a while.
Thanks for the feedback - been tied up a few days so just catching up. I think coming from an equally big country like Canada we were prepared for the distances and planning required. The Ghan was well worth it. Cheers!
This is amazing... and I think your planning, with rehearsal thrown in is beyond meticulous! As I was reading this, I was just thinking how this one post brought back memories of your entire 90-day posts as we all read them... especially in the photographs - these seem to be a great collection to re-live the trip! Just like you said at the end: ...to remember is to re-live... What a wonderful recollection!! 🎕
Thanks for the kind words. I have been tied up a bit since finishing the series, hope to do some more on other trips soon. Hope you are well.
Lol... what timing! Right after I wrote here, I got tied up too in some writing assignments - just managed a couple of posts a day but couldn't follow up with the replies... I would start and fall asleep on the laptop! Lol... I am a little free-r now but am caught up instead with 'Qurator' - you must join us there when you continue with your posting here... Look forward to your return... and say 'Hi' to brightonbonnie too! Cheers... Ohhhhh, and...
🎅 Merry Christmas 🎄 ...and a Happy New Year ✨ to you and yours!!
First time coming across your blog, what an amazing trip it looks like you had from this post, will need to catch up with your trip though your other posts.
Glad you found me, and thanks for the resteem. It's funny how there is so much on steem that you never run across, and then - there it is. Following you now - see you are in NZ, great country which we really enjoyed.
Just read your Queenstown post, it was a lovely post, did the pilot get close to the mountains on your trip in and show them off?
Thanks for the follow, yes I'm in NZ.
Did you get to see Kai Iwi lakes on your travels?
In my first NZ post, from Cairns to Queenstown, the second photo shows the mountains as we descend towards the airport. We saw a bit of the Southern Alps as we came in but not the highest peaks unfortunately. Didn't get to the lakes - added to our rapidly growing to-do list - we are trying to return for a 2 month caravan trip but age and budget may work against us!
The mountains are pretty up close.
The lakes are on the north island further up, hope you guys will make it bake one day if not at least you got to enjoy what you saw.
One day hopefully - we have a plan, just need to get a window of opportunity...
<was here missing you :( <3
Yeh I've been tied up with other stuff the past while, also needed a break after doing the 90-day roadtrip series! Hope you are well.
i kind of thought so BUZZZ welcome back & 💖💖💖LY to see you again :D all alive ofer here & you??
Congratulations, Your Post Has Been Added To The Steemit Worldmap!
Author link: http://steemitworldmap.com?author=brightongreg
Post link: http://steemitworldmap.com?post=roadtrip-revisited-planning-the-90-day-tahiti-australia-new-zealand-roadtrip
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@martibis another QA check - all working OK! Sadly this is my last 90 day roadtrip post, but I did manage to get a Tahiti pin posted for the trip, since I wasn't able to put one there when you asked me to help beta test many many weeks ago!
There is actually a problem with some pins disappearing and reappearing, trying to reach @blueorgy to look at it, haha!
Noooo, you have to go travel again, so I can enjoy more of your content, haha!
I do have plans to post old trips lol! Some will be from before I kept a journal, so the content may have to be made up, as my memory is fading...
Bizzarro map - given your disappearing pin comment I checked Tahiti but what follows could also result from a memory lapse on my side. I'm sure I placed a pin there for a photo I entered in a challenge, but there's nothing like that.
What is there however is a pin for my first Tahiti post, which I don't think I did since it was done before you contacted me and I couldn't edit in the script line. And if I had I'm sure I would also have entered Tahiti #2 and #3. Would you have somehow added them to database? Or did I do it, and forgot to do 2 and 3?
Awesome, I can't wait for them to show up, fading memory or not, haha!
Yeah, well I mean it could only have gotten on the map if you added it! But the other one not being there at the moment, is probably the disappearing issue!
Probably it'll be fixed later this week!
it has been quite gteat tour as you mention reharsel since you start, nice photography and amazing tour you have made.
Thanks for the feedback!
Wow! There's an awful lot of planning gone into your trip! I'm glad you had a great time.
Thanks, appreciate the feedback from a traveler I admire!
Lol. Those flynets. I remember them! Such a necessity.
if you haven't seen the Uluru post there's a shot there of brightonbonnie demonstrating how to drink sparkling wine while wearing her flynet! So yes an absolute necessity!
It has bene an adventure following along reading and seeing your adventure sorry I have bene slack on commenting but I have bene swamped with starting up the Steemusa Community of recent and been a bit bad in keeping up with comments and such
Loved htis post, doing a rehearsal run for the Tripp’s you explained it was a brilliant idea and for sure it must have helped Shiloh the actual trip
Tip!
Thanks my friend! I've been a bit idle too after finishing that series, and also unexpectedly landed some consulting work, so now in the mornings instead of posting I actually have to do some work! Hope you are well.
Thanks doing fairly good
90 days long? How awesome and daring! Will do that one day! Photos look very promising, love them, Greg! Have fun!
Hey Greg and Bonnie!
I really enjoyed your recount of your trip to my beloved homeland! We are from Wollongong (about 70km South of Sydney).
We are actually going on a road trip from Adelaide to Melbourne in a week! I first spotted one of your posts as I was looking for information around the Adelaide area from fellow Steemians.
We have been up to your neck of the woods, actually - We did a three month trip to North America in 2015. We started in Vancouver, dropped down into the states after some time in Whistler, Jasper and Banff hit San Francisco, Yosemite, Las Vegas, Orlando, Washington DC, NYC, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City.
It was like a big "U" shape!
I loved Montreal.. we had this special moment of seeing these HUGE ice crystals hanging over the edge of a hill in the city near the university. It was a real wonderland. We didn't see snow until we got to Quebec City. Very very pretty place. So many fond memories.
Take care,
Nick
Thanks for your comments. We are about half-way between Toronto and Kingston so you would have passed right by! Epic trip, like ours, and you hit all the best spots in my view - except for the Maritimes, like Halifax or Prince Edward Island, which are also remarkable. Safe travels!
Thanks Greg!
We are currently in Adelaide, South Australia about to pick up our camper to travel across to Melbourne.
Very exciting! We LOVE Adelaide.
Cheers.
Nick
Enjoy! That was a fun part of our trip.
Haha.
We have been!!
https://steemit.com/travel/@nickmorphew/two-thickshakes-one-winner-and-adelaide-dazzles-us-with-sunny-weather