North Queensland and New South Wales, Australia
- seanick9
- Dec 2, 2025
- 13 min read
We are now on our next major leg of our Year of Wander - Australia! It was always our plan to follow the sun a bit on this trip, but at the same time try to optimize for not being in the hottest weather for a given area - so when we were planning our travel in Australia for early Spring, we chose to go north (towards the equator) for the first bit to see Anna’s mom in Magnetic Island and sisters Cal and Rita in the Brisbane area, then traveling south to Hobart to see the rest of Anna’s family.
The path to get to Australia from the west coast of the USA requires you to connect through a larger city, whether it be San Francisco, Vancouver BC or Los Angeles. We always choose Los Angeles as we like the facilities there, the Delta Sky Club, and the connections are solid through Delta. No matter where you want to go in Australia, you usually have to fly first to Sydney or Brisbane, and we chose Sydney as we wanted to visit there for a few days. It’s also a good idea to stay at the city you land in for a couple days, partly to deal with jet lag, and to ensure that a flight delay doesn’t mess up the rest of your plans. In our case we are doing slow travel, not trying to hit everything on a 2 week vacation, so it’s no big deal to stay in one place for a few days even if we didn’t have anything specific to see.
Sydney
Our journey from Seattle to Australia started with a flight from SEA-> LAX in the late afternoon, then catching the 10:00 PM flight from LAX to SYD, which then arrives at about 6:30 in the morning. I’m not particularly good at sleeping on flights- when you are on a plane for 15 hours though, it’s worth trying, and I think Emily and I both got a few good hours in the latter half of the flight. We made it safely to Australia! Customs line at SYD was long but not too bad. No baggage was lost and the taxi to get to the hotel from the airport was pretty uneventful.
I like Sydney, and we knew we’d be jet lagged for this part of the trip anyway. We stayed at a hotel in Wynyard near Darling Harbor, SKYE Suites, because it was a place where we could get a 2 bedroom suite for a reasonable price. We arrived at the hotel pretty early in the morning, so obviously our room wasn’t ready yet, fortunately they let us use the pool showers to freshen up and leave our bags with the bell desk. After showering, we went out to get a coffee, and then took Emily to the Tumbalong playground in Darling Harbor, a 15 minute walk from the hotel. After spending some time at the playground we returned to the hotel when our room was ready for us. The hotel room itself was great! The rooms were super modern, and had a kitchenette (though since we were really only there for a couple days, we didn’t bother to get any groceries.) We ordered room service for the first day since we were super jet lagged and wanted to get an early night’s rest.
While in Sydney we also were able to catch up with cousin Maddie (Calliope’s daughter), who is now working in Sydney and wanted to catch up with us for dinner one night! Emily was enamored with Maddie and drew her a few pictures. Maddie had hurt her foot so it was in a brace, but she seemed to be doing well and enjoying living in Sydney. We met her at Bar Luca which had some great burgers and brews.
Tumbalong Park Playground
This playground in Darling harbor was fantastic- we visited it a couple times and still only got to see about half of it. It was pretty warm weather in Sydney and really sunny, so we tried to keep Emily in the shady part of the playground (and out of the water park side). Emily loved climbing on the rope structure and must have rode the flying fox 50 times. We also cracked up watching some of the local birds (the Ibis, also known as Bin Chicken, are all over the place in major cities in Australia) and had some ice cream for a snack after a hard day’s play.
Ferry
While in Sydney, you have to get out on the water to see the Sydney Harbour bridge and the Opera house, and with luck, the easiest way to do that is to jump on the F3 ferry stop in Darling Harbor (Barangaroo), which has about a 15 minute ride to Circular Quay that sees both sights. Obviously we had to do that, then go and visit a local restaurant for lunch. If we’d had more time, it would have been fun to take that same ferry upriver which goes for quite a ways, but we had to go see Maddie for dinner later so didn’t want to cut things too fine time-wise. The ferry trip was pretty easy, quite reasonably priced and allowed us to get a couple of good tourist pictures!
Brisbane
After a few days in Sydney we flew to Brisbane. Noel met us at the airport with his car which he was kind enough to let us borrow for a few days, and we drove from Brisbane airport to Rita’s house in Toowoomba, about a 2 hour drive from the airport.
Toowoomba
Anna’s sister Rita lives in Toowoomba with her husband Ian, and we had rented an AirBnB near there so we could spend a couple days with them. We visited a nearby park, Queens park, which had a nice playground and a botanical garden. Emily played in the playground for a while one day, and on our next visit she spent 30 minutes running through the sprinklers at the park! Afterwards, we had some ice cream at Park House Cafe near there. We also visited Rita’s house, borrowed some books and art supplies and played with her cat. Rita also had us over for dinner a couple of times. We just spent a couple of days there until the weekend when we were all going to Bunya mountains, where the family had rented a large cabin for a few days.
Bunya mountains
I had no idea what to expect about Bunya mountains, other than that the term Mountain is used loosely. Bunya mountains are apparently on the continental divide, and one of the highest points on the continent- but it was only some 3300 feet elevation. It was an interesting drive to get there, and pretty entertaining seeing all the “Steep road” signs. We met up at a bakery about halfway there for lunch, then proceeded the rest of the way.
The lodging was one of the big cabins at the Bunya Mountains Accommodations development, and we stayed there for 3 days with Rita, Ian, Calliope, Noel, myself, Anna and Emily. When we checked in, Rita bought a couple bags of bird seed, which I didn’t think anything of at the time - until a few minutes after we checked in and a handful of parrots flew right up to the door to the dining room and perched up on the backs of some chairs. We ended up going outside and feeding the birds directly from our hands - and they came to visit us every couple of hours for the entire time we stayed there. All sorts of different parrots, crimson rosellas, king parrots, sulfur crested cockatoos, superb fairywrens, bush turkeys, magpies, and even some kangaroos. It was an incredible variety of wildlife that was almost tame with how close they came to us. Some of the birds would happily land on our arms, shoulders and even our hair!
On a couple of the days we went on a couple of bush walks along the trails, which were very pretty. We saw a pretty big python, heard the calls of lots of birds including the eastern whipbird, the catbird and many others. Unfortunately a few of us came home with ticks that we had to remove.
We had a few good meals, I made a big scramble one morning for breakfast and just scrambled eggs the other mornings. Rita made lasagna ahead of time and we had a taco night one night. We played games, there was Jenga, jigsaw puzzles, Candyland, and we went over to the tavern for one meal. It was overall a pretty fun weekend, and I would highly recommend visiting Bunya Mountains for a while, just for the wildlife alone!
The Gap
After the long weekend at Bunya Mountains, we drove back to Calliope and Noel’s house. They live in a suburb of Brisbane called The Gap, and have a nice rambler house that they were in the middle of remodeling! They intended on the remodel being done before we arrived but we all know how building projects go, and at any rate the place looked great already. It was super nice to spend some time with Cal and Noel, and we were lucky enough to be there for Halloween. Little did we know they live on one of the most famous streets for trick-or-treating in Australia. I thought they were crazy for having 3 big buckets full of candy and boxes of bags of chips as well, but people came by in groups of 10-15 kids for hours straight - they must have seen 300 kids! Apparently groups of kids shuttle to the neighborhood to celebrate what is not a super traditional Australian holiday. We got to go out and trick or treat a bit with Emily too - and since Cal is into Halloween, she let us borrow some costumes, both for the trick-or-treating and the Halloween party at Cal’s house afterwards! Emily also really liked meeting cousin Peter and his girlfriend, who came by the house a couple of times to play with her (and also help move a bunch of Cal and Noel’s furniture).
Ferry to Southbank, Playground, Streets beach
Brisbane has a river ferry that’s only $.50 to ride, that goes up and down the river with stops on either side. We had a coffee on the way- but note, they won’t let you take a coffee on the ferry! Oops, and it was too hot to chug so we just left it behind. On the ferry, Emily was pretty happy because one of the staff kept coming over to give her stickers and check on her. At the end, she announced over the intercom that it was Emily’s stop which made Emily really feel special.
We got off the ferry at Southbank, which had a playground, a pool, some restaurants and more. Emily played at the playground for an hour or so. There were a handful of climbing structures , followed by some ice cream. After that, we took Emily over to the water park - a large pool that had sandy beaches underneath! Emily and I then played in the water park for an hour or so until Anna was worried that Emily would get a sunburn, and then went to the food court to have some lunch, after which we rode back on the ferry to where we parked.
Nature reserve
Anna and Rita took Emily to the nature reserve at Walkabout creek which is just a few blocks from Cal’s house (We ran there a couple times and it’s up a very steep hill). They saw echidna’s, lizards, snakes, and an emu - then Emily found a friend to wander the trails with!
Bluey’s World
Anna and Cal also took Emily to see Bluey’s World where apparently Emily ran up and hugged Bluey multiple times! https://www.bluey.tv/blueys-world/explore/. We had gone to the Bluey exhibit in New York, but this was much larger and had more interactive activities. Anna wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside so she bought the paid picture at the end with Bluey and Bingo.
Thunderstorms and extreme weather
One of the nights we stayed with Cal, there was a massive thunderstorm that seemed to last off and on all day - it was pretty exciting! Thunder and lightning, very very frightening! We ended up going out for dinner that night and most of the time we were at the restaurant, lightning was still going strong. Apparently last week they had a massive hailstorm nearby that had baseball-sized hail - no word from Cal if it hit near her house or not. We saw a few smaller storms while we were there too. Pretty crazy extreme weather in Brisbane!
Magnetic island
We spent a bit of time with Anna’s mom, a couple weeks, at her house on Magnetic Island. Magnetic Island is a short ferry from Townsville which has a local airport, so it’s relatively easy to get to- a short flight from Brisbane, then a shuttle or cab to the ferry terminal from the airport. We’ve stayed there a few times before. It’s a pretty nice place with a pool, a covered veranda, and air conditioning in all of the bedrooms. Sue does most of the cooking and she’s a pretty good cook! It was nice to have a bit of downtime, and we swam in the pool almost every day. By the time we left, Emily was almost swimming across the pool by herself without floaties!
Townsville Strand water park
A couple of the days we were on Magnetic Island, we took the ferry over to Townsville to take Emily to the Townsville Strand water park, which she loved! We’d taken her there before when she was smaller but this time she was able to do pretty much everything there - water slides, splash pads, the buckets that fill with water then tip over, splashing everyone nearby. She had a great time here, and even though it didn’t seem like it would hold her attention for long, it was always a struggle to get her to leave after a couple hours of playing in the water. We went across the street to Seaview hotel for lunch both times. The drinks were great but the food was a bit hit or miss - had to send a steak back for being too rare and I NEVER send food back! Regardless we still enjoyed coming here enough to return a second time.
The local butcher runs a pool shop
Apparently, if you live on Magnetic Island, you get your meat and sausages from the pool store! We went there to pick up some meat for a barbecue and came back with a couple packages of maple bacon sausages which were quite tasty! Many of the businesses on the island have multiple uses, such as the post office which also has banking services and a gift shop, the Lava Lava cafe which has the Juniper & Co gift store, Bounce which is also a koala park, Arcadia village which has a pub and gift shop. I’m sure there are a ton of other examples - Makes sense, when there aren’t a ton of people living there, that you’d need places to have multiple business ideas to both fill the needs of the island, and to pay the rent.
Forts walk
We have gone on the forts walk a few times over the years, and sometimes we see wild Koalas and sometimes we don’t. The park ranger comes and sets some sticks to make little arrows on the main path pointing at where the koalas are sleeping every morning, and you just have to trek a little off the path to see wherever the arrows are pointing to see the koalas. Unfortunately sometime since we last came there has been a forest fire here, and many of the eucalyptus trees that the koalas call home have burned, so you have to go quite a bit further off the main path to see any koalas now. The first time we did the walk this visit we didn’t see any koalas. There were some arrows, but we didn’t follow them far enough apparently. The second time we did see one but it was quite a ways off the main path, and we had somewhere we had to be so didn’t follow the other arrows. It’s still a pretty walk, and at the top of the forts you can see a few of the beaches around the north east corner of the island.
Koala Park at Bounce
One day I took Emily to the Koala park at Bounce, where they give a bit of a tour of the property and introduce many of their resident animals. We saw a couple of their koalas, lizards (Skinks), a python snake, freshwater crocodiles, turtles, and a black cockatoo. It was a big group so of course it took a long time for each of the guests to get a chance to pet the animals. Emily tried to get to the front of the line, and pet each animal before going again to the back of the line to get another chance! She really enjoyed seeing the koalas, and tried to get the female one to eat the eucalyptus leaves she held up for it, but of course the koala was more interested in sleeping than eating given they are mostly nocturnal animals! Emily also enjoyed holding the snake, and went back for a couple more chances to hold it.
Magnetic Island brewery
This brewery is new since we last came to the island. It’s just a couple blocks from Sue and Mal’s house, on the Picnic Bay boardwalk. The beer here is pretty good, they have an homage to Washington State in the form of their Grant’s style IPA as well as a variety of other beers, sours, lagers etc. that you’d expect from a craft brewery, plus a cocktail option and wines if beer isn’t your thing - and there’s a food truck in the back which makes a variety of snacks. We didn’t get around to trying the food truck as our meals were mostly planned out with Sue and Mal.
Thai Again
We really enjoy the Thai restaurant, Thai Again, which is on the island - a quirky place where it’s really quite difficult to make a reservation. You have to actually go there and talk to someone to make a booking, which would be a week or so out. They don’t have a reservations website and they don’t answer the phone! But it’s worth the effort. The restaurant has a great selection of Thai dishes, which come out really fresh and tasty. The spice level is pretty decent even for me, and I love spicy food! And it’s a BYO place which means you can bring your own wine and beer to drink while you eat. They have a yard out the back that regularly has interesting wild life, I saw a ton of fruit bats there the first time I went, and this time saw some really pretty birds. Recommend making the trip if you are on the island.
Overall, we had a pretty great time hanging out with Anna’s family in Queensland! On to our next leg of the adventure, we’ve rented a house in Tasmania for a few months, and enrolled Emily in Kindergarten there! Hope you are all enjoying the journey as much as we are- and I’ll post more later. Happy holidays!
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