Reflections of Australia

It's hard to believe we've been away for 4.5 months now and it's time to leave Australia and head to New Zealand.  We've seen such a small part of an immense country but here goes!

• It was lovely to spend time with family and friends and just what we needed after 3 months in South East Asia
• Sydney is a very beautiful city and especially the harbour inlets and beaches with Hobart being similar on a much smaller scale
• Everything here is very easy due to it's similarities with home (you almost start to miss the challenge!)
• Despite what we believed the weather has been really mixed from extremely hot to quite cold (in Victoria and particularly Tasmania) and it has rained quite a bit (more of a British summer at times!)
• The distances are vast and whilst you can easily get around hiring your own transport or flying it is quite pricey. In fact most things with the exception of fuel seem a bit more expensive than at home (although that might just be how it seems after being in such a cheap part of the world before we came here)
• Communications are in the main terrible!  Wifi availability is very patchy and often only available on a paid for basis. Tasmania is particularly poor
• It feels like the country is desperately trying to do the right thing it terms of it's past and the impact on the local indigenous people but to us it's all felt like a bit of a token gesture
• The landscape is lovely, in particular in Tasmania although it's been difficult to be blown away by it when you compare it to home/Europe (accepting we were in the mountains which are similar and the jungle/barrier reef/central deserts we expect will be!)
• However the coasts along Victoria and Tasmania are wild and beautiful and the history of the shipwrecks in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries was very sobering
• It's definitely made us appreciate our right to roam in Scotland, both from a legal and practical perspective. Even if you can roam legally here the vegetation (and some of the wildlife) makes it almost impossible
• There's so much more to explore and see here...but if you're looking to be taken out of your comfort zone then the coastal plains of Australia isn't for you!
• The people were very friendly and everywhere we went we got a smile and "G'day"
• The beer and wine are very good as is most of the food. However we were surprised to learn that after the USA, Aussies are the most obese with over 60% being overweight. They do love their pies though, which after sampling a couple we can understand why!
• They are as obsessed with their politics as we are; there's been a leadership "crisis" with their PM and if they voted to change him, it would mean they would have had 6 in 8 years. Whilst voting is compulsory here, we understood that, like in the UK, a lot of people were getting very disillusioned with it
• Aussies are very patriotic, which is evidenced through their love of sport (they were thrashing England again at cricket!) and it was good to experience being here on Australia Day (26th Jan)