Walk It Out

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The best way to see a destination is often by setting off on foot. I am that proverbial person that says, “We can walk it.” Don’t know what to do with the day, then start walking. I find you stumble upon some of the most significant discoveries when you take to the pavement or the off-beaten path. It is a fabulous learning experience with discoveries around every bend.

Australia has plenty of walks to discover. Or hikes if you are in for a bit more workout. I’ve climbed an array of gorges, canyons, and more! I’ve had the thrill of experiencing a climb up Peak’s Passage on Hamilton Island, trekking around King’s Canyon Rim, and scurrying down the hillsides in the Blue Mountains to witness cascading falls. No matter your state or territory, you will find somewhere unique to explore on foot.

Australia makes it even easier to Walk it Out.

Australia has what is known as the Great Walks of Australia. For the fitness buff, nature buff, and explorer, these are a variety of walks throughout the regions and in varying degrees of difficulty. Some are multiple days, and some you can do only part of. No matter your choice you need to try one.

Walk it Out in Australia.

Here is a list of the Great Walks:

  • The Arkaba Walk– Located in South Australia, is a 4-day walk of moderate intensity traversing the Flinders Ranges. It is best done from March to October.
  • Murray River Walk-Located in South Australia, is a 4-day walk rated easy that takes along one of Australia’s greatest rivers. It is best explored from May to September.
  • Bay of Fires Lodge Walk-Located in Tasmania, is a 4-day walk of moderate intensity as you explore the northeastern part of Tasmania along Mt. William National Park. It is best done from October to May.
  • Cradle Mountains Hut Walk-Located in Tasmania, is a 6-day walk rated moderate to hard discovering World Heritage areas along the famous Overland Track. It is best experienced from October to May.
  • Freycinet Experience Walk-Located in Tasmania, is a 4-day walk of moderate level. This walk will take you through the pink granite Hazard Mountains, and you will see the famed Wine Glass Bay. This walk is best done from October to April.
  • The Maria Island Walk-Located in Tasmania, is a 4-day walk with an easy to moderate rating. Explore eucalyptus forests and spot amazing wildlife on this trek. Plan this walk for October to April.
  • Three Capes Lodge Walk-Located in Tasmania, is a 4-day walk of moderate level open year round. It is fully guided and walks along the Tasman Peninsula.
  • Scenic Rim Trail-Located in Queensland, is a 4-day walk rated moderate to hard. It is accessed from Brisbane and explores South East Queensland’s Main Range Park. It is best done from February to November.
  • Twelve Apostles Lodge Walk-Located in Victoria, is a 4-day walk of moderate level. It explores the famed Great Ocean Road. It is best experienced from September to May.
  • Cape to Cape Walk-Located in Western Australia, is a 4-day walk of moderate intensity exploring the landscapes along the Margaret River. Plan this walk from March to June and September to November.
  • Classic Larapinta Trek in Comfort-Located in the Northern Territory, is a 6-day walk listed as moderate to hard. It will take you along the high ridge lines of the MacDonnell Ranges. This walk is best done from April to September.
  • Seven Peaks Walk-Located in New South Wales, is a 5-day walk. It is rated moderate to hard with options. This walk takes place on Lord Howe Island, a Unesco World Heritage listing. Operational months for this walk are April and May, and September thru November.

For more information, contact your Australia Travel Expert here at Boomerang Escapes. I can guide you to what will work with your travel plans. Until then, happy walking!


Lisa Rossmeissl is the owner of Boomerang Escapes, a home-based agency located in Old Bridge, New Jersey with agents in TN, MS, and WI. 

She has been a professional travel consultant since 2008 and specializes in Australia and the South Pacific. Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Fiji, and Cook Islands are among the specialist certificates she holds.  Her agency’s focus is on creating custom itineraries with their client’s wants, desires, and budgets in mind.  She and her planners believe in getting to know the traveler to ensure they have a vacation to remember.  With each planner specializing in a different market area, Boomerang Escapes can offer a wide variety of leisure vacation planning.

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Glenrowan-Home of Ned Kelly

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Glenrowan-Home of Ned Kelly can be found in the state of Victoria.

 

Are you familiar with our US History? Specifically do you recall in your history lessons the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral? It was an infamous shootout in the American West during the late 1800s in the town of Tombstone, Arizona. I mention it because it was exactly what I thought of when I was introduced to Ned Kelly on my first visit to Australia. The whole trip was a reminder of how closely tied our histories are with Australia despite being located on opposite ends of the world.


Like our own famous “Cowboys” from the Gunfight, Australia had its own shootout with its “Bushrangers”, led by the outlaw Ned Kelly.

Ned and his gang had been alluding the police for two years, but in 1880 they had their final showdown in Glenrowan. Kelly was not shot, but taking into custody. He was convicted and sentenced to death. His last words are reportedly said to have been “such is life.”

He still stands as a cultural icon and one of the most written about Australians in Australia. Some sympathizing and seeing him more of Robin Hood then the outlaw and murderous villain he was convicted of being.

Journalist Martin Flanagan wrote:
“What makes Ned a legend is not that everyone sees him the same—it’s that everyone sees him. Like a bushfire on the horizon casting its red glow into the night.” From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Kelly>

What else is great about making a stop in Glenrowan to see Ned?

You can tie your history lesson to one of Australia’s well known and oldest wine regions dating back to 1870. The area has 13 growers and 7 cellar doors. Shiraz is the main wine produced along with delightful fortified wines. A winery worth making a stop and taste at is Baileys of Glenrowan. They have been in the wine business for 145 years with a spectacular site in the Warby Ranges. If you enjoy these wines and consider yourself a true wine drinker, you may be interested in joining their 1870 wine club. So, let’s raise a glass to Ned Kelly and the other the legend makers that have shaped our country’s histories.

 


Lisa Rossmeissl is the owner of Boomerang Escapes, a home-based agency located in Old Bridge, New Jersey with agents in TN, MS, and WI. 

She has been a professional travel consultant since 2008 and specializes in Australia and the South Pacific. Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Fiji, and Cook Islands are among the specialist certificates she holds.  Her agency’s focus is on creating custom itineraries with their client’s wants, desires, and budgets in mind.  She and her planners believe in getting to know the traveler to ensure they have a vacation to remember.  With each planner specializing in a different market area, Boomerang Escapes can offer a wide variety of leisure vacation planning.

Lisa RossmeisslGlenrowan-Home of Ned Kelly
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Amazing Facts About Koala Joeys

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1. Baby koalas are called Joeys. All marsupial babies are called joeys – kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, tasmanian devils, possums & bilbys. The meaning/origin is unknown – it’s possibly just a diminutive used at that time for any small animal. Joey as a baby marsupial was first recorded in use in 1839.
The use of the word joey may have started with the word being applied for a British fourpenny coin. Politician Joseph Hume promoted the use of the fourpenny, thus the coin developed the slang name joey after him.

2. The first time you see a koala joey it is already 6 months old. Koala joeys are born as tiny naked creatures that don’t look anything like a koala. They move straight into the pouch, and remain unseen until they emerge at around 6 months old.
Actual emergence takes time. The joey first pokes his head out of the pouch at 5.5 months, and fully emerges at 6 to 7 months. By 8 to 9 months the joey becomes too large to get into the pouch, and spends all his time on his mother’s belly or back.

3. Koalas invented pro-biotics. Koala joeys eat ‘pap’ – a special substance produced by their mother that looks like poo and acts like a probiotic. It contains gut flora that the joey needs to process eucalyptus leaves. The mother koala produces it from her caecum (a special chamber in her large intestine) and delivers it from her cloaca, so though it looks a bit like poo, its not.
Pap is absolutely essential to a koala’s health. Wildlife Carers with orphaned koala joeys will frequently ask the wildlife care community for a postal delivery of pap from a koala mother – any koala mother will do, the closer the better but any is better than none. Imagine receiving that package of squishy green slurry in the mail!

4. Koala joeys are born out of their mother’s central vagina. Female koalas have three vaginas.

Why? Its complicated, and deserves a complete blog on the subject. Suffice to say that the two lateral (side) vaginae are for the passage of sperm to the uteri, and the median (central) vagina is for birth.
5. Koala joeys are born high in a tree. There is no danger of them falling to the ground – they are so tiny they get trapped in their mother’s fur. At birth a koala joey weighs only 1 gram – as much as a single sultana/raisin – and is only 2cm long.

It’s Koala Joey Season in the state of Victoria right now. All over the state wild koalas can be seen with joeys – hotspots are The You Yangs near Melbourne, the Great Ocean Road and Raymond Island, East Gippsland.
Echidna Walkabout runs the following tours to see koalas in the wild – with a high chance of seeing koala joeys each year from September to November:
Wildlife Journey 4 days
Great Ocean Road 3 days
Koalas & Kangaroos IN THE WILD 1 day
For more information contact:
Janine Duffy
janine@echidnawalkabout.com.au
T: +61 (0)3 9646 8249
Echidna Walkabout Nature Tours & Koala Clancy Foundation
http://www.echidnawalkabout.com.au http://koalaclancyfoundation.org.au

*Reprinted with permission from Echidnawalkaobut


Lisa Rossmeissl is the owner of Boomerang Escapes, a home-based agency located in Old Bridge, New Jersey with agents in TN, MS, and WI. 

She has been a professional travel consultant since 2008 and specializes in Australia and the South Pacific. Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Fiji, and Cook Islands are among the specialist certificates she holds.  Her agency’s focus is on creating custom itineraries with their client’s wants, desires, and budgets in mind.  She and her planners believe in getting to know the traveler to ensure they have a vacation to remember.  With each planner specializing in a different market area, Boomerang Escapes can offer a wide variety of leisure vacation planning.

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Little Penguins of Phillip Island

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I was first introduced to the Little Penguins at Featherdale Wildlife Park in August 2011 during my first trip to Australia. Featherdale is located just outside of Sydney and makes for a great day trip for visitors wanting to get up close and personal with some of Australia’s most famous wildlife.

As our trip continued along the Southeast coast of Australia to Melbourne, I got the experience of a lifetime at Phillip Island, which is home to The Little Penguins.

Phillip Island has a wealth of activities for visitors to partake in with great landscape and wildlife. Some favorites are visits to the Churchill Island Heritage Farm and the Koala Conservation Centre, but Phillip Island has probably become most well known for the Penguin Parade. The island is one of the Little Penguins’ homes that come in each night to their nests.
The penguins are the smallest of all the penguin species. They have homes along the rocky coastlines of New Zealand, Tasmania, and Australia’s southern coastline like Phillip Island. The penguins are under increased threat from non-native carnivores, and areas such as Phillip Island have become national parks that work to protect and conserve these tiny creatures.

Phillip Island has set up an amazing opportunity for educating visitors while allowing them an up close and personal glance at these cute creatures. This is an impeccable experience that allows visitors to see the creatures make their nightly trek up into the rocky shore banks to return to their nests. Hundreds or more birds each night come ashore and make their waddle to the nests. Visitors can choose from several watch options for viewing from the main area at Summerland Beach to personal guided eco-tours. My personal view back in 2011 was from the Penguin Plus Viewing Platform. I highly recommend spending the extra few dollars for a closer viewing station for a more intimate experience and a front-row seat.
Listening to the bird’s chatter and call out to one another as we watched them make their nightly journey was truly amazing. It didn’t even matter that we were getting wet in a light rain that had begun to fall. I was literally close enough to reach out and touch them but sadly was not allowed. Photography is not allowed either. However, the shop at the end of the tour has professional photographs available for sale in various formats. I took home several of the postcard photos, one of which you see here. Animal lover, bird lover, wildlife enthusiast, or not, you will love and be amazed by these little birds and their nightly trek home. Photo courtesy of www.visitphillipisland.com

 


Lisa Rossmeissl is the owner of Boomerang Escapes, a home-based agency located in Old Bridge, New Jersey with agents in TN, MS, and WI. 

She has been a professional travel consultant since 2008 and specializes in Australia and the South Pacific. Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Fiji, and Cook Islands are among the specialist certificates she holds.  Her agency’s focus is on creating custom itineraries with their client’s wants, desires, and budgets in mind.  She and her planners believe in getting to know the traveler to ensure they have a vacation to remember.  With each planner specializing in a different market area, Boomerang Escapes can offer a wide variety of leisure vacation planning.

Lisa RossmeisslLittle Penguins of Phillip Island
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