Remainder of the Australia Trip / by Rongjie Lu

While these have been edited for some time now, i realized finding a good source of internet while traveling through the Southern Island of New Zealand may be harder than expected. Considering that my last two accommodations only allowed for 200-500 MBs of wifi usage and a majority of the areas that I traveled barely had signal (being in smaller towns in the mountains and all), uploading high definition images was definitely out of the question.

BUT - with all of that said, I can proudly present you the pictures from the rest of my journey in Australia having finally found decent internet in Christchurch.

From Sydney, I moved on to Newcastle, Port Macquarie, Gold Coast, and Brisbane. Unfortunately for me, most of that time was spent driving and trying to avoid the rain, but I was able to get a few nice images when I can:

Out of that, I've composed two Galleries: Blue Mountain & Newcastle and Australia - New Castle to Brisbane:

The galleries are displayed below as previews, but can be found on separate links under the Photo Galleries section as well.

Blue Mountain & Newcastle

While I was enjoying a nice afternoon of conversations at a local cafe in Sydney, Blue Mountain came highly recommended, so I made a stop prior to heading forward to Newcastle. While I did get quite lost due to some in accurate google map location guides and a lack of signal in certain areas of the mountains, I was able to find an extremely beautiful area called Jenolan Caves, where I took a nice walk along the river walk and saw an lyrebird (according to the Australian lady who happened to walk by).

Newcastle, on the other hand, will forever be remembered as the place of the horrid sunburn - where weather channel lied to me on the reality of how cloudy it would be during the day (it was supposed to be cloudy all day with rain in the afternoon. It became extremely sunny less than 30 minutes after I left the house). The beach and walks were absolutely beautiful, so in the end, I did enjoy myself even in horrible pain.

Locations in this gallery include those below and surrounding areas:

  • Blue Mountains

  • Jenolan Caves

  • Newcastle Wharf

  • Nobbys Beach

 

Australia - Newcastle to Brisbane

Newcastle to Brisbane was more than a day's trip, but considering how there was little I can do besides trying to avoid the rain as much as I can, but I was able to stop by some fun place. I had the most fun at Springbrook National Park when it came to pictures - I was lucky enough to run into a most photogenic little lizard and enjoyed trying to find all sorts of fun fungi.

The night I drove into Brisbane, I stayed in a lovely Airbnb (it reminded me of something from a historical novel) where the designer that lived there told me that the best pace to view the sunrise was from Mt. Coot-tha, so I woke up early in the morning to try to catch it and boy was I not disappointed. It was stunning and the pictures do not do it enough justice, so I'd highly recommend it if you're planning to visit Brisbane to see in person.

Locations in this gallery include those below and surrounding areas:

  • Springbrook National Park

  • Gold Coast

  • Mt Coot-tha