A journey of one's own

my first big-girl solo trip to Australia

Despite this being one of the most exciting things I have ever done in my life, I’ve put off writing about it until now. Part of that comes from a selfish desire to keep these memories to myself, jealously guarded and magpied from the world. The other part is that so many people have asked me ‘how was your trip?’ and I have had so few uninspiring words to return that I have felt that it is almost obsolete to write anything down at all.

But I need to write this down before the memories begin blur and curl at the edges. Already I am beginning to forget the minutiae of each day and wondering where, when and how of basic parts of this trip, and my little past version is flickering slightly. So, without much pomp, ceremony or pretty words, I’ll just shove all of this down and hope it serves to remind me in a few years time.

The context

Firstly, Virginia Wolf always said a woman should ‘have a room of one’s own’ to write in, and I think the modern equivalent of that is that a woman should have at least one trip alone in their life. I’ve done quite a bit of travelling on my own over the years, but nothing very big - a few European things here and there. I’ve always, always wanted to do something huge and massive and scary.

Secondly, since I was very little, I have been obsessed with the idea of visiting Australia. I read We of the Never Never which is a niche autobiographical novel written by Jeannie Gunn in 1908 about her experiences on a remote cattle ranch in the Northern Territory and then watched that Baz Luhrmann film from 2008 with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman and I never looked back. I bizarrely felt that those two things were enough information to carve out an entire life long romance with a country and ambition to visit.

Thirdly, and I suppose most crucially, my very good friend Emily applied for some funding to do some of her PhD in Australia, and I jokingly said ‘if you get that funding i’ll come out and visit you’, and the universe said bet.

And that’s it. That’s literally how the trip came to be.

The planning

I saved up for about 10 months to go, and the whole trip cost me just over £3,500. Which I think is quite respectable when you consider the flights alone were over a grand.

My friend Emily was living in Geelong, Victoria, just outside of Melbourne, and though it was no Jeannie Gunn in the Northern Territory, I thought it was a reasonable place to start. It meant that I’d have a friendly face to begin my journey with, and honestly I was having difficulties with organising my thoughts around the planning. The one thing no-one tells you about solo travel is that you have all the choice - which means you have all the choice. Trying to decide what you want to do and when and how is actually a lot more difficult than you’d expect when you have no one to argue with about it.

In the end - and actually rather last minute - I threw my predicament into ChatGPT and asked it what it thought. It give me a wildly unrealistic agenda, so I returned to old reliable and went to the library and got a few books instead. What came out was a mash of the two, and actually I think it worked out pretty well.

I decided pretty early on that I didn’t want to do huge swathes of travelling. I have had a stressful year at work and in my personal life, and I really didn’t want to spend most of my trip in an airport. So, despite the opinion of almost everyone I spoke to who told me to ‘make the most of it and travel to Perth!’, I rented a car and agreed with myself that I was just going to stay in the state of Victoria - which looked green and lovely on the map. It meant I’d miss out on meeting friends in other parts of the country - a bit of a blow when you don’t know if you’ll ever go back - but it felt like the right decision. Spoiler: It was the right decision.

The flight

I flew from Manchester to Doha and then Doha to Melbourne (and then the same in reverse) on Qatar Airways. I’m including this bit because I know there are different schools of thought about whether to fly to Singapore or Dubai, and while I can’t compare them, I know that Doha airport was massive and had very helpful staff on the way back when all my flights got delayed.

Qatar as an airline was fine. I had the little baggie of eye mask, toothbrush and blanket, but the plane was very small. The food was good though.

Accommodation

If you’re just hear for the tips, I’ll include all of my accommodation down below. Don’t feel you need to stay for my blow-by-blow account - I recommend wholeheartedly all of them, though for different reasons.

Jan Juc - the Nook - One Night

Port Campbell - The Cabin - Three Nights

Hall’s Gap - Tim’s Place - Two Nights

Elwood, Melbourne - Elwood Loft - Two Nights

Rye, Mornington Peninsula - Three Nights

The rest of the trip was spent at my friend’s accommodation which I can’t share for privacy reasons!

The trip

As mentioned I started in Geelong for two days to get over jet lag. Emily and I went for coffee and we went swimming and shopping and for dinner, it was a relaxed couple of days while I tried (and failed) to adjust to not only a different timezone but also a completely different season. Travelling in October and November meant that it wasn’t hot hot, but by British standards, the second it hit 15 degrees I considered it warmer than our summer. I also spent a lot of time eating Tim Tams and hummus straight out of the pot.

I commenced my journey down the Great Ocean Road - or like, towards it, to stay for a night in Jan Juc (just outside of Torquay).

I completely get why it is called Torquay. Huge ocean vista and creamy yellow-white sand, it did feel a bit like I was in Cornwall. The only exception was the incredible vibrant birdlife flitting between the dunes and the coastal paths - so different to our own British LBB jobbies (Little Brown Birds). I saw Rosellas and silver-eyes within seconds, and even a Nankeen Kite that hovered for seconds before darting down and carrying away a lizard in its beak.

I walked along the coastal path from Jan Juc beach to Bell Beach which apparently has a very famous surfing wave - not that I really understood what I was looking at (all waves look the same to me!). There were a few little surfers bobbing about in the white tip foam, the sea so clear when it stilled you could see the board’s reflection on the sand beneath the waves and I watched them for a bit - though they didn’t do much surfing. The sport mainly seems to consist of sitting and shouting at one another.

I stayed at a great airbnb called the Nook , which was in a quiet residential area. which I couldn’t recommend more. It was stunningly well put together and had the biggest most comfiest bed ever; I had the best sleep.

That evening I went out to watch the sunset across the beach. The temperature had dropped and the wind picked up and the whole place glowed blood red and nectarine with a thin bleed of pastel pink along the horizon. On my return to the airbnb, 5 huge red kangaroos hopped out in front of my car - almost the size of my roof!

The next morning I continued driving along the Great Ocean Road, with the intention of getting to Port Campbell and my next airbnb by the evening. I was going via the Great Otoway Forest - a huge swathe of national park which served to replenish the area trees that had been planted - which is most famous for the 200-ish waterfalls across the region.

The weather had dropped to muggy and grey as I reached the forest, but that only enhanced the great emerald greens of the giant ferns of the trees. I parked up in a car park that was almost empty after following an old gravel track, and snacked on some more hummus and Tim Tams (not to spoil this for you, but I largely ate those two things exclusively on this trip). As I was sitting alone looking at the tree canopy, I heard I noise that resembled pan-pipes being played melodically by a group of people. Shocked - because I thought I was alone - I looked around for the players, but could hear nor see anyone close by. I assumed it must have come from someone further off between the trees that I just couldn’t see, but after sitting back down, the noise came again, but this time louder and closer! As I looked to my left, I saw it was an Australian Magpie stood on a fence, whistling for my hummus. The sound is one of the most beautiful and ethereal, and I know many Aussies hate the magpies for ‘swooping season’, but I don’t think I could share their dislike. It really was a stunningly ghostly noise.

I went on a hike to see the Kalimna falls - supposedly named for Kalimna means ‘beautiful’. There are two falls, approximately 10km from the carpark, which I felt was enough of a hike for me. I followed the path, seeing no-one, but being deafened by a cacophony of birds, so loud and pressing that it almost gave me a headache. It was a gorgeous display of wildlife that we don’t often get in the UK. I spent a lot of time just listening, trying to pull at the threads of the bird’s noises and figure out their distinctions in their mash of noise. Without any signal on my phone, I was unable to google anything and so genuinely just had to unpick the wall of sound myself.

The falls themselves were, like their namesake, very beautiful and I stayed there for some time before wandering onwards. No one came, no-one disturbed the peace except for me. I dipped in the pool beneath the waterfall for a few moments and then lay on a tree that had fallen to dry off. It had been worn smooth where, I assume, countless bottoms had sat before me.

The afternoon saw me continuing my drive along the Great Ocean Road (built by WW2 soldiers for their fallen comrades in one of the biggest remembrance memorials in the world). I saw an echidna plodding along the side of the road, and a Koala on a verge. Both were much larger than I expected and I screamed when I saw both of them.

I stopped in Apollo Bay for some coffee, where I had my first (and last) most horrible coffee of the trip (why in the whole world of coffee would you choose to serve illy?) and lay on the beach for a bit, watching some blokes play with a piece of seaweed that had been thrown up on the sand.

Port Campbell was quite disappointing. It had been largely wrecked by a storm a few weeks earlier and nothing was open except a chippy and a small general store. My airbnb was up on a farm in a cosy little cottage that looked out on the bay and into the countryside. I felt properly at home there, and spent much more time in that airbnb than any other (even if I did think it was haunted!). It had a lovely veranda to sit out and drink coffee and at night it got dark - like really dark.

I spent the next few days at a spa in Warrnambool (about an hour’s drive away) and popping about to see the local countryside. I loved how quiet it was around there.

By Friday though, I was ready to leave the coast behind and head for the mountains! Despite the peace, I was beginning to become a little bit lonely on my own and had become quite anxious about silly little things. My Tim Tam consumption had also reached shocking new heights, and it definitely felt time to see my friend Emily again.

The Grampians

I’m going to include a gallery here and try to be brief, because I think I could talk at length for hours about the Grampians. I’ve always been a mountains girl over a coast-and-beach gal, preferring the pressing silence of towering monolithic rock to the hush of the sea, and I think I’d like to write a bit more about it in depth and with the poetry it deserves at another point.

What you need to know here is that we did some climbing - bouldering and sport - and we had a really nice time. We stayed in some eco cabins run by a friendly guy named Tim (Tim’s Place). If you are ever in Hall’s gap, I would recommend these dorm - style suites to you in a heart beat; Tim has a community garden with chickens you can cuddle and did everything he could to make us feel unbelievably welcome.

We saw the Milky Way in the evening and did some hiking; the weather became much hotter over this weekend and it felt like a real proper holiday. In the mornings, I sat out and watched the kangaroos, who lounged across the grass like large, lazy rabbits, totally unphased by us, and who allowed their joeys to take a peek at us.

One evening, while we were cleaning up after dinner, a huge possum climbed onto our porch to take a look at what we were up to, and we drank wine to the deafening roar of cicadas.

This was an incredibly special weekend, and one I won’t be forgetting in a hurry.

Melbourne

The following week saw me in Melbourne, which was a lot city-style excursions including the Immigration Museum (a must-visit), coffee shops and other bits of shopping. I’ll be honest, city life doesn’t quite enthral me as much as other outdoorsy things, and so much of the time spent here is a blur. Melbourne is a very nice city and I felt very safe there, but really it’s not my space.

I stayed in a suburb called Elwood, which I liked a lot as it was very close to the beach and also felt safe and quiet. I stayed on the beach every evening until it got dark, listening in to other group’s conversations and parties. I had started to get a bit lonely again.

Philip Island

I’ll talk more about Philip Island in another post because it deserves its own write up! Here I took a boat trip to see the Fur Seal colony, and it really was spectacular. The noise and smell were beyond what I had expected, and I just loved watching these massive silly little creatures jump and roll off the cliff faces and turn in the water with their flippers up.

I made a short video about it on YouTube if you’d like to watch it.

The Mornington Peninsula

My final few days in Australia were spent on the Mornington Peninsula, an extremely affluent area with massive houses and gorgeous blue-green sea fronts. Again, this was bookshop browsing, coffee-drinking and sunbathing - not much to discuss- but I honestly had a much better time than I did in Melbourne. It was quieter with much more wildlife, and looked exactly like Italy (the main town is called Sorrento!). I hiked up to the Point Neapan lookout (an old and eerie military training and firing range) in order to see the plovers, but could'n’t see them.

Overall

The best trip I’ve ever done.