One Year Later - My Parents' Second Trip Down Under

A year ago (Oct. 3, 2008 to be specific) I travelled with my parents for the very first time to Australia. As an avid scuba diver, it had always been my dream to dive the Great Barrier Reef. With global warming, I was very keen to dive the GBR before the coral bleached and the fish life disappeared.

I spent 3 weeks traveling around Australia (2 weeks with my parents, the last week I dived my heart out in the GBR) and LOVED it! That's why, when I got back to work and heard about the Cisco ANZ PR Manager position I thought it was fate! And a chance of a lifetime to come back to Australia!

It was a bit of a "flashback" to then meet my parents at the Sydney International Terminal on Oct. 10, 2009 and bring them back to my place where they'd stay for a week and sight-see the places they missed last year and then we all headed out for the second week to Christchurch, New Zealand a place we were all visiting for the first time.

On their first day, we "Island Hopped" to some of the islands in the Sydney Harbour that are not always open and accessible to the public. Our first stop was to Fort Denison Island which used to be where convicts were confined, then it was used in the 19th century as a fort to protect Sydney Harbour until the time when the cannons on Fort Denison were no match for the steel-enforced battle ships that were coming into the Harbour. Now it's a great place for tourists to enjoy lunch at the cafe seven days a week. Note: For $1,000 a person, you can also welcome in the New Year from Fort Denison over a lovely dinner and champagne toast with a front row seat view of the fireworks over the Sydney Harbour Bridge at midnight.



After Fort Denison, we "hopped" to Shark Island where the National Park staff created a "Jurassic Park"-like atmosphere for us Island Hoppers.



On Sunday, Oct. 11 it was rainy and we took a chance that by heading to the Northern beaches we could find some sunshine. And it worked - we headed to Palm Beach and while early on it sprinkled and was overcast, by lunch time it was beautiful and sunny.



On Tuesday, Oct. 13, we enjoyed dinner at Cafe Sydney which has a spectacular view of both the Sydney Harbour Bridge but also Circular Quay and the Sydney Opera House. Since Mom's birthday was just a few weeks ago (Sept. 29), we had a belated birthday cake celebration.