Australia

In April 2015 Thomas and Brigitta Dahlgren, friends we met in Botswana in the mid-1970s, invited us to join them on a trip to Australia. MyPlanet, a travel bureau in Gothenburg, helped assemble a programme with our individual choices of local tours. In March 2016 we set off,  7 from Nybro and 2 from Lund. We flew Copenhagen — London Heathrow — Hong Kong — Sydney — Adelaide — Alice Springs — Cairns — Hong Kong — London HR — Copenhagen. The trip lasted three weeks.

Tourism is a major industry in Australia, and there is an enormous offering of activities. We joined tours which included visitors from other countries. The smallest tour had 11 persons including 9 of us. The largest was a catamaran outing with perhaps 90 plus lot of crew. All of the tours we took were excellent, and the guides were outstanding. In Australia a guide is responsible for everything: driving and guiding, and on longer tours for sleeping arrangements and meals.

Whenever we came to a stop, the guides always pointed out where the toilets were, sometimes with a warning about how far it was to the next acceptable facility. In general Australia is outstanding in public toilets: always near, clean and free. Almost everywhere we went was warm, and restaurants and cafes always offer unlimited cold drinking water, refilling your water bottle without charge. This is different from Sweden where finding a public toilet depends on local knowledge, and where many restaurants charge customers for a glass of water. On the other hand pedestrians have no right of way. There are even signs at crossings warning pedestrians to yield to vehicles. Cross at the lights if possible.

These pages describe some of our experiences.