Know Magic

My Australian tour of the coast between Sydney and Melbourne has been one of the most superb vacations I have ever experienced. There was beautiful scenery, heaps of things to do and friendly Australian people.

There are plenty of car rental Sydney and car rental Melbourne options and that’s definitely the handiest way to experience the coast. Car hire agencies are more than happy to help you arrange the tour of your dreams. Car agencies are constantly running promotions and deals. I managed to find a fantastic one way special to Melbourne at a car hire in Sydney.

I headed south from Sydney through Royal National Park. The Grand Pacific Drive is exciting. There are lots of coastal villages along the way and I enjoyed exploring and spending some time there. I also spent a a few hours visiting the bustling city of Wollongong before heading to Jervis Bay.

The next daybreak I hopped on a cruise to see the resident dolphin population that Jervis Bay is famous for. The immaculate white sand beaches made it extremely hard to leave given that I am visiting from England. Continuing my journey further south, I was able to buy some authentic craft items in Tilba Tilba.

I stopped at Mimosa Rocks National Park and swam in the lagoon before stopping at Tathra Beach to watch some surfers and enjoy the beach. That evening I lodged in the stylish village of Metung and had a wonderful seafood platter in one of the lakeside eateries.

Wilsons Promontory National Park is home to amazing scenery and an abundance of wildlife such as kangaroos, koalas and wombats. The place is filled with activities to keep you busy, I spent an entire day hiking through forests, exploring beaches and climbing on granite mountains.

Next stop was Fish Creek, a small, quirky and thriving town with arts and crafts, books and cafes. I took the bridge over to Phillip Island, a popular family stop. At Nobbies Centre you can watch the penquins strutting up and down the beach and see one of Australia’s most remarkable fur seal settlements.

As initially planned, I ended my trip in Melbourne making my last stop at the heritage farm on Churchill Island. Renting a car was a convenient and fun way to do this spectacular coastal drive from Sydney to Melbourne. Next time I may get a car rental in Melbourne and do this trip the other direction!

Are you one of those Americans, professing to love freedom, who has become boxed in by a framework which allows very little of that often illusory ideal? Have you allowed yourself to become enslaved by your cell phone, monthly deadlines at the office, baseball games for your kids, worry about payments on your house you can hardly afford and the demands of your church? Could you be like the fierce dog on a leash straining to attack which suddenly thinks better of it when let go? If you really want some freedom and you would like to forget, at least for a time, the constraints and strictures of your life, try some horseback riding. It will get you back to basics and let you be a person rather than a robot and a great place for it is Arizona. Horseback riding in Arizona has a special appeal because it is wide open country without many fences as Cole Porter so aptly implied. Arizona has another advantage; it is home to some of the most dramatic and beautiful topography in the world. That is why so many movies have been filmed there. The landscape conveys a sense of freedom, but you don’t have to sit there and get a vicarious thrill out of watching a movie, no matter how great. You can get out there and actually live it!