I recognize and respect the Traditional custodians and owners of the lands that I travelled through and their connection to the lands, waters and skies. I honor and respect the community elders and their ancestors who survived and cared for their countries.

Perth, Western Australia, where my family is from, is 11,000 miles away. Most people think of Australia as an exotic place that is impossible for them to ever get to. And that is true to an extent. The plane ticket is expensive and it involves 36-48 hours of travelling through airports and on airplanes, one of the legs, being a 14-17 hour flight. But Australia is also an incredibly unique place. It is a continental landmass and an island. It spans 2,968,464 square miles, making it the sixth largest country in the world by land area. It is a Commonwealth Nation of the United Kingdom. The country has rainforests, desert, vibrant reefs, and mountains that get snow (creatively called the Snowy Mountains). It is a megadiverse country, more than 80% of its flora and fauna aren’t found anywhere else in the world, and has the Great Barrier Reef which is the world’s largest reef.

Western Australia (WA) is the largest state in the country, taking up about a third of the country. Its area is about 18 times the size of Wisconsin. Over 80% of the population lives in the Perth area. Perth and the southwest have a Mediterranean climate that is similar to Southern California. Australia’s biodiversity and uniqueness is reflected in WA. In the north there is the tropical rainforests of the Kimberly. The Ningaloo Reef, the only large reef positioned close to a landmass. The Kalgoorlie-Boulder Goldfields which are some of the richest land in the world. The Margaret River Region, known for its wines and cave systems. There are four separate deserts in the interior of the state. The Nullarbor Plain has some extensive caves that have yielded some of the most complete fossils and skeletons of megafauna to come out of Australia. There are dark parts of the state as well: the atrocities against the Aboriginal Peoples, the exploitation of the environment, and the downsides of the pastoralism that defined much of the establishment of the state.

My parents and my brother, sister-in-law, nephew and my sister-in-law’s mother left a week before my sisters and I. We drove down to Baraboo on December 10, swinging by UW-La Crosse to pick up my younger sister. We have a cousin that we stayed with overnight and who drove us to the airport the next morning. Madison airport is a wonderful airport. It was clean, quiet, and we made it to our gate in 25 minutes. Our first flight took us to Dallas airport where we had a layover of a few hours before our long flight (16 hours) to Brisbane. I don’t know about everybody else, but at least for me and my sisters, sleeping is near impossible on flights. I felt like we spent most of the flight trying to sleep and shifting to try and find a comfortable position. We had another layover in Brisbane, this one was only a few hours, but we did have to go through customs and immigration and picked up our luggage. You have to fill out a declaration form with any potential contaminants. Because of the uniqueness of Australia’s flora and fauna, customs and immigration is a bit more strict than here in the States. They want to avoid any diseases that would decimate their delicate biological balance. After making our way through Customs and Immigration, we dropped our luggage off at the transfer desk and changed terminals. Thankfully, they had a bus for the terminal change. We left Brisbane to make our final five hour flight to Perth.

We arrived just after lunch. Our uncle picked us up from the airport and took us to his home where we would stay for a couple of nights. Our parents and my brother’s family were already farther south in Pemberton, we would be meeting up with them in a couple of days. When we packed for this trip, we packed as light as we could, which meant that when we arrived, we had to go shopping for basics. We didn’t do much that afternoon as my younger sister had to finish some homework, since we left before finals. That evening we had a barbecue with a couple of my aunt and uncle’s neighbors. We finished the day by going to bed early to try and get over jet lag.

Jet lag is terrible, by the way. When you need sleep, it keeps waking you up and wakes you early. Emily and I were up ridiculously early. We had rejuvenating cups of tea and that first full day we didn’t have much going on. We went shopping for a few more items and picked up Meat Pies, Sausage Rolls, and Chips for lunch. Chips are French fries but better, don’t know why, but they are. And Meat Pies and Sausage Rolls are very Australian. Later in the afternoon, our uncle went to pick up our cousin from the airport. For dinner that night, we had Thai food. Perth is a city of over 2.3 million people and has a lot more ethnic restaurants available. After dinner, my sisters and I packed up for our trip to Yallingup the next day before going to bed.

Jet lag takes a few days to get over, we had an early morning before hitting the road just after 10 a.m. Check-in for our Airbnb wasn’t until 3, so we had some time to get down the coast. Our first stop was at Lake Clifton to see the Thrombolites. These “Living Rocks” are colonies of cyanobacteria that are reminiscent of the organisms that are responsible for putting enough oxygen into the atmosphere to allow for the explosion of life 500 million years ago. A few months ago, when there were the solar flares that prompted the auroras, one of the best places to view the auroras was Lake Clifton. The people were disrespectful of the thrombolites and stood on them, potentially damaging the thrombolites irreparably. Luckily, we didn’t have to yell at anybody to stop standing on the thrombolites. After Lake Clifton, we continued our journey, stopping at Bunbury for lunch at a café that overlooked the beach. We had a stroll along the beach before we headed off. We made it to Yallingup where the other six were waiting for us. Our day ended with watching the Perth Scorcher’s Cricket Game on the television and we had dinner on the barbie.

Unfortunately for our group, most of us got sick. Which is terrible in the summer. The cold also split our group for the day. My brother and his family (who was sick just before leaving and was still recovering) left for Dunsborough, my dad decided to stay behind and try and get over his cold. And my mom, my sisters, and I went into Busselton for the day. We made it into Busselton in time for lunch which was fish and chips at the Sandbox, then we took a walk along the Busselton Jetty. Busselton Jetty is the longest timber-piled Jetty in the Southern Hemisphere, stretching 1.841 km (1.144 mi) into the Geographe Bay of the Indian Ocean. The Busselton Jetty, built in 1865, used to be a functional exportation point, and continued to be extended due to the shallowness of Geographe Bay. Now it is used exclusively for tourism and has a solar-powered train that runs the full length. The Jetty also has an Underwater Observatory, a Marine Discovery Centre, and Underwater Sculpture Park with the ability to snorkel along the Jetty. After walking down the Jetty and back in 75° weather, we decided to go swimming before returning to our place after picking up dinner which was lamb on the barbie. As we were returning, we saw kangaroos in the fields.

By the morning of the 17th, my cold had set in. It was a close repeat of the day before, with my brother’s family going off on their adventure and my dad staying behind. My mom, my sisters and I headed off to Hamelin Bay since today was the calmest day for waves so far and the next couple of days. On the way to Hamelin Bay, we did see wild emus. Hamelin Bay is known for having stingrays come up to swimmers and rub against their legs like a cat. As much as it wasn’t as windy as in previous days, the water was still a bit choppy, so the rays didn’t come in super close, but we did see a couple of them. After Hamelin Bay, we headed down to Augusta and out to Cape Leeuwin and the lighthouse there. We had lunch at the café at the lighthouse before touring the grounds and the Interpretive Center. Cape Leeuwin is the most southwestern point in Australia. It has dangerous, turbulent waters from where the Southern and Indian Oceans meet. The lighthouse that sits on the cape is the tallest lighthouse on Mainland Australia and the inspiration behind the book The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman. As we were leaving the Cape, we saw the Historic Water Wheel before going back to where we are staying and then going out to eat at Lamont’s before trying to make the sunset. We didn’t make it to see the sunset, but we did see a beautiful twilight over the Indian Ocean. As we were going home, we saw a Goanna (a large monitor lizard) crossing the road.

To be continued