Australia

Our journey through Oceania began with the difficult business of designing the itinerary. We had several constraints to satisfy.

First came New Zealand’s South Island. We did not feel like driving ourselves, so we joined a tour that ran between Queenstown and Christchurch once every five days. That immediately dictated the broad outline of the trip: either we went to New Zealand first and took the earlier departure, or visited Australia first and joined the tour five days later. We did not have separate New Zealand visas; under the policy that applied to us, our Australian visas allowed us to enter New Zealand provided we traveled there from Australia. That settled the matter.

The tour departed from Christchurch, which raised the next question: should we visit New Zealand’s North Island or South Island first? We found that flights from the South Island back to the United States generally required a connection on the North Island, while the North Island offered direct flights. South Island first, then, was the obvious choice.

We could now consider where in Australia we might fly to Christchurch from. Cairns was non-negotiable—we were going diving at the Great Barrier Reef. Cairns had no direct flight to Christchurch, however, so we would have to connect in either Melbourne or Sydney. In that case, why not stop and explore? Melbourne was noticeably cheaper, so we provisionally added it to the itinerary.

But how were we to get from the United States to Cairns? There was no direct flight there either; once again we had to connect in Sydney or Melbourne. A closer look revealed connection times so dreadful that they were unacceptable. So, once again: why not spend a day at the connection point? I compared the total airfare for Sydney, then Cairns, then Melbourne against the same route in reverse. The former was clearly cheaper and had much more sensible timing, so that became the plan.

You may find this hard to believe, but Melbourne was never part of our original plan at all.

And that, in summary, was how the itinerary came into being.

We left the United States on the evening of December 10, 2025. By the time we arrived it was already the 12th; December 11 had simply disappeared from my life.

For the fifteen-and-a-half-hour flight, we traveled in Premium Economy. My personal view is that most people who pay outright for Premium Economy are getting a poor bargain; it mainly makes sense as an upgrade. The difference from Economy is modest, the recline remains limited, and the fare is often more than twice as high. Yet when I checked the airline’s website, Premium Economy cost 70,000 points while Economy cost 87,000. It made no sense, but there it was.

So we booked Premium Economy. Only seats in the last row remained when we selected ours, and that was where the trouble began. The seats were close to the wall, further restricting how far they could recline. Anyone who has flown knows that aircraft seats are not exactly precision instruments. Their official recline is one thing; a sufficiently heavy passenger leaning back can sometimes persuade the mechanism to yield what feels like another ten degrees. Normally body weight can coax out a little extra angle. Against a wall in the last row, there was no such possibility. It was deeply uncomfortable. Lesson learned: I am never choosing the last row again.

In the end, we rested reasonably well—though on a flight that long, it was difficult not to. That afternoon, as planned, we visited Sydney’s well-known Taronga Zoo. Here was the zoo map.

At the zoo, it was another ordinary day of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

There were also capybaras, now seemingly unavoidable internet favorites.

And koalas. We would see many more later at a zoo devoted specifically to them.

That brought the day to an end. We hurried back to the hotel to sleep and adjust to the time difference.

The next day, we visited the Sydney Opera House.

We joined an interior tour and wandered through much of the backstage area. The guide shared all manner of behind-the-scenes stories: the architect’s family drama, the passions and grievances surrounding the building, and a quiz for the group—was the only person ever to have climbed the Opera House Tom Cruise or Jackie Chan?

The next photograph shows one privilege of taking the interior tour: a concert hall, empty-auditorium edition.

Afterward, we had little else planned and a flight to catch that afternoon, so we walked through the nearby park. The scenery was quite lovely, and the park offered another distant view of the Sydney Opera House.

It was already evening when we reached Cairns. After checking into the hotel, we went straight back out to find dinner. This was unmistakably the tropics: the restaurants and casual open-air eateries lining the street reminded me strongly of Hainan. There was no danger of going hungry. Food was everywhere, places stayed open late, and the night market was lively.

The weather looked good when we woke the next morning.

That day we took a sightseeing flight over Cairns and its surroundings, first circling above the inner Great Barrier Reef and then flying over the rainforest and mountains inland.

That was our only scheduled activity, so the rest of the day became a leisurely walk around town and along the waterfront.

The third day brought the main event of the entire trip: diving at the Great Barrier Reef. The excursion included both snorkeling and scuba diving. To take photographs underwater, we had bought transparent, fully sealed phone pouches while walking around town the previous day. They were expensive. A quick check on Amazon suggested that ordering online would have saved roughly twenty percent. We no longer had that option, of course, and a twenty-percent premium for buying one on the spot was not outrageous. Still, anyone planning a similar trip should bring a pouch from home.

We set out early that morning in high spirits. The excursion included hotel pickup, and because we were worried about missing the vehicle, we went downstairs well ahead of time. Eventually a small van arrived and drove us to the nearby marina. Cairns truly is compact: we could have walked to the marina in less time than we spent waiting for the ride.

Once aboard, we signed several liability waivers and assumption-of-risk forms without even reading them—our cheerful little stack of “sign here in case everything goes wrong” paperwork. Then came a ninety-minute boat ride to the first site.

Into the water!

We had assumed that as long as the pouch kept the phone dry, we would be able to operate it underwater. That proved optimistic. The pouch did keep the water out, but we could not operate the phone at all. It was not a defect in the pouch; everything worked normally at the surface. Underwater, however, our touchscreens simply stopped responding. Only the phone’s physical buttons still worked. Fortunately, we had anticipated this possibility and looked up a workaround in advance: in camera mode, the volume button acts as the shutter. Every underwater photograph we took was made that way.

There was one crucial rule: do not press the power button. If that happened, the adventure was over. The phone would lock, and without a working touchscreen there was no way to unlock it. Even with no passcode, we could not swipe past the lock screen and return to the camera. The only solution was to surface, unlock the phone, and dive down again.

So we swam along, hammering the volume button. The Great Barrier Reef really was beautiful—almost dreamlike.

Snorkeling here revealed more than coral. There were plenty of animals as well, especially tropical fish.

After climbing out of the water, we realized that we appeared to have forgotten our towels. The pre-departure information had advised bringing them because none would be provided, but I had forgotten. We had booked the excursion months earlier and I had never looked at those instructions again. A careless mistake. Our only choice was the ancient art of drying oneself: sun and wind. In that Pacific weather, the technique worked remarkably fast. A little sunshine and sea breeze dried our skin almost at once; after lying on a sunny deck chair for a while, even our swimsuits were dry. I would still strongly recommend bringing a towel. This method is not kind to the skin.

Because we were not certified divers, our scuba dive was an introductory one led by an instructor. On this particular excursion, that meant going a little over ten meters down. There was little point going farther anyway; we had already reached the seabed. We had read online that a phone might be fine at around ten meters, but the instructor told us it could break under the pressure and advised us not to take it. After weighing the risk, we left it behind.

For both scuba diving and snorkeling, we were advised to wear the full-body protective suits supplied on the boat, reportedly to guard against stinging jellyfish. We had not understood that. We assumed the suits were only for scuba, so we wore none while snorkeling. Seeing so many people on the boat changing into them, we wondered whether that many passengers were really planning to dive. They were, of course, snorkelers. When it was finally time for my scuba dive, I had still not put one on, and the instructor fitted the tank onto me before I had a chance. Fortunately, no jellyfish stung me. I did, however, accidentally scrape my knee against the reef on the seabed because my swimming skills were so poor, breaking the skin. Back aboard, we applied every disinfectant in sight for fear of infection. The lesson was clear: wear the suit.

We returned to the marina that afternoon and were told a shuttle would take us back to the hotel—in thirty minutes. No, thank you. We left and walked instead. Having learned from the morning, I knew I could have walked to the hotel twice in the time it took to wait.

On the fourth day, we joined a day tour of several attractions around Cairns.

The Curtain Fig Tree.

Millaa Millaa Falls.

And Paronella Park, often claimed to have inspired Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky.

That brought our time in Cairns to an end.