Sydney: The Beginning of Our Oceania Journey

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.