AWC Going Dutch Nov 2019

Unconventional Travel: Down Under
by Melissa White
In September 2018, my 18-year-old daughter
Ashlynn started a year of working as a
full-time international fashion model for
her gap year, and I started writing about my
visits with her while she was “on-stay” (when
a model stays in a city for an extended time
to meet local clients in the hope of securing
jobs). I was thrilled that it worked out to visit
her in Paris, Athens and Seoul. Two and a
half months after hugging Ashlynn good-bye
in Seoul, it was time to meet her in another
foreign land. This time I would be venturing
south of the Equator for the first time in my
life in order to visit her in Australia.
Luckily, I arrived at Schiphol three hours
before my flight as it turned out that I hadn’t
done my homework and I was denied boarding.
It never dawned on me that my blue
passport would encounter any road blocks,
thus I neglected to research if I needed a
tourist visa. Nor had Cathay Pacific mentioned
the possibility during either the
booking or check-in process, so I was completely
caught off guard when I was unable
to print my boarding passes at the airport
kiosk. Imagine my shock when the agent
said I needed an urgent visa. I was very fortunate
that James had accompanied me and
helped talk me out of having a complete
meltdown. After much fumbling on his iPad
and foolishly paying twice for an urgent
40 GOING DUTCH
visa, he sweet-talked the agent into letting
me back into the front of the line where I
eventually held tightly onto my invaluable
boarding passes. Passport control was also
a madhouse where my pretty blue passport
was initially denied entry into the automated
check-out lines; after a 20-minute wait, the
same agent who had initially denied me,
rushed me into the correct line. Fortunately,
everything else went smoothly and 26 hours
later I met Ashlynn at Melbourne Airport for
the long Easter weekend.
Multiple people had told me that Melbourne
is Australia’s most cosmopolitan city. We
stayed in the city center, not far from its impressive
riverfront. Melbourne is Australia’s
cultural capital and second largest city with
around five million inhabitants. It is home to
the longest continuously running Chinatown
outside of Asia, with an incredible variety
of Asian restaurants throughout the city; we
had several great Thai meals and lots of delicious
takeaway sushi.
We walked a lot, including walking along the
riverfront, through the botanical gardens and
across the city to St. Kilda’s to see some of
the area’s 1,400 fairy penguins come ashore
at sunset. People line up along the suburb’s
pier to witness the quick swimmers emerge
from the water to spend the night between
the rocks and bushes. We were fortunate to
find a great vantage point to see magic happen
before our eyes: one moment the smallest
penguins in the world were swimming
along and the next they were chattering
away while hopping around the rocks. Due
to their sensitive eyes and the high number
of human observers, flash photography
wasn’t allowed so my photos aren’t great.
I’m not a big fan of tour buses, but I also
had no desire to drive on the other side of
the road, so I sought out a company offering
small-sized tours for our biggest adventure:
an all-day trip to Phillip Island to see
the island’s official penguin parade. Along
the way, we stopped at Moonlit Sanctuary
Conservation Park where we saw rescued
native animals, including koalas, dingoes
and wombats. We really enjoyed the opportunity
to feed kangaroos and wallabies who
freely roamed the property. Then we went to
Point Grant where we saw some beautiful
rock formations called The Nobbies due to
their dome shapes and saw fairy penguins
in the burrows amongst the rocks. Our final
stop was Phillip Island Nature Park to
see the nightly march of the penguins from
the waters of the Bass Strait to their burrows
on land. I splurged on an upgrade for
a small group tour with a park ranger who
led us down to a viewing point above the
beach to witness this magical event. We
were exceptionally lucky with the weather
as it sprinkled for just a few minutes as we
were leaving the beach, but the skies waited
to open up until after we were safely back in
the Go West Tours’ mini-bus.
On Easter Monday, Ashlynn flew back to
Sydney and I flew onto Canberra, the capital
of Australia, where I spent ten days with
a friend whom I’d met in Switzerland >> 42
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