Introduction

We've had the good fortune to visit a number of fascinating places around the world, without the associated burden of choosing among the multitude of possibilities in each instance. This year, the need to select a vacation destination was averted once again, with our younger daughter Lauren’s election to spend the second semester of her junior year in college studying abroad at the University of Melbourne in Australia.  Within weeks of her acceptance, we began to plan our own exploration of the Land Down Under.

Actually, ''we'' is not the appropriate pronoun, since Anne single-handedly performed the lion's share of the necessary research on the Internet, ultimately engaging a travel broker named JOURNEYS International, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to coordinate the precise itinerary and logistics with Sydney-based tour company, Australia2see.

The actual trip, completed between late March and early April, was excellent.  As usual, I shot hundreds of photos and scribbled a few notes during our travels.  Complementing these records with some after-the-fact Internet research, as well as my unreliable memory when all else failed, I have compiled this journal of our Australia adventure.  If you’re interested, your own virtual voyage to Oz is just a mouse-click away.