Family van Holland in Australia

We highly recommend The Shrine of Remembrance, a building to remember all the soldiers who have been fighting in the wars. Here, you also have a beautiful view of the city. The Parliament Building, National Library, National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) are also worth visiting. In the evening, you must visit St. Kilda beach. Here, you can see Fairy penguins, which arrive at dusk for their night’s rest.

We started our actual journey when we headed for the Great Ocean Road. Along the way, we visited different bays with different rock formations and beautiful sights (12 Apostles, Razorback, London Bridge, The Grotto, Bay of Islands). It’s well worth taking your time, to walk around and take in the surroundings. Along the way, you may already spot some koalas. Visit Warrnambool, Port Fairy and Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve!

The next stop was the Grampians National Park. Here, we saw an echidna, so many kangaroos and cockatoos! The beautiful, diverse nature is mesmerising. It’s a perfect destination for long hikes, (Boroka Lookout, Reed Lookout: especially for watching the sunset), up and over mountains, but also on flatter grounds, making it doable for all levels. Especially, climbing up to one of the look-outs was a literal and figurative high (the Pinnacle). After a brief stop to shorten the trip to our next destination and crossing the state border of Victoria and South Australia, we took a ferry to Kangaroo Island.

Before the big bushfires at the end of 2019, this was a gorgeous piece of nature, our favourite destination of the entire trip. The flora and fauna are so diverse and driving on sandy roads really added to the beachy and adventurous experience. We came across emus, kangaroos, so many koalas, iguanas, seals, echidnas, pelicans and heaps of birds. One of our favourite spots on this trip were the Remarkable Rocks in Flinders Chase National Park. It maybe doesn’t sound that special, but it was definitely worth the small detour. On our way back to the mainland, we even saw a dolphin!

Near Adelaide, we got to enjoy the beaches and had a relaxing swim in the bay. Exploring Adelaide was great fun because the city has so much to offer. Featuring astonishing architecture and the relaxing botanical gardens. Having a city stop somewhere in the middle of our journey, was a nice switch from all the different national parks and mesmerising nature.

We then headed off to Flinders Ranges and thus went into the Outback, even though it’s still on the border of the actual Outback. All of sudden, nature looked so different, so red and so dusty. A guided trip through the park taught us a lot about the park, nature and local life. And we even saw a rare yellow-footed rock wallaby. It’s worth visiting a small part of the Outback.

We slowly made our way back towards Melbourne, but first stopped at one of the many wine regions around Adelaide, in our case, McLaren Vale. Obviously, we had a wine tasting, recommended by our B&B host. The coastline there is beautiful and worth visiting. A part of the coastline is a protected nature area, where you can see a lot of seabirds and a variety of plants.

The end of the trip was supposed to be relaxing near beaches on the Mornington Peninsula, two hours south of Melbourne. The weather wasn’t in our favour and after a soaking wet sightseeing trip to Cape Schanck, we went back the next day, to find a beautiful spot in much better weather. We visited Point Nepean, where during the late 19th-century, English prisoners were shipped to. The cute house in Rye added to the beachy experience nevertheless.

All in all a lovely ending to a holiday to remember forever. The high quality of the beautiful accommodations really added to the experience and the hosts always gave us a warm welcome. A big thanks to A Journey DownUnder for their great care and the help given when changes had to be made. We are glad that we were guided towards this great travel plan, with its beautiful destinations.

Gerrit, Cobi and Jacobine Van Holland