Australia Luxury Trip Review: Sydney Opera House, Wildlife, Boating, Great Barrier Reef, Uluru, Hiking, Cuisine, Culture, One Month

As noted above, there were too many highlights to single out one. We particularly enjoyed the opportunities to walk, bicycle, swim, and take in sights from boats in a wide variety of environments, and to learn about the people and place.

Just a few of the highlights:

A bike tour of Sydney; the early-morning backstage tour of the Sydney Opera House, where we also saw their premier performance of The Magic Flute one evening; learning about indigenous culture, foods, and art from various guides, galleries and museums; getting up close and personal with the fascinating and often charismatic wildlife in the wild and at wildlife refuge centers, particularly seeing the penguins returning from the ocean to waddle up the dunes to their burrows on Phillip Island; petting Gumnut the koala at the wildlife refuge near Melbourne; helping with the evening feeding of animals at a wildlife refuge near Hobart; walking in the Blue Mountains, on paths between beaches in the Sydney suburbs to lookouts along the Great Ocean Road and at the Apostles, on Kangaroo and Bruny islands, and along the Bondi to Coogee Cliff walk near Sydney; learning about the peoples, history, contemporary life, and government of Australia; enjoying some excellent food and discovering the Sydney rock oysters; hiking in Walpa Gorge and seeing sunrise and sunset at Uluru and Kata Tjua; snorkeling around the Great Barrier Reef; strolling around lovely botanical gardens in Melbourne and Sydney; and seeing the fascinating rock formations and stunning blue-green waters of the ocean from various locations throughout our trip.