Month: March 2019

Tasmania’s East Coast (Aussie Road Trip, Part III)

by pennypostcard • March 29, 2019 • 2 Comments

[This post is the third part in a series about the road trip I took last month with my mom and V. If you missed the first two posts, you can find them here and here.]

Day 9

The original plan had been to see more of Tasmania’s capital, Hobart on the afternoon of day eight and then move on to Port Arthur on day nine. However, we as human beings had not been able to move at the speed of my paper itinerary, after all. So after a quick redrafting of the plan, the morning of our ninth day we headed to the infamous Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), about nine miles away.

Australia, Foreign Service, Travel

Tassie or Bust (Aussie Road Trip, Part II)

by pennypostcard • March 20, 2019 • 6 Comments

After a wonderful but long day on Victoria state’s Great Ocean Road, we looked forward to a day of sightseeing in Melbourne, followed by an overnight ferry trip with the car to Tasmania. I hadn’t sailed on the Spirit of Tasmania since my grad school days in 2005, and I was excited about getting back to one of my favorite places in Oz. Only this time, I would sleep in a cabin with a bed rather than on the floor, and I wouldn’t have to drive on the left for the first time upon arrival!

[This is the second post in a series about the Australian road trip I took last month with my mom and V. If you missed the first post, you can find it here: Bush Capital to Great Ocean Road (Aussie Road Trip, Part I).]

Australia, Foreign Service

Career-Related News From the Field

by pennypostcard • March 13, 2019 • 4 Comments

In my prior post, I was recapping a February trip with my family to Melbourne and Tasmania. I’ll pick up where I left off on that very soon, but first wanted to share a little career-related news from down under.

Australia, Foreign Service, Travel

Bush Capital to Great Ocean Road (Aussie Road Trip, Part I)

by pennypostcard • March 11, 2019 • 5 Comments

Last month, my mom came to Australia for two weeks to visit V and I, and celebrate her milestone birthday. We spent a few days in Canberra (Australia’s “bush capital”), showing her around and letting her adjust to the 19 hour time difference (!). Then we took an epic eight-hour road trip through rural Victoria down to Melbourne, where we looked around the city and did a day trip down the Great Ocean Road. Afterwards, we loaded up ourselves – and my car – on the Spirit of Tasmania ferry and sailed 10.5 hours overnight to Australia’s island state of Tasmania. There we spent six days trying to circumnavigate the island’s breathtaking coastlines, lush valleys, and primordial forests. We then reversed our course all the way back to Canberra, spending a couple more days sightseeing around our little town and celebrating V’s own milestone birthday before my mom returned to American winter.

It will probably take me two or three posts to share all the cool things we did, so with no further ado – three Americans take an epic Aussie road trip across three states and one territory!

Australia, Foreign Service

Always Was, Always Will Be

by pennypostcard • March 6, 2019 • 5 Comments

If you have ever attended a celebration, speech, or conference in Australia, chances are it began with the speaker or master of ceremonies acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land you were on. That protocol is called an Acknowledgment of Country.

If you are truly lucky, you may have even experienced a Welcome to Country by an Aboriginal elder (sometimes also referred to as an Indigenous Australian). This Aboriginal welcome practice has been going on for thousands of years, long before the first white settlers landed in Australia. It is rooted in the Aboriginal cultural awareness of being in your vs. “another’s country,” how to ask properly for permission to cross into someone’s land, and how to welcome others into your land.

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