PacificDawn Archives - The Bright Eyed Explorer

Where is she off to next? A 2018 recap and plans for 2019

January 1, 2019October 28, 2022Adventure, Australia, Beaches, Cruise, Europe, Food, Hotels & Eateries, Leisure, New Zealand, Queenstown, Road Trips, Sightseeing, Sports & Activities, Travel, Uluru, Uncategorized, Wine admin 2 Comments

Firstly, happy new year to you all. It’s my first ever happy new year as a travel writer and man it makes my heart sing! Cheers to that!

I started this in July 2018 after some gentle persuasion from family and friends and let me just say, it’s been an absolute treat. Not only is this giving me an opportunity to write about my favourite thing to do, travel, I am actually writing. And taking photos. And learning. Being creative on some level has always been at the core of who I am and what I want to do with my life.

It’s been ace! And there is so much more to come.

I woke this morning on New Year’s Day with mixed emotion. One of my closest life allies and closest of friends was already up in the sky embarking on a new life adventure by moving from Melbourne to Seattle. I felt like I missed her already yet I was so bloody excited for her new path in life.

And we are up! Heli Glenorchy — Hannah & I in New Zealand… Good luck on your next life chapter darling. See you soon x

It got me to thinking about the past year, 2018. Personally, it was hideous on a lot of levels. No need to dwell on the past year, those who follow the blog know. But while it was literally the worst year of my life, I still managed to find it a humbling and life changing year in its own right. One in which I’ve learnt some extremely valuable life lessons and found a finer appreciation for life and living the best one imaginable. Lessons in which with gratitude and love I chose to embody going forward. I’ve dropped people pleasing and saying yes when I have wanted to say no for doing what I want on my terms, basically living my life more authentically and true to self.

And this means change. Professionally, personally and creatively. Some subtle, some huge and really significant and whilst it is scary I am so fucking excited! 2019 I absolutely and unapologetically choose me without any guilt.

And more travel of course.

And so the heart sings some more!

Nothing gives me more of a thrill that being in a plane… or helicopter so it seems

But back to last year. 2018 saw me focus on travel that was more localised. I ventured to Uluru, Northern Territory for the first time and it was monumental on all levels. So much so I really want to go back sooner rather than later. I think it was 2 weeks after my mum passed away that I fulfilled a promise to her and booked my flights and accommodation. At the time (and still now) my heart was completely shattered, I either felt a complete mess or just numb, so jumping on a plane seemed just about the best thing I could do to remove myself from all responsibilities of the last few years. Finding peace and connection in the middle of Australia is my account of one of the most insightful journeys I have had to date.

In July I headed off to New Zealand for the first time ever with a good friend of mine Hannah. While we didn’t stray too far from Queenstown, it was a beautiful holiday, one spent with a great friend, eating glorious foods, and adventuring around the area. Milford Sound was a huge highlight of this trip, the views are truly next level amazing and we got to see it all 3 ways, via bus, boat and unexpectedly via helicopter. You can read more about our Milford Sound adventure here. We had heard that food and wine in the area was sensational but nothing prepared us for exactly how amazing it was. Huge notable mention to fabulous Ferg burger, Ferg bakery, Rata, Bunker and the Gibbston Valley Winery and Cheese Shop. If food is your thing, get mouth wateringly jealous by reading this.

Queenstown, New Zealand — How stunning is Queenstown right?

Ship faced at 20 knots; a booze filled family adventure on the high sees details a little family get together on honour of my late mum for her birthday at the end of September. This trip saw me join my brother, his wife and numerous members of Mum’s family for a cruise off the coast of Queensland. This P&O cruise on the Pacific Dawn was to celebrate what would have been mums 64^th birthday and didn’t we do her proud. Well I hope so anyway. It was a bit of a booze cruise in the end, a few of us got sea sick (not I for I own a stomach of steel) but we all had a really great time being together. Especially that last day bar crawl. Ouch! Never knew there were so many bars on board cruise ships!

So… 2018 recap done and dusted, you may ask what is in store for The Bright Eyed Explorer in 2019?

Shit Loads.

It was only this morning I started planning my first ever trip to the US in October/November. I am off to Europe again in April and have done stuff all organising for that trip but the US trip, feel like I’m all organised!

So at Easter this year I’ll be off to Europe again. Landing in Rome on Good Friday I am hightailing it out of Catholic Rome at the most religious time of year and heading to Munich. Swapping religion for beer halls and pork knuckle sounds just about right to me. I’ll be in Munich for 4 days before heading to Salzburg to sample a little taste of what Austria has to offer.

Where I have stalled in organising this trip is… I only have 3 weeks and was thinking of heading from Salzburg to Slovenia and doing a bit of lake bled, and a touch of Ljubljana. But the more I think about Italy, and pasta, and Prosecco, and pizza, and wine, and gelato and um just Italy, the more I am compelled to skip the Slovenia side trip and just launching head first (stomach first) into northern and central Italy. Honestly, tough life choices I know. But what a good dilemma to have.

I am currently taking submissions/help/advice for my 2 weeks in Italy, but I do know that I will be doing Venice, Bologna, Florence and Rome. It’s the in between bits that I am unsure of. Do I do Cinque Terre? Pisa? Milan? Parma? Verona? I definitely want to do a bit of lounging around in Tuscany. With wine of course. If you have any insight for me, I am so interested in hearing your advice.

In October I’ll be heading to the US for the first time EVER! Didn’t think I’d be as excited as I am, it’s weird this disconnection I have had with the US until now. Maybe it’s the fascination I have with Europe? And Asia? Maybe like, New Zealand, I’ve stupidly felt it would be all too similar? But hey there’s nothing like one of your closest mates moving there to fuel some interest.

This morning I planned this trip all out. Land in LA, spend a few days with another close mate from Melbourne who happens to be on holidays at the same time. Then meet the friend living in the US in San Fran for a few days of exploring then heading back to her place in Seattle for a week and half. Being a teenager of the 90s and a huge lover of ‘Grunge’, Seattle has always been on my US list of must sees, but since knowing my friend was moving there, I’ve learnt more about the awesome food, coffee, booze, art and culture of Seattle so needless to say I am hell excited about going there.

While my friend is working, I plan on an overnighter in Portland Oregon, and on one of the weekends we will head into Canada to Vancouver. Ticking another country off my list. After Seattle, I’m solo tripping to Alaska! YAY! The more I learn about Alaska the more fucking excited I am. Glaciers, fjords, micro-breweries, off the beaten path stuff. It’s so me to a tea. BUT the biggest draw card and reason why I’m heading to Alaska, is the chance to see the northern lights again!!!

OMG I AM GOING TO SEE THE AURORA BOREALIS AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Speaking of the Northern Lights, I promise that I will have blog posts of my trip to Norway in 2017 up on the blog VERY soon… watch this space).

I’ve also realised that I really have not seen a lot of my home state Victoria. I mean I did grow up in the country and am very familiar with Ballarat and Portland, as well as Geelong, Port Fairy, Warnambool, Hamilton, Buningyong, Echuca and Wangaratta. But it is hard to believe that at 41 I have not yet seen the Great Ocean Road. What an absolute crime, I am actually quite embarrassed to admit that one. I’d also love to do a trip to Lake Tyrell to take gorgeous pics of the salt lake as well as other areas such as Lake Eildon, the Grampians, Bright and the Victorian Alps.

Time for some weekend road trips with my trusty DSLR me thinks.

And speaking of more local trips. Midway through writing this post I got side tracked (happens a lot) but received confirmation from a dear friend who is able to dog sit for me in a few weeks so it is off the Gold Coast I go for Australia Day weekend. Flights booked and all! Yay, I finally get to see my bro Richie and his wife Jas in their new home after too many months apart. Also ticking off the list for this trip is seeing his new band ‘Awake in Time’. I am VERY excited for this!

Before I forget, watch this space as I’ll be announcing a small collaboration with two other travel bloggers Matt Kepnes of Nomadic Matt and Kristin Addis of Be My Travel Muse. A piece I wrote on overcoming my fear of travelling solo will be featured with some other solo travellers. Such an honour to be a part of this one as both bloggers have been such a huge influence for me with their combined 14 plus years of experience. These are the bloggers that inspire me to be better and to work harder at what I am doing so it is an honour to be included.

Also, I recently came runner up in a competition to meet my master run by the guys at Red Zed. I had to write 250 words on my business master and what I would gain from meeting them. I submitted the entry on a tram on the way home from work so really have no idea what I wrote but apparently it was enough to get runner up placing and $1000 AUD. All goes into the travel account so I am so grateful for that opportunity. If I had of won, I would have been meeting Kristin Addis from Be My Travel Muse but the runner up placing was awesome considering I didn’t think my entry would even be considered.

So now I have blabbed on and on about my travels, where are you off to this year?

Do you have some plans set in place or a trip you are thinking about? If you do, I would LOVE to hear all about it.

Happy new year & safe travels for 2019.

S x

The Bright Eyed Explorer — Summer in Melbourne means hammock hangs…..

Ship faced at 20 knots: A booze filled family adventure on the high seas.

November 27, 2018October 28, 2022Adventure, Australia, Beaches, Cruise, Food, Leisure, Sightseeing, Travel admin 2 Comments

“Let’s all go on a cruise” she said. “I am in, it will be AMAZING!!” the one on the left said. “Oh yeah, we had sooooo much fun on the last one” the short one pipes in. And with that it was set in concrete. Done. Organised. Swiftly. Without any second guessing.

What?

What the hell had I just committed to? A cruise? Me? Shae the self-confessed Euro lover? The experienced South East Asian explorer? World adventurer, land lover, plane and train junkie… The list goes on. A cruise? Like on a boat? Like on a boat that sails on the sea? Like on water? Oh no, surely not. Surely, I can spend my travel money in a better way?

With 18 family members?

Has my brain suddenly decided after 41 years to depart my body and fly off into some distant land?

Look you’d be right in thinking I’d lost my mind but let me back track a little before you pass judgement upon my good self and the state of my mental health.

You see, those people in that very first sentence of this story were some of my dearly loved Aunties. My mum’s sisters. And if you’ve been following my blog of late, you’d know that Mum is no longer with us. In fact, in February this year cancer made an angel of the biggest legend of a human, my mum.

Mum was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in early December 2015 not long after getting back from her first ever cruise with some of her family, her first holiday in 20 years. Cruel twist of fate hey. Let that one sink in while you second guess why holidays should be a priority in your life.

Cheeky mum on her first ever cruise. She looks so happy here

She had a ball. I remember picking her up from Melbourne airport and for the 20kms to her house, Mum talked non-stop about how much fun she’d had. I could see the excitement in her eyes and hear it in her voice. She looked and sounded like a new woman, invigorated, inspired and ready for more adventures. For me it felt like Mum finally GOT travel. Finally GOT why I chose to invest my time and money in travel and experiences rather than a mortgage. Honestly, it had been years since I’d seen her so happy and shit did that make me smile. That was to be her last real holiday. Only a week after Mum got back from her cruise she got the cancer diagnosis and that is when all our lives changed forever.

The day after we said goodbye to mum (it was massive, my mum was one of 12 kids so lots of extended family) while we were all still together, the cruise plan was hatched. You see, we are a family that sticks together, we may fall out on occasion (it’s never bad) and there may be disagreements but we all pull together to support each other and this was possibly the biggest moment in our lives since Pa passed away (back when I was 13) that we all needed to band together. We were hurting, grief had entered our lives and took one of the best in a shitty fucked up kind of way so we needed to do something to honour her, to celebrate mum’s life, to be together, and to breathe again.

From memory I think it was my Aunty Cathy who suggested the cruise. Cathy and her husband, Phil (legends) are seasoned cruisers so it was decided that they would do the organising and before you knew it, 18 people had committed, rooms were allocated, and deposits paid. We were off on a family adventure on P&Os Pacific Dawn for 3 nights of cruising out into the Pacific Ocean before heading back into the port of Brisbane. This particular cruise was a ‘Comedy Cruise’ ha, I knew our family were quite funny, but there was no need to rename the cruise for our benefit ;-).

I was bunking in with one of mum’s youngest sisters, my Aunty Trish. Trish is only a few years older than me and a bit of a lush and gawd do I love her for it. I’ve lived with her previously so we would get on perfectly fine. Trish was, after all the person who introduced the younger version of me to much more refined drinking when I was 18. She was literally the perfect person for me to bunk in with. My brother and his wife ended up being about 1km away (not really but it felt like that) at the mid-front of the boat while a Trish and I were at the very end of the boat. Like the last room on level 9 while the rest of the family were splattered around near us.

On the day of boarding we all managed to find our allocated rooms and by 12.45pm I think it may have been my incredibly gifted for all things fun, Aunty Angela and her as gifted hubby Ross who sniffed out the only adults’ bar on board, Oasis (coincidently at the end of the boat, a level up from our room – winning). By 3.30pm when we had the ‘very important’ safety briefing, it would be safe to say that 70% of our family were well on our way to sweet drunken bliss. That particular day, our first day on board was also the AFL grand final (Australian Rules football for you non-aussies) so we managed to find a quiet spot at the on-board casino of all places to watch (ahem scream at the telly some of you) West Coast beat Collingwood. I’ll never get the picture of my sister-in-law’s joy of the Magpies los out of my head!

Dancing the night away
When the weather was good

The first night was spent at the aptly named ‘Pantry’ which is a buffet of all different nationalities. Cruise ships are renowned for mass gastro outbreaks so obviously for that very reason, food is not a free for all, everything is served by staff. Generally buffet food rings to me bland and tasteless meals with limp salads and crap desserts, but not at the ‘Pantry’ on P&Os Pacific Dawn. No, sir, not here! I don’t know how many times I ate the spaghetti Bolognese on this cruise but call me super impressed. Other food options were really quite good considering the mass amount of people being served. The only real negative for me when it came to food and drinks was lining up for 20 minutes in the mornings for my much-needed double shot caffeine hit.

Later that night we ended up in the Orient Bar partaking in a spot of music trivia. Considering we are a family of music lovers, had a musician and an ex band manager in our group we were a shoe in to win and seriously we did win if honesty counts for something (meh there was one question that clearly was answered by Mr Google by on opposing team). To commiserate/celebrate our second placing, unhinged dancing, singing and general hijinks preceded a pretty crude but hilarious Comedy Show.

Our second day cruising was disappointingly, a shocker weather wise and a few of us had been stricken with a bit of sea sickness so while some spent time in bed, most of us headed off to do our own thing indoors for a few hours before meeting up at the front of the boat, at the very tip, in yep you guessed it, another bar. But before drinks could commence a few of us started the day in the gym, some went on walks, while I found a quiet spot by myself to sit and have some reflection and writing time as this was of course, what would have been Mum’s 64^th birthday. Only natural that in moments like these that emotion can bring tears to the surface so with that, just before I broke into an epic sob session and just as I was looking for a dignity saving escape route, over walks two living angles in the form of Aunties with the long-missed sun at their backs. It was literally a perfect moment. I love being Ms Independent, solo world traveller, strong-as-all-hell-I-got-this-shit-sorted-woman-of-the-world, but… I just didn’t realise just how much I needed people, my family, until then. Thank you Clare and Colleen.

Later that night the entire family was booked in at the Waterfront Restaurant for mum’s birthday celebration. Unfortunately, dinner was a bit of a fizzier on account of about half of us battling the dreaded sea sickness, but in a roundabout way, mum managed to save the night. You see sneaky me (some might say, clever) managed to bring along some of mum’s chemo anti-nausea drugs (yes yes I should have thrown them out, but ya know, I didn’t and for good reason) and within no time people started to feel a little better. A few of us got an early night while the rest headed off to another late-night comedy show before succumbing to sleep in readiness for the next day…

The next day? The last day? What a day! From what I remember at least anyway. You remember that bar we went to the day prior, the one at the very tip of the boat? Well on the second day of the cruise, our first time at that bar and after witnessing a flash mob (why do people still do that?) we started to count just how many bars there were in total on the boat. And by doing that count, someone, I can’t remember who exactly, suggested a bar crawl for our last day. A plan was conceived, put into action and by 1pm the next day we were back at that bar at the tip of the boat ready to drink ourselves into sweet bliss.

Rules were (cause with our lot there needs to be some rules):

1 drink in one bar – half an hour maximum time spent in the bar before moving onto the next (pffft some of us managed more than one drink)
One shot to buy in for every bar you’ve missed
One extra drink for one person (only) in each bar for a family member on her own cancer journey

Simple!

One person’s collection from one of the early bars
Early days! Not posting the end result photo!

After visiting 10 bars, 2 other alcohol serving areas on the boat and revisiting a few more, sneaking in more drinks in our half hour slot at each bar, and general crazy hi jinx over gawd knows how many hours, it was suggested in good spirit that our family should have an annual bar crawl to celebrate mum’s life on her birthday. Considering she wasn’t a drinker (but her children clearly are) I think my brother and I are down with that, she loved a decent celebration after all. I’ll go with it for sure. I love drinks. Sorry mum. Ah it was sure a night to remember. There were a few tears (me mostly) but plenty of laughs and happy times. Mum would have been (and probably was) right amongst it all. She was after all an instigator of fun.

So. Did I have a good time on my first cruise? Yes! Of course, I did. If you are thinking of doing a cruise, I would. It really is a different kind of adventure and one of which will always be what you make of it. Like any form of travel. Just do it. Like all travel inspiration, don’t wait to do it. Just remember when you get off the boat it is going to take you a few days to get your land legs back and things will feel weird. Yes. It is true! I struggled for three days. Would I do it again? Yes, but not for a while and if I did it would be out to see something like an island or other things in the ocean….

But irrespective of would I do it again was not the point of THIS cruise. This was to celebrate the life of an outstanding, firecracker, cheeky, generous and beautiful woman who happened to be my gorgeous mum. I think we did a bloody good job of honouring her. Yes, it was a bit boozy for some of us, but in true family spirit we were together and having a great time.

On the first night of the cruise my brother and I snuck away from everyone else and stood at the back of the boat watching the sunset as the boat left the port of Brisbane. It was real pretty. One of those catch ya in the feels moments. A token moment of admiring natural beauty and our own sentimentalities on such a pivotal occasion. Arm in arm, tears in our eyes we vowed to make this a beautiful and fun journey, for mum. Gawd I fucken love that kid (sorry swearing not sorry really).

There were many times on the cruise when I stood back on all the frivolity, all the laughter and all the noise to take stock. To look at each and every one of my family enjoying themselves and I could feel mum next to me saying ‘we did good kid’. You see family was at the core of mums whole entire essence. Mum loved her family more than anything, her children, me and the bro, were her life. Her whole entire family was what fired her and gave her the most joy in her life. Wherever she was in the universe over those 3 days I know it was a whirlwind of amazing for her as much as it was for me.

So, as mum did when she arrived home from her cruise, with the spirit of travel racing through her heart and soul, so did I. I don’t think that feeling of post-holiday elation ever leaves a person. That excitement should never die, that glow should not fade. So, there really is only one thing a person can do to top a holiday.

Book another holiday. And that I did.

For my mum Mary, Richie, Jasmin, Tricia, Angela, Ross, CAtherine Rose, Phil, Michael, Helen, Clare, Colleen, Narelle, Luke, Nikki, Daniel & kids.

Thank you x

To book through P&O visit their website