The Johnslingtons

Once you get south of Jervis Bay, the Sapphire Coast begins. It’s basically beach after amazing beach, all long and golden, some studded by morning and evening surfers, some essentially deserted. They’re so lovely that you’d wonder why they’d be deserted, until you remember that with 22,000 miles of coastline and a population a little… Continue reading Australia By Campervan – the Sapphire Coast

Hey, we like food. In a past life, I was an honest-to-goodness food blogger. That’s done, but I still love to find great things and chow down, so… here’s a list of the great things we had in Australia. Mary’s Burger, Sydney. Good enough for its own post! Pizza, pasta, and salad at Next Door… Continue reading Australia – The Best Stuff We Ate

After leaving Wollongong, we road-tripped our way southwest in a three-person campervan with overnight stops in Jervis Bay, Broulee, Eden, Kosciuszko National Park, Khancoban, Bright and Whitfield. We dropped the van in Melbourne, where Fiona’s Dad’s friend Anna lives with her partner Sim and their daughter Aelie (8). We spent three lovely nights with them… Continue reading Where in the World is Fiona? On the Road in Australia: Jervis Bay to Melbourne!

Dan’s recent post about Jervis Bay included a couple of lovely photos, but doesn’t The Most Beautiful White Sand Beach in the World deserve just a few more? I couldn’t resist, and so…

We left Wollongong on a gorgeous day (later than we’d planned, because campervan) and made our way to Boodaree National Park on Jervis Bay. Call it an hour and a half in a normal car, two for us. My confidence in driving Mist slowly grew as we drove, and we were pretty excited to see… Continue reading Australia by Campervan – Jervis Bay

I’m not much for camping. Many people I love love it (including the two awesome people I’m currently traveling with), but I’ve just never quite been able to tip the hassle-to-enjoyment ratio in my favor. First there’s the gear—so much gear!—which all needs to be pulled down from a high shelf, dusted off and packed… Continue reading #vanlife

Folks, we are #vanlifing it, currently posting on a weak connection from Bright, Victoria. There is a lot to write about but…well, there hasn’t been a lot of downtime to write this week, for reasons that will be clear when we get to writing about it! We are fine and happy. More soon.

Our first stop in Australia was Sydney, where we stayed for three nights in a historic neighborhood near the waterfront called The Rocks. After that, we traveled south to Wollongong, where we stayed two nights with Fiona’s dad’s friend Jill, her husband Graeme, and their kids Joseph (15) and Miriam (12).   An Interview With… Continue reading Where in the World is Fiona? Sydney + Wollongong!

Our first day in Australia wasn’t exactly terrible, horrible, no good or very bad, but it didn’t find our family at its best, either. We were up at 5:30am to catch a 9am flight out of Fiji and, despite a cheerful early rise from our late-rising kid and a luxurious stop in the Fiji Airways… Continue reading Some Days Are Like That (Even in Australia)

It was 2013 the last time we were in Sydney. We were younger, childless, and there ostensibly for work. That time around we went to cool places: speakeasy-style bars where you hit a few keys on an old typewriter to open a secret door, restaurants with giant barn doors to enormous open kitchens, and a… Continue reading A Tale of Two Marys