Australia, New Zealand Trip Details Ready

October 15th, 2019

   If the Land Down Under is on your bucket list, you’ll have a chance next year to visit both Australia and New Zealand with fellow garden- and nature-lovers – including me.

Sydney’s skyline with its famous opera house.

   Lowee’s Group Tours, Collette Vacations, and I just finished details on a 17-day tour that’ll include gardens of those two countries, plus must-see highlights like the Great Barrier Reef, Sydney’s Opera House, New Zealand’s “Southern Alps,” and, of course, koalas, kangaroos, and penguins.

   The trip leaves Oct. 25, 2020, from Philadelphia and returns Nov. 10, 2020, from New Zealand.

   We’re going in the fall because that’s Australia’s spring, a time when we’ll catch the flowers and landscapes in peak form before the weather gets too hot.

   The trip price is $8,999 per person double (if you book before next April 29). That includes hotels, 24 meals, admissions, a tour manager, and all flights, both international and three that we’ll be taking during the trip.

   The “South Pacific Wonders” trip will be ready to book at the annual Travel Day that Lowee’s Group Tours and I are planning for Sat., Oct. 26, at 10 a.m. in the West Hanover Twp. Recreation Center, 628 Walnut Ave., Harrisburg. The West Hanover Rec Center is located just off Linglestown Road near Central Dauphin High School.

   We’ll have flyers at Travel Day with the full itineraries of our entire lineup of 2020 garden trips, and I’ll be doing a PowerPoint presentation showing you what all we’ll be seeing.

   It’s free, and you’re invited! Free refreshments will be served.

   You’ll have a shot at winning raffle prizes, including trip discounts and two of my gardening books. Register ahead of time, and you get an extra raffle ticket.

   If you haven’t registered yet, call Lowee’s Group Tours at 717-657-9658, email ckelly@lowees.com, or register online at Lowee’s website.

   Besides the Australia/New Zealand “big trip,” we’ll be offering multi-day coach trips to Niagara, Toronto, and the Rochester Lilac Festival next spring; to Nashville, St. Louis, and Louisville next summer, and to North Carolina’s Biltmore Estate, Stowe Botanical Gardens, and ChristmasTown USA next December.

Niagara Falls is on our 2020 trip lineup.

   We’ll also be running day trips to the 2020 Philadelphia Flower Show (seven of them), to Lancaster County home gardens, to gardens of New York’s Hudson River, and to Delaware’s Mt. Cuba Center and the new Delaware Botanic Gardens, among others.

   If you can’t make Travel Day but want to book trips anyway (including Australia), you’ll be able to do that online or by phone after Oct. 26.

   I’ll have all of the details posted on my George’s Talks and Trips web page shortly after then. Lowee’s will have itineraries and booking options on its Garden Series web page, too.

   Australia apparently is a destination that a lot of gardeners and non-gardeners alike want to see. We’re going mainly because so many people mentioned to me how it was on their wish list.

New Zealand is nicknamed the Southern Alps.

   In talking to people who already have visited Down Under, most of them say New Zealand is actually the more beautiful of the two. We’ll find out.

   We started with the classic Collette two-week tour of the two countries and “gardened it up” by adding garden visits and a two-day add-on in Melbourne, where we’ll begin the trip.

   We’re going to hit Melbourne’s beautiful Fitzroy Gardens first thing and then tour the city’s 150-year-old Royal Botanic Gardens. That’ll give us an immediate look at the rich variety of plants that this other-side-of-the-world grows, things like emu bushes, protea-like banksias, and plenty of others you and I have never seen (or heard of).

   Plant-wise, it’ll be like a visit to the Land of Oz. Yet the language, day-to-day life, and customs are familiar enough to us that we won’t feel that far out of our element.

   Also in Melbourne, we’ll visit a farmer’s market, tour the Koala Conservation Center, and see the world’s biggest colony of little penguins.

   Then it’s north to Cairns, where we’ll learn about Australia’s aboriginal people at the Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Center, visit a crocodile farm, and spent a day at the Great Barrier Reef, including a trip out on the water in a catamaran.

   Next, we fly to Sydney, where we’ll tour key attractions like the site where the original British colonists landed, Harbour Bridge, Kings Cross, and the Sydney Opera House, where you’ll have an option to book a dinner and show.

Melbourne’s Fitzroy Gardens.

   Garden-wise in Sydney, we’re scheduled to tour the city’s world-class Royal Botanical Garden as well as the Chinese Garden of Friendship, built authentically in conjunction with Sydney’s sister city, Guangzhou, China.

   After Sydney, we fly to the city of Christchurch on New Zealand’s southern island. Christchurch was hit hard by an earthquake in 2011, and we’ll see how the city is still recovering and rebuilding from it.

   Nicknamed the “Garden Center,” Christchurch is in a scenic region highlighted by Mt. Cook, where glaciers blanket the jagged peaks. We’ll see Christchurch Botanic Gardens there and have a special home-cooked meal in the home of New Zealand “Kiwi” families.

   If the scenery isn’t amazing enough in that so-called Southern Alps region, it gets even better heading toward Queenstown – famous for its Hollyford Valley and surrounding mountain setting.

   We’ll do a fjord cruise on the Milford Sound and take in the beech forests and sheer rock faces that quickly rise up 4,000 feet on either side of the water. We’ll also stop at the Gold Rush town of Arrowtown.

   Queenstown Gardens are on tap the next morning, followed by a tour of a sheep farm, and a variety of options, including a jet boat ride, a tour of New Zealand film locations, a visit to Kiwi Birdlife Park, and a gondola ride to the top of Bob’s Peak.

   There’s a nice mix of gardens, scenery, nature, wildlife, and historical attractions on this trip, plus enough free time built in to either give you a little time to rest or to take advantage of specific activities that catch your fancy.

   It’s a long way to get there, but this one’s a once-in-a-lifetime destination. Besides Iceland, which I’ve already seen, Australia is one of the two places in the world I’ve always wanted to see.

   Those koalas seem pretty cute…