Moving to Australia has been an amazing adventure, but it’s hard being so far away from family and friends. Jon and I lobbied hard for my family to meet us in the middle which we decided is Hawaii and travelmath.com agrees. “The city at the geographic halfway point from Melbourne, Australia to Washington, DC is Banana, Kiribati. [which has this extensive Wikipedia page] The closest major city that is roughly halfway is Honolulu, HI.”  When my family decided to go for it and meet us in Oahu over our nephew’s spring break it was the best news ever.

Jon and I flew in to glorious Honolulu a couple of days before the fam and took full advantage of our time in the states to stock up on things not sold or sold for much much higher prices in Australia (even with the weak dollarydoo!). I know I’m not supposed to love retail giants Walmart and Target, but there just isn’t anything that compares in Australia and it felt so good to be able to buy Powerade Zero for $.99 and pick from 10 types of pretzels for a snack. I felt so guilty.

Other highlights from our first two days include $6 pints of beer, heaps of spray sunscreen to bring back with us and somehow ending up next to a couple from Melbourne at Uncle Bo’s where we had dinner one night.

I couldn’t sit still on Monday as we waited for my family’s flight to arrive. I anxiously paced back and forth in baggage claim like a nervous first time father to be. Finally, we saw them coming down the stairs and I literally jumped for joy. After all their bags arrived and the rental car place finally provided a car, we were off to our home for the week, a rental house on the North Shore.

We explored different beach(es) each day with my sister, Alison, providing amazing, tireless chauffeur services. One thing that really stood out to me was how different each beach was from the last. I liked Waimea Bay for it’s beauty, moderate waves, and location, a very short drive from our rental house, and Jon liked it for slope/ sand setup which was good for digging out your own beach chair.

Shark’s Cove, also well located just a short walk from our rental house, allowed us to see some of the creatures we shared the water with all week. The super clear water revealed Nemos, humuhumunukunukuapua’as, angel fish and all sorts of other sea life I don’t know the proper names for. We also went snorkeling at Kuilima Cove and saw even more colorful, interesting fish. Lanikai and Wailua beaches both impressed with super soft sand and water in lovely shades of blue.

My nephew and I made the most of the small waves at the latter by jumping over/into them. Too bad Jon couldn’t quite get the photo timing right…

We checked out a beach by Laie on the north east side of the island and found what may be my perfect beach, at least on that day. The sand may not have been as soft as Lanikai or Wailua, but I didn’t care since I spent 99% of my time in the water which was a refreshing temperature and lovely shade of blue with the (my) perfect amount of waves. And I can’t forget one more beach, the beach by our house. I don’t know the official name, but we’ll just call it giant wavey beach which as you may have guessed had giant waves. We spent several funtastic evenings there watching the giant waves, building forts to keep out the giant waves, playing frisbee and watching the sunset.

As you can imagine, we worked up quite an appetite exploring all these fabulous beaches. Luckily, Hawaii’s restaurants and food trucks did not disappoint. We had delicious lunches at Ted’s Bakery, Buzz’s Original Steakhouse, and Seven Brothers Burgers among others and tasty dinners at Haleiwa Joe’s (thanks for treating us Auntie Lorrie!),  Cholo’s and my personal favorite, steaks with pineapple grilled at home by my brother-in-law, Lyon.

My family lived in Wahiawa,  Hawaii from just before the time I entered kindergarten until just after I finished the 3rd grade. A big plus of going to Hawaii for our family reunion was a chance to see places I have fuzzy little kid memories of with my mom and sister who remember things much better. We took advantage of our sole rainy day to drive to the middle of the island checked out Alison’s and my old school and the two houses we lived in. Not surprisingly, everything seemed much smaller to me.

Our other exception to the beach all day every day rule was Easter Sunday. Mum treated us to a feast at the Hale Koa. The buffet had everything from biscuits and gravy  to sushi and I tried it all. Luckily we took a super long walk around Waikiki afterward so I’m sure that I worked it all off. Ha.

We also drove around the southern part of the island to make a quick stop at Bellows Beach, our favorite beach when we lived there.

With all the exploring we did, there is still a surprising amount of the island we didn’t even get to so I guess we’ll have to go back next year or sooner!

The rainy weather thwarted our original plan to stop at Freycinet National Park and walk to see Wineglass Bay on our way to St. Helens. Instead, we drove straight to the town deemed to be bustling by the tourism powers that be. When we arrived, we had to double check to make sure we were in the right place as the town we drove into was quiet and empty. Sure enough, we were in the right place, a lovely AirBnB rental house right on the water.

The next day, my birthday – woo!, we decided to get up early to head back to Freycinet to do the walk we’d wanted to do the day before. Jon and I both hate back tracking, but we didn’t want to miss out on such a highly touted tourist destination. We walked to the view point and then continued on down to the beach and a ways further, doing a loop back to the car park.

The walk paled in comparison to the Cradle Mountain hike earlier in the week in both difficulty and views, but it was still a lovely way to spend the day. That evening Jon cooked me a wonderful birthday dinner and we enjoyed our last night in our rental home.

Before heading away from the coast, we hit up the Bay of Fires beaches. This is another of the must sees per big tourism, rated as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. I agree wholeheartedly that they are beautiful BUT can a beach that you can’t use for typical beach purposes – swimming, sunning, relaxing – really be the “best”? I don’t think so. What do you think?

After spending the morning driving on winding less than 2 lane roads to view beaches, we switched things up to drive on winding less than 2 lane roads to get over to Launceston. We finally came across normal roads as we got closer which I found more exciting than warranted. Fortunately, no super strong kangaroos tried to lift up our car along the way.

Big tourism briefly mentions that there is a gorge in Launceston that you can walk to from the CBD. Jon and I decided to check it out and found that in this case big tourism was seriously underselling things. The gorge is a terrific place to walk, a big park, a free public pool, a natural swimming hole, and more all located in actual walking distance from the CBD. I think it is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in a city.

We hoped to grab a few post cards and some souvenirs before heading back to Melbourne. Unfortunately, the entire CBD shutdown at 5 pm so nothing was open for us to spend our tourism dollars.

Then again, we probably would have spent $10…

We drove out of Launceston and onto the ferry in Devonport  for the return trip to Melbourne. Luckily it was a much smoother uneventful sailing and even more luckily it didn’t coincide with this.