Moon Sydney & the Great Barrier Reef

by Ulrike Lemmin-Woolfrey

Overview

This full-color guide to Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef includes vibrant photos and easy-to-use maps—plus a 30-page Wildlife Guide—to help you plan the trip of a lifetime.

The birthplace of modern Australia, Sydney is a bustling, cosmopolitan playground. Off Queensland's endless coast, the Great Barrier Reef is a playground of a different kind, a wonderland of coral gardens and colorful sea life. Larger than the Great Wall of China and home to thousands of species of wildlife, the Great Barrier Reef is an adventure-lover's paradise.

In this book, expert traveler Ulrike Lemmin-Woolfrey tells you everything you need to know to make this trip possible, with tips on:

How to get from Sydney to the Reef and where to stop along the way—including information on Cairns, Port Douglas, and Townsville
How to experience the Reef's world-class diving
How to choose the best reef cruises and rainforest tours
How to find and identify wildlife

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781612388298
Publisher:	Avalon Publishing
Publication date:	02/24/2015
Series:	Moon Handbooks Travel Series
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	375
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Originally from Hamburg, Germany, Ulrike Lemmin-Woolfrey has lived in six countries and on three continents, including Germany, the United Kingdom, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. When her husband relocated to Melbourne, Ulrike found herself packing her bags and heading to the “land down under.” Since then, she has made it her mission to see and experience as much as possible of her newly adopted country.

With a bachelor's degree in marine biology and a passion for scuba diving, Ulrike loves exploring the Great Barrier Reef and the Queensland coast. Her favorite experiences in Queensland include diving off Heron Island and cuddling a koala. In Sydney, she enjoys immersing herself in the history of the old beautiful buildings, and walking the magical Bondi to Coogee coastal path. She has also been known to sit in the Taronga Zoo's petting area to get some one-on-one time with the cuddly critters.

A freelance writer specializing in travel, expat issues, and lifestyle, Ulrike is also the author of Moon Living Abroad in Australia. She currently lives in Melbourne.

Read an Excerpt

From Moon Sydney&the Great Barrier Reef

Sydney spreads itself sumptuously along its sunken river valley, hemmed by some of the world’s most expensive real estate. Pricey or not, people come to Sydney and fall in love. The beauty of the harbor, the majestic buildings in the town center (Central Business District or CBD) harking back to prosperous times that started back in the early 1800s, and the proximity of some of the world’s most famous and surfable beaches along the Pacific coast, together with the city being the hub from where to reach the rest of this rather large country, all make for a popular gateway to Australia and a stunning city in its own right. Here are the highlights you need to see when visiting Australia’s largest city.

The Rocks: This is where it all started, where the First Fleet landed and the first settlers arrived, voluntarily or not. There is a great atmosphere of history in the air, the buildings are all wonderful, and the area is dotted with cafés, restaurants, and shops.

Sydney Opera House: It really doesn’t get more iconic than the Sydney Opera House, one of the most widely recognized buildings in the world.

BridgeClimb: To get a view like no other, climb Sydney Harbour’s iconic “coat hanger” bridge. It looks steeper than it is and the climb is slow with plenty of breaks, making it accessible for nearly everybody.

Manly Ferry: This commuter ferry goes past the opera house, all along the harbor, and past the islands to the entrance to the ocean at Manly. For a handful of dollars you get hundreds of dollars worth of views.

Macquarie Street: If you just see one street in Sydney, this must be it. Every building is historic, and the road stretches from the opera house, past the Royal Botanic Gardens, to Hyde Park. Take your time and pop into all the buildings along the way, and you’ll have a great idea of Australia’s history.

Hyde Park Barracks: This museum concentrates on Australia’s first settlers, the workers that built the colony—how they lived, worked, struggled.

Art Gallery of New South Wales: Located in the beautiful Domain, with great views, the gallery is a fantastic collection of old European, contemporary, indigenous, and ancient Asian art.

Sydney Tower Eye: Get a good overview of this sprawling metropolis from up high. You can even do yoga or be daring and do a skywalk.

Taronga Zoo: Sydney is all about views—even the zoo has them. Stand by the giraffes and see the Sydney skyline, opera house, and bridge from there. Oh, and the animals, from near and far, are wonderful, too.

Bondi Beach: This is one of the best-known beaches on the globe. Curved along the bay, fringed by rocky outcrops and the “village,” as the suburb proudly calls itself, the beach attracts surfers, bathers, and the famous lifeguards. And the stunning Bondi to Coogee walk starts here.


The region of Cairns and the Northern Reef offers a plethora of thrill-seeking activities, be it bungee jumping, ziplining, or wild-water rafting, as well as more serene ways of spending the day, such as taking the cable car to Kuranda, doing some shopping in the market, and taking the scenic railway back. Here are the can’t-miss sights and activities for your trip.

Flecker Botanical Gardens: Imagine walking from a bustling city center into a wild and luscious rainforest within 30 minutes. The botanical gardens are slightly more manicured and not as wild as the forest farther up the coast, but that means that you can safely walk along boardwalks taking in the incredible plants that grow here, view special exhibits, and stop for coffee, all without worrying about the indigenous wildlife eating you while you are in the jungle.

Kuranda: Take a cable car up over the rainforest’s canopy, see the cockatoos sitting on the treetops, then visit colorful markets in Kuranda over lunch and get back to the starting point in a historic train that trundles past waterfalls and across gorges—this is quite simply one of the region’s best days out.

Undara Lava Tubes: Just when you think nature could not get any more impressive than the magnificent Great Barrier Reef and the luscious tropical rainforest, then you’ll walk through a maze of enormously large tubes that were formed from lava flow some 190,000 years ago. Add to that a hike around a crater and toasting your morning bread at a bush breakfast, and you get an all-round Outback experience that is hard to beat.

Fitzroy Island: After a mere 45 minutes on the ferry from Cairns, you are on a (nearly) deserted island offering self-guided walks through the rainforest, a white sandy beach that is flanked by giant boulders, and the possibility of encountering green sea turtles when snorkeling. But this desert island also comes with a beach bar and snacks.

Lizard Island: The only continental islands close to the outer Great Barrier Reef, an hour’s flight from Cairns, the Lizard Island group offers pristine water, easy access to the colorful reef, untouched beaches, and a true desert island experience. The star of the islands is Lizard Island and its award-winning five-star luxury resort, where celebrities come to take advantage of the combination of unspoiled nature, luxury amenities, and utter seclusion.

Daintree Rainforest: Covering some 1,200 square kilometers north of Cairns, the World Heritage-listed Daintree is the largest continuous rainforest area in Australia. At an estimated 180 million years old, some tens of millions of years older than the Amazon rainforest in South America, it is also the oldest rainforest in the world, containing examples of fauna and flora that are not found anywhere else on the planet.

Editorial Reviews

One of the great travel destinations in the world is the Great Barrier Reef. The planet's largest coral reef system, the Great Barrier Reef in the Coral Sea stretches over 1,400 miles and features some 900 islands. Author Ulrike Lemmin-Woolfrey suggests the best diving locations as well as the best choices for cruising the reef (whether organized, private or doing it yourself). Sydney in all its splendor takes up a big chunk of the book too: its culture, nightlife, shopping, dining and, of course, beaches.

The book concludes with a wildlife guide (sea life, mammals, reptiles, birds and insects) and a backgrounder section on Australian cultural values: Australia prides itself as being the land of the ‘fair go,' or giving someone a chance.”
—The Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher