Sunday September 8th, 2019.
We finally get 8 hours (or more) of sleep. Chrissy, Brandi and I trek into The Rocks and meet Hannah’s friend Sydney in Sydney’s oldest neighborhood.
We say our farewells, first to Sydney the Human, then to Sydney the Australian city.
Chrissy, Brandi and I relax on the flight heading Northeast towards Oahu. We all agree how amazing our Australian trip was over the last 7 days and we’re ready to lay on a Hawaiian beach near Kapolei where Chrissy lives.
Sunday September 8th, 2019.
Exhausted from going through the International TimeWarp, we arrive in Honolulu earlier the same day and collect ourselves to head west. This concludes our adventure down under and we discuss the beers and burgers we’d had throughout the past week.
Saturday September 7th, 2019.
Hannah, Chrissy, Brandi and I try our hardest to stretch time in our favorite Airbnb but we inevitably lock the doors (all of them of course) and carry on to a local coffee shop featuring our most discussed menu item: the chicken sandwich (known in Aus as the chicken burger). We tried many on this trip and the Gold Coast has it down.
We also noted the dish we saw most often was The Burger. Australians don’t mess around with the typical American diner burgers, these things were massive and decked out with some eclectic fixings. Their fries were flaky, crisp, meaty and sometimes inside the burger. Hannah drove us to the Gold Coast airport and we said G’Day to her as we flew to Sydney and Hannah remained in GC to wait for Sydney that was in Sydney at the time.
Friday September 6th, 2019.
This day started with joy when Brandi held a koala for the first time. His name was Brüt and apparently his mother was as distracted by crowds as he was. At that wildlife sanctuary (Currumbin) we saw kangaroos, wallabies, crocodiles, dingos, red pandas, giant bats and other native animals. Too wild!
Hannah, Chrissy, Brandi and I continued to Black Hops headquarters where we had to check out where the brewery’s beautiful brewing began. Then to Burleigh Brewing and on to Lost Palms Brewing. It has to be the most breweries visited before watching Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: we’ll have to see if anyone else has visited more than 3 before watching a 3 hour late night showing. This was our last full day in Gold Coast and we ‘made a day of it.’
Thursday September 5th, 2019.
Our first full day in Gold Coast, Australia and everything is going swimmingly. We avoided swimming at Mermaid Beach that was a 2-3 minute walk from our place but we didn’t avoid more breweries.
After Hannah surprised us by driving to a natural kangaroo area, we arrived at Black Hops II- an impressive industrial structure with great brews and fantastic vibes. Everyone was so nice and when they saw we were filming Show Us Your Brews, they took us on back through the brewery to see where the Magic took place. They have a new brew called Flash Bang White IPA and it should be coming out as this article is published.
We continued to Balter Brewing and ate some Mexican food from a truck parked in their factory. Being from San Antonio it sounds like blasphemy but the fish tacos were incredible and so was the fish burrito, like we ate a lot of Mexican food.
Wednesday September 4th, 2019.
One of the best Sunsets I’ve ever seen but let’s start with the Sunrise. We wake up in an Airbnb in the hill country but, ya know, the Australian hill country. Our last day on the true road trip part of our journey from Sydney to the Gold Coast and we stayed in Port Macquarie near the Midcoast.
A relaxing day on the road and we make some beach stops and some lighthouse stops. We check out Stone & Wood- an Australian staple of a brewery and the sun is coming down hard so we attempt to run up the trail to the main lighthouse. We might be too late to see it from the top but my drone decides to scope it out from above. We find a little nook where we can see the lighthouse and the beach below where surfers are riding their last waves of the day. Too beautiful.
We make it to Gold Coast, and meet up with Chrissy’s college roommate. We have an Airbnb here for 3 nights.
Tuesday September 3rd, 2019.
Sydney begins to feel familiar and we walk from our Haymarket hotel to the Sydney Opera House finding Blake Rabe staring into his reflection in the water, pondering life. He spent days and days around Cairns to the north but took a flight south to Sydney the day before. Blake, Hannah, Chrissy, Brandi and I wander around for a bit and find ourselves at Hertz where we check out an SUV to begin our journey North.
We all hang out at 4 Pines Brewery in the Manly area for a bit then look at the surfers riding the short breaks at Manly Beach. We bye-five Blake and carry on to Hope Brewing on the way to Port Macquarie.
This began a two day road trip to the GC totaling 9 hours of driving snapped in half. This sunset was different- we saw an amazing spot to pull over and drone, quickly realizing there are tons of kangaroos. I guided the drone down to the pack and captured them standing, laying and occasionally scratching their head.
Monday September 2nd, 2019.
We arrive in Sydney at 3 pm and take the train to our hotel called Ultimo in Haymarket near the Central Station. Check in is great and we crave a burger and a beer. We find Blake in a burger and beer spot called ZePickle and eat a burger and drink some beer with him. Always a neat thing to see a longtime friend in a faraway location.
It should be noted that Brandi ate a fried chicken burger with mashed potatoes and crispy fries IN the bun.
We carry on with lil espresso cups to our first brewery of the trip: Sydney Brewing Surry Hills where we meet up with Chrissy’s longtime friend Hannah. Brandi and I met her in October of 2018 when we visited Chrissy in Kapolei so I feel that this article is revealing that full circle thing. We all laughed, carried on and even said “cheers” a whole lot.
Sunday September 1st, 2019.
6 am we leave our Waikiki hotel and head to the Honolulu airport. Brandi and I find Chrissy and our Jetstar flight leaves at 8:30 am Sunday. We make our way to Australia through the International TimeWarp...
