Australia: The Land Down Under Our International Travel Plan

Australia: The Land Down Under
Our International Travel Plan

Our International trip was to Sydney, Australia, with four fun filled days of adventures ahead of us. We worked around all of our schedules and ended up going March 21st-24th. To gain more knowledge about the place we were taking off to we decided to research the culture, population, art, and tradition of Australia. After comparing prices, we decided to use Expedia.com, where we found four roundtrip tickets from the Dulles Airport straight to Sydney, for $5,600 per person, using United Airlines. We also booked our three-night stay at the International Hotel and Resort for $330 a night per room. The most important factor was getting passports, so we interviewed a representative of the Department of State about the process of getting a passport. We told the representative that we were going to Australia. He told us that we had to get a passport book in order to travel by airplane. We asked him where we would fill out the forms and he told us to fill out the forms on the Department of State website. We would print out the form and present it to the Passport Agency. There the Passport Agency would ask for our birth certificates and two photos of each of us. We also had to present our drivers license and pay a $75 fee for the application. After we filled out the forms and submitted them to the Passport Agency, we got our passport books in the mail 4-6 weeks later. We also registered at the State Department and filled out emergency information. For this trip, we decided not to bring too much cash or any expensive jewelry or watches because crime is a daily occurrence in Sydney. We looked at laws in Australia and read the security procedures at Australian airports. We checked our medical coverage in case we get sick or injured in Australia. We decided we would only bring necessary items to Australia such as phones, clothes, maps and cameras. We estimated that the total cost for our trip was $23, 600 that included airfare, hotel, transportation, food, and sightseeing. On March 21, we arrived in Sydney very late but we did decide that the city was too large for us to walk everywhere so we chose to use the Sydney Shuttle Club. The next day, the 22nd, we wanted to start visiting the great museums Sydney has to offer so the first museum we went to was the Powerhouse Museum. The Powerhouse Museum had a variety of exhibits. We went to the Student Fashion Exhibit to view the next generation of fashion design in Australia. The designs were very interesting. The goal of our trip was to research the music and museums of Australia so we picked the tea cosy exhibit to go to because tea cosys are an important part of Australian culture. A tea cosy is a cover for a teapot. In the exhibit, there were many designs of a tea cosy including some that looked like fruit. We also searched the web to find out the different types of music in Australia. There is a variety of types of music in Australia but the most famous bands in Australia were rock bands. Australians listen to metal rock or hardcore rock. Famous hardcore rock bands are Mindsnare, 50 Lions, I Killed the Prom Queen, Toe to Toe. Australian Metal Bands include Mortal Sin, Devolved, Portal, Segression, The Amenta, and The Red Shore.
After learning so much at the Powerhouse Museum, we went to eat at one of the two restaurants we found that had great reviews from customers and served seafood that we all wanted to experience in Australia. The Astral Restaurant in Star City proved to be quite delicious and had very reasonable prices. Next, it was on to visit the other museum we went, the Australian Museum with the admission being $12 per person. We attended the “Surviving Australia,” exhibition that was located on the second level. This exhibition focused on the key to the survival of Australian animals. It was divided into six sections that offered information on Australia’s habitats on land, under water, and in between. We learned about Australia’s top-10 venomous snakes and we even got to play with sharks, crocodiles, funnel-webs, and other threatening creatures. We then moved on to visit the museum’s vertebrate collection. The collection included specimens of birds, mammals, fishes, reptiles, and frogs.
The next day we turned to a different aspect of Australia, its arts. We went to one of the museums that contained Australian Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art. There we went to see was the Olafur Eliasson contemporary art gallery. The gallery contained his photographs and sculptures from 1993 to the present. We also searched on the internet for Australian historical art. We found that Australia’s indigenous culture is the oldest in the world and contains art from as far back as 30,000 years ago. The types of art were Rock Art, works on paper, canvas, fiber and glass. The rock art is important to the Aborigines because it shows the presence of their ancestors. The most famous site in Australia is the Uluru, caves containing Australian aboriginal paintings.
After the Museum of Contemporary Art, we returned to our hotel to fulfill another goal of our trip. We wanted to find out the natural resources in Australia so we searched through the internet and found out Australia is rich in coal reserves. Australia has 24 billion tons of coal reserve. Other natural resources are Gold, Iron, Bauxite, Manganese, Uranium Ore, Lead and Zinc. After all the intensive research we did, we went back to Star City to eat at the Lagoon, the other seafood restaurant we found. The food was also good here but unfortunately, we could not stay a sample more because we had to go back to the hotel to pack and get ready for our early morning flight back to Virginia.
While we were in Australia, we learned that Australians are nice helpful people who have a good sense of humor. They majority of Australians live in coastal areas away from the central deserts, they like to fish and surf. Australians are also competitive in sports. There are many national parks in Australia and many movie theaters or cinemas in shopping centers. Interesting facts that we learned while in Africa are that songs and dance are important in Australian culture. In the past, the aboriginal people of Australia used songs at every ceremony. To dance correctly was a very important thing in Australian culture because it shows your knowledge of your ancestors. Knowledge of dances was passed down from generation to generation. Visiting Australia showed me the great artwork and music of Australia. Visiting Australia helped me understand the differences between American culture and Australian culture. Visiting other countries can help achieve world peace because we see the difference and similarities between countries and come to understand each other. Although there may differences between countries, we can accept those differences and live peacefully together in the world.

Works Cited
Expedia.com
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/ http://australianmuseum.net.au/ google.com www.mca.com.au

Cited: Expedia.com http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/ http://australianmuseum.net.au/ google.com www.mca.com.au