Australia Entry #26 - April 6th, 2026 - April 25th, 2026

Images and Videos

April: Hosting my Sister and Her Friend

As part of working for Epic abroad, I have been given an annual personal flyback to use to return back to the US to see some family. However, an alternative to me going back to the US is that I can gift this flyback to a friend or family member and have them fly out to Australia instead. So, during the start of April, my sister was able to fly out to Australia with her friend and I spent some time showing them around Melbourne and further going to New Zealand for some road tripping. It was a pleasant change of pace in my life. While I was still working most of the days they were here, we did get to go out to a couple of restaurants, and I got joy out of giving recommendations for ways to spend their time, like going to the Royal Botanical Gardens or the Melbourne Zoo. I am very fortunate to have a my coworker Cameron offer to let me borrow his car as well, and thanks to that, I was able to road trip them over to the Great Ocean Road to see the cliffy ocean side and to Philip Island to see some penguins. Ultimately, they told me they enjoyed their time out in Australia, and so I am happy to have been able to give them some time to enjoy a little vacation and decompress from their jobs back in the states, and of course it was lovely to see my sister again in person after almost a year.

I had spent a lot of time continuously asking my sister what other trip she wanted to do while she was out here for the two weeks, because I didn’t want her to spend all that time in just Melbourne, and finally I was able to convince her that the second half of her trip here would be spent in New Zealand. We ended up flying into Queenstown and road tripping to Dunedin, and though for the entire last week we were constantly checking weather andd expecting it to be non-stop raining on us, we lucked out that the rain seemed to only hit while I was driving between our different locations. I got to see Dunedin for the first time and we ended up doing a High Tea event at the one and only castle in New Zealand. It was super interesting learning about all the different places that the materials from the castle were sourced from and the drive to get to the castle was remarkable with the views across the Otago Peninsula. That morning I also, thankfully, forced and convinced my sister and her friend to wake up for a sunrise at Tunnel Beach and we had amazing colors across the ocean and sky, and I think it’s now either the best or second best sunrise photo I’ve ever taken. On the way back from Dunedin, I had us stay at Wanaka for a night and we went hiking at Rob Roy’s Glacier. Initially we were planning to do an easier hike around Hooker Valley and Mt. Cook, but it seems there was a suspension bridge that was brought down out there and so half of the track was actually closed for the last year or so, and so we pivoted. The drive there was amazing, and though there was a long gravel road with many potholes, I eventually got comfortable driving through it. We also ended up stopping right before a cattle crossing of about 100-200 cows across the road to get to a new location for grazing which was completely insane to see against the backdrops of huge mountains and riverbeds.

I always knew from the beginning that I wanted to pay for a big chunk of the costs associated with this trip that my sister and her friend Rameen, and luckily I got an Australian Tax reimbursement that came in at the exact same time for around the exact same amount, so I didn’t really even feel like it was a massive hit to my bank account. I also ended up doing a budgeting exercise after they left, because I’ve always known that I don’t have to budget for survival, but it’s quite lazy of me to not know some of the big numbers for how much discretionary spending I should be letting myself have each month. What I always ended up doing was having extra income at the end of every month that I would just use to put towards additional savings and/or investments, but it was eye openning to know how much flexibility I do actually have in being able to pursue interests and having more road trips. I always love optimization and finding ways to streamline things, but I’ve also known that in many ways those optimizations came too early in my time learning a new skill or pursuit of a new interest and it ended up being a detractor. For instance, I realized that I can comfortably budget $400 for groceries each month now as something to aim for, and I can look into buying different things from the grocery store however I like and reflect back on that budget later to see if I need to make any improvements while I focus on trying to learn new recipes and possibly using new ingredients and vegetables in the recipes that I want to eventually learn.

I unfortunately won’t be able to travel for the next few months due to restrictions from work. This weekend my coworker is flying back for two weeks to America for a work conference and so I have to back up all of our customers while he is away until May 12th. Then, on later in May one of my customers is going live with additional hospitals so things will be hectic in the office again and travel will be restricted. Finally, the same coworker, Brian, will be using his sabbatical in June. I think I’m going to try to attempt the Frenchman’s Cap in Tasmania in June around the King’s Birthday three day weekend and possibly plan for another international trip in September.