Having canceled their last biennial meeting in Buenos Aires, ISER headed to Australia this year and gave us an opportunity for a family trip Down Under. Due to time zone changes, Westley spent his entire 7th birthday aboard our 15-hour direct flight from SFO, complete with party hats, cupcake, music video, and a loaded Kindle Kids. Our arrival in Sydney was traumatizing when the customs dog sniffed out apples and cheese that Melody had failed to declare. Fortunately, we adapted quickly to driving on the left side, despite struggling with the tight hotel garage. After unpacking, we marched to Happy Chef for seafood and laksa noodles, past Hyde Park to Flour & Stone for fig tart and panna cotta lamington, then through the Royal Botanic Gardens to Circular Quay. We cooled off with gelato on the ferry to Taronga Zoo over views of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. The heat kept the zoo animals sluggish, so we hurried back for XLBs and called in early ourselves. We awoke early Saturday for oysters, sashimi, aburi scallops, and lobster noodles at the Sydney Fish Market, which fueled our visit with dugongs and shovelnose sharks at Sea Life, followed by souvenir shopping and lunch of egg tarts and seafood paella at the Rocks Market. Next, we drove south to hike Fitzroy Falls, then visited Kangaroo Valley for solid pub food and the wild wombats of Bandeela. On Sunday, we headed to the Blue Mountains for the Three Sisters and Katoomba Falls walks, followed by the railway, walkway, cableway, and skyway at Scenic World. For lunch, we ate 3 things at 8Things, with pork rolls, taro boba, and a shot of Josophan’s famous hot chocolate to put us in near-coma on our drive to Featherdale Wildlife Park. We perked up to koala petting and wallaby feeding before dining on the sushi train at Makoto. Still jet-lagged, we awoke early to stroll the Queen Victoria Building, then scurried to return our rental car. Our flight to Alice Springs was delayed, leaving bad lunch options and necessitating a grocery run prior to check-in. We cooled down at the pool, then sampled emu tartare, kangaroo rolls, and barramundi ceviche at Saltbush before a nocturnal tour at the Alice Springs Desert Park, where we spied golden bandicoots, malas, bilbies, bettongs, curlews, and swarming echidnas with our red headlamps. We returned to the park next morning for howling dingos, feeding birds, and more nocturnal animals. Westley could not stand the heat, so we left early for brunch at Page 27 and an iced latte to fuel our 5-hour drive on Red Centre Way. We stopped at Standley Chasm, Ellery Creek Big Hole, and Ochre Pits, then drove the unsealed Mereenie Loop, complete with wild horses, lizards, and piles of poop. We collapsed into our glamping tent at Kings Canyon Resort, briefly suffering a power outage and fly swarms before enjoying bar food and jukebox BTS at dinner. We began the South Wall walk at Kings Canyon before dawn on Wednesday, and was thankful to have forgone the full Rim Walk as temperatures climbed and Westley complained. We returned to raid the breakfast buffet, then drove to Yulara to share kangaroo skewers before settling into our hotel for Legos and AC. Our Field of Lights evening tour was otherworldly with a beautiful view of the Milky Way. We continued our pre-dawn routine with Kata Tjuja’s Valley of the Winds and Walpa Gorge walks, followed by a sexist didgeridoo workshop, and meat pies at the Kulata Academy Café. Our sunset camel tour was interrupted by rain, but showed us how lighting starts wildfires. Dinner at Arnguli was a unique but heavy sampling of kangaroo steak, emu kofta, and wallaby shanks. We could still see fires burning when we returned to Uluru before dawn, and chose the Mala Walk and Kuniya Walk in lieu of the entire base walk to make time for a visit to the Cultural Centre, a wooden animal painting workshop, and lunch. The first part of our Australia trip was action-packed, but definitely eye-opening for us all.