MAKER Sydney

Sydney based coffee bar / bakery MAKER is one of the coolest vegan businesses in the world and I'm here to tell you why! Firstly, look a this sign. Self love and vegan treats are basically what I'm all about. I visited another popular vegan business in the city and they had a sign letting me know that their products are guilt free. Nope! Not cool. Eating isn't something that we should be made to feel guilty about and businesses buying into damaging rhetoric about guilt free foods and clean eating makes me super angry. Bring on the self love and vegan treats!

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Secondly Maker are a social enterprise. Annabelle who makes beautiful bespoke cakes at My Little Panda Kitchen, and Kate of The Vegan Teahouse who specialise in vegan cafe classics, got together to run a 100% vegan commercial kitchen where anyone can join in and make and sell epic baked goods. I mean really?! How perfect are these people? I want to move to Sydney and be a part of this.

Planning a Self Guided Trip to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park

Visiting Uluru was an absolute must for me and Nick during our time in Australia but working out how to make it happen took a while. Flights were expensive, we didn't think that we had the necessary skills to drive there, and finding a tour that didn't include eating kangaroo seemed impossible. I also knew that being on a tour with people who planned to climb Uluru against the wishes of the Anangu people would irritate me so much that I probably wouldn't enjoy the trip. In the end we planned our own self guided tour of Ulura-Kata Tjuta National Park and Kings Canyon.

Here's what our five day trip looked like.

Vegan in Hobart

After spending a little time in Melbourne after driving the Great Ocean Road Nick and I flew to Hobart to start our Tasmanian adventure. We saw the rest of the state first, check out that post here, before ending in the capital for a city break that involved a little walking, a spot of culture, some grade A eating, and a whole lot of relaxing. Our very first stop was the Salamanca Markets which we'd only heard good things about. Bury Me Standing Bagels was the place we were most stoked about trying, they have great Happy Cow reviews and they sell boiled bagels, otherwise known as proper bagels.

As well as decent bagels that you can buy to go they also sell baked goods like cookie sandwiches and brownies, some of which are gluten free. We opted to get our bagels sliced and filled to eat right away and I went for a potato bagel with a schmear of vegan cream cheese and pickles whilst Nick opted for a plain bagel with Nuttelex (Australia's Vitalite / Earth Balance), sugar, and cinnamon. They also had vegan lemon curd which I was sorely tempted by but a vegan cheese option will sway me every time.

Vegans Explore Tasmania

When I was a little kid Tasmania was one of those mysterious far away places that I never imagined that I'd travel to! Hilariously as I grew older I realised that Tasmania is just part of Australia, a cool part but still, somewhere that you could feasibly travel to. When I saw photos of the stunning scenery whilst planning my Australia trip I knew that I had to go asap. Nick and I flew to Hobart from Melbourne, picked up a rental car at the airport, and headed out into the wilderness. Our first night there was challenging, it was 4 degrees outside, the hostel had no heating in the rooms, and the building wasn't well insulated, we were very, very cold. We didn't let that dampen our spirits though and hopped out of bed bright and early the next morning assuming, correctly, that it would actually be warmer outside. Our first destination was Freycinet National Park where we had set our sights on hiking up to the wineglass bay lookout.

This hike was, of course, mostly uphill but it was manageable and we were glad that it was a little chilly in parts. There's usually a slightly longer hike that takes you down to the beach but it was closed for maintenance and we were more than happy with this shorter hike. The bay is gorgeous and the hike was challenging enough to feel like a proper work out. After descending from the lookout we had a look at the park map and headed on to our next location.

Road Trip! The Great Ocean Road

The Great Ocean Road has been on my must visit list since I was a teenager so when Nick and I were planning our trip around Australia this was on my must do list. As I may have mentioned upwards of a hundred times we love a road trip but car hire can be pricy so we kept our eyes peeled for relocations. If you haven't heard of a relocation before it's exactly as it sounds, a rental company needs to get a vehicle from one location to another and so they let you hire it for a nominal fee (in our case $5 a day) in return for you moving it for them in a timely manner.

We had three days to get from Adelaide to Melbourne which was just right. If the weather was nicer I guess it would have been fun to have an extra day to fit in some beach time but as you can see from my photos it was rainy and windy for the majority of the trip so the slightly tighter schedule was no problem. On day one we drove, drove, drove (well Nick did!) from Adelaide to Port Fairy, about six hours, so that we could kick off our first proper day on the road with a walk at Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve near Warnambool. We'd read that this was a great place to spot wildlife especially early in the morning and our getting out of bed at dawn was rewarded with some fantastic kangaroo, wallaby, and emu sightings.

Vegan in Adelaide and Broken Hill

After exploring Perth and Fremantle Nick and I flew east to Adelaide. It's a smaller and less touristy city than Melbourne, Sydney, or Brisbane and I really enjoyed it. On our first night there we went for a walk and saw protesters showing the earthlings experience, drank bubble teas, and went to Zen House for vegan yum cha. It was the perfect first glimpse into the city and we were excited to return. We stayed at the Adelaide Central YHA hostel which worked out great for us, it really is very central which is a theme with YHA hostels, when they say they're central they really are. It's within an easy walking distance of vegan eats, there was good wifi which is a must as a travel blogger, a huge lounge area, a book swap (so great!), and a decent sized kitchen which was always very clean. It was the perfect jumping off point for a trip into the outback as they even have a car park out back where we were able to park our rental car whilst we loaded it up with food, water, and our backpacks.

Our road trip was taking us six hours north of Adelaide to Broken Hill where we planned to stay in a cabin for a couple of nights.