The Price of Gas in Australia

Australia Travelog #29
Leura, NSW - Fri, 29 Dec 2023, 12pm

I pumped gas into our rental car today in Australia. That gave me occasion to do the math on gas prices. It's $1.99 at many gas stations in the area. But that price is (a) in Australian Dollars and (b) per liter. The AUD-USD exchange rate is 0.68, so that's $1.35 US per liter, and at 3.785 liters/gallon that works out to $5.12/gal US.

$5.12/gal... that's actually not much higher than premium grade gas at name-brand stations in California right now.

Why premium grade? Because Australia would seem to offer only premium grades of gasoline....



Notice those octane grade ratings— 91, 95, and 98. Anyone who drives a car with a high performance engine in the US would be salivating as our typical stations offer 87, 89, and 91 octane gas. A few states offer 93, and grades like 95 and 97 aren't seen outside of race tracks. But the US and AU figures are not the same. The US figure is an AKI calculation, Australia is RON. Australia's higher numbers actually work out to about the same octane content as the US's 87-89-91 fuel grades.

Eat and Get Gas

Australia Travelog #30
Leura, NSW - Fri, 29 Dec 2023, 12:30pm

We debated where to eat lunch today. Usually when we're out trail-hopping we try to pack food in the car or find a fast, casual restaurant for takeaway. Unfortunately there are dearly few choices in fast-casual restaurants around here. The nearest McDonald's or Burger K— I mean, Hungry Jack— is 30 miles away. There are a few cafes that might be quick but they're in dense downtown village areas, where it takes time to drive through traffic, park, and then wait in line to order and get food. Oh, and packing food in the car? We tried shopping two nights ago, but the grocery store here sucks. The choices for food we could reasonably pack in the car are poor.

"Let's try the gas station on the highway," we agreed as we finished up our hike to Empress and Sylvia Falls. "Maybe they've got some take-away food."

We were thinking of gas-station food on the level of hotdogs on rollers or maybe a microwaved Hot Pocket™. But at the BP station around the corner we found something even better: pasties! Aka, meat pies. Aka, the thing that likely inspired Hot Pockets™ but is made by actual people instead of produced thousands at a time by robots and stored frozen for a few months before being popped into a microwave oven that somehow makes parts of the sandwich blisteringly hot while the center remains barely thawed.



I picked a butter chicken (Indian dish) meat pie and a ground beef and cheese. Hawk picked a steak and chile pie. We each got a few drinks and a fresh donut or danish for dessert.

And of course, because we bought our lunch at a gas station...



...We ate it at the gas station!

Seriously, sitting at a picnic table in the gas station parking lot was more comfortable than sitting in the car to eat, and it was a lot faster than taking our food back to the hotel.

Oh, and we bought petrol while we were there. Eat and get gas!

Climbers Rappelling down Empress Falls

Australia Travelog #28
Valley of the Waters, NSW - Fri, 29 Dec 2023, 11am

As we made our way back up the canyon past several waterfalls on the Valley of the Waters trail we saw an unusual sight: rock climbers rappelling down the face of Empress Falls!

At first we stopped and simply watched, thinking it might be just one daredevil. But then we saw there were a group of them, so I pulled out my phone to record video.

Watch on YouTube

After I recorded one video from the bottom I scrambled up around a knob halfway up the falls to get a better view. I got there just in time for the second climber's descent. Both are in the video above.

By the time we left the falls and climbed up around the ridge opposite it we saw that it wasn't just a few climbers but actually at least a dozen people coming out the narrow canyon above the falls. They had hiked down from the top of the canyon, not climbed up from the bottom (answering one questions we wondered about as we watched the first two climbers descend). Apparently there's an extreme outfitter that runs tour groups doing this.