11/19

Lady Elliot Island is a natural island formed by coral and bird droppings.  It really is.  The lodgings are glorified tents.  The reason you want to stay a week here is that the island is in the Great Barrier reef and you simply walk off the island into reef and amazing coral vistas.  We spent days snorkeling here.

We only had a disposable underwater film camera so our pictures are not as good as we would have liked and we missed a lot of great shots.  We saw so many different kinds of seafaring creatures: sharks, turtles, anemone, cuttlefish, manta ray, and a huge maori wrasse (biggest damn fish I have ever seen).

While we were there, the Green sea turtles were nesting, so we could go out at night with the nature guide and watch the turtles dig a pit and lay eggs before heading back to sea.

We left Lady Elliot and headed to Sydney to finish out the Australia leg of our trip.  Our second day in Sydney we went to the Opera house for Rachmaninoff after a visit to the botanic gardens.

The following day we saw the aquarium and wildlife world.  We got a lot more pictures at the aquarium but it feels like cheating after seeing some of these animals in the wild.

The Sydney Harbor bridge was very cool.  We climbed the pylon before taking the Parramatta ferry.  Of course, the most interesting pictures you can take from the bridge are the opera house.

We took the train to Katoomba and the Blue Mountains.  There we saw echo point, three sisters and the leura cascades.

The next day we flew to New Zealand.

11/13

We stayed in a rambunctious hostel (I think it was called Calypso) in Cairns but they had a travel guy there that would have made the place a bargain at twice the price.  He helped us book an overnight on the Great Barrier Reef (our travel agent in the states said there was no way we could afford to do that) and he even refunded our hostel for the days we would be on the overnight.  Anyway, kudos to Calypso, they were great.

Our first full day in Cairns we went to Tjapukai, an aboriginal cultural park.  We watched an aboriginal dance with music by didgeridoo.  We were also taught how to throw boomerangs and spears.  It was pretty awesome.

We took the Skyrail to Kuranda.  The Skyrail cable car was outstanding and we were fortunate in that it had rained the day before so waterfalls were flowing and the greenery was beautiful.  In Kuranda, we went to the butterfly sanctuary.

The next day we went out with Billy Tea Bush Safari.  We must have done their Daintree rain forest 1 day tour.  We went out in their truck through the rain forest to have a snack, then on to the boat trip down the river.  We saw crocodiles, snakes and mangrove trees from the boat.  At the animal preserve we fed kangaroos, and at Cape Tribulation we saw a box jellyfish.

The travel guy at Calypso said we had to do Uncle Brian’s waterfall tour, so that’s what we did the day after Daintree.  The waterfall tour was incredible!  The sights were amazing and the natural water slides were great.  This tour was easily the most fun you can have on a bus.  We even saw two platypus! (yes, I had to look it up)

1. Scientists generally use “platypuses” or simply “platypus“. Colloquially, the term “platypi” is also used for the plural, although this is technically incorrect and a form of pseudo-Latin; the correct Greek plural would be “platypodes”.

2. Platypus – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus

Then on to the Coral Sea Dreaming for our live-aboard for the next two days.  The live-aboard was less expensive than our hostel stay in Cairns.  Of course, we had to sleep on the dining room table but it was awesome.  Plus, we went to snorkel, not to sleep on tables!  We tried scuba here and it was ok.  Jenn didn’t care for it at all and used up most of her air in just a few minutes underwater.

The day after we got back from the live-aboard we flew to Lady Elliot Island.

11/6

We took the ferry back to Adelaide and the next morning we boarded the short bus for our 6 day trip through the red center.  The tour hiked through Alligator gorge and we saw aboriginal cave paintings.  We ended the day at Pachilna where we ate kangaroo, emu and camel for dinner.

Our tour went through another gorge where we saw yellow footed rock wallaby, emu and a shingleback lizard whom we affectionately refer to as a turd lizard.  Their tail resembles their head and as it was described to us, a predator might bite the shingleback’s ‘fake’ head and get a mouthful of something not delicious.  Later in the day when it was much warmer, we climbed Mt. Ohlssen-Bagge.

The following day we drove to Lake Hart salt flats.  It was the first time I’d ever seen salt flats and it was pretty neat.  It was also very flat.  After that short stop we continued our trek to Coober Pedy where they mine opal.  They had these crazy vacuum vehicles made of old pickup trucks.  They use these vacuums to suck the dirt up from inside the mines.  It was very hot there, so hot that the houses are built underground.  We fossacked dirt piles for a while trying to find opal but gave up and bought one.  The breakaways are near here, and a lot of movies like Mad max and Pitch Black were filmed in this region for the desolate landscape.  That evening in the dining hall where we stayed, we saw a giant spider and learned that everything in Australia can kill you.  You should listen to the ‘Come to Australia‘ song.

11/9

We made it to Uluru.  It was quite hot.  That night we camped under the stars.

The next day we had a chance to walk around Uluru (or climb it).  We read that it is disrespectful to the Aboriginal people to climb it, so we admired it from the ground.  After a few hours at Uluru, we hiked at Kata Tjuta.  We camped in cabins that night and saw more of Australia’s poisonous spiders.  I’m pretty sure that’s a redback.

After packing up camp, we head to King’s Canyon where we hiked for a few hours.  It was very hot once again.

Leaving King’s canyon we drove the rest of the way to Alice Springs.  In Alice Springs we bought a painting by an Aboriginal artist then took a flight to Cairns.

11/1

After visiting the tourism information center, I did their walking tour #5.  I also saw the Royal Exhibition Building and the Old Melbourne Gaol.

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The next day we flew to Adelaide.  After checking into the hostel and getting some groceries, we rode the tram awhile and saw the Chinese market.  Then we walked around the park and saw the river and sculptures there.

The bus for our Kangaroo Island tour picked us up the following day.  Aboard the Sealink ferry, we crossed over to the island.

The tour took us to a farm where we were able to pet koalas, feed kangaroos, and hold a joey.

After the farm we went to a beach with sea lions before continuing on to watch a man feed pelicans.  Jenn loved it.  The pelicans were pretty ornery and threatened to eat a gull that sat atop the man’s head.  That evening, we walked along to beach to see penguins.

The tour bus picked us up the next morning and took us to a eucalyptus distillery, remarkable rocks and a dairy farm where we enjoyed fresh sheep cheese.

10/24

In 2006 Jenn and I had a good opportunity to go to Australia.  She was in a lab in Baltimore and her PI sent her to a meeting in Melbourne.  We decided we would take off about ten weeks and see both Australia and New Zealand.  The company I worked for would not authorize that much leave so I was forced to quit my job.  We packed all our things into storage and gave back our apartment.  It was a little unnerving, it felt a bit like we were planning to never return.

Early in the morning we caught our flight from Baltimore to Denver.  We had used a travel agent to help us plan the trip, and at her suggestion we planned an 8 hour layover in LAX so we could leave the airport and go to Santa Monica.  That didn’t work out and just made the very long flight from Baltimore to Melbourne longer.  After LAX, we had another stop in Auckland, then on to our destination of Melbourne.

We arrived in Melbourne in the morning.  We were extremely tired but we were going to try to stay up and go to bed at a reasonable bed time.  First we checked into our hostel.  This was the only time our hostel was not a private room so we were in a co-ed room with about 6 bunk beds.  We went to a grocery store for some food then wandered around St. Kilda for a bit.  We couldn’t hold out though and went to bed for a long, long time.

10/26

Did the Great Ocean Road tour.  On the tour we saw Bell’s Beach, a shipwreck site, some Australian rain forest and several ocean formations including the 12 apostles and London bridge.  We also saw a house from Mad Max.

The tour was pretty good and we got to see Koalas right off the highway.

The next day we visited Queen Victoria market, the botanic gardens and the shrine of remembrance.  It was a lot of walking.  The National Gallery of Victoria and the Ian Potter Center were fascinating museums.  Jenn had to attend the conference for the next few days so for dinner those nights we walked to different areas of town, visiting Chinatown and Little Italy.