Brisbane and beyond...

Today we are in Brisbane. Alan has taken the kids to see the science center and I am here at an internet cafe without them. Yeah...

We could not camp last night, the Caravan park was full to bursting. It appears that we are back in CIVILIZATION. and lots of the cheap accomodation was booked out by the time we arrived in Brisbane last night. We are staying in a pretty nice place. We have a big room with two single beds and one double bed. Luckily for us we have a small fridge, a kettle and an ensuite bathroom. Breakfast is included. Tomorrow morning we are going to hook up with Alan's cousin Kevin for his son's birthday party. He lives about an hour south of here.

Catching up on the travels... We left the Capricorn Caves area and headed south. We went to a place called Mon Repos which is a turtle sanctuary/caravan park. We had a campsite right on the dunes (think Sandbanks by the sea with very few people...). There are apparently several species of sea turtles which nest on the beach at this park. We went out at sunset and walked along the beach and back, but didn't see anything. In the morning, Heather was making a sandcastle on the beach and a park ranger asked her if she wanted to see a baby turtle. Apparently a nest of Loggerhead turtles had emerged not 10m from our tent in the night. You could see all the little tracks leading down to the sea in the sand from the nest, so many you couldn't count them. The rangers check for any that get caught in the nest and release them every morning. She had found 4 and let Heather touch one of them. She then released them from the nest site and watched them as they walked to the sea. Jacob luckily made it back from his shower in time to see the last two as we cheered them on into the surf.

We left there and headed for Hervey Bay. Apparently in the spring (our fall) they have 3000 humpback whales which visit. I would really like to see that sometime. We were out of season for the whales but we visited a place called Fraser Island for the day. It is a huge sand island and a world heritage site. Last night I was trying to figure out how many world heritage sites we have visited on this trip. Lots is all I came up with. The whole island is only accessible by 4wd vehicles. All the roads are pure sand. The ones through the forest look a bit lethal to drive on, but the beach itself looked like a blast. We were in a 28 seater bus cum assault vehicle. Our driver looked like he really enjoyed his job. He really opened it up along the beach. We read in the paper that they are thinking of closing the beach to vehicles because of the shorebirds. Looking at all the tire tracks, I can see that the shorebirds would have a 1,000,000:1 chance against making it through an incubation period with the vehicles roaring up and down the beach. It would make it a lot less fun for the tourists and guides if they were only allowed to drive on inland roads. I wonder how it will turn out.

We took an extra option of going in a small plane which took off from and landed back on the beach after flying around the island for 15 minutes. Alan and I really enjoyed it, but the kids didn't. There was another family of 4 and us who took the plane. There were only 7 seats. I think they didn't want to send two planes up, so they offered us 2 for one if the kids sat in one seat. It all happened really quickly and we agreed. They were kind of squished and Heather didn't have a very good view out of the windows from where she sat. The kids were less than thrilled. Way less.

We had a buffet lunch and then went for a walk in the forest. It was only about 2.2 km along a creek but it was really peaceful. Jacob was again less than enthusiastic -- "we come by plane and boat and bus half way round the world for what - to walk on a TRAIL." It was not our day for cooperators. They had fun by the end when we got to swim for an hour in Lake Mackenzie on the island.

Yesterday we left Hervey Bay and had plans to stay the night in Noosa. It is a famously NICE place to be. Too many people think it is a nice place to be. It is a real tourist town. We ran away. I hope we have not run out of beaches that are unspoilt. We were kind of getting used to them. We have really enjoyed the whole camping thing here in Australia. It is nice to have our own rented car and to be able to go off the beaten track and stay in the national parks. I think if we had to stay in the "popular" places, it would not be nearly as enjoyable. I think we may be in for a bit of dissapointment. Looking at the map, there seems to be a lot more people in the areas we are going than the areas we have been but we will see. Alan seems to be getting used to driving on the left side of the road and hardly ever makes mistakes anymore!

Rockhampton and counting...

We are in a place called Rockhampton. We just stayed overnight at and visited the Capricorn Caves just north of here. A woman there is part of some sort of wallaby/kangaroo rescue deal. She had a 3 month old wallaby she was rearing whose mother had been hit by a car. There were tons of pretty tame kangaroos around. The kids loved it.

We stayed in a cabin on the grounds of the cave complex which had two bedrooms, full kitchen, living room with TV (5 whole channels) and couches. It was LUXURY for all of us. We haven't had that much personal space for 3 months. In the morning 8 of the resident kangaroos came by to graze in an open patch across the road from the cabin. Two of them were obviously males and they had a boxing match. It was fun to watch. They poke at each other and balance on their tails and kick each other. They also have an aggressive behaviour which involves scratching their sides. One did it, then the other, then they got right into the kicking.

It seems that every day is a new wildlife adventure for us. I think I mentioned on our first camping night, the niche of the chipmunk was taken by brush turkeys. The night before last we were staying in a place called Rubyvale and the chipmunk niche was filled by a huge flock of Rainbow Lorikeets. They were really beautiful to watch. Alan fed one from his hand (bad boy, encouraging the wildlife like that). Running out of time will explain more later....

Down the Coast in a Rented Car...

We spent almost a week in Cairns and now are headed south. We rented a car for a month. We had to wait 2 days to get the car, so we rented another one for 2 days and went to the tablelands near Cairns. It POURED with rain most of the time. The kids enjoyed swimming in waterfalls and we saw duck billed platypusses (well, we saw ripples and brown backs which the guide ASSURED us were duck billed platypusses, so I GUESS we saw them). Al and the kids also saw huge lizards called river dragons.

We spent our last morning in Cairns buying camping equipment. At Woolworths we bought 2 tents for $34 each and two sleeping bags for $22 each. We also got an air mattress the size of the floor of one of the tents for the Queen of Everything (in case you are not in the know--that would be me!). Heather really wants one for the other tent. People have to take turns using the clunky old thermarests we brought with us. She is also angling for one when we get home for the big tent.... I figure that 3 nights of camping will recoup the investment of the tent, sleeping bags, campstove and air mattress. We have spent 2 nights so far. I must say the air mattress REALLY improves my outlook on camping. I have spent a lot of time in my life in tents, but I am getting too old for the cold, hard ground thing.

The first night of camping was fabulous. A little buggy, but there you go. We had the whole campground to ourselves and the red headed Australian brush turkeys that seem to fill the niche of the chipmunk in that park. One was really bold and stole the buns right off the table! We also saw our first kangaroos -- a mother and a baby -- as we drove into the campground. It is the kind of isolated camping experience that I remember from my youth (lo, those many years ago).

Yesterday we went to Townsville and went to a place called ReefHQ. It was really good. I wish I lived in Townsville so I could get a season's pass and go and stare in the windows. It has a part of a reef in a huge tank of water. It has hundreds (maybe thousands) of individual corals and thousands of fish in the tank. There are tons of different species of corals and fish. The tank is about 20 meters by 15 meters at least and about 4 meters deep with viewing windows all around. It wasn't quite as good as snorkelling, but it was really nice. We were there for 3 hours and Heather and I could have stayed longer. She made us go to every lecture (there was on every half hour while we were there). Jacob said to me at one point "you know, three months ago I would have thought this place was unbelievably good" I asked him why he didn't feel that way now and he said "I guess I am just jaded". At the tender age of 12.... what have we done!

Last night we spent in a caravan park. Lots of people and, sadly, very little wildlife. We did see kookaburras and crested cockatoos. Not special for here, but special for us.

Great Barrier Reef

We went out to the Great Barrier Reef on a boat called the Passions of Paradise. It took about 2 hours to get out to the reef. The crew was nice and tried to make the time pass. They gave Heather some colouring to do. Jacob was quite offended that he was offered some too. It was St. Patrick's Day so the crew had their hair spray painted green and were liberally applying green face paint to all and sundry.

The snorkelling at the reef was ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS. I could not count how many different fish and corals we saw. We had gone to a lecture the night before called Reef Teach. It was done by a marine biologist. It gave us a lot of information about the kinds of fish and coral on the reef, so we had a context for what we were seeing on the reef. It was well worth doing, especially for the kids. I think the whole experience was a lot more educational for them that way. Heather was with me for the day and she was very excited to be able to name the kinds of fish and coral. We even saw several clown fish in their anemone homes. Heather and I also saw a stingray. On the way home on the boat, Heather saw a shark.

We had about 2 hours snorkelling off a small cay(=island) then they served lunch and gave us another hour in the water at a more open water spot. It was good that we went first in the lee of the island because it eased us into the whole thing. In the open water there was a lot more swell and the current carried you along. I could have stayed for a lot longer, but the trip back was 2 hours. You can stay overnight on huge boats out at the reef, but we didn't take that option. You probably get a lot more swimming time that way. On the way home they gave everyone who had anything green on a free drink. If you didn't have any green clothing, they applied face paint and gave you the drink anyway.

Yesterday we went on the Skyrail cablecar above the rainforest. It is a 7 km cable car in three sections. It goes above the canopy of the rainforest, which is a world heritage area. In between the first and second sections you can stop at a boardwalk through the rainforest. We had a little 20 minute lecture by a forest ranger. At the second stop there is a lookout on Barron Falls. It has been raining a lot so the falls were in full flood. They are impressive but the water is very brown. I think they must have a real problem with erosion somewhere upstream. I haven't seen water that full of silt since I was in Nepal where whole mountainsides regularly fall into their rivers. There is also a small interpretive center about the rainforest.

The cable car ends at a tourist trap village called Kuranda. It is the kind of place that I want to leave as soon as I get there, if not before. Luckily our bus back to Cairns arrived about 5 minutes after we had marched through the village. Apparently there is usually a craft coop that is good, but it was closed. I may have had a different outlook on the town if it had been open.

Hopefully we will be able to put some pictures up again soon but it is difficult to find a place with the software needed for uploading....

Cairns

We are in Cairns staying at a place called Tropic Days. It is a nice place. They have 38 beds and a pool. It has a small pool that the kids have spent a lot of time in already. We are going out on a boat to the Great Barrier Reef to go snorkelling. It was raining yesterday and the kids swam in the rain in the pool. We are going to explore town a bit this afternoon.

We are tossing around the idea of renting a car for a month here. I think we would like the freedom of going at our own pace after being on Magic Bus time in New Zealand. They don't seem to have any equivalent here, so we can't really do that anyway.

Will post again when I have something worth saying...

Leaving New Zealand

Tomorrow morning we leave New Zealand at the obnoxiously early hour of 7 am. We have to be at the airport by 5. We leave the hostel at 4 am. I am not looking forward to spending the day with Heather after she has been woken up at that time. I think it is cruel and unusual to put an international flight on at that time. Virgin Blue, "discount" airline. That should have been the clue....

We have been in Christchurch for 2 days. Yesterday it was pouring most of the day so we all sat around and read books in the hostel. I think after whirling around New Zealand like the proverbial dervishes, we were all ready for a lazy day. Heather was bugging everyone to play cards with her, so I struck on the brilliant plan of teaching her solitaire. She played quite a bit yesterday and is at it again today. She is her grandma Jean's grandaughter for sure.

Today we went to Singapore airlines and moved our flight out of Australia back 2 weeks. We felt rushed in New Zealand and didn't want the same to happen in Australia. We will now have a little over 5 weeks there instead of 3. It also gives us less time in China. We were going to be in China for over 2 months, which is probably more than Heather (and the rest of us) could take. She may be back to a plain rice diet there. Although we can probably find some stuff that is not too spicy as well, I hope.

We posted a package of brochures and maps, etc. to Richard and Martina to hold on to for us. We picked them because Alan had bought a t-shirt for Richard in Cambodia (Richard-- you can just take out the t-shirt and hold onto the rest if you don't mind). I also mailed a present to Ruth's friend Laura who was so nice to us in Nelson...

We went from there to the Canterbury museum. It was a nice museum. Not huge, but some interesting bits. The kids went into an interactive part and were gone for well over an hour (you had to pay extra so the cheapskate adults just waited for them). There was an exhibit which had been a New Zealand/US base that had been dismantled after being used for international explorations in Antartica. There was also one of those pretend old streets from the turn of the century. They had both a penny farthing bicycle and a fiberglass horse you were allowed to ride. We discovered that even 12 year old boys can get a kick out of getting on a fiberglass horse if they are 10,000 miles from anyone they know...

If we survive the wake up call at 4 am, the next post will be from the (other) land down under.

Lake Tekapo

I cannot do any links on this post because I can only open one instance of Internet Explorer at a time. I usually have one open to google to find the appropriate link sites. Sorry for the inconvenience and all that. Not that I really expect anyone to follow the links...

We are in a really beautiful town called Lake Tekapo on the shores of the lake of the same name. It is a glacier fed lake and cold (as both kids but neither parent can really attest to). Surrounded by mountainy hills. Nothing but nature out front of the hostel and not much town to speak of. Unfortunately there is a LOT of condominium building going on and I think it will not be nearly as nice in not very long. Right now it has some star observatories on a hill above the town, but I am sure they will suffer as the town expands and maybe puts in street lights, etc.

We have had relatively short days on the bus since Queenstown and tomorrow is the same. The day we left Queenstown (yesterday) we arrived in Dunedin at 1 pm. We booked and went on a wildlife tour from 3-9 pm. It was GREAT. It was called the Elm Wildlife Tour and it would be worth searching your own link for it. I will put one in next time I fix the blog. We saw a seal colony from about 50 ft above, then went down to a beach and saw Yellow Eyed Penquins and Seal lions (including a pup) really close up (problably about 5 meters). We then went and saw albatross. I would recommend it to anyone in this neck of the woods.

Today we headed north again and stopped at the Morekai Boulders (wierd round rocks in the ocean) on the way here to Tekapo. We didn't really do much else eventful. Tomorrow we do our last bus leg of New Zealand and head for Christchurch. We fly from there on the 15th.

P.S. mum you were wrong, 3 weeks is NOT long enough in New Zealand, I would have happily spent at least another week or two here. It is beautiful. They are really good at enticing money out of your pockets, though. Lots of really great activities. They apparently have 2 million visitors a year here and there are only 4 million New Zealanders, 1/3 of them living in Auckland.

Queenstown and Beyond...

We are now at Queenstown (middle of south island close to the bottom). We crossed on the ferry with a pleasant voyage. I was talking to some women from the bus and I suddenly thought I should go look for the dolphins. I walked to the front of the ship and looked out the window and presto! there they were. Four of them jumping toward us. They passed in front of the boat then along the side. I couldn't call Jacob over fast enough. Heather was on deck with Alan, he saw none and Heather saw the last one passing the side. Apparently they were the only dolphins spotted at all by anyone on the ferry, so I timed it PERFECTLY. Luckily we saw lots a day or two later between Nelson and Greymouth at a place called Punakaiki in the west We stopped at a hostel to let some people out and the bus was facing the ocean. There were about 20 dolphins playing in the surf just in front of the bus, thankfully the whole family saw them this time. Later we saw more of them from the lookout at the pancake rocks (see same link as Punakaiki above for info). Heather even saw one jumping in front of a lucky kayaker. We can now check the box marked DOLPHINS....

We were picked up at the ferry by another bus and driven to Nelson. We stayed two nights in Nelson and spent Sunday with a friend of Ruth's from Canada (now New Zealand) called Laura. She was VERY hospitable and took us to a beach with her partner and his 5 year old daughter. It was a day of fishing, swimming and frisbee enjoyed by all. After the beach we stopped by a Gypsy Fair. In New Zealand, old hippies live in flatbed trucks with elaborate houses on them and call themselves gypsies. There was one open for touring and it had a bedroom (the size of one on an 18 wheeler) as well as a kitchen area and a sitting area with a balcony off it. It had beautiful stained glass windows all over. The owner said he could do 90km/hr on a flat road and he got a whopping 8 miles/gallon. We saw a couple of the caravans on the road south and then we saw an advertisement for another Gypsy Fair in Greymouth, so presumably they do some sort of circuit.

It was a bit of a craft fair and a bit of a psychic fair. It was possible to have your tarot cards, palms or aura read. They photographed your aura for you, then analysed it. The aura reader had a computer and I noted it was probably a lot easier to catch the aura on digital "film" now that we have photoshop software available. We all enjoyed it a lot, even Laura said she was glad she went because she had seen them advertised and had never been before.

After Nelson we headed for the East coast and spent the night in Greymouth. We didn't do much there that I can think of. The next night was at Franz Josef, which is a world heritage site for natural beauty. We signed up for a heli-hike where they fly you up to the glacier in a helicopter and take you for a walk. Sadly, the cloud layer was too low so we couldn't fly. Instead we took the shuttle bus from town and walked an hour to almost the base of the glacier. We were worried about missing the next shuttle to town so we turned around. A narrow escape since it poured BUCKETS in the hour we would have had to wait in the open for the next bus. It was a fabulous walk and everyone was pleased with the day in the end. We saved over a thousand dollars ($300 a piece), but a woman on the bus next day said the heli-hike was fabulous. C'est la vie.

Today we headed over here to Queenstown which so far reminds me of Banff with smaller mountains around it. Let you know how it all turns out later.

Curious facts

A curious fact about Cambodia is that, at least based on my observations, virtually all the cars in the country are Toyota Camrys. There are loads of non-car vehicles, of course -- land cruisery things, big Lexus SUVs, vans, pickups, tuk-tuks, vast numbers of motorbikes and bicycles -- but apart from a couple of Toyota Corollas, a couple of Diahatsus and a Mercedes, all the cars we saw were Camrys. Old and new and different colours, some left hand drive and some right hand drive.

The tuk-tuks in Cambodia, unlike the autorickshaw-like three-wheelers of Thailand, are motocycles pulling little trailers. The trailers have seating for four but the motorbikes, ranging in size from 90 to 125 cc's, don't really have the power to pull four big Canadians, or even two big and two little Canadians. For the most part we took taxis when we had to get any distance, such as to the temples of Angkor, but a couple of times we took tuk-tuks short distances. In Sihanoukville I feared we would run afoul of any society for the prevention of cruelty to tuk-tuks that existed. We were on our way to a restaurant that turned out to be farther away than anticipated and up (and down) some very big hills. The motorbike seemed to be on its last legs at several points, crawling uphill at a walking pace. Going downhill was even more alarming, with the heavily-laden trailer threatening to seize control of the whole operation and try to get past the motorbike. Judging by the number of roadside stands selling motorcycle shock absorbers and the stacks of brightly wrapped wheel rims at all the repair stands, motorcyles in Cambodia live a hard life. Large tourists aren't the only culprit. I saw one little bike carrying the rider and five 50 kg sacks of rice.

A curious fact about New Zealand is that the entire country seems to be devoted to hurling people off buildings, bridges, cliffs and other natural features or dropping then out of aeroplanes or down into deep holes in the earth. It's unclear whether the New Zealanders themselves fling themselves from great heights or whether they have just discovered that tourists will pay big money to be flung.

Continuing South in New Zealand....

We are now in Wellington on the bottom of the North Island. Tomorrow morning we are catching a ferry (way too early I might add). We spent the last couple of days in the thermal wonderlands of Rotorua/Lake Taupo area in the middle of the bottom bit of the north island. I had forgotten to mention that in the park behind the hostel we were staying in in Rotorua, there were numerous thermal things. Some of them had boiling mud, others just steaming water. It is forbidden to walk in the park at night because they break through relatively randomly and you could fall into one that hadn't been cordoned off yet. Some are obviously old and have weathered wooden fences around them, others newer wooden fences and some just orange snow fences (these we took to be more recent additions to the thermal family...

Jacob was very impressed with the park the first time he saw it. On the bus the next day we went to a big pool of boiling mud with burps coming up all over it. It was about 50 feet in diameter. The kids were still impressed. In the afternoon we went to what Alan and I both thought was one of the coolest natural places either of us had ever been, Wai-o-tapu, but unfortunately the kids suddenly decided that they had come to the end of their geothermal ropes and refused to be impressed. They couldn't help but mention a few things were cool-- sulphur caves and lakes made of natural silica glass sheets built up over 700 years..., but generally they complained their way around the entire 3 km trail. At the end I was ready to hire a babysitter.... (none were available--sadly mum left us after Thailand). I must say that the web site link above doesn't even do most of the place justice.

We spent most of the day just on the bus today. The Magic Bus is pretty good usually for stopping every couple of hours at a scenic spot or a tall place for the crazy people to hurl themselves off. Today was more of a straight drive down from Taupo to Wellington. We did pass Mount Doom (or the mountain they used for it in the Lord of the Rings). Unfortunately there was some cloud around it and we couldn't see either of the two mountains beside it.

Tomorrow I am really hoping to see dolphins from the ferry, but I told the woman who said they would be there PLEASE not to mention it to the kids. They were totally bummed when we didn't see any of the promised dolphins on our Gulf of St. Lawrence ferry ride two years ago.