Our Australia Journey

We are on our way to Sydney and have stopped in Paynesville, (as in the Payne group). This is a quaint and exceptionally pretty town. We are on the waterfront, along with everything else here. Yesterday we took a 5 minute ferry ride to this little island. The ferry dock is out the front of our motel. The owners here suggested a “Koala” walk. You are guaranteed to see Koalas, they say. Well they are hard to spot.  We did see three, but at the second one, Doug said “Can you hear that”? At first I could not, then I heard this strange humming noise. It turned out to be a large swarm of mosquitoes coming for us. We ran. As I was running I tried to remember what colour mosquitoes are attracted to. If it was dark I would be chosen, if it was light Doug would be attacked. It was dark. In my panic I went off the path and found myself in a dirt area with little holes everywhere. OMG snakes. Run harder. We never totally escaped but were impressed by all the pretty birds here. The ...

  Melbourne is much bigger than I expected.     Many of the buildings here were built in the 1800’s and often by French designers. The result is beautiful building facades with lots of stained glass archways.     New construction has obviously considered esthetics. City design took into account details such as the size of hoop skirts in the 1800’s. We are staying 4 days in the central business district and cannot even begin to see half of everything here. We are on the top dizzying floor of the hotel here.      We went to see Jordan Peterson (U of T & Harvard prof) from T.O. in a stadium completely sold out with 13,000 in attendance. I was thrilled to go and listen and was not disappointed. He lectured for over 2 hours. Jordan is back on Twitter and threw a dart (or two) at Trudeau (hahaha). He has 3,500,000 followers and is about to have 3,500,001.       The next night we got tickets to see Hamilton...

About 2/3 of the way from Adelaide to Melbourne is the small coastal city of Warrnambool and, for east bound travellers like us, this marks the start of the Great Ocean Road. This iconic drive is heavily promoted around here and we allowed two days to cover it. For the first half of day 1, not many trees as the terrain is covered in low vegetation consistent with a wind swept area. To view the sights (and they're quite dramatic) you have to stop periodically at the many well marked turnouts and walk out to a viewing platform.  Huge limestone cliffs plunge several hundred feet to the sea. Waves constantly gnaw at the limestone abrading the softer rock while harder bits yield the rock stacks that you see here. London Bridge formation: Mostly you view from above but we were able to get down to the beach in one location.  The Twelve Apostles formation is the most famous although some in the foreground have collapsed. Fallen angels? T...

We stayed in a magnificent house in Mt Gambier. We had our own fireplace drawing room complete with every kind of drink you could imagine. Too bad we don’t drink. Upstairs was the largest billiards table I have ever seen. Apparently Edward VIII, when he was Prince of Wales, played billiards at this table (before Wallace). It was so large it was elevated to the second story before the roof was added to the house. Mt Gambier sits aloft a limestone rock formation. The limestone has eroded over many years and there is now an extensive underground cave system and a giant sinkhole. The sinkhole now 200 feet down appeared suddenly in the 1800’s and is still sinking.  The city has filled the sinkhole with gorgeous vegetation and Wombats call it home. A set of narrow steps invited us down all the way to the bottom.  Signage was there instructing us on what to feed the wombats. We left Mt Gambier after far too short a stay and are now in Port Fairy. The place we ...

We drove to a lookout point and it was so windy I couldn’t open the car door to get out. Doug had to help me. When I did get out I was pushed so hard I had to fight to stay upright. The birds were having a ton of fun. There were flocks of pelicans soaring in the sky. We saw a whole flock of beautiful black swans in a small lake. We could not make our way to the beach as the wind just pushed us back so hard. The gusts were up to 100 km/hr.  

Both literally and figuratively blown away - more on the latter in a minute. Both wind and rain have been intense on our drive to the Coorong and will remain so for our two night stay. Winds are sustained around 50 km/hr and gusts can be way stronger than that. Can literally knock you down as we found out earlier today. Rain comes and goes, lashing us periodically and then sun will come out. Rain was really strong last night. That said, we're delighted with everything and very glad we came here. The Coorong is a narrow (~ 2 - 4 km across) and long (130 km) body of water separated from the Southern Ocean by a thin strip of land. The entire area forms a national park and where we're staying is immediately adjacent. We had hoped to get out for some bike riding or kayak but this is simply not possible with the wind. We can't even manage a walk! We were able to get out and drive around the area which is mostly farm country running down to the sea. Easy to understand ...

Nancy's described most of our outing yesterday with Walkabout Tours - an aboriginal owned tour company for the Daintree Rainforest. Recently,  the Australian government turned over more of the management of these areas to the resident aboriginal people. This forest is roughly 1200 square km in size is the largest single block rainforest in Australia; estimated to be around 180 million years old. The Kuku Yalanji people are believed to have lived here for 40,000 years or so. Our guide Aaron is a member of this tribe and, as Nancy mentioned, taught us all manner of things about foods, medicinal remedies and the like. I was unaware but Aaron told us there are roughly 3,600 different aboriginal languages in Australia; none of them being alike! First stop was a local fruit stand that allowed us to restock our dwindling supply of Thai mangoes and Sapote. On to the forest! Quite dense as you can see. The day was very hot which was tough on our aging bon...

  Our last day in hot hot hot. It is so tropical. The humidity is what makes this place so difficult. Right now we are in Spring. They say in February it is unliveable as the humidity soars to 80%. Unliveable that is unless you are a crocodile or a lizard or a snake or a stinging ant or a big fruit bat. Today we went on an 8 hour tour of the Daintree Rain Forest with an indigenous guide. His focus was on how the indigenous people coexisted with the Forest. He talked about the unique plants and how they were used as cures for our ails. At one point he located a stinging ant nest hanging from a tree. It looked like a wasps nest. He advised us to backup then he shoved his arm into the nest. The ants started pouring from it. There must have been thousands and they ran up his arms. As they did this he scraped them off and crushed them in his hands. He then let us smell his hands. It was like a hot pepper sprayed in your nose, meanwhile the ants started attacking us. I was wearing full c...

We have arrived in Port Douglas. It is beautiful and hot hot hot. On the way, we stopped at a place that is both a crocodile zoo and a crocodile farm. The crocs are grown, raised and killed for meat and hides and a tiny market in facial cream. This cream is amazing. It is my secret :). We started the zoo part with a boat tour through 30 crocodiles. The guide had chickens on a stick. She would tap the water with the chicken and then we would watch the crocs jump from the water to try and grab the chicken.  They were for the most part not successful. The croc would get mad and we were a few feet from the boats edge. After this we went on a tour of the croc farm. We saw baby crocs and crocs ready to be killed. The town and our accommodation is very lovely. We have a balcony with an ocean view and a pretty apartment. The accommodation has every toy imaginable for us. It has bikes we can use, a ton of beach toys, books and puzzles, Netflix and prime. It is overwhelming. In addition to t...

  It is hard to think of the coral as a living  animal . Imagine turning to stone on the outside like much of the coral.  How can an animal turn to stone and still be alive. The Great Barrier Reef stretches over 2000 km in length. Once a year the coral reproduces and we were lucky to be here to witness the event. What you see are  all these tiny speckles being released into the water. The soft coral shaped like little volcanoes ejects this stuff. Fish hang around to eat the specks. The coral is possibly varied in colour in other parts of the ocean but what we saw was mostly all one color, but many different shapes. Now lurking there is the irukandji . It is a very tiny jellyfish, invisible to the eye and the most venomous creature in the world. If you get stung you are in for likely death and huge horrible pain lasting at least days. Apparently a large swarm of these was found off a nearby island. In the past week 3 people have been stung. It scares tourist...

I acknowledge the title of this post screams click-bait but the beach actually is called this and, no, it ain't what you think. All visitors properly attired.  A few years ago, Nudey Beach was named Australia's most picturesque by some travel mag so yesterday we thought we'd better do the 1.5 km hike to check it out. A fair bit of up and down to get there. The hike was a bit tiring in this heat but was worth it as the beach was very pretty. The beach itself is a mix of sand and broken bits of coral that you may be able to make out in the lower left corner of photo. Barefoot walking tough in places! What's been surprising to me on this trip - surprising to both of us perhaps  - is how much our energy has gone down. We used to be such road warriors on these trips. Have we gone soft after 3 years of covid? Do we now need to gracefully accept the limitations of age? If the latter, perhaps I can be accepting but then I think, dammit, I...

Swim? In ocean currents? Gulp. In front of all those bikini clad gen z’s, I ticked the box “solid swimmer”. But now I can’t recall if it said you had to be able to swim 200 m or 200 ft.. This afternoon we are going for a guided tour of the “Great Barrier Reef”. I am highly nervous / excited right now. All the staff here highly charged 18 year olds. One young gal announced as we arrived “Get ready to party”. (We groaned). It turns out the only party animals so far are the cockatoos. They are about the size of a hen with a rooster headdress and all white. The party for them starts around 4 am and they make a hell of a racket. I can’t think of an equivalent that we have been to in North America. It is as tropical as Mexico but not as bubble like. Large boats arrive several times in the day bringing in all the “green feers“ (day trippers). The beaches have no lounge chairs. There is a pool with a swim up bar and parents crowd there around 4:30. You have to prebook meals but I don’t believe...

A two and a half hour flight north of Brisbane is the coastal city of Cairns. In terms of population,  it's a bit bigger than Abbotsford although the airport is substantially bigger as tourism is the main driver of the economy. Weather is a lot warmer - tropical really - with highs in the mid 30's. Yesterday, we took the catamaran service for a 45 minute ride to Fitzroy Island for a 4 night stay. This place is within the Great Barrier Reef, of course, with many folks coming from all over the world to dive or snorkel. Although not a student of linguistics, I can usually pick up on some of the languages being spoken but I flunked out here!  The resort itself is quite nice - 70 or 80 rooms I'd guess. Most seem to be like ours: quite spacious, a 1 bedroom suite, really, with small kitchen area. Below is picture taken from the open-air bar where we went for dinner last night. Pretty much everyone here is WAY younger than we are! We remarked on one young w...

We have very much enjoyed our few days here. It struck me as a prosperous city that, among other things, has put huge effort into making the most of the Brisbane River that meanders through the middle of the city. We've used the CityCat fast catamaran service to get around; nearest terminal just a 5 minute walk from the hotel.  Returned to the Botanic Gardens today. Pictured below is one of the oldest trees in the park planted ~ 150 years ago. Yes, that is actually one tree. After a quick bite, we crossed the river to the Southbank Parklands area - I'd estimate about 2 km in length of bike/walking trails, gardens, restaurants and shops, museums, etc. Extensive network of these trails throughout the downtown and adjacent areas. A people-scale city. As it was getting cool after dinner, we took Uber back to the B&B and had an interesting connection with our driver, John. He's lived in Australia for 24 years having immigrated from South Sudan. He was...

  In a word Brisbane is gorgeous. I don’t know how they pulled it off but it is so well designed here and so Singaporish it is stunning. The jacaranda trees are still out and the downtown is breathtaking. There are walls of blooms and great care taken in creating paths.  I still think Singapore was the most beautiful city I have ever seen but Brisbane ranks right behind it.They have a ferry system with all these super fast boats going up and down the waterways.They have constructed a sizeable beach right in downtown. Our B&B host told us about the best route to go through to see the city. I fear we would have missed out had we just followed our noses. They mesh function with nature. Big trees are everywhere and make you always feel like you are still in a forest. Tomorrow more downtown.

As Nancy mentioned,  the plane ride here was quite arduous so our first day was a recovery one. We did get out for a bit and, like other places we've been, I was struck  by both birds and trees. The violet flowering Jacaranda trees are past their prime, apparently - quite a few in a park near our B&B. Also enormous banyan trees. They must not get the tree-trashing winds that we do. Birdsong quite unique to us; they made a terrific din outside the open air Thai place we went to for dinner.  Earlier in the afternoon, we grabbed some tea and cake in a local bakery. We asked the young woman serving us about local pickleball courts where we might get a game. She was unaware but went on to say we might like to give lawn bowling a try. Lawn bowling! I'm old but not that old! I kept these thoughts to myself as she went on to explain that the Millenials and Gen Z's have taken over the sport - a huge social, pub food and drinking activity that can feature live enter...

  Day 1 Flight from hell. Okay I am not totally complaining, but here is what happened . Because this was a 15 hour flight we decided to fly business class. I, simply put, WILL NOT fly this distance at my age and go economy. Part of this deal is that you get access to this biz lounge ahead of time. Air Canada has a beautiful lounge with great attention and excellent food. The lounge when we got there was almost empty. In the middle of the lounge was this guy who was coughing and blowing his nose. Not a mild cough mind you. A hacking cough. He obviously had a fever as his face was very red. I said to Doug “Oh please, don’t let this guy be going to Brisbane”.    When it was time to go to our gate we meandered over. Right there we spotted this guy waiting to board. Rats. Then shock and horror he had the seat right beside me. I kept my mask on for the full 15 hours. He hacked and sneezed all night! He did not wear a mask so hopefully he is an anti vaxxer and my bivalent vacci...