Helicopter over the Great Barrier Reef

The weather was perfect yesterday for a great heli ride over the Whitsunday Island group and the Great Barrier Reef.  Susan and I spent a great two hours with our pilot as he gave us a private tour of these places.  There is not much in my vocabulary to describe the beauty.  You will have to see for yourselves in these few pictures on the net and the ones we bring home.  Also shown are a few pictures of Qualia from the air.  The super white beach is known as Whitehaven and is the most photographed beach in the world.  From the air, we say schools of rays, turtles and one big shark. Enjoy the photos, we will see all of you in a few days.  We are sad our trip is coming to an end, but are thrilled to be able to see our home and friends.  See you in Seattle or at Silver Star!

Good Morning Whitsundays

I just could not resist taking a few shots of the glorious sunrise this morning.  This shot is taken from our front balcony and is looking at the hillock on the east end of the island.  It is really quite striking and fills one with a real sense of wonder at the beauty of the world.

The Whitsundays are located off the east coast of Australia.  If you want to find us on a map, go to Google Maps, find Mackay on the east coast (north of Brisbane) and zoom into the island group until you find us.  Most of the big reefs are named.  The Whitsundays are the most sought after destinations for Aussies to sail to.

Qualia Resort

Today is our first full day at Hamilton Island.  We are kicking back and enjoying the amenities of our windward pavilion room.  Our stay here is all inclusive and includes the use of an electric golf cart to carouse around the resort and in fact all over the island.  Everyone here uses the electric carts to travel into town and to head into the national forest areas.  The resorts here occupy a small percentage of the island.  The balance is in a national forest reserve.  We were rudely awakened last night by screaming wild cockatoos and parrots fighting each other for roosting space.  Enjoy the pictures of our lovely room, there will be more for you to see when we come home at the end of this week.  I will post another blog toward the end of the week so you can see the beautiful scenery from our morning walks through the national preserve and beaches.  See you soon!

Pictures of Port Douglas and Daintree

A few more shots of Port Douglas, the Daintree Forest and a couple of new Aussies!

Port Douglas and Beyond

We arrived north of Brisbane at the Cairns Airport.  Enter Dick & Susan into the hot, steamy tropical town of Cairns.  We stayed a bit further north at Port Douglas, a sleepy little town that is the center of all the rainforest and great barrier reef activity in the area. It is a quaint area filled with palm trees, white sand beaches, azure water and the (and I mean the) biggest fruit bats you have ever seen.  These bats (for Andrea Nelson's sake) are over 16 inches long when hanging from their little feet's!  They are nocturnal, so when dawn comes, they are found by the thousands hanging from certain trees.  Night time comes and off they go to eat fruit and bugs.  When they fly, it appears as if thousands of eagles are flying off into the dusk.  They are quite harmless and only eat fruit of which there is a ready supply.  We did not experience any lack of fruit but did notice a significant lack of mosquitoes.  The Peninsula hotel was right on the beach where we were able to enjoy the walk down 4 mile beach.  The pictures with this post show the beach, the rain forest and  the view from our rear balcony.  You will notice the "stinger" net surrounding the water that is open to swimming.  The first of December is the start of the stinger jelly fish season.  The Box Jelly Fish can send you to two places if you get stung.  One is the hospital and the other is the grave!  The local officials have to cruise the stinger net at the end of the season in March.  They are required to have two consecutive weeks of daily checking that shows absolutely no sign of the jelly fish before they will open the beach for total swimming  this usually happens in March.  We did not have any problems in the net nor did I have any encounters when I took a dive boat to the reef for a day of underwater fun.  I was required to wear a "rashie"suit just in case.  For those of you who know Susan's temperature standards for getting into the water will then know how warm the water was in Port Douglas.  Kristie and Ted will know for sure!  The rain forest is so very hard to describe so I will let our pictures do the talking when we return.  Ditto for the reef and the diving adventure.  We are now on Hamilton Island at the Qualia Resort.  It is beyond description but I will try in a future blog.  Right now it is time to wrap this up.  I will give another post or two while we are on Hamilton and then wrap it all up at the end of the week when we head for Sydney and the final leg back to all our friends and loved ones in Seattle.  So much more later!

Brisbane down under

Susan and I had a great day yesterday touring the hinterland and the Sunshine Coast near the capital city of Brisbane.  Our tour guide, Keith was a fount of information about the area.  We drove north from Brisbane to the town of Mooloolaba.  This town is right on the coast and very touristy.  It is quite pretty, but very busy with people on a Sunday outing.  Remember that yesterday was Sunday for us and Saturday for you.  I am including a few pictures of the Mooloolaba area for your viewing pleasure!  Our next stop for lunch was a very interesting little town called Montville.  Montville is known as the creative heart of Queensland.  We toured many galleries and artists shops.  I found a couple of wonderful Christmas presents for someone and even (as our boys will know) presents that Santa thought would be great for Dad.  Our last stop was at the subtropical rain forest.  We walked through the forest to see lots of indigenous flora and fauna.  I am including several photos of the rain forest, surrounding area and the beaches at Mooloolaba.  Our arrival back at Brisbane was heralded by the worst thunderstorm in a decade.  We watched the lightning, rain and wind that by morning had devestated many homes and farms in the area.  Today is partly cloudy but calm.  Our next stop is Cairns.  We are moving north into the heat and to our final stop on Hamilton Island.  Oh yes, the lovely lady with Susan is Barbara, a friend of our own lovely Erica.  Yes Erica, I did deliver the gift and got one from Barbara for you.  She is a special person that we would love to visit us in Seattle.

High on Sydney

We made the fabulous bridge climb today.  The whole operation was fun from start to finish.  The BC people have a very professional and fun organization. Sus was right up there with me as you can see from the pictures.  We just had a fun and very tiring day today.  Hamilton Island and a relaxing week is seeming better and better for the way to end this first trip to the land down under.  More from Brisbane.  Good on ya mates and have a ripper of a day!

The Bush

Yesterday was a very long but rewarding trip to the Bush.  Early morning fog delayed our flight for a couple of hours.  As soon as we were airborne, the beauty of the Sydney area became apparent.  If we think Seattle is a boating capital with our myriad of inland waterways, Sydney takes that a couple of steps further.  From the air we saw the hundreds of inland bays and freshwater rivers that dominate the surrounding area.  I saw some saltwater bays where there were easily 200 boats moored to anchor buoys.  As we headed north, we lost site of the urban area.  Once at Katoomba, we saw the absolute beautiful escarpments that surround the town.  The town is perched on a huge plateau which is surrounded by bush.  Our first landing was at the Middleton Ranch owned and operated by Allan and Suzanne Henderson.  They are fourth generation ranchers in the Scone area.  Scone is also home to lots of Arab rich who buy thousand acre ranches to raise horses.  Scone is the biggest Thoroughbred raising area in Australia.  The Henderson's were a very interesting and wonderful hosts as they regaled us with stories of the bush and their youth.  The next stop was wine country in the Hunter Valley.  Again, a very beautiful area famous for more Aussie wine production.  Today is clear and hot for our bridge climb.  I will post pictures of that in the morning.  Take a look at these photos to see the bush, the Henderson's and the wine country.  More later mates!

Sydney AM

We are up early to meet the people from Air Sydney.  We have a full day air tour of Sydney and the surrounding area.  We will be landing at a working ranch followed by another where bbq is on the menu for lunch.  The pics were taken from our balcony. They are of the famous Opera house, the port of Sydney and the famous steel bridge.  We climb the bridge in the morning.  It is a 3 hour venture so we are starting early  in order to take advantage of some great shopping in the late morning and afternoon.  We must shop for all of you so that Christmas is a "ripper" one for you all.  Good Day Mates, more later.

Pictures

Sorry about the double picture

Sorry about the two shots of the same field of Kangaroos.  The little guy is called Sol.  I got to feed him his 6 AM milk replacer the day we left.  I was the only one up in the lodge as usual, so Sandy let me feed him and give him his morning constitutional.   I will upload some more pictures of Kangaroo Island.  See if you can guess which is Seal Bay, Remarkable Rocks and the Southern Ocean Lodge.  More later with new and exciting tales and pics.

Adelaide and First Day in Sydney

We just arrived at the Park Hyatt in Sydney.  Our view shows the Opera House and the circular quay surrounding downtown Sydney.  It is quite the town.  We had a wonderful time in Adelaide.  We spent the entire day yesterday in the Barossa Valley.  It is a huge wine growing area.  The rolling hills of grape vines, trees, and wheat fields are quite spectacular.  We had two guys from Florida and Atlanta with us on the tour.  They were a kick.  Susan tasted and drank most of the day away!  I had fun with the people who actually make the wine and the French Oak casks that are used for the aging of the wine.  I have a nice oval cask being custom made with an engraved carving on the front of the cask coming via mail to Seattle.  I will not be able to see if for a couple of months as they have to make it and then ship it to us.  Cindy, I also bought a very nice quilt in a little town called Tanunda.  I will show it to you when we return.  I met the gal who made it.  It took her a year to complete. Susan was petered out from all the wine tasting (swilling if you ask me) so she is in her favorite position in the room-that being asleep in bed.  I have been wandering the down town area of Sydney looking at things.  We take our air tour in the morning, have Thursday to ourselves and then a sailing tour on Friday.  Saturday, we are off to Brisbane.  It seems to be going way to fast.  I will be posting a bunch of pictures to this post.  I am sure you can guess where they are.

Good Day Mates

We had another great day at the Southern Ocean Lodge on Kangaroo Island. We went to Seal Bay to see the sea lions up front. The weather is good and the experience with the sea lions was quite some fun. We leave tommorow for Adelaide and the Barossa Valley. I hope to be able to upload some photos of Kangaroo Island with a faster connection. Needless to say, we are having a ball. We miss our pups a bit but they will survive in the good care that Erica is giving Dexter and the drill sargent is giving Cody. More later from Adelaide.

Kangaroo Island

We arrived at Kangaroo Island early yesterday on Thursday (Wednesday for you folks). A quick tour of the island by our friendly driver brought us to the Southern Ocean Lodge. You can see some of the pictures of the lodge at their website. I am going to add a few of our room and the view from the lodge. The lodge is in a very remote area and is something out of any one's perspective of being nice. The people are wonderful and the food is definitely five star. We visited the Kelly Caves yesterday while today took us to the site of Remarkable Rocks and a cliff side walk to see flora and fauna. The guide, Sandy, has a baby Kangaroo that she found in a road kill female. She nursed the little joey to health and vigor. The little guy is about 18 inches tall and quite friendly. He sat with me for an hour and fell asleep in my lap. What a treat to actually hold a living little Kangaroo! We have another full day tomorrow followed by a treat Susan bought me at the spa. More about that after the next day is done. Needless to say, we are having a ball. Everyone we meet is so very friendly. If you have a desire to see Australia, then follow up on before you get too old!
More later and more photos later. The internet connection is a bit slow to add photos to this site, so I will add when we are in Adelaide or Sydney.

And The Journey Continues

Second day in Australia has been great.  Yesterday, we sat in a huge cobblestone plaza along with a couple hundred Aussies and watched the hoopla of the Melbourne Cup.  It was really quite exciting to see how much these people get so pumped up for the horse race of the year. The whole town is still in a frenzy and more is on the way as Thursday is Oaks Day (also called Ladies Day) at the track.  The women will again get dressed up and sport another new hat.  The hats are quite impressive.

The architecture of the city is something everyone will need to see.  I took some photos from atop the Rialto Towers observation booth. It may be hard to see the city through the photos, so I will have show them to you when we return.  This city is so very vibrant.  The people stay in the inner city long after the work day to attend the sporting events, restaurants, pubs and any event that is going on.  They love their city and it really shows.  As an interesting side comment, we have yet to see any police presence in the city.  The people of Melbourne appear to not need the police to remain civil.  Trash on the street is almost non-existent. A trip to Australia must include a visit to Melbourne.  I would suggest at least a week in order to see all their is and to eat at the numerous restaurants on Lygon Street.

We went to the Melbourne Aquarium today as well as many other sites.  We just got back to the hotel to change into shorts and check on the election. It appears our horse won the race in the US.  We are now off to the train depot to catch a train that tours the inner city.  It has been fun and exciting in Melbourne.  We are off to the airport in the morning for our flight to Adelaide and then a quick flight to Kangaroo Island. 

First Day in Australia

This is Susan and me on Brighton beach in Melbourne.  We took a great tour of the city and surrounding suburbs.  The city has a lot of nice parks and beach areas.  If you notice the little shacks to the left of the picture.  These shacks sell for over 200K.  They have no windows or any place to sleep.  They are used to store beach stuff like chairs and other items.  It was explained that it is some kind of status symbol to own one. Kind of like having a lambo in your driveway that has no engine in it! 

Today is the famous Melbourne Cup.  It is a three mile race for 3 year old horses.  The favorite horse is from Ireland named Septimus.  For those of us who never knew, this is a race that stops all of Australia.  Susan and I saw hordes of people in the bar at 9 this morning.  The ladies are all dressed up to the nines.  There seems to be a competition for who has the best hat and overall outfit.  All the jobs are shut down, the stores closed and everyone is heading to the track.  The big race starts at 3 this afternoon.  Susan and I are going to try to get tickets and head out to the track ourselves.  You know how I love to bet those ponies!  More later on the race and our stay in Australia.