The Journey Home

What a holiday!!! It has gone by so quickly and also so slowly. We've seen many interesting places and met many interesting people. If any of you wants to see the entire slide show, complete with witty narration and brisket (along with vegetarian selections if you are of that bent), email me for an invitation. We're looking at a weekend in October or early November for a barbeque.

We had to buy a new suitcase (A$40=US$30!) to haul the boys home.


The flights went well, all the bags made it, and we're slowly recovering from jet lag. The kids keep asking when we'll go back and the answer is always "7 years."

Sydney

We did a bit of sightseeing around Sydney on our last day, visiting some of the places Di had been.

Clive Park is near where Di's grandparents lived. The boys had fun clambering on the rocks and looking at the boats.



You wonder what part of Sydney you're in now...

Barrington Tops

Barrington Tops is a national park with a few state parks scattered around, about 2 hours north of Sydney. We drove through on our way back down.

Here is the view from Thunderbolt's Lookout.


To the left


In the middle


To the right


Connor hitches a ride

Love and Hate

What we love about Australia
1. cricket
It's almost as good as baseball.

2. cookies
America has the basics -- oreos, chocolate chip, and snaps. Aussie has fifty million different kinds of biscuits (cookies). You just can't have a favorite, since each one is better than the last. Not healthy, though.

3. plumbing
Aussie toilets are way cool. They have two flush buttons, one for a half flush and one for a full flush. Makes a lot more sense than Austin's low-flush toilets which cake up with lime and soon become no-flush toilets.

Aussie showerheads are heaven. Feels like you're in a tropical rainstorm. If you've ever taken a shower at our house, you've experienced it.

What we don't love about Australia
1. the lack of healthy food
Oh, you can find it if you really look, but even the vegetarian stuff is battered and fried. And I'm not talking "health food," I'm just talking non-fried stuff.

2. plumbing
Yes, plumbing is on the list of things we love. However, the dark side of plumbing is the blasts of scorching hot water in the shower for no particular reason, or the way the toilets mysteriously stop flushing at 8 am, or the time I had hair dye covering my head and there was no water anywhere in the unit when my half hour was up (luckily, the water at my parents place across the complex was still on, and nudity is not as taboo here as it is in the States. ;)

3. sand fleas and mosquitoes
We are both covered in little red bumps on our legs from the sand fleas, and little red bumps on our arms from the mossies. Off helps with prevention, and Ivarest helps with cure, but it is Not Fun.

Tropical North Queensland

For a little over a week, we've been in the tropics. The scenery has been coastal waters, sugar cane fields, and rainforests with waterfalls. We stayed in Yungaburra, a small village in the heart of the rainforests just west of the mountains west of Cairns. We spent most of our time driving from waterfall to waterfall, seeing the shy wildlife of tree kangaroos and platypussies. I took pictures of the platypus, but it was evening and they won't come out nicely on the web page. I've included some of the many beautiful sights on this page.

The Curtain Fig Tree




This is an incredible tree, hundreds of years old, with roots from the canopy to the ground.


Pepina Falls


Andrew took this picture of us in the Misty Mountains.


There was a wind farm on the aptly named Windy Hill. Why aren't there more of these in Texas?


Millstream Falls, the widest in Queensland


Milla Milla Falls, where we would have swum if it had been hot.


Zillie Falls


Ellinjaa Falls


Dinner Falls on the way to an old volcano vent called The Crater.

The Crater

A warning sign on the way to The Crater. We especially like frame 3, which really means that you are in big trouble, mate.


We took a drive in parts of the outback on the Savannah highway. It was a beautifully clear day and this picture captures it perfectly. We passed many unusual rock formations such as quartz or basalt outcroppings.


The Cathedral Fig tree, formed in much the same way as the Curtain Fig.


Barron Falls. The Dinner Falls above are part of the Barron River as well. This falls is closer to the beach.

Davies National Park


I couldn't resist, seeing how I was born a Davies.

The kids were taking a picture of me. Most of the walk to the falls was over boulders like these.

It was hard to get a good shot of the falls. You might have to tilt your head.

The kids meet new friends everywhere we go.

Cooberrie Park

Cooberrie Park is an animal park, full of kangaroos, koalas, wombats, donkeys, snakes, emus, cassowaries, cockies, parrots, and lots of other birds and animals. Years ago, I held a koala here, and got to again this time.

The peacocks were showing off.

Feeding kangaroos. They take in animals which can't make it in the wild.

This cocky was telling Richard off.

This koala's name is Mullygrub, which means something like muddy piece of mud.

Andrew holds a carpet python. (by the way, Pam, the park is for sale)

She's heavy, so Richard helps.

And the picture you really wanted to see. Get it off! Get it off! :)

Great Keppel Island

We've been on the beach for a week now. It's hard to tear myself away to download photos from the camera, let alone write up a trip report! We'll leave tomorrow for a week in tropical north Queensland, then back to this beach again for two more weeks before beginning the journey south.

We took a boat trip out to Great Keppel Island. It has grown from having one hamburger stand to having a large resort and a few smaller camping, dive shops, and accommodations. This is my favorite beach anywhere. The sand is fine and white, the sun is hot, but the water is cool and clear.

The boys and I swam a lot. This is one of our favourite games, sort of a variation of body surfing, just let the waves sweep you onto shore.

This little guy and his friends wanted our lunch, and our sunglasses, and our packets of sugar. He is a rainbow lorikeet. The birds are so pretty here!

On the boat on the way home, full of sand and salt.

Carnarvon Gorge

Unfortunately, we only had a couple of hours to spend at this national park. It's best on a visit of multiple days, so we did the best we could. Almost all the sights in the park are only accessible on walking tracks. One of the tracks we took was to an aboriginal site called Baloon Creek.

It was only about a 1km walk to the site, crossing the same (dry) streambed multiple times.

These are the handprints which were painted 10,000 years ago (plus or minus 3sigma). The pigment used is from ochre found nearby. This site is very similar to the one I've visited in Boynton Canyon, near Sedona, AZ. Those people didn't build roads either, it's a long walk to their old towns along the cliffs.

The real handprint culprit.

Typical scenery on this side of the gorge -- large basalt monoliths, gum trees, palm trees, rocky stream beds. Most of Australia has been in a 5 year drought.

Fossicking

Richard has found his calling. He has the eagle eye for spotting sapphires. Fossicking is a lot of hard work and a lot of fun. We've been to a couple of different fossicking parks, both ones that are run by people and get their pile of rocks from the mines, and the type on the side of the road where you dig up your own pile of rocks from the stream. The former is much more profitable, even though you pay $10-20 for the day.

First, fill a bucket from the pile and either spin the silt off and then wash or go directly to washing.


Next, wash the two sieves. The top sieve is for the big stuff (the stuff which will pay for our trip!) and the bottom is finer, for the little stuff. Di is really good at washing. Shaking it in the right way is important so the sparkly bits end up in the middle and on top when the sieve is flipped.


Finally, pick out the sparkly bits. Richard has the eye for this!


Here's what we've found in a couple of days of fossicking. The blues are sapphires or corundrum. The reds, ambers, and clears are zircon. The large rock is a 1cm per side sapphire. We're going to either get it polished or cut.

Anonymous posting enabled

I've made it so that you don't have to have a Blogger id to be able to write us a comment. (thanks, Dave) Let me know if it's not working and I'll try to fix it!!! I'm gradually getting to know the idiosyncracies of this thing...

No pictures this time. We left the farm this morning and are off to who knows where. Probably hunting thundereggs (look it up) a bit further north and then off to Carnarvon Gorge NP and a look at some aboriginal wall art.

Connor has just announced to the entire (very quiet) Armidale library that he hates getting changed. So it must be time to go.

Shearing

We were very fortunate to time our trip over the shearing weekend. Two men shear while one throws the fresh wool over the table, one grades the wool, and another skirts the wool (takes the dirty bits off the outside). The wool is sold to Italian woolen mills and probably ends up in mens suits. They work for 2 hour stretches, with a half hour smoke-o in the morning and afternoon (although nobody seems to smoke), and an hour for lunch.

Shearing the sheep


All this from one animal!


The animals are slid down the chute after they are done.


Mid-morning on the second of three days.