Puffy's Travel Journal, Part 3

Cairns! The Great Barrier Reef!

When we arrived in Cairns (pronounced Cans) in the late afternoon, we immediately took off for a walk down the Esplanade along the beach to explore. We got there on the Thursday before Good Friday and Easter. They seem to celebrate Good Friday even more than Easter. The restaurants charged a 15% surcharge the entire weekend, due to the holiday. Also, because of the holiday, you could only order alcohol if you had already ordered a meal!

I'm still amazed at the enormously gigantic lagoon-style pool on the Coral Sea side of the Esplanade. It's beautiful with water up to the brim of the pool. It probably took up the equivalent of a city block or two. Many towns along the Coral Sea have huge pools next to the beach. People are discouraged from swimming in the sea due to the unsafe jellyfish.

edited to add a picture of the humongous pool. The little specks in the pool are people.


Here's the shirt that Zombs sent me in the T-shirt exchange:

We went to a restaurant with "hop, skip, hump, and jump" on the menu. It was a serving of kangaroo, crocodile, camel, and emu. We've also seen witchy grubs and bugs on the menus. Mr. Puffy ordered a fish called barrumundi. It was served whole; with the head and tail still on it.

The next morning, we lathered up with sunscreen and boarded a catamaran for the 1 1/4 hour cruise out to Michaelmas Cay. We wore our "swimmers" (bathing suits), but were encouraged to put on stretchy lycra body suits. We looked like the Star Trek crew or the Teletubbies. We saw a video about the reef during the trip out to the reef. We got our snorkel equipment and boarded a little boat that brought us to the cay which was a sandbar with a bird sancturary on it. I don't know how the birds knew not to fly over to our side of the cay.





OMG! The snorkeling was gorgeous-so colorful. We saw so many varieties of fish, coral, rocks, and clams. I liked the huge colorful clams the best. We could even hear the fish pecking at the coral and clams to eat algae off of them. We snorkled for about 2 hours, then returned to the catamarn for a delicious buffet lunch.







We've had gelato every place we've been. After dinner we had Irish cream/chocolate gelato while strolling down the boardwalk.

In our hotel room, the bathroom mirror had a special coating on it so it wouldn't fog up when the shower was on. The phone books in the hotel room had both phone numbers and email addresses in it! I didn't steal anything from the Great Barrier Reef (I'm no Colby) but I did take the shells from Mr. Puffy's oysters at dinner.

The next day in Cairns, we explored the area. We drove by fields of sugar cane and banana trees until we reached the Wooroonooran National Park. We hiked to 3 lookout points over Josephine Falls.



We walked through the rainforest while a warm rain fell. We saw cassowary birds which look like colorful emus. We saw a few eucalyptus trees with hundreds of bats hanging in them!




The best part was the kangaroo with a joey in its pouch! See the legs sticking out in the picture with me in it:


In this last kangaroo picture, the mother and the joey are both eating grass at the same time!

We visited the home of an Aboriginal family. The 15-year old son played the didgeridoo for us. The didgeridoos are hollowed out naturally by termites. The Aboriginal cultural show in the evening was sort of Disneylandesque. The best part was that it reminded me of Survivor-making fire, the torches, and tribal council.

Rub those sticks together fast!

Blowing to start the fire.

My torch was NOT snuffed out.



Next stop-flying to Sydney, our last town in Australia before we went to New Zealand.

Puffy's Travel Journal, Part 2

Alice Springs and Ayers Rock

Ahhh, the Outback. No Jeff Probst, no Colby Donaldson, no Jerri Manthey. We flew 2 ½ hours north to Alice Springs, in the outback, in the middle of the country. The earth is a deep red color. Interestingly, about 2000 Americans, mostly Air Force people working on satellites, live in Alice Springs.

The Alice Springs School of the Air educates children who live up to 600 miles away, an area as large as Central Europe or 2 times the size of Texas. It started in 1951 with short wave radios. Now they use the internet. The students live on cattle stations (farms), rural sites, and national parks. They would otherwise have no opportunity for education. The students are given computers by the Australian government. The lessons are mailed to them and they have a specific schedule when classes are held online. They get report cards every 2 weeks. If possible, they all meet in person 4 times a year-it’s their only experience playing and interacting with other children. They can see the teacher and other students on the internet. They even had an interactive choir online! Occasionally, the School of the Air teachers take 4-wheel drives and visit the students at home, many of whom are in the top 10% of all students in Australia.

This is a map showing where the children who use the School of the Air live.



Here’s a picture of the online teachers working with the kids.

Here’s a science lesson on bugs.



Then we visited the Royal Flying Doctors Services. This organization began in 1928 and it serves the medical needs of the remote outback. It’s amazing. They’ve saved many lives.

We explored a reptile center. Australia has 18 of the top 20 venomous snakes in the world. This was not my favorite part of the trip. Aren't you happy that I'm not showing pictures of snakes and geckos? Instead, I'll show you two little lovebirds sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.




The homes here have metal fencing and gates due to many termites. We drove a few hours to Ayers Rock. This whole Northern Territory area is 2 times the size of Texas, with a population of only 200,000 people. The aboriginal people have land rights so the cattle stations are leased to the Australians. In fact, they feel that photo-taking might take away the spirit in some areas so we had to comply. I saw a few dingoes and immediately thought of Jimbo. By the way, camel meat has less fat and less cholesterol than beef. Australia is the driest continent in the world, after Antarctica.

Hey Boo-we had a rest stop at Mt. Conner. It’s a sacred site, which looks like a big toothbrush. We went to the Olgas, known as Kata Tjuta in the Aboriginal language. This is a mountain range and a national park with the fine powdery red earth. We walked through the Walpa Gorge. It was beautiful.



Outhouses out here in the bush are called “long drop dunnies.” The Australians have a great sense of humor. Look at the sign for a public bathroom:



Finally, we went to the sunset viewing of Ayers Rock, named Uluru in the Aboriginal language. It is a sacred site. They ask people not to climb the rock, but some people ignore that request.

Can you see the two people climbing down the rock?

We got little canvas seats, wine, snacks, and a great viewing of the Uluru monolith as it changed colors during sunset. Every few minutes, the colors on the rock changed. Amazing.




4:30 am; Wake up! It’s time to go see the sunrise over Uluru (Ayers Rock). Both the Uluru monolith and the sunrise were beautiful.




They served coffee and cookies while we watched the sunrise and the colors change on the rock. The ranger took us to the Mutitjula waterhole. It never dries up, here in the desert.
Every time the waterhole gets low, the Anangu elders come to perform a ceremony. Soon it rains or they get enough heavy dew to fill up the waterhole. This hole always has some water in it!


We bought some “fly nets” to cover our faces. There are hundreds of black flies here so the nets really helped.


Here are some ancient Aboriginal drawings in a cave. The drawings were their way of communicating.



It was very special to experience these World Heritage Sites.

Next stop…Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef!

Puffy's Travel Journal, Part 1

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

We were lucky enough to sit next to an Australian businessman on the flight to Melbourne so we enjoyed comparing customs and finding out about his country.

A limo was waiting for us at the Melbourne airport. Once we checked into the hotel around 10 am, we couldn’t wait to see the city. We walked to the nearby Victoria Market which had items for both locals and tourists.

This truck, marked “American Doughnuts” fried the doughnuts in the truck.

They tasted like beignets from New Orleans. We saw brightly-colored wooden boomerangs, didgeradoos, and rainmakers. There were knock-off designer purses and UGGS. And we saw aisles and aisles of fruit and veggies that we had never heard of and lots of lamb, chicken, and beef.

We took a free tram around the central business area of the city which was along the Yarra River. Yarra is an Aboriginal word meaning “flowing flowing.” A couple of restaurants we saw were a fish and chips place called Lord of the Fries and an Italian restaurant called Scusami. We saw some beautiful gardens.



Melbourne was having a heat wave so we got really hot. We washed our underclothes in the shower while we showered. I watched a little bit of the Biggest Loser, Australia edition. The male trainer is called the Commando, the hostess looked similar to our American hostess, and they’re all allowed to swear on TV with no bleeping.

We saw a photo exhibit called, “My Last Supper,” which featured photographs of famous chefs and a description of what they’d like for their last meal. I took a picture of Anthony Bourdain.



The newspapers are huge; too wide to hold in two outstretched hands and impossible to read while eating at a table. They’re just enormous pieces of paper.

An interesting bit of Australian news occurred while we were there. A sunken Aussie WWII warship, the HMAS Sydney II was found, after all these years. It was discovered off the shores of Australia a few days after they found the sunken German ship that shot it down. We had great buffet breakfasts every day. We tried the vegemite spread, on Frodis’ suggestion; yuck, ptooey, and blech. Enough said. Way too salty! We went on a bus tour of the city. Melbourne’s favorite sport is “Australian Rules” football. We went to a beautiful war memorial. Each November 11, at 11:00 am, the sun shines onto the word “love” in the center of the memorial. This is the exact time of the armistice, the end of WWI. Every single town we visited, without fail, had a war memorial.

We found a “Big W” store, identical to a Wal-Mart. We bought water and Tim Tams, which is a box of cookies that Frodis suggested I try. “Take away” is Australia’s way of saying food “to go” or “take out.” Look what else I found to eat:


Now for one of the highlights of our entire trip…We went to Phillips Island, south of Melbourne. We saw all these animals in their natural environment: kangaroos, emus, wallabys, koalas, and little penguins! There were raised boardwalks near the koalas so we could be up high near them as they slept in their trees. A wallaby is smaller than a kangaroo and has a sharp face, like a fox. Here's Mr. Puffy with a kangaroo.



Here I am with a couple of emus.



I have so many koala pictures; I don't know which to choose!





*Claps hands* The nightly Penguin Parade!! The little blue penguins are the world’s smallest penguins. They are molting now so some don’t go into the water to get fish when molting. They’re not waterproof without their feathers! This means that they don’t eat for perhaps 2 or 3 weeks! The penguins fly all the way to Japan or Alaska during the Australian winter (our summer) and reappear in September-the same week every year! The mother and father penguins go into the ocean every day to get fish. They both return each sunset at dusk to feed their babies who are waiting in the burrows on land. No other penguin will feed another one’s baby. This is an ancient ritual of nature. They stay out in the water until sunset to avoid predators. They must clean and preen (oil) themselves to continually be waterproof. A gland on the back on the rear is the oil gland and keeps them safe from the cold water. The babies don’t have oil in their fur so they can’t go into the water.

One fox can kill 40 penguins in one night! They’re trying to eradicate the foxes from Phillip’s Island. The penguins drink salt water when they eat fish. A salt gland on their head excretes the salt and they swallow fresh water. We weren't allowed to take pictures or video of the penguins waddling up from the ocean. Just imagine watching the waves and all of a sudden penguins appear and waddle up the sand to their nests. Here's a penguin, hiding under a boardwalk, before we got to the place where they come up out of the water.



Before we left the beach, we saw the Southern Cross in the sky! What a wonderful experience we had! It was one of the most exciting days ever!

Next time…Alice Springs and Ayers Rock.