Sydney, Australia - The Harbour

Sydney, Australia Slide Show

The picture to the left is a photo of the Sydney Opera House taken from a ferry while going under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This is probably the most photographed opera house in the world. We have watched the spectacular New Year's Eve fireworks in the harbour many times on TV. In person, the Sydney harbour is even more impressive. The harbour is made up of an extensive network of bays, points, and rivers. These waterways are accessible by ferries that act as river taxis to and from various points in the city.
Like Melbourne, Sydney has a great mass transit system that makes it easy for locals and tourists to get around without a car. There are trains, ferries, monorails, buses, subways and bikeways that connect the city with the suburbs. We made use of the trains, ferries, and buses during our stay. Speaking of Melbourne and Sydney, we have met many people from both of these cities. Melbournians and Sydneyians both made adamant pleas to us about how their city was better.  Rather than joining the fray, we will just say that they are both great cities for different reasons.
Some of you have asked us about how we have gotten along with just the three of us traveling together for such a long time. Overall, we have done quite well despite the usual family conflicts and issues that arise whether we are at home or somewhere on the other side of the world. We did start to melt down in Sydney though. As a result, you won't see as many group pictures in this slide show. After traveling together for almost 7 months, we needed a little more "alone time" than we have had in the past. The jokes that we used to think were funny were no longer funny. Personal habits became annoying habits. I just don't understand why me tapping my fingers on the table while using a knife as a toothpick can be considered annoying to Jennifer. She of course has no annoying habits.
We took turns exploring the city and split up at times. One such "alone time" was for Jennifer to attend the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House. She got to enjoy the music without Noah asking her "how much longer" or me asking "does this mean I can go to the rugby game tomorrow". While Jennifer was at the Opera House, Noah and I were off eating pizza and popcorn.
We did all go to Bondi Beach together. We had watched the Australian reality TV show about the Bondi Beach lifeguards, so we thought it would be fun to go there. The TV show is a combination of Baywatch and 90210. What's there not to like? Our plans were to take a look at the beach and then go for a walk down the coast, but seeing the large surfer waves changed our minds. We rented boogie boards and ended up riding the waves the rest of the afternoon. We originally rented the boards for one hour, but that turned into three hours. After finally convincing Noah to take a break, we went on a walk on the beautiful coastal walkway.
Wanting to play baseball on a nice baseball field, I found the Olympic Park fields on a web site that has 3 manicured fields with batting cages for use by the public. We set out to the Olympic Park Village, home of the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics. It takes a while to get there by ferry or train since it is a ways out of town. A unique characteristic of the Olympics in Sydney is that all the facilities were built in one area so the entire Olympic complex is massive. The only problem is that the baseball fields that were on the web site were not at this location! They have everything but baseball fields here. I still don't know where the fields are. Maybe I should have checked this out in more detail prior to going all the way out there?!
We are off to our last stop on the trip - Fiji! to see our slide show of Sydney, Australia, click on the following link ==> Sydney, Australia Slide Show

Queensland, Australia - The Great Barrier Reef

Queensland, Australia Slide Show

Realizing that driving from Melbourne to northern Queensland would be the equivalent of driving from Dallas to Boston, we added a flight to see the Great Barrier Reef, beaches, and rainforests of Queensland. The Great Barrier Reef is located off the coast of Queensland, the state that occupies the northeastern section of Australia. We started in Port Douglas, using it as a base to explore the area.
Traveling in this area can be a bit unnerving at times. Either Australians are just trying to scare you with all their "danger" and "warning" signs or there are truly many dangers awaiting tourists. We were warned about stinging trees, winding roads, stingers, falling rock, jellyfish, wet roads, snakes, cyclones, crocodiles, deadly currents, spiders and some big bird the size of me that you should avoid pissing off. It appears that the danger signs are just for tourists since the locals handle all these animals and call them by their names as if they are best friends. Our various tour guides pet huge fish in the ocean, handle crocodiles, hug lizards, kiss birds, hang snakes on themselves, and are not bothered when a koala "poos" on them.
Besides seeing animals in the wild, we had to get used to a variety of critters showing up in our rooms. Any food left out brought an immediate army of ants. Geckos obviously liked it better inside with us. A hornets nest in Noah's closet caused him to lose some sleep. I wish we had video of the three of us trying to chase a bat out of the house. Luckily the crocodile and kangaroo stayed outside. They would have been a little more difficult to deal with.
Noah turned 14 years old in Queensland! After failing in my attempt to make him pancakes (pre-packaged and stale) and bacon (thrashers are not bacon) for breakfast, we spent the rest of the day visiting various spots in the Daintree National Park on a beautiful day. The park is a wonderful combination of hills, streams, rainforest, and deserted beaches. It is the only place in the world where the rainforest meets up with a reef (the Great Barrier Reef in this case). We were meant to be as there was a Noah's Creek, Noah's Range, Noah's Campground and the massive Noah's Beach. We had Noah's Beach to ourselves. Was it because of the multiple warnings about deadly crocodiles and stingers?  We finished off Noah's birthday by eating Mexican, and playing pool and video games back in Port Douglas. Noah agreed that it was a great Birthday.
Since you can't go to Queensland without snorkeling or diving at the Great Barrier Reef, we hopped on a boat that brought us to three locations for snorkeling. We of course had our stinger suits on to avoid ending up in the hospital. Each site brought more fish and variety in coral. We have snorkeled quite a bit and overall this is the best snorkeling that we have ever experienced. Another boat trip took us up Packers Creek in search of crocodiles. We only saw one due to the warm waters.
From Port Douglas, we drove down the coast to Airlie's Beach, the base town for visiting the Whitsunday Islands. We took a raft boat trip out to the Whitsunday's in some very high seas which made for a wild ride. We did some more snorkeling, but the highlight was going to Whitehaven Beach, which has to have the whitest sand in the world. The sand is 98.9% silicone. I am not quite sure of the significance of this composition, but it sure makes for incredible baby-powder sand.
Our final stop in Queensland was on Magnetic Island, just off the coast of Townsville. The island is a week-end destination for Australians so there are very few foreign tourists. It has a homey feel being void of large resorts. We rented a house in the rain forest on a lagoon about a 5 minute walk away from the ocean. It was a great house except for the aforementioned bat, geckos, and hornet's nest. This is where we saw our first kangaroo in Australia. Yes, it took us 2 weeks to see a kangaroo in Australia! Keeping with the nature theme, we held crocodiles, lizards and birds, and Jennifer got to hold a Koala! No, it did not poo on her.
To view our slide show of Queensland, Australia, click on the following link ==> Queensland, Australia Slide Show

Melbourne, Australia - No Worries Mate!

Melbourne, Australia Slide Show

Going through the airport, we were preparing for our routine of retrieving our luggage, going through customs, finding a place to stay and trying to understand another language. We were tired and our bodies and heads were dragging when we heard across the way, "No worries, mate!" Immediately, smiles came to our face. Hey, he was speaking English and he was happily greeting us upon our arrival! Not counting South Africa, which has 123 official languages (give or take a few), Australia was the first country that we visited where English is the main language.
Actually, the airport employee was speaking Australian, which we learned quite a lot about traveling in Cambodia and Vietnam with our fellow Aussie travelers. We found out that a "TimTam" is a chocolate biscuit that you drink tea through, a "mossie" is a mosquito, a "tinny" is a small can of beer, "footy" is Australian Rules Football, "salties" are salt-water crocodiles, "freshies" are fresh water crocodiles, "schoolies" are high school kids on spring break, a "jumper" or a "cardy" is a sweater, "g'day" means good morning or good afternoon or good night depending on the time of day, "tinny in a stubby" is a can of beer in a cooler, "loo" is a bathroom, and many others that I can't remember off the top of my head. Our pronunciation lesson continued with city names as Melbourne is pronounced "Melbin" and Cairns is pronounced "Cans". The best that I can tell is that the "r" is not pronounced in a word, but is added in a word that does not contain an "r", such as the name Donna is pronounced "Donnar".
Speaking of Donnar, I mean Donna, we met her on our Intrepid tour through Cambodia and Vietnam. Like most Australians that we have met along the way, it was easy to quickly develop a friendship with her and she was nice enough to have the three of us stay at her home in Melbourne. She lives within walking distance to downtown and most of the major sights. We spent the days walking and biking around the beautiful city of Melbourne and the evenings staying up late with Donna and her friend Chris, eating and drinking like only Australians can do. On one of those nights, we met up with another Intrepid traveler, Dave for dinner. Before entering Australia, I had lost 6.8 kilos, but I assume that I will leave Australia over my starting weight.
Even though Melbourne is a big city, it feels like a small city. People stop you on the street asking if you need help and restaurants take charges off your bill if they feel that they didn't provide good enough service. Twice we had this happen when we didn't have an issue at all with the service. Anything they did take off our bill was appreciated though since we were still adjusting to the significantly higher prices of a developed country after recently spending time and money in India and Southeast Asia.
Besides being friendly, the people of Melbourne are sports fanatics. You don't walk very far before walking by another sports stadium. They have 2 major stadiums that they use for Australian Rules Football, cricket, soccer, and rugby and are building another one. The Australian Open is held at Rod Laver Stadium and Noah and I even came across a 6-plex of baseball fields. Well, we didn't exactly come across the baseball fields. Actually we took an hour train ride followed by a 15 minute taxi ride to a baseball warehouse where we purchased a baseball bat and a dozen balls and then walked to the fields. It didn't bother us that there were 40 mph winds blowing us around. We were playing baseball on a baseball field! On our last night in Melbourne, we even got to see Collingwood thrash Essendon 106 - 62 in the semi-finals of the Australian Rules Football NAB Cup.
The winds weren't all that blew through Melbourne. Just north of Melbourne, the forest fires were still blazing away when we arrived. The state of Victoria was in a 5 year drought, which was not helping the fire situation. That's okay, we took care of that. It rained for the first 4-1/2 days of our 5 day stay, at least temporarily putting an end to the drought and the fires. There was a front page picture of a fireman dancing in the rain and puddles. Whatever we can do to help.
The cloud and rain didn't help our photography, but if you would like to see our Melbourne, Australia slide show, click on the following link ==> Melbourne, Australia Slide Show