Fraser Island

Hi!
Just a few quick pictures from Fraser Island... we are in Brisbane tonight, and head to Surfer's Paradise in the morning. We loved Hervey Bay (where we spent the last two nights), very different than Cairns or the other places we've been. Basically if Cairns is Key West (hot, tropical, lots of partying), Hervey Bay would be Hilton Head (more sub-tropical, much quieter). I obviously love my tropical paradises, but Hervey Bay was a very nice change of pace! One of the most fun elements was the crabs. Remember the balls of sand at Mission Beach? Same type of thing, but on a larger scale. When the tide goes all the way out, the beach is massive. Check it out: this pier is nearly a kilometer long.



So you can tell how far out the tide goes. Anyway, when it's all the way out, the beach is covered in crabs! They roam in groups of probably 100-200, and there are so many you can actually hear them clicking along.


They're a little hard to photograph, because when they are threatened, they fall onto one side and start beating their legs to corkscrew into the sand. It's pretty funny. It also kind of makes you feel like Godzilla, as all of these tiny creatures run from you and try to hide. Good times.

Also, I liked these pictures.






Right, I said Fraser Island. So Fraser Island is the world's largest sand island, which is weird, because even though it's all sand, there is a huge rainforest and lots of other fun things. Like dingoes!


And rainforests! Also in this picture, our crazy German guide, Henning.



But I'm getting ahead of myself. We cruised the island in this amazing vehicle. We opted for the smaller tour (16 people instead of 40, for only like $15 more). And a hilarious looking car!


Seriously! All sand! I took this picture when our 4wd (and professional driver) got stuck in the sand and we had to get out and walk.



Anyway, Fraser is gorgeous, like this beach.



Also, this shipwreck was pretty amazing. At first, I was annoyed that there were people in the picture, but I'm not sure anyone would believe that I took it if there weren't. Okay, maybe it isn't quite that good. Whatever.


Another shipwreck picture (because you know I took hundreds. Along those lines, I've now taken more than 2000 pictures with my new camera! Crazy!)



Being a sand island, Fraser's freshwater lakes and rivers don't have any dirt in them, so they are exceptionally clear.



This creek was also very clear and pretty crazy looking. Also, much colder than the ocean. Unfortunately we couldn't swim in the ocean because apparently it is full of deadly sharks (yeah, I know, but I still stayed away).


Anyway, lots of fun. Brisbane is pretty cool, had a good dinner in Chinatown. The city is interesting because ferries are a major part of public transportation. A little daunting, but fun. Also, strange to be in a big city after so much country. Alright, running out of ways to say I'm done, so here's a picture! (Okay, two.) Bye!

Airlie to Bundaberg

[I just read this through, and I'm really, really sorry about the terrible writing. There was just a lot to write, and I'm still excited!]

Hi!
We are in Bundaberg, and we have internet in our room! That means I'm writing this as I go, not in installments. I hope it makes sense. It's actually a crazy complicated set-up where Jon is plugged in to the internet and his computer is acting as a wireless router that I'm connected to. Whatever, it works, although it didn't work in our room so we're actually in the room next door. We're at a Best Western because all the hostels in town were ridiculously expensive anyway, and Jon is a corporate discount member through one of the companies he worked for in Cairns. Okay, whatever, we're here, and it's been good, there are laundry facilities so that has been good. Okay, rambling, lots to tell you all about, so here goes!

Sailing in the Whitsundays was a lot of fun, we actually went to Hayman Island, where Mom, Dad, Jenny and I stayed almost ten years ago. The sail was nice, although we did get a bit of rain.


Luckily they had super-cool rain jackets for us on the boat. The weather did clear up, and Hayman Island was beautiful.



Check out the clear water. The diving was fine, not nearly as good as what I did in Cairns, which makes me feel good about having worked there. This was probably my favorite diving picture, I could show you more but I just have so much more exciting stuff to write!



Okay, one more sailing picture, just because it's such a good one.


And this one too. Because it's so dynamic. (Dynamic? Did I just type that? I must be tired.)


Okay, that was sailing. The end. So that was St. Patrick's Day, we went to the Irish Pub in town (which was seriously like one of 5 bars, so that was lucky) and had a pint of Guiness, then went to bed early. We had to get up early the next day for Forest Flying!

Forest flying was in the Finch Hatton Gorge, in the Eungella Rainforest. Our driving directions included "turn left just after you go through the creek" and the drive did in fact involve multiple creek crossings. The Yaris is going strong, I am so impressed by this car.

So Forest Flying involves wearing a harness and being attached to a zipline, then cruising through the rainforest. Check out my "sassy" harness pose.



What amazed me the most (and what I'm glad I found out after I did it) was that the guy set the whole thing up using a bow and arrow. That's amazing to me.

There I am! It was very cool, lots of crazy things to see but pretty tough to take pictures with one hand while slowing yourself down with the other as you fly through the rainforest. Also, I need to move on because I am so excited to tell you about tonight!

Before I do, I need to tell you about last night. Rockhampton is the beef capital of Australia, so obviously my expectations for the town were not high. Also, the hostel we were staying at didn't even have a picture of the building on the website (but it was a YHA, which is a national chain, so we knew it would meet a certain standard.) So my expectations were very low, and got lower when we drove up to a depressing brick building. When we checked in, the guy told us we were at "cabin 18," which... well, I didn't really know what to think. Turns it it meant a trailer!


Okay, actually it is a "modular unit" and these specific ones were actually athlete housing during the Sydney Olympics, which is kind of cool. But we walked in and seriously? This thing was a palace! We had our own bathroom and plenty of space for our stuff. Which was a huge improvement over the places that we have been staying. I was so impressed! Also we had a delicious Italian dinner near the river, and all in all, I was pleasantly surprised by Rockhampton.

Today we got up and backtracked a little bit to the Capricorn Caves. Even before we got into the caves, we were glad we made the trip: hanging out in the little nearby campground, there were kangaroos! Craziness!


This picture makes it look really tiny, but it's a weird angle, they were probably four feet tall. Pretty cool.

The caves were pretty, and the end was fun because we had to walk through this part called the zig-zag passage with no guide and with just candles for light. I got to lead the way, which was exciting. Here's a pretty cave picture.


We drove to Bundaberg, did some laundry, and then did what has got to be the coolest thing we've done so far... turtle hatching!

We drove to a place called Mon Repos at about 6:45 pm, which is a turtle sanctuary. We happen to be at the right time of year to see the little baby turtles emerge from their nests and head to the open ocean. Once we were there, we had to wait in a group of about 50 people to hear if there were turtles hatching on the beach. At about 7:30, we all went out to the beach and power-walked down to the nest. The rangers put a little extra sand on top of the nest so the turtles won't get out too quickly, and the timing was perfect. We all got in a circle and watched little bitty Loggerhead turtles emerge from the nest.



Here's the nest they came out of (after they were all gone, and the volunteers were collecting data on the nest).


125 of these little guys came out of the nest we were watching, and they were all corralled until they were out and we could move to the beach.



On the beach, the rangers drew lines in the sand to make a little track for the turtles to run to the beach, and everyone lined up on the sides. Because the turtles are attracted to light to get to the ocean (usually the horizon), they needed a few flashlights to guide them. Jon and I (and one other guy) got to stand in the middle of the track to guide the turtles! This was such an amazing bit of luck, because while everyone else got to watch, we had dozens of turtles crawling over our feet! This is a terrible picture, but we couldn't use a flash, and Jon was taking the picture over my shoulder as these little guys ran at us. You can make out some turtles in the middle, and the guy in front of us's feet, which I had to point the flashlight at to guide the turtles from him to us.


It was incredible to feel like we were actually helping these turtles along to the ocean! I would absolutely recommend this experience to everyone, and I just feel so lucky that we got to be the ones right in the middle of it all!

As you can tell, things are great. We've gone 1,831 kilometers so far, and I think we are about halfway. We've gotten to see and do some great things that we would never have done if we had been flying and only seeing the major cities. (That sounds like such an obnoxious hippy-backpacker thing to say, and I apologize, because they drive me crazy). But seriously, I'm so glad we've had the chance to do this. I will let you know what happens next!

On the road

Hi- I wrote this as we went along... not too much internet around here. We are in Airlie Beach still and went sailing and diving today... way too many pictures to go through right now, I will post them later! This post starts on like Wednesday and goes through yesterday (Friday).


Well, we hit the road today (after having our apartment inspected) and drove from Cairns to Townsville, with some stops on the way. Our first stop was Mission Beach, which required a bit of a detour through the rainforest. As we drove, we saw some amazing signs like this one:



If you haven’t read my entry on the cassowary (you should, it’s a good one), you might not recognize this amazing creature. To recap: enormous, bizarre-looking, and potentially dangerous. We have a bit of a cassowary obsession, which is why we stopped and photographed this sign. Unfortunately, signs like these tend to fall in the category of the alligator signs in Florida-- you keep an eye out, but never actually have to stop for gator crossing.
As we drove, we saw a sign for a rainforest walk, and decided we might as well check out the rainforest, since we were there. We walked down a little path about 50 feet before I froze, hit Jon, and pointed. About 15 feet ahead of us, a real live wild cassowary had just emerged from the rainforest.



We gaped for a while, then the cassowary saw us and started heading slowly in our direction. We walked backwards for a while, then took some pictures.


The cassowary never took it’s eyes off of us, but didn’t really seem to mind us. That didn’t stop us from backing up every time it walked towards us. These things are huge, scary, and can kill you with their claws. It was such a highlight.

I have to give you a close-up of this one, because seriously, this bird is ready to attack me. Giant claws.

After we left the rainforest walk, we actually passed another cassowary right by the side of the road, and could easily have hit it—I guess this sign wasn’t lying.


Cassowaries are endangered, and there are approximately 2,800 of them these days. Since we have now seen four of them (two today, and two at the bird sanctuary), we have actually seen 1/700 of the extant population. Crazy! Anyway, they are amazing, and seeing them in the wild was so cool.

Mission Beach is beautiful, and the rainforest comes all the way down to the beach, which is pretty cool looking.

The beach itself is covered in little balls of sand. Super-smart Jon remembered that we saw a video on this (the Blue Planet BBC series is amazing). The balls of sand are actually formed by thousands of crabs looking for infauna (microorganisms that live in the sand). It’s a pretty cool sight.

After that, we continued our drive and took a detour to Wallaman Falls, the highest waterfall in Australia.

The drive to the falls felt like something out of Jurassic Park, and I know the little Yaris has never seen so much excitement. It made it though, though, and the falls were very pretty. Part of the drive was also very rural, and these cows decided we should not get through.

We arrived in Townsville later than anticipated, and apparently the hostel that we thought we had booked over the internet hasn’t had internet for a couple weeks, therefore can’t get any of their internet bookings, and hasn’t told the booking company this. Which was great. Luckily, they did have a private room available (two single beds, but at least it’s a place to sleep). So, aside from that part, an amazing first day on the road.

So far Airlie Beach has been pretty relaxing. Some fun bars, and a cute (but very small) town.

This is Airlie, the pointy building blocked by the trees is actually our hostel- very well located. We spent today laying on the beach and planning our trip to Asia. Jon made friends with this snake, especially when it crawled across his legs.

So, that's all for now. Tomorrow we leave for Rockhampton. The driving hasn't been bad (Jon has done all of it, so I guess I should say the time in the car hasn't been bad). We are having fun, and look forward to the rest of our trip!

And we're off!

Hi everyone,
Well, Jon and I officially move out of our apartment tomorrow morning. It's been a stressful experience, trying to get out of the lease, get everything planned and packed and cleaned in a much shorter period of time than expected. We are staying in a hotel tomorrow night (just in case anything goes wrong with the inspection), and then we begin our drive down the coast...

In this! Our super-hip Toyota Yaris. It's pretty tiny, but it has a backseat, so no problem for holding luggage and all. Also it's stick-shift, which adds an interesting dimension to the whole driving on the left thing, but Jon is planning to do most of the driving. So that's good.

I should be able to at least post text from the road, and hopefully some pictures as well. Jon and I went on a photography tour of Cairns today (which basically meant I dragged him around town) while our apartment was being cleaned. I am finally learning how to really use my camera, and I am proud of the results!

There are all these amazing trees and flowers around Cairns (we are in the tropics, after all), so I have lots of great pictures. I liked this one for some reason. Probably because I finally learned how to focus my camera (sad). Also, I managed to take a decent-looking picture of Cairns!


You can hardly tell that it's a few inches of water away from being mudflats. Really, though, it is a pretty city and I'm glad I got a pretty picture. I am sorry to be leaving, but Tusa has called me to work twice total (once they cancelled on me, and once was two nights ago), so really, things just weren't making sense here. It's been a hard decision, and even now, I keep feeling like there's something else I could have done to make staying worthwhile. There's not. So, it was fun (especially before Christmas, when I had a steady job!), but now it's time for us to move on. I'll keep you updated from the road.

Major change of plans

Hi all!

Well, I know I have kind of implied that work has been slow, but to be honest, neither Jon nor I has worked a day since we've been here. We've been patient, looked for other opportunities... but really, things just aren't going well. So rather than work at the farmer's market or some restaurant, we, with the help of our amazing parents, have decided to move on.

Rather than just settling down in LA earlier than planned, we are going to continue our adventure in Asia. We will still travel for about a month around Australia as planned (just a little bit earlier), and then head up to Asia for about six weeks of travel before coming home.

The plan for Australia is to drive the East coast from Cairns to Sydney over about two weeks, stopping at beaches, theme parks, islands, waterfalls, and rum distilleries along the way. We will visit some friends in Melbourne and see the sights there, then head up to Ayer's Rock (Uluru) for a few days to experience the outback. After that we will spend a few more days in Sydney and then head up to Asia.

Nothing has been booked for Asia yet, but we are planning to see Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong and China (and there has been mention of Taiwan, Tibet, Okinawa, Osaka, Seoul, or Manila). Let me know if you've been to any of these places-- any advice would be awesome!

Okay, I will definitely keep everyone posted as things develop. It has been a crazy few days making all these decisions- this is not at all what I thought I would be doing, but I think it will be amazing, and a better use of our time than sitting around Cairns waiting for work. So... I will let you all know as the adventure continues!

My underwater camera-- in action!

We finally went diving! Dash (Jon's roommate from last year) was in town visiting (his cousin got married in Sydney, so he flew up to see us) and we all went out on Passions (a different dive company) (apparently I am in a parenthetical mood). We kept calling Tusa to try to go out on the boat, but it was booked solid-- which, unfortunately, doesn't mean I've been working. So for Dash's last day in town, we decided to just try for a different boat. We chose Passions because they actually sail-- it's a huge catamaran, which was lots of fun.



It's definitely not meant as a diving trip, Jon and I were the only certified divers on the boat, and Dash was one of five intro divers. It was nice and relaxing, and the diving was alright. It gave me a good opportunity to try out my camera, and since the three of us were the only people who wanted to do a second dive, we all got to dive together with a couple of staff members. Very relaxing and a lot of fun. We also went to Michaelmas Cay, which is a tiny, very pretty island.


It is also completely covered in birds.



So... diving pictures! I took like two hundred pictures, and a few of them were decent. Oh well, it was my first try.


This was the cutest tiny little cowfish, like the one I used to have. Too bad I couldn't get a picture of the front of it.

Juvenile damselfish like to live in corals for protection. I caught them in the act.


These batfish followed us around for like five minutes.


Butterfly fish tend to pair for life. Awwww.

I found Nemo.

This one is my favorite. I love my new camera/housing. Thanks Mom/Mimi and Granddaddy!


That's it. Guess I'm not feeling very verbal today. Enjoy the pictures!