Up the east coast of Australia

Our trip around Australia has begun! Ben’s dad, Norm (the guy with the beard), has kindly loaned us his trusty 1979 Ford Falcon station wagon (lovingly called “wombat” by the family) for our journey (and yes, it is as old as Karen – wow!!). We left freezing Canberra in late August and headed north to Sydney where we caught up with (and were kindly hosted) by Ben’s former housemate Cathy. We unfortunately couldn't stay long as we had to meet up with Karen's friend, Christina, in Brisbane in a week’s time. So, we shot northward through New South Wales (NSW), stopping for a delightful evening with another former housemate, Kate, in Port Macquarie (though "shot" is a relative term as our trusty old wombat is more aptly described as spluttering her way to 100 km/h....perhaps......downhill?)



Girraween National Park
We took a slight detour inland to Girraween, just on the border of NSW and Queensland (QLD). We arrived after dark, as is typical for us, and were delighted to wake up the following morning to find an abundance of Australian wildlife right in camp! There were kookaburras laughing at us maniacally (if you're lucky, you've heard Ben's excellent imitation given at his work's annual department meetings). Kangaroos, their joeys, and crimson rosellas were foraging across the lawn.



We then managed a quick morning walk through some amazing granite boulder landscapes before the rain began in earnest. We enjoyed this park at all levels, from the massive balancing rocks it's famous for to the birds bathing in temporary rock pools against a background of flowering wattle.



The rains continued along our drive to Lismore, where we enjoyed a lovely two nights in the rainforest (the emphasis is on RAINforest as there was a steady downpour the whole of those two days) with Ben's uncle Michael in his self-designed and built hexagonal home. From there it's only an hour's drive to the famous Byron Bay, where we met up with Ben's old friend Kim. We only spent the afternoon and evening in town as it was generally pretty quiet given the rain and time of year, although we did manage a walk up the headland to look over some of their many famous beaches.



Lamington National Park
Situated only 1.5 hours from Brisbane, on the top of a wide plateau, lies Lamington National Park. The park is filled with lush sub-tropical rainforest, home to loads of climbing vines, enormous epiphytes (like the crows nest fern above Karen), and strangler figs slowly suffocating their host trees. A walk through the park takes you through damp rainforest where waterfalls and fungi thrive, and then out to the drier eucalypt woodlands along some edges (filled with Dr. Seuss-like grass trees, like those next to Ben) before dropping away to expansive views over the valleys below.



We would have liked to spend more time watching the plethora of local wildlife, but as it was we saw quite a lot in just 24 hours. We were greeted by a mob of red-necked pademelons grazing across the campground lawn - a cute little marsupial that only stood about 1.5 feet (0.5 m) tall. That night, we heard some scrabbling in the bushes near our tent, and there were a couple of possums hanging out, as chill as you please. Then, as we drove out the next day, we saw some whiptail wallabies checking us out from the side of the road. Excellent!


The bird life in the park was even more spectacular than the mammals. There were flocks of "wild" parrots that hung around for free birdseed from the kids, including crimson rosellas and king parrots. Throughout the park (and the entire east coast of Australia, as we later discovered), we saw brush turkeys scratching about in the debris for something to eat (the males have this fabulous yellow wattle). We later learned that the male is responsible for making the nest - and this is no small task as it is a pile of leaf debris scratched from the surrounding floor typically a meter high and 4-5 meters in diameter - wow! He then has to tend it as the female has nothing to do with the eggs post-laying, and it's the decaying leaf matter that warms the eggs. The male uses his beak as a thermometer to maintain the nest at the right temperature. Cool, huh? And speaking of males that make fancy structures - the park is home to the satin and regent bowerbirds. Pictured here are the male and female satin bowerbirds (note their super-blue eyes) and a picture of his bower (that he dances through to turn on the ladies), complete with blue bits of trash that he collects for decoration.



Surfers Paradise and BrisVegas
We headed to the Gold Coast to pick up Christina, who was amazingly coherent considering she'd just completed four flights to get here from her home in Austin, Texas. She'd been "forewarned" about our stylish transportation, but she quickly grew to love it. We enjoyed a coffee watching some kite surfers against the imposing hi-rise background of Surfers Paradise. We then made our way there to enjoy lunch and some time checking out the beach and a white ibis before jetting to Brisbane (sometimes called BrisVegas for no reason we could identify) where we met up and were graciously hosted by Anhar and another of Ben's school friends, Neil. Trying to acclimatize Christina to Australian time, we kept her up late checking out the view over the city from Mt. Coot-tha before sharing an excellent steak dinner. We were so proud of her for staying awake!



Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary
After a good night's sleep, we headed to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary so Christina would get a guaranteed look at some Australian "wildlife". We started with a sheepdog demonstration (which was actually quite impressive) where Christina really got into the show, followed by an Australian birds of prey show before we headed over to feed the kangaroos and wallabies (look at Ben with that big boy...).



We saw many different animals (lizards, hairy-nosed wombats, rainbow lorikeets), but the highlight of the day was cuddling our very own koala - he was a male, complete with stinky glands, but wasn't he cute!! We finished off the day with a tour of the XXXX beer brewery (the main beer of Queensland), and were finished off by the four included beers at the end.



Glass House Mountains and Rainbow Beach
En route to Hervey Bay (north of Brisbane), we stopped for some photos in the Glass House Mountains. These are ancient volcanic plugs that rise abruptly from the otherwise flat (boring) landscape. Then we did a brief walk at Rainbow Beach to check out the sands from which the town gets its name. It was cool to see the different colours of sand right next to each other in the cliff face.



Whalewatching in Hervey Bay
Humpback whales migrate between Antarctica and northern Australia annually, but lucky for us and other tourists, they decide to chill out for a couple of months in the waters of Hervey Bay just after they've calved. We spent most of a day out of the water observing these large, yet still active, ocean denizens. We found some mothers with their highly energetic calves (who gave us a bit of an aerial display). A great experience that we'd recommend.



Eungella National Park
It was a bit of a mammoth drive to get here (involving a night's stay in Rockhampton and the realization that some places in Australia don't stay open for dinner quite as late as we'd expected - we enjoyed the Red Rooster chicken anyway), but ultimately worth it. Like Lamington, Eungella is a rainforest national park (though a bit more tropical feeling), and it is known for its relatively easy to see (though hard to photograph) wild platypuses. They were smaller than we expected, only about 1.5 feet (0.5 m) long, but enjoyable to watch as they swam and dove while feeding.



However, there is much more to this park than just platypuses. While walking, we came across a goanna (about 3 ft long head to tail), who sought refuge in a tree. There was loads of flying wildlife: red dragonflies, sulphur-crested cockatoos (who greeted every dusk and dawn with raucous squawking choruses), the iconic kookaburra, an inquisitive blue-faced honeyeater, and some massive fruit bats roosting in the trees (though they took off in a screeching storm when we approached. We first started to see these bats in Brisbane, and Karen wouldn't believe the Australians when they told her that the huge black shape in the sky was really a bat. Their wingspan can reach over a meter!)



When night fell, we chanced upon a tawny frog-mouth sitting in a tree. These birds are normally hard to spot as they closely resemble a dead branch when they are resting. There were also many possums around the park - one who would NOT leave us alone while we were making dinner, and another that did a quick drive-by with her massive baby on board.



Cruising the Whitsundays
We went on a three-day sailing cruise of the Whitsunday Islands on the ex-racing maxi yacht, Condor. They tell us that this yacht, in her day, won each of the major ocean-faring sailing competitions...twice - a feat no other boat has achieved. The water in the Whitsundays is a GORGEOUS turquoise hue, and this makes for spectacular views, such as the one over Whitehaven beach. The sand on this beach is pure silicon, which is brilliant white and super soft and cool to walk on (or jump on).



It was a relaxing few days, as we spent most of our time catching some rays on deck as we watched the lovely forested islands glide past (while the crew made our meals for us!). We did some snorkelling each day at amazing locations full of coral and tropical fish (underwater photos yet to be developed). Occasionally, we'd get a visitor - like seagulls or this white-bellied sea eagle (snatching a treat from the crew out of the water). It was a BYO trip, so we had some fun evenings as well…



It wasn't all lying around, though. Whenever we sailed, the passengers had to man the winches to hoist the sails (and it wasn't as easy as we're making it look!). Our first two days of sailing were pretty low-key; however, on our final morning, the winds really picked up and the crew showed us what the old girl was still capable of. The boat took on a savage lean (probably reaching 40 degrees at times), where we had to hold on to keep our seats in the wind-driven spray. Fun!



Mission Beach
After another mammoth drive (and remember we don't have air conditioning) where we found out that food places in country towns keep silly hours (they’re open at five, but everything is closed by eight), we pulled into Mission Beach with plans to set out for pretty Dunk Island the next day. However, the wind was blowing even harder than before, so no boats were making the trip across. We consoled ourselves with some beers (and ciders, and a bottle of vodka, and a bottle of Bundy, and maybe even some wine...), and headed out to enjoy the beach which had a view of Dunk, at least. We crawled out of bed the next morning to do a quick walk through the nearby rainforest, hoping to catch a glimpse of the rare and elusive cassowary (a large, flightless bird) - there are only perhaps 1000 left in the wild. No luck, though we did see some cool fan palms - their leaves can fold up to survive the high winds of cyclones, like the one that blew through here earlier in the year causing the price of Australian bananas to soar (it seems banana trees aren’t quite so cyclone proof).



Visit to Johnstone River Crocodile Farm
Not having seen any crocs in the wild (thankfully), we decided to head to the Johnstone River Crocodile Farm to see some. It was pretty touristy, with our loud-mouthed tour guide poking the crocs with a rake to get a rise out of them (or to get them to rise out of the water). He even sat on big Gregory, who seemed pretty low key considering he weighs a ton, is 5.5 meters long, and could probably eat our guide if sufficiently motivated. There were heaps of crocs and we got a good chance to look at these ancient creatures up close. There were even some baby American alligators (kindly held up by the handler for our photo). Here at last we saw a cassowary - the big plate on their head (called a casque) is spongy rather than hard to help absorb shocks as they move through the rainforest. They sport a long, razor sharp toe on each foot, and if provoked can jump up and disembowel you. Lovely.



The highlight of the visit was at the end, when we got to handle some of the reptiles of the park. There was a blue-tongued lizard (he's about a foot long) who gladly poked out his namesake at us. There was a variety of pythons that we could cuddle, and we all got into this. Ben even braved a snakebite from a grumpy python so that he could get a free coke (how cheap can you get?). And, of course, you could hold a baby croc (mouth taped shut). Some of us were better at this than others. ;-)



The Atherton Tablelands
We detoured away from the coast on our way to Cairns to explore the Atherton Tablelands, an elevated inland rolling countryside with lots and lots of waterfalls. This area is home to the curtain fig tree - a famous natural creation formed when the tree supporting a strangler fig tree tilted sideways allowing the fig to overwhelm its host tree as well as the neighbouring tree, creating a spectacular curtain of fig roots. Fig roots and vines of other sorts abound in tropical and sub-tropical rainforest, and Ben really enjoyed taking photos of them. To cap off our day, we visited Crater Lakes National Park, which consists of two neighbouring lakes formed from old volcanic craters. Lovely!



Cairns
And we made it finally to Cairns, Christina's last Queensland destination. We took Anhar's advice that we just had to experience the Woolshed, a local pub, so we went there for dinner and 2-for-1 drinks. We stayed there a wee bit longer than planned, took in the wet t-shirt contest (which turned into a wet no-shirt contest), and got up onto the tables to dance through until closing (3am) with our brand new friend, Adrian. Our reef trip was off for the next day as there was still high wind and rain, so we consoled ourselves with a first-class dinner at the Red Ochre Grill, which consisted of kangaroo, croc, emu, damper, pavlova and more all made with seasonings from the Australian bush.



From there we sadly said goodbye to Christina who headed down to Sydney for a day of sightseeing before heading back home (a big thank you to Chuck for meeting her at the airport and showing her around town!!!). It was a really good trip through Queensland and an excellent chance to catch up! Thanks for being our first visitor in Australia, Christina!! We have since continued our adventures up north including the Daintree and Cooktown before heading west with 2,500 kms of driving between us and Darwin. We'll spare you having to read any more right now by putting this in the next blog.

P.S - Big Things Australia
There is an interesting cultural phenomenon in Australia of building BIG versions of everyday items alongside major highways and expecting people to stop and buy things at the associated tourist shops. We stopped at a few of these (mainly because we needed to document them for our devoted blog audience) which showed up along the way: the big merino (really well made out of concrete), the big banana (supposedly the first of the big things), the big pineapple (look for Karen and Christina at the top), the big mango, and finally the rather weak big cassowary. There were many more to be seen, and you could spend months trying to find them all, but this was plenty for us.