Oct. 29 - Byron Bay

Time for a road trip!  Annie, Laurie and I decided to leave Brisbane and check out Byron Bay.  Byron Bay is the famously hippie community at the eastern most point in Australia.  It also is home to a big lighthouse.  We got here in a rainstorm, waited it out and then went to see the lighthouse and shoreline - pretty impressive!  the lighthouse and coast are more impressive than the hippies....

Oct. 22-27 - Heron Island

Heron Island was fabulous!  We saw it all - from sea cucumbers to sharks to turtles digging their nests on the beach.  We left at midnight for a six hour bus ride from Brisbane to Gladstone, then took a two hour ferry ride to the island.  The ferry is known for its seasick potential, but our crossing was calm.  After settling in at the research station, we went out for a reef walk, looking at the coral and critters in close to shore.  The next few days were spent snorkeling from land or boat - several times a day.  Annie and I were dive buddies, and Laurie paired up with Dr. D. from Hobart who was here to check things out for next year.  We swam with sharks and rays (the rays were scary, but not the sharks) and saw all kinds of fish and coral.  It was an other-worldly experience to just float along looking at all the life around us.  On the land we also saw turtles coming up on the beach to lay their eggs, and birds - lots of birds!  The island was home to an overwhelming number of noddies who sat in trees or on the ground, pooping on all who walked beneath.  We also had mutton birds who dig nests in the ground and cry and howl al night.  All in all, it was a week in paradise swimming with the fish and sharks and considering ourselves lucky to be there.

Annie the Diver

Jetty Where We Watch Fish

Swarm of Fish at Jetty

Sharks Found the Swarm

Swimming Turtle

Turtle Tracks in the Sand

Our dive boats with rays

After a Snorkel

Laurie

Laurie, Dr. D. and Sue

Heron Island

Research Station

Nesting Turtle

Mutton Bird Nest

Noddies

Oct. 25 - Heron Island

This is our fourth day on Heron Island, and finally I have Internet.  We have been having a great time snorkeling on the reef and seeing all the wildlife here.  We have seen tons of sharks, lots of fish, both big and small, loggerhead turtles, turtle tracks from moms coming up to lay eggs, big rays swimming around and burrowing in the sand, and tons of birds.  One kind of bird just comes to shore at night and spends the whole night making the most incredible moaning ghost noises.  It is kind of nice until they decide to leave around 4 am and feel the need to talk about it at great length!  We are having camera issues, so for now no pictures.  They will come!

Oct. 13 - Brisbane

Well, it has been a long time since we blogged because we have been busy with two trips that took us off the grid.  The first was our own private road trip to get out of Brisbane and see the country - and we sure did see some country!  The second was our field trip to Girraween National Park.  I broke these down into a series of blogs, starting with Road Trip Day 1.

Oct. 8 - 12 - Girraween National Park

Our Tent Village

After a day at home to recover from the road trip and do our laundry, it was off on a five-day field trip with the students to Girraween National Park.  Girraween is on the dry side of The Great Dividing Range (Australia's only mountain range) and it was also in the granite belt.  It reminded me a lot of Yosemite in the USA, except that it was also home to a zillion kangaroos and didn't have big cliffs.  Our camping setup was really interesting.  We were taken care of by Kangaroo Bus Lines, a company that specializes in camping excursions.  We slept in 2-person tents that we put up ourselves.  We had air mattresses that they supplied and slept in our own sleeping bags.

The Kitchen

 There was a bathroom in the campground with running water and electricity, but no power at our site.  The bus company set up tables and a big tarp for our eating area, and a trailer that they pulled behind the bus turned into the kitchen.  Jan our cook did a great job feeding us - it turns out that she and her husband own the company.  It's not a small thing - they have almost a hundred buses.  She really seemed to like to be with us and do the cooking, and told me that she now has trouble hiring cooks.  I volunteered on the spot!

We spent our time at Girraween hiking around to various sites where the students did projects.   Annie and I hiked a lot and had a great time!

The weather was hot and sunny during the day, and potentially quite cold at night.  The kangaroos were our buddies - always around in the mornings and evenings, and not at all timid about being close.

Who? Us?

I almost ran into one at night when I was headed to the bathroom.  We measured trees, caught yabbies (crayfish), counted 'roo poo, looked at stars, saw king parrots and kookaburras, climbed the pyramid, and generally had a great time.  I liked this park better than Lamington - maybe I need the sunshine.  Climbing the pyramid was a big adventure for me.  It is a fairly steep granite formation, and at one point on the way up I was sure I was going to just slide right down hundreds of feet to the bottom.  I sat down and just froze.

On the Pyramid

It is easy coming down

I considered calling out for help (I was alone) but decided that there wasn't anything anyone could do to rescue me.  So I instead started muttering unrepeatable things and slooowly started crab walking sideways about six inches at a time to get past the steep part.  My Outward Bound experience got me through it, and after reaching the top I didn't even notice the same section on the way down (maybe because I kept my eyes focused on the trail and never looked to the side again...)  Once it was over, it was a whole lot of fun!

Now we are back in Brisbane.  Laurie comes next Sunday, then on Monday we all head off for Heron Island and our last field trip in Australia.  Can't wait for another adventure!

Oct. 6 - Road Trip Day 3

Day 3 (Sunday, Oct. 5) - We got up and headed out of the peanut town and went to Bunya National Park to take a hike before heading home.  The road to the park was twisty and narrow, and the road out was twisty and narrow until it turned into unpaved gravel.  And these are major roads??  The park itself was similar to our Lamington experience, basically rainforest.  The big difference here was the presence of Bunya Pines - an ancient species that has survived to the present.  We had a nice hike, lunch at a cafe offering bunya nut muffins (despite a sign in the park telling visitors not to remove the bunya cones from the park since they are needed for the local ecology...) and then a long ride back to Brisbane.  I was mighty relieved to get the car back in one piece and hop on my bike to meet Annie and take the CityCat back home.

Bunyas are big....

...it is hard to get a good picture

Oct. 5 - Road Trip Day 2

Day 2 (Sat., Oct. 5) - This was an interesting adventure!  It started by a near death experience as we were almost sideswiped by a passing truck (no photo for this one).  We were well away from anything resembling sizable towns, just driving through dry country with small towns consisting of about twenty houses and four stores.  

This is a big town

We stopped in Cherburg, which was an aborginal settlement where the aboriginal people were forced to live until the 1980s.  They couldn't leave the settlement without passes from the governors, could not have their own bank accounts, and were forced to work for food rations.  The children were taken from the parents and put into dormitories so that the parents could go back to work.  After the aboriginals finally gained some recognition, they managed to save some of the old buildings and made a museum.  The museum guides were women who had lived in the settlement as children, and it was really moving to hear them tell their stories.  What a place!

Cherburg Museum

We then went on to Kilkivan, where the first gold was found in Australia.  Annie had read about a mine where we could pan for gold.  We asked directions in town, and the shopkeeper had never heard of the mine.  Ominous!  We finally found it, and checked things out.  their main business these days is stone and gravel for garden supplies, but they did have a gravel heap that you could use to pan for gold.  We watched a couple of dads with their kids, and sure enough, there were tiny flakes of gold in the gravel. The dads and their kids did not get rich.

Panning for gold

The Putnam Gold Mine in all its glory

Our last stop of the day was Kingaroy which turns out is the peanut capital of Australia.  One of the advertised things to do in town was visit the Peanut Van which we did.  The peanuts were great.  We had an interesting dinner at a local hotspot - the RSL.  That is the Returned Service League for the armed services.  They served dinner and had a lot of gambling going on.  In the middle of the evening, we all stood for a moment of silence for the fallen servicemen, and they played something similar to taps.  There was a lot of war memorabilia on display and it was really quite interesting.

Oct. 4 - Road Trip Day 1

Day 1 (Friday, Oct. 4) - We started our road trip with the CityCat catamaran taxi to take us down the river towards the airport.

City Cat

After about an hour on the Cat, we got off and I jumped on my trusty BikeFriday and rode off to find the rental car.  I drove back to get Annie and after a few minutes of panic, managed to find her.  We then bravely (remember I'm driving on the wrong side of the road!) headed north for Noosa.  On the way we took the scenic route to the Glasshouse Mountains, which were really funny volcanic remnants that looked like old English glass factories (hence the name, as given by Captain Cook).  

Glasshouse Mountains

We had some fun, took some pictures and headed for the famed beaches of Noosa.  They were supposed to be nicer than those of the Gold Coast to the south, and they may have been - we never saw them!  When we found our way there, there were tons of people, tons of cars, no place to stop, and general terror for the driver (me).  So we bailed out and stopped at Sunrise Beach just to the south.

Sunrise Beach - all the people are at Noosa!

We took a look and then made our way to Gympie. "Gympie?? Why on earth would you go to Gympie??" was the question we got form our Aussie firends.  When we got there, we understood their question.  All that Gympie had to offer was a good dinner, a mediocre motel, and a place for me to buy new hiking boots to replace my old ones that had a sole that was rapidly detaching.  I personally think this was great - how many people can claim that they have gympie hiking boots??