Frumious Bandersnatches and Vermicious Knids

Some of the critters we saw in our journey...

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Today's forecast... rain and more rain...

We're now in the Daintree Rainforest for 4 days.  Limited Internet access so I'll post more Monday night.  Loving it here... so wet and lush and alive... took a walk today on a boardwalk through the jungle.  A huge iguana crawled down the tree two feet from where we were eating breakfast this morning.   More later...

Jan at the foot of a giant fig tree in the rainforest...

Snorkeling The Great Barrier Reef

Snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef...

As Charles Darwin said of the Galapagos, 'What an amazing diversity of life has been created here.'

The GREAT Barrier Reef

Just back from the Great Barrier Reef.  Warm, humid, rainy, sunny, the gamut... a marvelous place!  Jan did quite a bit of snorkeling and we enjoyed being on a boat for 3 days.  We adopted a young man from Germany who kept us in stitches, and made friends with a kindred spirit who works for the State Department.  There was a real diversity both on the reef and in the young people manning the boat and diving duties.  We saw a shark, sea turtles, and countless other colorful creatures that inhabit these warm waters.  There are 2,900 coral reefs that comprise the Great Barrier Reef and we saw 3 or 4 of these... only 5% or so of the total are accessible for tourism.  Most of the reefs are only a short distance under water, rising up from the Australian continental shelf,  and some are close enough to the surface to cause breaking waves.  A rainy welcome but, hey, we heard it was wet here...

In she goes...

A prawn barbie and great new friends!

We really like this backpacker's place, Traveler's Oasis, in Cairns, so much so that we took another night so we could chill and get our bearings.  It turns out that Cairns is pretty centrally located for what we want to do here on the Barrier Reef coast.  We booked the Reef boat trip we want this morning through the Traveler's Oasis people here, so we'll leave in the morning for a 2 night / 3 day snorkeling trip on the outer Reef... the Oasis people will keep our car and extra luggage and we'll stay here another night on our return before heading up north to see the rainforest at Daintree, and take a gondola ride through the rainforest to Kuranda.

We spent the afternoon at the home of the people we met last night.  They treated us to a prawn barbie, a nice visit, and gave us lots of good tips about things to do and see in the area.  As always, the best part of a trip is the people we meet.  Thanks Adrienne and Steve and Charlie and Finn!

Adrienne and Steve and Michael

Good on ya, Steve!

On to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef

Jan took another small hike at Uluru while I manned the air-conditioned, flyless car.  Then off to the airport to learn that our flight to Cairns had been canceled.  Fortunately we were there early enough (I'll never hear the end of it from Jan who I give a hard time about always having to be so early when we fly) to get put on an earlier flight... comfy, 2 abreast, exit-row seats to boot!  Was nice to get to the coast and the lush, wet landscape after our sojourn in the desert.  The backpacker's lodging we had reserved was quite good... we got settled in and went to the nearby Green Ant for a bite.  In keeping with the friendly nature of people here that we have been experiencing, we met some folks at the restaurant who invited us to their home the next day for a prawn barbie!

Uluru - Ayers Rock

Today was our full (and hot) day at Uluru, flies all over you... saw the aboriginal cultural center, the Olgas mountain range, and some more of the Rock... Jan took a couple of small forays up to and around the Rock... oh, the heat and flies!

Uluru Sunset

Arrived in Uluru, Yulara... nice little cabin at Ayers Resort... went to a viewing spot to watch sunset at Ayers Rock (Uluru), the changing light changes the colors of the rock due to the high mineral and metal content... impressive!  This first day was notably cool for here, and Jan and I lingered after all of the other viewers, enjoying the cool dessert air at the base of this magnificent rock.

It's hot and dry and soooo dessert-like here, replete with flies buzzing around your face all the time, but the 'Rock' is indeed impressive.  They have a good viewing point for watching the sunset and sunrise at the Rock, so we did both... herewith, a sunset as the fading light plays on Uluru...

Rock Art and Goodbye to Kakadu

Said goodbye to Kakadu... we especially enjoyed it here.  Our goal had been to see some wildlife and something of the aboriginal culture and we managed to do this in our short time here.  Many things were closed due to the high waters following the wet season.  We weren't sure we would be able to see the rock drawings since the road is sometimes under water... but we were just able to pass through on our last day for a look around... the drawings are on some rock outcroppings where ancient aborigines took shelter during Bangerrangs (knock 'em down storms).

See more of the drawings in the Kakadu slideshow below. (April 13 post)

One of the Kings of Kakadu.  There were warnings everywhere to beware of the crocs.  This photo from the safety of our boat on the sunrise river cruise we took...

There were many termite hills in the Darwin and Kakadu areas.  And I mean hills!  Some were quite intricate and 8 or 10 feet tall.

Jan made friends with some local aborigine women. Herewith her account...

A Special Conversation
I was walking into the restaurant where we stayed in Kakadu Narional Park when a young aboriginal woman spoke to me. We began to chat and I sat down at her picnic table. She said her name was Sylvia and that she lived in the park. She has a two year old daughter, and she showed me pictures on her cell phone. She spoke with a heavy accent of her language. She said she was here today with her aunty.

Soon we were joined by the aunties, Cindy, Mercy, and their auntie, Rosie. Cindy explained that they were not aunts in the white man's way, but all members of the clan are thought of, and referred to, as close relatives. They call each other daughter, niece, and auntie interchangeably. The watch each others' kids. Mercy showed me pictures of her teenagers on her cell phone.

Cindy spoke without an accent. She said they call their language 'Lingo.' She said they speak Lingo and Pidgin English to each other, and English to Europeans like me. They knew I was American and asked about the wild west in Colorado, but they call all whites Europeans. There are two kinds of Lingo: 'easy' that they speak everyday to each other, and 'hard' Lingo that is the language of the ancestors. They must all learn hard Lingo to keep the culture alive. The children do learn it and do not complain as they too want to keep the culture alive.

Cindy said Rosie knows the history of the people but she won't write it down. Rosie, about 70 years old and hard to understand, began to speak. She said she was born in the bush. Her father had been a buffalo shooter and a crocodile shooter, as had all of her uncles. She was missing much of her right hand. She had had leprosy as a child or young woman and was sent to Clayton Island to recover. She said she could still write her name and asked the bartender for a paper and pen. She wrote her name and I wrote mine, and we tore the paper in half and gave each other our names.

Cindy told me her history. She had an Irish grandfather and is part black, and is referred to as 'creamy.' She prefers to live with the people and comes up from Darwin, 260 kilometers away, as often as possible when her work allows. She also said she thinks Rosie's leprosy was caused by an infection from the bite of a small child when she was a young woman.

By now, an hour and a half had passed, so I said goodbye as Michael didn't know where I was. The next night I saw Cindy, Sylvia, and Mercy at the bar around 9:00 PM. They said they were going to Sylvia's house to catch a Baramundi for the cook's birthday. The following day I asked if they were afraid to fish the crocodile infested river in the dark. They said no. The next day we noticed that people were fishing from bridges, the safest way! Anyway, the next day as we were leaving, I saw Merch and asked it they caught their fish. She said no, because it was raining.

We said goodbye. I very much enjoyed meeting and talking with these women. There were very friendly and seemed to enjoy talking with me as well.

~Jan


Then we drove back to Darwin... to Frog's Hollow again... we found the place to be not as bad as we had thought at 2:00 AM on our last stay... it was clean, though still a bit of a party place for the younger set, the partying going well into the night.  But we had more time there this time and discovered they had Internet... hmmmm, I wonder if that had anything to do with Michael's estimation of the place?!!  We had an early night as we had to get up at 4:00 AM the next morning to catch our flight to Uluru.

Images of Kakadu

Just a quick slideshow of some images from Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia.  It's the end of the rainy season up here, the northernmost part of Australia... April is known as the season of the Bangerreng (knock 'em down storms)... we had lots of rain along with some good doses of sunshine, but no real Bangerrangs.  The images are from some aboriginal art drawn on rock walls in Kakadu, and some from our early morning boat ride on the Yellow Water River.  It was raining so hard when we awoke before dawn that the boat trip had to leave from Home Billabong as it does during the wet season instead of further up river as it usually does this time of year... but the rain stopped and the boat ride was spectacular... we saw crocodiles and lots of different bird species.

A billabong is an estuary, a backwater that fills with water as the river levels rise during the wet season.

We saw several crocodiles, including the resident mascot, Waters... and a diversity of birds, including sea eagles, whistling kites, an egret with a hollow vertebrae so it can spear fish, a rare black bittern, jacana, rainbow bee eaters, and magpie geese who mate in 3's, a male and an older and a younger female, and a Jabiru, a memeber of the stork family, working on the huge nest in the top of a tree (the last bird photo in the slideshow below).

Darwin and Kakadu National Park

Arrived in Darwin about 1:00 AM.  Wow!  Hot!  Humid!  Wow!   Got our rental car by 2:00 AM and found our reserved lodging at Frog's Hollow Backpackers... not the nicest, cleanest place  by any stretch... Michael was not impressed!  But we got a good night's sleep, then went to downtown Darwin to a Turkish restaurant for brekkie, as they call it here in Oz... then hit the road for Kakadu National Park.  The road was better than we expected and we made good time and found our lodging in Cooinda, in the park... a lovely place.

Possum Screamers and Good Times

Had a wonderful visit with Bob and Wendy in Melbourne following our week in Tasmania.  We're in Darwin tonight, at the opposite end of the country.... and wow is it hot!  Off to Uluru tomorrow for a couple of days and then on to Cairns and the Barrier Reef.

Bob and Wendy live in a Melbourne suburb, and their son, Andrew, lives nearby.  They graciously welcomed us into their home and showed us some local sights on Saturday and Sunday.  We rode the light rail around Melbourne, had lunch and some good coffees, visited the Anderson Chess Collection at the Melbourne library, took a stroll along the river in a nearby small town... and managed to get in, or at least get a good start to, a game of chess.  Bob made us all waffles for breakfasts and treated us to an authentic Aussie Barbie on Sunday.

Possums have been trying to establish homes in the rafters of Bob and Wendy's carport and around the property.  But Bob, ever the engineer, has made some motion activated 'possum screamers' that emit a frequency of noise not heard by humans, but which drives the messy critters elsewhere.

The Flinders Street Railway Station is a large, beautiful old building, still sporting the old analog clocks for the train schedules.

The electric trams and the general ambiance of Melbourne are reminiscent of San Francisco or Boston.

Michael supervising Bob at the barbie.  It was a bit chilly so we ate inside.... but yummmm!

Thanks folks!

Ferry 'cross The Mersey

Tasmania was great, but time to move on. We boarded the Spirit of Tasmania ferry this morning in Devonport, Tasmania for a 10 hour sail to Melbourne. The Spirit of Tasmania is a large ship, carrying passengers as well as freight and vehicles, replete with shops and restaurants and entertainment... a nice civilized way to travel. We had calm seas and mostly sunny skies and enjoyed the crossing over the Tasman Sea.

Bob and Wendy and their son, Andrew, met us at Port Melbourne as promised, and we enjoyed a sea food dinner with them before heading to their home where we will stay for 2 nights.  Bob and I are excited to finally have a real, live, face-to-face, over-the-board game of chess, as well as time to catch up and see some sights.  Bob and I met on my chess website several years ago, and we hit it off in person as we thought we would.  Wendy and Andrew are delightful as well and, as always, the best part of a trip is meeting some locals.  Thanks for the warm welcome, Bob and Wendy and Andrew, and for welcoming us into your home!


We boarded the Spirit of Tasmania on the Mersey River inlet in Devonport...

Anchors Aweigh...

And a rainbow to greet us on our arrival in Melbourne...

And good friends as well...

On up the east coast of Tasmania

We headed out this morning up the east coast, to Swansea where we had reserved a holiday park lodging for 3 days. It is Easter Sunday, a big holiday here in Australia... in part because it is the last big holiday before winter. Most people are off work on Good Friday and the Monday following Easter, and the kids get a week off school. We stopped by the botanical gardens in Hobart on the way out of town... it turned out to be rather serendipitous as the park was lovely, we had a great breakfast overlooking the grounds, and had a coffee watching this refurbished carousel from 1895. The British call a carousel a set of Galloping Horses, and this one had been lovingly restored by a couple who took it around the country for people to enjoy. People were strolling about the botanical gardens, families and girls in their Easter bonnets, and the carousel fit right in with the ambiance.