Safe At Home

We're home now. Back to work tomorrow. Boo.

We Have Lost Our Koreans!

A slightly late start this morning because we lost our Koreans. Our tour group consists of our tour guide Darren, us, an Irish forty-something couple, a single twenty-something Swiss guy, and three Koran ladies. The latter did not show up at the arranged meeting time, causing Andrew to repeatedly declare “We have lost our Koreans!” as we searched the resort.

The locals are not very original in their names on Fraser Island: the “ocean beach” is the beach on the ocean; the “fox tail plant” is a plant that looks like a fox tail; and a “sand blow” is, well...

Heavy rains today didn't end up putting that much of a kink in the plans since it is still very warm. A whistle stop tour around the island showed us forests, lakes, creeks, beaches, shipwrecks, and OMG LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT SPIDER! GET BACK IN THE CAR! GET BACK IN THE CAR!

Phew! Sorry for that outburst. Here's a picture of Jessica watching a lovely lake turtle to calm your nerves:

Our long trip home will commence over the next few days: tomorrow to Brisbane, Friday to Sydney, and Saturday all the way home to Calgary.

Fraser Island

Cpt. James Cook named this area “The Sandy Lands” for obvious reasons. Fraser Island is not really an island per se, but rather the world's largest sand bar. In fact, it's the world's largest sand anything. Fortunately, it's entire 125km length is serviced by a multi-lane, high-speed super-highway which also doubles as a runway for small airplanes. It's known as the beach.

A swim in the inland lakes proved to be the same clear water we've come to expect from Australia:

Our accommodation's are in a fancy “eco-hotel” which strives to make minimal impact on the environment while still functioning as a 5-start resort. Andrew's favorite feature is the bathroom windows have no curtains but are designed to be impossible to see in from the outside, thus encouraging you to use natural light.

More Posts Tomorrow

We're back in Brisbane after a fun couple of days on Fraser Island. Unfortunately, we're using a crappy lobby internet computer so I can't load our pre-written blog posts, so instead I'll load a few tomorrow when we get back to Sydney.

Brisbane

We made it safely to Brisbane, managing to dodge around the floods completely. (Trains were not so lucky; good thing we booked the bus.) We're booked on dinner cruise up and down the river tonight so we can see as much of the town as possible during our overnight here.
Tomorrow morning we leave for Fraser Island. Internet access will be unlikely there, so probably no posts until Thursday or so.

Byron Bay

Satellite photos of Byron Bay would have showed a green haze moving around the town; this was from the stink-waves coming off the two of us. We had left the bars in Port Macquarie at 10PM and then sobered up by sleeping on the filthy floor of the bus terminal until 2AM, then slept on the bus until 8AM. Since we couldn't check in to our motel until noon, we killed a few hours by taking a long hike to Australia's easternmost point on Byron Cape:


The cape is covered in subtropical rain forest, and it was cloudy and a steamy 28C so we were disgustingly hot and sweaty by the time we got back to our motel. With air-conditioning, our first proper bed in eight days, and a much needed shower, our room was like an oasis in the desert!

Byron Bay itself is the opposite of lazy Jervis Bay: crowded beaches full of surfers, crowded streets full of the young and beautiful, and crowded bars full of drunks. We found a nice restaurant with a balcony overlooking the chaos for lunch (though of course there's nobody on the street the moment we took a photo):

By dinnertime the streets were a zoo of young party-goers with techno music echoing out of every bar. We decided we were too old and tired for this nonsense, quickly scoffed a couple of kebabs on the street, and went home to barricade ourselves in our room for an early night.

Port Macquarie

An early morning bus ride ride brought us to the seaside town of Port Macquarie at noon, where we had to find a way to amuse ourselves until the red-eye at 1:30AM that night. We hit a few sangs: (1) the bus terminal had no lockers so we had to drag our heavy bags with us; (2) the visitor information centre had been replaced with a large construction site; and (3) rain, rain, and more rain. We handled these setbacks in the only reasonable manner: drinking in local bars for twelve hours straight. :)

Up and Over (Sydney – Day 6)

Divide-and-conquer today: Jessica & Becky went shopping while Andrew did his “nerd-tourism” and went to the Sydney Observatory. (Not posting pictures of that since it was so dorky.)

The evening brought one of the most anticipated (and expensive) parts of our visit: the “Bridge Climb” over the top of Sydney Harbour Bridge. An hour of safety training, waiver signing, jumpsuit fitting, breathalyser tests (you must be under 0.05!), equipment training, metal detectors, etc. finally led to the climb itself. Breathtaking views of the nighttime Sydney skyline were punctuated by distant fireworks right as we reached the apex – it was very kind of John & Becky to arrange that for us! (Not posting pictures of this either since they wouldn't let you take ANYTHING on the bridge with you.)

There is no Spoon (Sydney – Day 5)

John had to return to work today, so the rest of us sympathized by taking a booze cruise around Sydney Harbour on a 1922 tall ship.


In the evening, we took in an open-air showing of “The Matrix” in the park.

Seeing this movie again after a long time only made us angry about how crappy the sequels were!

There's a Reason They Called it the “Plughole Tour” (Sydney – Day 4)

We headed inland today into the Blue Mountains where we had booked for an exploration of the Jenolan Caves. Initially we had been worried about how we would fare during the abseil into the cave entrance:


In hindsight, what we should have been worried about what turned out to be a claustrophobic, technical descent into the heart of the mountain.

As we descended deeper we had to work our way through the appropriately named “keyhole”, “letter slot”, and the “S-bend”, the last of which was roughly equivalent to crawling through a 10-ft long coffin lengthwise!

A quick detour on the way home to see the famous “Three Sisters” rock formation was pedestrian by comparison.

No Worries, Mate. (Sydney – Day 3)

A later start today and a slower day of sightseeing. We toured down to the Royal Botanical Gardens for the classic Sydney photo op:

Afterwards we were booked in for a tour of the Opera House. It's quite an impressive building, even for those of us who know nothing about architecture. Sadly we couldn't take any photos of the interesting bits inside, so instead he's a picture of our host throwing some “shrimp on the 'barbie”:

Beach Crowds then Booze Crowds (Sydney – Day 2)

We spent the afternoon checking out Sydney's famous Bondi Beach: terrific scenery, terrific waves, and terrific CROWDS!

That evening was the world famous NYE in Sydney. We were booked into a restaurant just south of the Harbour Bridge which gave us a break from the huddled masses on the streets outside and a great view of the impressive bridge fireworks.

Finding our way back to our bus in downtown Syndey in the first wee hours of 2008 was like something out of “28 Days Later” with car-less empty streets, garbage strewn everywhere, and random packs of drunks darting in and out of sight.

Blog Catchup Time

We're currently on a Greyhound bus from Byron Bay to Brisbane and Andrew is trying to use the time by catching up on our woefully out-of-date blog, but it's a very windy and bumpy road so if the entries stop abruptly it means he's gotten motion sickness and has needed to take a break. We haven't posted since we started visiting our friends, John & Becky, who are heartless tourism slave-drivers and have kept us too busy to spend time on the 'tubes, so the following posts will cover the entire past week (in order).

Busy, Busy, Busy.

Sorry for no posts lately - been too busy touring Sydeny to spend time on the intertubes. Will try to post later. Happy New Year to all!