check it out

So we love Air New Zealand - we have been with them on some great trips.  They are good to us.  They are funny.  We enjoy the video instructing us about masks and floatation devices.  So we want you to check this out!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZLBY3lYtsQ&hd=1

Funny as...

Australia

Brisbane

Mermaid Beach

Surfers Paradise at sunrise

We were so warm!  It was sunny during the first leg of the trip and overcast and rainy during our time in Cairns.  We were not upset about it - less worry about sunburn.  Kangaroos, koalas and kookaburras, crocodiles and cassowaries, wallabies and wallaroos, plains turkey and brush turkey, emus and iguanas, ok - lizards, but it worked...  Here is a brief overview of a great trip.  We saw so much - lots of sugar cane and fruit trees, tropical forests, wildlife, aboriginals - here are some of the highlights - 

The flight from NZ to AU was without event and took about 3 1/2 hours.  Brisbane looked like a great city as we went through to continue up the coast to the resort.  When we drove into the area in which we were staying - the Gold Coast  - and as we approached the beach we were so surprised - we were in Gulf Shores - it looked just like it!  We were told that we should go to all the theme parks close by but we did not.  We went to the zoo, hiked to waterfalls, spent time on the beach and at the pool, collected seashells, toured the town of Brisbane (the third largest city in Australia), went to Surfer's Paradise, took too many photos.  We met lots of folks from NZ  and from southern Australia who were, like us, escaping the cold.

After five days, we flew on to Cairns.  Our flight from Brisbane to Cairns - about 1,200 km if we were to have driven - was uneventful.  We landed and drove to where we were staying, according to me.   We drove up the coast with the rainforest on the left and the rocky shores on our right for more than an hour.  We were unable to find our desired address so stopped to ask.  I approached a gentlemen at a counter of a hotel and showed him where we needed to go on the itinerary.
I knew immediately by his face that we were not in the right place.  UUUGGGHHH!  Unfortunately I messed up!  I suggested lunch and offered to drive to our hotel before I shared the news that it was almost back to the point from where we had come.  As I told the man who got us headed in the right direction, I was going to hear about this error for some time - Adrian has been quite generous with me and has not brought it up more than a few dozen times!

Trinity Beach Watcher!

Happily we arrived at our reserved spot.  They had not given away our room even though we were quite late.  We stayed in a wonderful condo on the beach - the managers of the property were lovely - would highly recommend Trinity Beach - Coral Sands!  Graeme and his lovely wife were so helpful.  They told us about Billy Tea's Chillagoe Caves and Outback tour and the Kuranda skyrail and train tour.  We did both and were so glad we did.  The day we went on the sky rail over the rainforest it was drizzling and cool - perfect to see the forest.  We were able to walk through the rainforest and even though it was raining we did not feel a drop as the canopy is so thick.  We saw were taught about the aboriginal culture for a short time and rode a train back to downtown Cairns.  Great way to see things and the girls first train ride.


Incredible country.  We learned about plants that cut and poison and climb their way to the top to have their own sunshine.  As we drove we saw wallaroos, wallabies in the wild - no kangaroos or dingos on this trip.  We stopped in at Jaques (pronounced Jakes) coffee plantation for a tour, tasting and introduction to some of the most tenacious people we had ever met.  They started their business in Tanzania.  The government ran them out.  They came to Australia started another plantation, the government burned them out.  They started yet again, the government sprayed insecticide and killed their plants.  They started again - what an inspiring and awesome story we were told.  What a great cuppa we were served.  Inspirational.  Can any of us say that we have held on to our dream and started over that many times - I hope you can because often that is the stuff of which success is made.

One of the highlights for me was the lunch at a local watering hole where Jim and Fred were drinking beer at the bar - well, of course to make mama proud, I visited with them (interviewed, really) - what a treat!  Jim is the manager of a cattle station and Fred is kept busy by his wife and kids and breaking horses.  They had lived in this town all of their lives and were happily into their beer.  I would have loved to spend the afternoon with them but alas, I was whisked away to go to the local brewery, Golden Drop Distillery in Mareeba.  This place made fruit wine and liqueur.  There were banana, mango, coffee, etc. trees - some fruits I had not heard of.  Most are sent out to market but some are distilled into more potent fare.  We had a coffee and wandered the plantation.


We went to the Cairns Tropical Zoo, drove through the rainforest on our own and found some incredible waterfalls (It is the winter and the dry season there now.  The waterfalls must be incredible when it has been raining!)  We hiked in the hinterlands to a wonderful waterfall.  The terrain of this very large country is so diverse.  The country has miles and miles of uninhabited land and we saw a glimpse of why.  It is winter there now and it was hot!  I can imagine that in the summer it is unbearably hot and humid - like Nashville recently I guess.

The other thing we became fascinated by was Australian rules rugby - it is wild - there are basically no rules and there were shirts being ripped off. WILD!  By the end of the first game we watched we understood that there were some rules even if only a few.

So we return to our home away from home - as my dear Bettye pointed out, our home is in the US!

We may be away but we still celebrated the 4th and ate hotdogs - American ones even! - as we toured the Botanical Gardens in Brisbane (American style hotdogs need not be taken for granted as they are virtually impossible to find in NZ).  The kids also had Kraft mac and cheese from a package - we cannot get that in NZ - they loved it!

Even though he preferred to forget it, we celebrated Adrian's birthday!  We had a great day and a nice evening, too.  I think he even had fun!