Australia! Day Two...

Just a warning:  I took a LOT of pictures.  This was such a fun day!

The package thing we did included a waterfall tour.  Our first stop was a place called Babinda Boulders.  Beautiful river over granite.

 The path followed the river downstream, through the rainforest.  This is a bird's nest fern (Asplenium australasicum), an epiphyte that grows on most of the trees.  Pictures just don't do these trees justice.  They are MASSIVE!  Most of them are 30-35 meters, which is around 100 feet. 

 It was so nice seeing rocks again!  Guam has some, some nice volcanic cliffs mostly, but seeing some wonderful granite was great.

 This would be Devil's Pool, the site of the drowning of a poor Aboriginal maid, who was being forced to flee with her true love (according to our guide).  Now her spirit lures men down to the depths to drown.  B was ok, though.  Our guide did scare us with enough tales of (modern) people drowning that no one was too tempted to leave the path, except in the shallow pool at the top.

 This is the most amazing plant!  Called wait-a-while, or lawyer's cane.  (Calamus moti)  The stems are, you know, scary, but the long canes have the wickedest spines on them!

 This is not wait-a-while...  Just a pretty fern.

 Tree fern!  (Cyathea cooperi)  The coolest thing.  One of the many primaeval plants in these forests. 

 B and K.

 Curly vine things all over the place...

 Babinda Boulders, cool place!  Our next stop was Josephine Falls.

 This is our guide Peter on the path to Josephine Falls, showing us another scary Australia plant, stinging tree (Gympi gympi).  This one is crazy.  I'll copy from my plant book (Plants of Tropical North Queensland, the Compact Guide):  "The fine silica hairs on leaves and stems act like small syringes, and continue to inject venom for several days.  Sudden cooling of the site, even several months later, can produce a tingling sensation.  The immediate pain is severe... There is no effective treatment."  Fun, huh?  This is it below, too.  Even touching the tree will release the little barbs, and if you breathe near the tree, they will enter your lungs.

Here is Josephine Falls!  This was an awesome swimming place- unfortunately, Peter had several scary experiences with people getting drowned here, so he insisted that only very strong swimmers get in the water here- and I am certainly not a strong swimmer...  But B and K had a good time.

 Here they are climbing up the rocks...

 And a series of B going down the slide...

 Such a pretty place...

 I like to take pictures of my feet in the places they end up...

 More going down the slide...

 The paths around the falls were pretty too...  More bird's nest fern, and BIG trees...

 We have a sort of series of photos, comprising every picture that K took of B and I in Australia.  It seems she is rather incapable of focusing...

Luckily, we met some nice people at the upper falls who took our picture.  So here is one sharp picture of us!

 Ok.  Is this not the most awesome rv ever?!?!?  I must have one.

 Peter pulled over to a remote sugar cane field and cut us each a piece.  There were only five people on our tour this day; us, an American girl named Crista who teaches English in Korea, and Sven, a guy from Germany who was very very quiet. 

 K, sucking on some cane.

 K and I just nibbled on ours a bit, but B devoured the entire thing.

Oh, and here's a croc.

Driving around looking at the most amazing scenery.  I was grateful Peter was driving, so I could just look.

Our next stop was a place called Milla Milla Falls.

Now this place was Jackson Lake cold!  We walked around behind the falls, then I jumped off the rocks into the pool, trying to, you know, be brave and everything.  And, once my lungs got over the shock of the completely frigid water, it was rather nice!  For about five minutes...

 After Milla Milla, we stopped for lunch at the Tree Kangaroo Cafe in the town of Malanda.  They were out of kangaroo pies (the meat pie is Australia's favorite food- which is great with me, except none of them know that meat pies are supposed to be slathered in ketchup (tomato sauce in Australia).  My Dad would be appalled.  There was also a nice visitor center and more lovely trails.

 This was one of the most magical places I've ever been...

 Yes, I'm a tree-hugger.  Especially when the tree in question is a black bean tree (Castanospermum australe) that was as big around as a car.

 Love the canopy...

 I had the worst problem with this.  B saved me many times by pulling me back before a car ran me over...

 A brush turkey...

 An ent hand.  No big deal.

K and B.

 Next Peter took us to a billabong where we watched platypuses!  Hard to see, but we watched two of them dive all over this little pond.

 Our next stop was at Mecham Lake, a volcanic crater.

 B had his dive computer on, and tried to see the bottom but couldn't.

I started to walk the path that encircles the lake.  Seriously, I am in love with this forest.  Here is a basket fern (Drynaria rigidula).

I didn't have time to go all the way around, but hopefully I'll get back there someday!

 Next we went to the Cathedral Tree, a strangler fig (Ficus watkinsiana) that is just enormous.  My book says this species gets 40 meters plus...

 Here's Peter.  He doesn't wear shoes...

 Spot the lizard?

And here?  It's a Boyd's Forest Dragon, or Boydies.  So cute!  I'll put a picture from the web so you can see his cute face...

 Here is a link to wikipedia for him:  Boydies

 We were VERY quiet while visiting the Cathedral Tree, so that we might possibly get a chance of spotting this very rare creature.  Did you know there is carnivorous kangaroo?  Me neither.  But this is it!  The musky rat kangaroo.  Again, I'll put a picture from the web since my camera was just lucky to catch the blur of him running away...

I liked this sign, reminds me of the lesson about faith!  

 Gorgeous lookout on the way back to Cairns.

 Yeah.  Look at that nice, sharp mountain...

 And Peter stopped us by a paddock where he knew wild wallabies gather.  They almost all ran away when we got our of the van. 

The people in this house were throwing food out for this roo. 

And that was day two!  My favorite.

Australia: Day One!

 We went to Australia!  Our friend K wanted to take a trip after her deployment, and we eagerly volunteered to accompany her.  We confined our visit to the city of Cairns (pronounced "Kenz" by the locals) in northern Queensland state.

It is an ideal place to visit from Guam.  Same time zone, only a four hour direct flight.  We talked to a nice man from Melbourne who said it took him longer to get to Cairns than us!  Tropical paradise-ish like Guam- but so much better!  I can't say enough about how beautiful the weather was for the week we were there.  Warm in the day, but no trace of the muggy oppressiveness that is constantly on our little island.  And the nights!  Fresh and just on the perfect side of cool.

 Now, I've never really planned international travel before, so not really knowing what I was doing, I booked this package thing from this site. 

We arrived at midnight on Sunday night, and were taken directly to our hostel.  (More on that later...)

 Monday was our day on the Great Barrier Reef.

 

The marina at Cairns.

 The boat photographer ("Righty-O," and "No Worries"- I love Aussie vocabulary!)

 Filling out diving forms on the boat.  B and K went diving.  I am most definitely NOT a diver, so I enjoyed snorkeling.

 Fitzroy Island.  Someday I would love to spend a week just here.

 B and I while the boat let passengers on and off at Fitzroy.

 And K.  Notice how lovely and not red I am in these two pictures...  After the boat left Fitzroy Island, I decided to chance sea sickness (I've never been on a boat before, and was told to stay indoors in the middle to avoid getting queasy) and get some fresh air up on the bow.  I LOVED it!  I loved the boat bouncing in the waves, and having the wind in my face.  However... I got totally toasted from standing out there for two hours.  It takes two hours to get to the reef in Australia!  Isn't that crazy?  In Guam you just walk off the beach and it's right there.

 A note about these next pictures:  We had some issues with our GoPro, and it spent our Australia vacation in a box somewhere between Guam, California, Utah, and Guam.  (Gotta love shipping to our little kind-of-America-but-not-quite island...)  So I bought some cheapo film underwater cameras, and yeah, you get what you pay for.  These photos do no justice to the colors of this reef.  It was BEAUTIFUL!  I thought the fish were just as nice here in Guam, but the coral was definitely more colorful on the GBR.  B said he thought the diving better in Guam. 

 That's me.  They made us wear wetsuits, because the water was "cold".  I mean, it's no Jackson Lake in the Tetons by any stretch, but compared to the warm bath temp of Guam water, I was ok with having a wet suit...

 B and I. 

 Lots of tunnels and canyons in the reefs.

B, upside down...

This picture (above) makes me so sad...  That group of fish was posing in a bright ray of sunlight, and they sparkled blue and yellow and turquoise, and were just the prettiest thing I've ever seen.  I thought this photo was going up on my wall forever, but no...  Curse you Guam post office for not accepting my camera!!!

 Just kicking around in the Great Barrier Reef...

 That's our boat.  Interesting.  I did get extremely sick, and came so close to throwing up, but only each of the two times I got out of the water and in to the boat.  Going up those few stairs just did me in for some reason. 
We enjoyed our long ride back to Cairns, I had a nice long talk with a man from Melbourne.  Almost without exception, I found the Australian people we met to be the most friendly, easy-going people.  It was great!  (The exception, sadly, was in church, where no one seemed very friendly.)

 When we got back to Cairns, we walked all around town (looking for, shall we say, different accommodations...)

 This is the Esplanade Lagoon.  The Esplanade is a lovely park and walk that goes for miles along the water front.  The girls would have loved this pool, and there is also the hugest playground I've ever seen, called Muddy's Playground. 

 More Aussie vocab...

 While we were walking, we couldn't help but hear an enormous racket.  Turns out it came from these fruit bats!  Flying foxes, they're called here.  Roosting in these huge mango trees.  It was cool.

 I really liked how these palms looked in the Esplanade lights...

 The lagoon at night, and K playing with a gun.

We watched an incredible moonrise over the mountains, and then, since our hostel room was the only place available in the city (although we looked absolutely everywhere else- Australia was on their spring break...) we went to Woolworths and got B some ear plugs and went back to our room!