Grzes i Wrzos w krainie kangurow.
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Our visit to the land of Oz Grzes i Wrzos w krainie kangurow. | |
| Our first day in Australia, we spent wandering around Sydney. Unfortunately the weather was a bit iffy, but we managed a few typical tourist sites. | |
| I don't know who ever thought this bridge looked like a coat hanger. | |
| This is the front of the opera house, taken from the ferry. | |
| From Sydney we flew out to Alice Springs. Alice as the locals call it is pretty much in the center of Australia. Believe it or not, I'm standing in a creek bed. If you dig three feet under me, you'd find a healthy river running underground. | |
| Many of you may know Greg's obession with all things bird-like. These beautiful Galah birds look like they belong in a pet shop, but they were just the first of many exotic birds we were to discover that are native to Australia. | |
| On our first truly full day in Australia, what do we see in the wild but a kangaroo. If you look closely, this one is hiding underneath the tree. We were soon to find out that they are everywhere, but since this was the first for us, we were very excited! | |
| From Alice, we joined a 2-day safari to the "Red Center". Our first stop was Kings Canyon. The depth of this photo is off, but the rocks in the background are eroded such to look like cities in the distance. | |
| This is called the lost cities. | |
| The happy honeymooners pose at the top of the canyon. Don't be fooled, it was quite a hike up to the top! | |
| A view into the canyon from the top. This is called the Garden of Eden. | |
| While you can use the stairs to climb to the bottom, we didn't make it down there. | |
| After we left Kings Canyon, it was onto the red rock - Ayers Rock or Uluru as the aboriginal people call it. While the clouds didn't cooperate at sunset, the rock is still visible. It should be as it is the largest monolith in the world at 348m (over 1000 feet) tall and 3.6 km (over 2 miles) long . And that is with 2/3 of the rock below ground! | |
| The next morning we took the almost 10 km (over 6 mile) walk around the base of the rock. | |
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| We did not climb the rock, for a couple of reasons. First of all, the climb was closed because it had rained the night before and was still pretty windy. Second, to the aboriginal people the rock is sacred and they do not want others climbing it. | |
| After leaving Uluru, we continued on to visit Kata Tjuta (The Olgas). Kata Tjuta means "Many Heads" which makes sense when you see the rocks. | |
| Just so you understand the size of these, we are probably 5 miles away from them in order to get them to fit in the picture. The tallest of these rocks stands 546m (over 1500 feet) tall. | |
| Another surprising mountain near the others, is Mount Connor which stands 350m (over 1000 feet) tall. Unlike Uluru, this is a mountain with a completely flat top. | |
| Once we completed our tour out of Alice, we caught a plane to Darwin where we joined another safari tour. This tour was a 3-day tour through Litchfiled and Kakadu National parks. Here, not even an hour outside of Darwin, our tour guide brought the bus to a screeching halt and ran down a frilled lizard for us to see. | |
| Once back on the bus, we made our way to Litchfield National Park. No - these aren't Australian tombstones, but rather magnetic termite mounds. | |
| The termites construct their termite mound on the magnetic poles, for temperature controls. When the sun is low it hits the large sides of the mound, warming it up. Once at the top when it would be too hot, only the narrow top edge is exposed. These mounds survive the "wet" season by being impervious to water and fire. | |
| Another common termite mound construction is this cathedral mound. It takes millions upon millions of termites to construct something this large. I'm just glad these aren't the kind that munch through your house! | |
| These little black dots are actually termites from the cathedral mound. | |
| This is the first place we stopped off to swim at. This is either Florence Falls or Wangi Falls - we forget! The water was too cold here for me, but Greg swam around for a while. | |
| Of course these St. Joeseph's Cross spiders didn't make me want to get into the water either! | |
| It is difficult to see them, but there are flying foxes hanging from this tree. They were everywhere around the waterfalls. Unlike bats, these look like actual foxes, with bat wings. Strange! | |
| Next we went onto Buley Rockhole. This is a series of waterfalls, with nice swimming holes for each. | |
| Although the water was still a bit chilly for me, I managed to get in. All in all there were roughly 6 different swimming holes along this chain of waterfalls that we swam in. | |
| The trip seemed to be shaping up to be all about lizards. Here we get a close up view of a large monitor's backside. | |
| At a nature stop at a large billabong, we saw this "Jesus" bird, named so because he appears to walk on water. Actually, his large feet are walking on the grasses growing just below the waters surface. | |
| That night we stayed at Point Stuart, where we were lucky enough to watch several Aboriginal men dance and play the didgeridoo for us. | |
| Afterwards, they were kind enough to give us didgeridoo lessons. It is much harder than it looks. I think tuba players may be better at it than I, as you need to blow hard while letting your lips flap around like a horse neighing, or blowing raspberries. And that is only to get a basic sound out of it! | |
| We were also given the opportunity to participate in some of their dances. Except while the aboriginal people paint themselves with white paint, it wouldn't be visible on white men, so they painted them with black paint. Here is "Kangaroo Man". | |
| As you can see, several of the guys wanted to participate. | |
| Wallabies were as common as squirrels around our Point Stuart campsite. Here are several pictures of them at dawn the next morning. | |
| Wallabies are basically smaller kangaroos. They only reach 25 kg and roughly 3 feet tall. | |
| In action! | |
| Lots of wallabies became visible as the sun came up. | |
| This is the closest Greg could get before they would bound away. We did manage to get a small video clip of them bouncing around. You really do think BOING or BOUNCE when you see them move! | |
| Next it was onto a river cruise. Here is our first siting of a saltwater crocodile. This one was estimated to be roughly 7 meters long. We didn't get too close as you might imagine. | |
| Magpie Geese were around by the hundreds! | |
| Sea Eagle | |
| Beautiful water lilies grew all over this billabong. There were several colors, some native and others introduced from Asia. When the center pod turns large and green, you split it open and can eat the seeds. | |
| Ah, but this is what we are really all looking for. Our first sighting of a crocodile along the banks. Look closely - do you see him? | |
| Oops, we startled him into the water... | |
| This is the beautiful Jabiru stork. | |
| Yet another big crocodile. This one has caught himself breakfast. To give you some perspective, that catfish is probably a 40 or 50 pound fish. | |
| Not exactly waterlife, but still. Here is an escaped water buffalo. When I asked who would win in an argument - the water buffalo or the crocodile, I was told in no uncertain terms that a croc would take one of these buffalos down without even breaking a sweat (so to speak). | |
| Brolga bird - important in Aboriginal Culture | |
| In addition to being an excellent place to view wildlife, Kakadu is also one of the best places in Australia to view Aboriginal rock art. Kakadu is on the World Heritage List for both its natural and cultural importance. Here are some paintings from a place in Kakadu where they have proven over 20,000 years of continuous inhabitants. | |
| A turtle... | |
| Fish... | |
| More fish, but important because these paintings depict the interior, like an x-ray of the fish. This means they are from yet another time period. | |
| As I mentioned before, this was a trip for reptile life. Here is a yellow-spotted monitor. Much smaller than the first monitor we saw. | |
| A natural boundary of the park, this rugged escarpment is mostly made of sandstone. | |
| And looks beautiful with the setting sun shining on it. | |
| I think this is Gunlom falls. We stopped here to swim despite the warnings... | |
| Well we didn't see any crocs! | |
| Our trip over, we headed back to Darwin, where in the middle of the city we ran into some oppossums. | |
| From Darwin we were headed to the WhitSundays. We had a brief layover in Brisbane and so hired a car to visit a Koala Park. Here are some more wild birds near the park that we liked. | |
| The koalas were difficult to spot in the trees. Do you see this one? | |
| Here a baby orphaned koala is getting a supplemental feeding from the park ranger. | |
| A tasmanian devil... | |
| Yet another lizard. | |
| An extremely cooperative koala posing for a picture. | |
| What looks like a porcupine to us from North America, in actuality is an echidna hiding in a log. | |
| And a sleeping wombat... | |
| Emu | |
| And onto the WhitSundays. Here is Coral Beach near Conway National Park. | |
| The view from Mount Rooper Lookout. | |
| Green ants are clearly visible on the white trunk of a Gum tree. If you lick the 'bum' of a green ant, you get a charge not unlike licking a battery. The aboriginal people would make a tea from green ants (boil then strain them). Apparently they are high in vitamin C. | |
| From the WhitSundays we took a 3-day sailing trip on the Tongarra. We anchored off Hook Island the first night. Here is our closest neighbor. | |
| The next day we had a pretty good sail with the winds blowing around 30 knots. Just enough to really move the steel hulled cat we were riding on! | |
| Greg of course managed to skipper the boat for a while. We visited whitehaven beach (beautiful!) and snorkled at luncheon bay. Despite the stinger warnings, cold waters and strong winds, we saw some of the most beautiful coral and fish we've ever seen. The soft coral was especially nice here... | |
| From the warmth of the Sunshine Coast, we returned to wet Sydney. We hired a car, and drove to the Blue Mountains, roughly 2 hours west of Sydney. | |
| What a beautiful view! | |
| There really are waterfalls there, it was just incredibly misty and foggy that day. | |
| This is the first of the three sisters. The only one we could see through the fog. | |
| The fog later lifted for just a few moments. | |
| Since the weather on top was so iffy, we decided to head underground to some Limestone caves. There were some pretty colors due to the high iron in the ground. | |
| My favorite... | |
| This one is called Lot's Wife. | |
| Crystal City | |
| Back on top again, we pose for a final good-bye to Australia. I definitely want to return here - such a beautiful place and we only were able to explore a small bit of it. | |