Kiama & Blue Mountains

Because of the weather, we ending up returning to where we started... Kiama, just south of Sydney. The weather there was perfect and it is a lovely little beach town. We had a house for 6 nights with a beautiful view of the ocean and coast line. We have been nonstop since coming to Australia, so it felt good to stop and relax with a few days on the beach and taking walks along the coast.

Since we have been in Australia, we have spent a lot of time looking up in the trees for Koalas, but with no luck.... so far. We aren't giving up yet!

The birds here are amazing, with every color you could think of. The trees are full of the sounds of loud squawking and we have heard (and seen), on multiple occasions, the crazy monkey-like laugh of a kookaburra. All the birds here are so beautiful to look at, but the beautiful chirps and tweets of song birds are usually drowned out by all the noisy squawks! In this country, outside can be a very noisy place!

Matthijs celebrated his 9th birthday last week. He woke up with us singing 'Happy Birthday' to him with balloons dancing around his head. Ash gave him a classic Australian children's book, full of adventures of all the animals that we have seen here. He loved it. Since Matthijs is our little lover of fine food and good books, he decided to spend the day eating his favorite foods, at the library reading, and at the beach playing in the waves.

After Kiama, we headed to the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney for a couple of days. It is a beautiful area, but was a bit strange driving to, as we couldn't find the mountains! The Blue Mountains are, actually, a massive deep gorge, very much like our Grand Canyon, but green and gorgeous. It is full of over 100 different kinds of eucalyptus trees (Still no koalas though!). We did a couple of long hikes and had a great time. We now have our last night in Sydney and leave tomorrow for a week in Hawaii. American soil!
Below is a video of some of our encounters with the wildlife since we've been here, thus far, but be prepared, it's long! Enjoy!

Autumn & Animals

Well, we ended up taking a little detour to the Highlands and Canberra to visit friends we had met at the Elephant Camp in Thailand. It is a beautiful area and after being on the coast, reminded us that fall is here! Along the coast, you can catch glimpses of autumn with an odd tree or two, but really everything is quite tropical and the trees loose bark rather than their leaves. Going into the highlands was lovely; the air was crisp, the towns were cozy and the (planted) trees were ablaze with their autumn colors. I love fall and this year I’ve gotten to experience it twice!
The highlight, of course, was seeing ‘Bruce’ and ‘Sheila’ again! The time was too short, but we managed to have a picnic in the park together and the lovely ‘Sheila’ filled our cooler with yummy snacks. Thanks to her, we are now addicted to a chocolate cookie called Tim Tams... lucky for me, we don’t have them at home! After leaving our friends, we headed down the coast to Eden in the southeast corner of the country. There we spent some time lazing on the beach.
Afterwards we headed west towards Melbourne, taking a few days to enjoy the scenery and a detour through the mountains for a scenic taste of autumn again. We took two days in the very nice city of Melbourne; walking the streets, markets, and beaches.

At this point of the trip, going into cities is a ‘nice’ reminder of how raggedy we are starting to look after 4 months of traveling and wearing the same few clothes! After this wake up call to our appearance, we high tailed it back to the country where, at this point, we seem to ‘blend’ in more with the wildlife than the city folk. Here starts the very sad part of our story. Rain, Rain, And More Rain! We headed towards the beautifully scenic Great Ocean Road... and it rained!
(Our first and only stop along the Great Ocean Rd before the rain started!)

The rain came in along the whole south coast and is staying for a whole week! Well, a week is a little long to sit out any rain cloud, so, we headed to Halls Gap in the Grampians National Park. We were hoping to be far enough north to escape the rain, but that was not to be the case. Even though we were shrouded in mist and only caught glimpses of the beautiful mountains around us, all was not lost. We squeezed a lot into the brief moments without rain! M & A learned how to play a didgeridoo at the Aboriginal Center. We saw tons of kangaroos, emus, and the boys (all three) fed cockatoos from their shoulders! Even though it sounds like a day at the petting zoo, it wasn’t! Just a typical day in Australia!


(The boys watching the kangaroos behind our cabin.)

So, after these adventures, we again had to escape the rain, and headed towards Mildura to get a taste of the outback. Driving here, and especially further on, it is very dry and desolate. The funny thing is, just around Mildura, it is full of vineyards and fields of citrus. The irrigation system was pioneered here! The front of every car here is completely covered with a nasty brown mess from all the bugs that smash against them. And the bugs are HUGE! We saw what looked like a flattened fly that was the size of a bird! They wouldn’t just annoy you at a picnic by landing on your food, they could actually pick it up and fly away with it! Because of all the kangaroos that like to jump out in front of moving vehicles, big metal kangaroo racks on the front of cars are also very popular with the locals. Today we headed for a little drive further into the outback and were blessed with seeing a very special lizard crossing the road. Of course, we had to stop and examine it (I’m sure the one local car that passed us standing on the side of the road taking pictures of the ground thought we were crazy tourists!).

On closer inspection, we saw that it was just over a foot long, had a short fat tail and it’s shape and texture resembled a pine cone! We are seeing things up close and personal that, until now, we have only experienced on Animal Planet! The immense variety of animals that God has created is an incredible marvel... and we are getting to see so many of them are in this beautiful country!

Queensland & New South Wales, Australia

The city of Cairns made us feel like we could be visiting any town in Florida; palm trees, beaches, even a Target and Walmart (which they call BIG W!). But, as soon as you raise your eyes to the horizon, you know that you are somewhere very different. The area is surrounded by beautiful mountains blanketed in thick rainforest and waterfalls. The countryside is nothing like we have seen till now. The combination of gorgeous mountains covered in farmland and rainforest is just stunning. Quaint villages, and beautiful waterfalls abound in this area. Driving through the forest and looking high up over the roads, we saw little swinging bridges that are made to help the little mammals cross the roads safely. The boys have already gotten to pet and feed wallabies, kangaroos, and a kola bear. The trees and skies here are full of colorful birds.

We’ve seen thousands of flying foxes (huge bats!) flying through the night sky, very big spiders, and poisonous plants. Matthijs wrote about one plant, another one was shown to us by a local, with a warning! It was a prickly tree and if you touch it, it would sting you and the stinging and burning would last for 12 months! The boys know not to venture off the trail while we are hiking here in Australia! We have snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef, twice, and what a wonderful experience that was! It was so incredibly beautiful! The different types of coral and fish was a kaleidoscope of different colors and textures. It was a very special experience for us. One highlight was being able to swim with a sea turtle as it passed us! We followed him for quite awhile as he glided gracefully through the water. Wow!

We had a fabulous time in Sydney. It’s a beautiful city surrounded by many inlets, bays and sandy beaches. It’s such a nice change when you’re in the right city... we could definitely live here! Ash had his birthday while we were there and he woke up surrounded by balloons and us singing to him. He knew that his present was waiting for him at home, so he was surprised to have a present from his brother... a cool sun hat that he loves. We spent the day at the beaches.
We are now making our way south along the coast towards Melbourne. We have spent a few days in Gerringong, and leave tomorrow for a long drive to Eden to spend the next couple of days.

Amazing Australia... post from Matthijs

Australia is so amazing. I love it! I love all the new cool animals we've seen, and not just the birds! The birds are really cool too. They have a lot of very colorful parrots and cockatoo's everywhere. My favorite one is a white cockatoo that is pink under it's wings with a yellow crest on top of it's head.
One day, we even got to feed wallabies, they are soooooo cute, they are like little mini kangaroos. I loved it when they grabbed my hand for the food. They were out in the wild and are shy unless you have some food for them! We also got to feed and pet some kangaroos.
We also went to the Great Barrier Reef. It was fun! We even got to see a turtle! I saw a giant clam that was about a meter wide! And lots of other amazing fish and coral. I was the only one to see a starfish floating with the current. While we were walking through the rainforest, we heard about a poisonous berry. If you only touched it, you would have a rash on your skin and a headache for 6 weeks! We had a great time in Sydney. It is a really nice city and fun to hang out in. Now, we are in a house, which is great because now we have a lot more room to roam around. There is also a boogie board and a surf board in the house for us to use. We aren't so good at the surfboard, but we love catching the waves with it! We've spent the last two days at the beach trying it out. We leave tomorrow. I’ll write a lot more soon!

Australia... post from Ash

Wallabies are like little kangaroos. They hop very fast! We saw one with a baby in it’s pouch. We got to fed them and they were in the wild. They were so cute! They would eat out of our hands. My wallaby could hold a bag of food and my brother’s could too! They would also pinch my hand with their little claws because they wanted the food so bad. But I didn’t mind. One pinched my hand so bad that I had a red spot!
We also went snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef. It was great! We saw turtles and we saw lots of different kinds of corals. Some were soft and some were hard. We saw clown fish and learned that the biggest one is the female. The males look after her. It was awesome!

I had my birthday in Sydney. It is so awesome in Sydney! When I woke up, I had seven balloons all around me! I got a hat from Morgan, I love it! It can transform into another kind of hat. We went to the beach all day and we did a one hour walk along the coast. It was great! We ate lasagna for dinner. I had a great birthday!
I’ll write more next time! write more next time!