Day 16. Whitsunday Islands

A long day yesterday getting here. I left my hotel in Adelaide at 6:30am for an 8:00 flight to Sydney, where I changed planes. They don't check your luggage through on connecting flights, so I had to retrieve my luggage and take it to another terminal to check in for my 12:00 flight from Sydney to Hamilton Island. Arrived at about 1:30 and had to wait for the 3:00 ferry to get me back to the mainland to my final destination, Airlie Beach, arriving at about 5:00. There are 74 Whitsunday islands, so the ferry ride was a treat.

The place where I am staying, Adventure Whitsunday Resort, is like summer camp. Some cabins...






and some RV hookups and some tent sites. Then it has a great pool....Kara and Kai you would love that...





And playground....hey, kara, check this out!






And other amenities. Its cool, because it feels like I'm living in a neighborhood with the locals. When I came home from dinner, they were all sitting out in front of their cabins, catching the breeze.

For dinner, I decided to venture into the little town which is about a 15 minute bus ride away....but I stood in the wrong place and the bus whizzed past me. A young woman who was standing on the corner offered me a ride with she and her friends, so the four of them dropped me off right in front of my restaurant, Capers. I had local, fresh fish again, this time Barramundi. Sat outside, and while I couldn't see the ocean, I could feel the ocean breeze....eat your hearts out :-).

And then I found the bus stop and was able to catch the bus back.

Today I am headed out to the Great Barrier Reef...hoping the weather will cooperate.

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Location:Shute Harbour Rd,Cannonvale,Australia

Day 15. So long to So.Australia; next stop Queensland

I did take a needed day of rest yesterday. Other things one could do from here would be the Barossa wine district, or the ocean road, which is supposed to be spectacular, or other national park bushwalking. But resting and strolling around Adelaide was enough for me today. I did have dinner in a restaurant called Melt, because it is the name of my favorite restaurant in my brooklyn neighborhood. It lived up to its namesake, with a great tapas menu that I grazed through...they also had wood burning oven pizzas, but I overlooked those for the tapas.

Today I leave for Airlie Beach which is located in Queensland, Australia, home to the Great Barrier Reef. (Just heard on the news that Prince William is also heading to Queensland today! But not to the area where I will be :-) I will fly to Hamilton Island, then take the Cruise Whitsunday Ferry to Abel Point Marina which is a short hop to my next stop, the Adventure Whitsunday Resort. You may wonder how I stumbled upon this particular place to stay to experience the Great Barrier Reef? And.....there is a story there!

In December, Eileen's sisters, Trish and Mary Kathryn, as well as her nieces, Jenn and Kristin, had come to visit me in NY. One evening I took them to my favorite Chinatown dive for dinner (ok, now you want to know the name of the NY restaurant, but I will need to look it up as it is something quite complicated like, Good Chinese Food, or something similar). It is the kind of restaurant with just a handful of mostly 8-person tables, and they seat separate parties together to fill the tables. They sat us down with a couple who ended up being from Australia, which made for immediate conversation since I had just booked my plane ticket, and Australia was going to be a stop on my RTW trip. We were curious how they had picked that particular Chinese restaurant and it was one of the typical tourist tricks...I.e., they walked by and it looked like a popular place! As the conversation ensued, I asked them what they do in Australia, and they said they owned a resort in Queensland! And they handed me their property brochure for the Adventure Whitsunday Resort. So a month or so later, when I was booking that part of my trip, I thought "what the heck" -- it just seemed like another one of those "it's a small world" moments -- so I reached out to them and they were very excited to hear from me and immediately booked me a cabin, so here I go! Many of my friends have asked how they have fared with the floods and cyclone....they are not in the range of the rivers which flooded, but the cyclone did hit their part of the coast, and they were lucky to only lose some of their trees. Also all of these weather events, including continued rainfall, have affected the reef, so it will be interesting to see what the reef has to offer. But, regardless, I am looking forward to this next part of my "Adventure."

Meanwhile, time for some parting shots from South Australia.... First from womadelaide...





This French guy is apparently a regular at the festival, bringing his larger than life puppets....this rooster, and his monkey (see below) were his new inventions this year.






More of the Papua New Guinea dancers....





Aboriginal face painting (below) was a popular thing at the festival.


And from Kangaroo Island (thanks to Brenda for some great touring!)....





















The goanna lizard......
















I promised I wouldn't show all rock climbing attempts :-)















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Location:Adelaide, Australia

Day 14. Kangaroo Island...back to Adelaide

Another great day on Kangaroo Island yesterday after checking out of my wonderful little b&b, tucked in the side of the hill. So long to Chris and Ros!


Before I get into the touring of the day, I have an "it's a small world" moment for you CREW folks out there. Remember the family from Columbus who are part of my small touring group? Well, the woman works for the Limited. So most of you have probably already guessed it...she knows Cheryl Mack!! Not just "knows" her, but knows her well. Even went to school with Cheryl's brother. (For the non-CREW (that's 'Commercial Real Estate Women') folks, Cheryl was one of the early board members of CREW, back before I served as the CREW president, which was in 1998). Yes, it can be a really small world. We had quite an aha moment at the beginning of yesterday's touring.

So back to the touring! We focused more on the natural wonders of the island, with an occasional wildlife sighting. Along the way, we spotted these bee boxes, from which they gather the honey from the ligurion bees. Kangaroo Island is the only place left in the world where this special variety of bees still exists. The honey here was awesome.


On our way over to the western side of the island, we first stopped off at the roo lagoon wood shop for our morning tea. (we had added another delightful couple from Belgium to our group for the day).


This was a favorite stop of the original postmen who traveled the island on horseback; giving their horses a rest and watering too.


The proprietor of the wood shop made some wonderful items...some of the bowls were absolutely beautiful! But too big for my backpack :-) which is all I brought over to the island.


Then back in our trusty vehicle to continue our trek to the far western reaches of the island.


But not before this scorpion raided our tea party....yikes...


Our next stop was at the "Remarkable Rocks" and they lived up to their name.



Both the rocks and the coastline are those wonders that are so difficult to capture via photo, as they are so vast and breathtaking. Even more difficult, as it was extremely windy, so hard to keep your camera still.


I ventured up to the top of this one.....(the easy one).....


...while Grant couldn't resist climbing to the top of this one....


Then we were on to our next stop at the "Admirals Arch"....


Where the coastline was even MORE spectacular....
Again hard to capture the crashing of the waves up against the rocks, but this photo will bring back that memory for me!


The New Zealand Fur Seals also like the view from here....there were hundreds of them lounging on the rocks...


Then it was another stop for a wonderful picnic lunch...this time chicken with lots of salad! One of the specialties of the island is their sheeps milk cheese (which they served with every meal :-) sometimes you've just got to enjoy the local fare!


We then got a look at the local post office.....


That is not a joke! This is where the postman leaves the mail for everyone within that area. Yes, the washing machine is one of the mail receptacles for one of the residents! They each set up their own unique post box. Brenda said there was at one time even a toilet!

We did get to see the local porcupine, the echidna, a light orange color, which crossed the road in front of us, but he was too fast to capture his photo.

And last, before heading back to my ferry and back to Adelaide, we got another chance to watch the "Roos" grazing on what used to be a sheep farm that was "sold" to the park service by the woman who had completed the establishment of the farm on her own after losing her husband to illness.....establishing a farm here is not easy as one has to remove the thick "bush" in order to establish the grazing area for the sheep.


I got back quite late last night and so am probably going to take a rest day today. (although at some point I may have to check out the Clipsal 500, a race car event through the streets that is taking place this week in Adelaide).

I can't close out the day's post without recognizing the horrid events that are playing out in Japan. I woke up to the news that the US has advised American tourists to get out of Tokyo due to the expected fallout from the nuclear disaster. My thoughts and prayers are with all of my family and friends who reside in Tokyo as they determine what they might need to do to protect themselves and their loved ones. It is looking more and more like I will need to divert my own travels away from Japan as I continue around the world. I will make the decision when I get to Sydney at the end of my stay in Australia as to whether or not I will make that diversion, and where that might take me.

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Location:Adelaide, Australia

Day 13. Kangaroo Island

Yesterday, my first day on the island, was awesome! Brenda, who has lived on the island her entire life, was our guide. The other tour participants were a couple with their 16 year old son from Columbus, Ohio. (I made my tour arrangements through Exceptional Kangaroo Island, as they offered small group tours as opposed to larger groups of 14 or so people). We started out looking for koala bears. We found one or two here or there who were sleeping high up in trees, curled up in a ball, so they just looked like a big ball of fur. Then, one crossed the road, right in front of us, and climbed up a tree, and turned around to pose for our cameras.....


Cute, huh? Although apparently they can be quite vicious with their claws if they feel too threatened.

This also was where, right across the road, we had our best kangaroo sighting...


Although we expect to see even more kangaroos tomorrow.

We stopped off at an old school house for morning tea...


The towns were so far apart back in the 1800's and travel was difficult and so the towns would build their own school to service the children in their immediate community. The building would also serve as a church, town meeting hall, etc. Inside.....


...they had some of the old "rules" posted, such as: if a woman teacher married, she would have to resign; and male teachers could only court one night per week, two nights if they attended church regularly; after five years of service, they would get a 25 pence monthly raise.

Then, while walking through the bush looking for the almost extinct glossy black cockatoo (which we didn't get to see), we had some daytime sightings of the wallabies (which look like little kangaroos)...


It is thought that there are only about 200 of the glossy black cockatoos left, all on Kangaroo Island. There is only one thing they eat, the seeds in the pods from cassamina (sp?) trees, which are here on the island.

We stopped at a tent that was set up on a sheep farm, where Brenda prepared a wonderful island lunch featuring grilled king george whiting fish and sheep milk cheese.


Our day was capped off with a visit to Seal Bay where there were hundreds of Australian sea lions taking a three day nap on the beach after three days of feeding out at sea. (Mandy, it was very similar to that beach we visited in the Galapagos).



Then back to my b&b, where there were two couples that had arrived; one from Houston and one from Chicago....we ended up just putting our tables all together for dinner.

Today, another day of Island exploration.

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Location:Kangaroo Island, Australia