Friday March 17, 2017 The day started with a hike, i.e. a hike up Mount Ainslie; "a mountain" of some 850 m high. Not very demanding, but for me, a trip back to the past. I had not hiked a decent "mountain" for quite a while. It felt great. Going up, to my surprise a ran into a dark grey kangaroo one with rings around the eyes that look like glasses. The interesting thing was that he stopped at some 7 meters next to the path I was going on. He looked my way, and I obviously looked his. Before I could get my phone out for a picture, he was hopping away downhill. He was in no hurry, nevertheless he was faster than I could get my phone ready. Fascinating these type of encounters. Going ... read more

Wednesday March 15, 2016 A day of travel and little to tell. A flight from Cairns to Sydney, 3 hours flight, and a car ride from Sydney to Canberra. The car ride in countries with driving on the left side of the road, always is a bit stressful and confusing. The confusion typically related to functions of the car: windshield wiper, direction indicator, etc. Happily, the car we rented is automatic; adding a manual shift to driving on the "wrong side" would complicate life a bit more. The road from Sydney to Canberra is an highway in part through an empty country and wide fields. We had been warned to watch for crossing kangaroos, but the only ones we saw were far removed from the road. With one sanitary stop, it took us about 3 hours ... read more

Monday March 13, 2017 Going on tours is great and I love to go on them, but here in Australia there is a slight drawback to them: they start on ungodly hours. Today we had to get up before 6.00 AM, run to get breakfast and run to get on the bus. When you are just a little late, a couple of minutes, as was the case today due to the fact that I left the voucher in our room, we were frowned upon. The reason for the treatment is that everything here works clockwork and since we were picking up people at different hotels in the city, at specified hours, small delays mount to larger delays and things do not run on time. After picking up people in several hotels, we drove to the Daintree ... read more

Saturday March 11, 2017 Our first full day in Cairns. A busy day. It started out around 8.00 AM when we had to report to the wharf to board the 'Ocean Spirit', a luxury 105ft sailing vessel - the largest of her kind in the world to sail to Michaelmas Cay, known as the Isle of the Birds, a year-round home to thousands of sea birds of some 14 different species. The wharf is situated some convenient 500 m from our hotel. The trip to get to the island takes about 2.00 hours (40 km). We were entertained by early coffee and something to eat to pass the time. Our distraction was "enhanced" by the presence of a group of Argentine tourist. As said, the boat is big and holds to my calculations some 250 passengers ... read more

Thursday March 9, 2017 A day in 2 parts: morning a free program at the resort and an afternoon sunset hike around the Uluru rock. The morning activity was with a local aboriginal who, in the circle of sand, explained us about the tools and weapons used by the locals. Interesting the explanation regarding the different instruments, in particular the boomerang. As it turns out, different tribes in different parts of the country use a similar instruments, but adapted to the animals they are supposed to hunt and kill. Here in the centre of the country, the boomerang is for killing larger animals (kangaroos, emus, etc.). As such the boomerang is heavy and a little curved and does not come back to the thrower. The ones that we typically consider boomerangs, and that come back, are ... read more