Australia-home of the gender bender fish

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Australia-home of the gender bender fish

Our time in Australia was limited to two stops-Sydney and Cairns, home of the Great Barrier Reef-details follow. The reason for this was that we had to rush off to Thailand, so as not to miss its monsoon season and, more importantly, to finally see Marc. Some of the rain forests we have encountered in various countries claim that over 10 meters of rain fall each season. Dan feels that we have seen most of that just during our trip! So, back to the fun stuff.

After our luxurious plane trip, we arrived in Sydney, went through all the security lines, easily this time, actually, and got in the queue for a taxi. After our adventuresome trip with a cabbie who wasn’t the best driver-so glad we, meaning Dan, were not driving in this town of 5 million. Talk about a big city. Interestingly enough, our Holiday Inn was right next to Chinatown and the stadium, where the Cure band would be performing the next night. Any clues about them? I know we would have been the oldest folks there if we had gone.

Anyway, we walked to the Harbor-there are actually two-we were by Darling Harbor (the other being Sydney Harbor) the next day and got on a cruise catamaran to see the Opera House and Sydney Bridge icons from the harbor. It was hard to believe we were actually going past them after seeing pictures for so many years. We ended up not walking up and over the bridge-very expensive-they are making a bundle everyday, but it has to be quite a view if you can handle the height. It was really high and the number of steps would not have been kind to Bert’s knees. On the boat tour, the guide mentioned Piper’s Point, where a house last week went for not just 5 million, but 29! Every inch of the waterfront is covered with housing going up the hillsides-all about location, I guess. The boat then dropped us at Taronga Zoo, a huge and well-done complex. Needed to take another cable car up to its entrance and then wandered the Wild Australia exhibits, a special route to show us foreigners typical Aussie critters. It was great to see kangaroos, platypuses and many other critters so close up. We were chatting with some lazy wallabies, trying to get a better photo perspective when one decided to turn and hop right to the edge where Bert was standing. I would say we got within a couple feet of each other before he turned and headed off. It was a close encounter of a strange kind for sure. Also got up close to some koalas, one time finding a mom in the tree with a little one clinging to her while she grabbed about for more leaves. The giraffes were wonderful critters to behold-very interesting learning about how they work around their great height and how their body also adopts to these physical characteristics. Had a small lunch sitting in a park at the zoo overlooking the harbor What also really brightened our day, literally, was the-get this-warm sunshine-no mittens, hats or double sweaters-what a treat!

After our zoo tour, we hopped back on the ferry and headed back to Circular Quay-lots and lots of restaurants and shops. After wandering, we hopped the ferry yet again and got off not too far from the hotel. The walk meandered through a wonderful city park, complete with many in-ground water features and fountains, palm trees and actual blooming flowers-hadn’t seen those for awhile. For dinner, we headed back to Darling Harbor, another really happening place loaded with more shops and even more eateries. Actually ate outside and watched the parade of people passing by. The skyline, day and night, is quite impressive. I believe they leave all the skyscraper office lights on to add to the ambiance, even though they avow energy-saving initiatives. I guess the draw of tourism dollars is just too strong. Anyway, we were impressed by these aspects of the city. Overall, Sydney strikes us as very cosmopolitan and well to do. First city where we saw a great number of BMWs, Mercedes and Lexus driving about. The harbor areas contain many high-rise office buildings, which reflect several American business icons. Don’t know if these people work the night shift to match US trading hours, but something must be working, considering that in 30 Sydney suburbs, a typical home goes for about a million. I think it must be those restaurant prices!

Our final day here, we walked all the way to Sydney Harbor to tour the Opera House. While waiting for our tour, we had lunch at the Opera House Sidewalk Café in the sunshine, in short sleeves, at least for Dan, while viewing the Sydney Bridge and the Opera House-not bad. The tour was very informative. The Opera house design was the result of a design contest, which received 223 entries from over 20 countries. A Danish architect won for his design, even though how to actually build the structure was not a condition of the contest. The building was to be completed in 4 years and cost 7 million. Due to many complications and engineering problems, the actual building began several years later and took 14 years to build at a cost of $102 million. The original designer-Utzon- had actually left the project due to some disagreements about construction, left Australia before the building’s completion and never returned. There are just over a million, self-cleaning tiles on the different roof areas. Why can’t we have these in our showers? The tiles are triple-glazed, of two different colors and, depending on lighting conditions, take on varying hues. There are five performance halls, the largest holding over 2,000 guests. Even in this hall, all music is performed without benefit of microphones. The acoustics are exceptional, due to the two different types of eucalyptus woods used in these halls. The large hall contains the largest pipe organ in the world, using over 10,000 pipes, from the size of your little finger to over 40 feet long. After it was completed, it took two years to tune it! This facility hosts over 2,000 performances a year and still needs to be government subsidized, along with all the patrons and the guided tours and gift shops, and restaurants, all of which you pay dearly for. There are many other tidbits we heard, but that’s a decent general summary and pretty good recall, I think.

Once again, we had sun to enjoy our long walks and harbor side lunch. Even though it is winter, there are many, many tourists wandering about. The harbor offers jet boat rides-you will get wet, simple tours and elegant lunch/dinner combos. The people use large water taxis to get around the harbor areas, as they use regular taxis all over the city.

Overall, seeing and experiencing these Sydney icons were very memorable and rather hard for the mind to accept the fact that we were actually here. Now, it’s off to Cairns. This time, we flew with Jet Star, who apparently did not take the course on how to throw a party. Despite the similar travel times (3 hours), the only free thing we received was water. But, we had stopped at the airport McD’s for a breakfast-world marketing has reached everywhere, I guess. Due to our early (7 AM) flight, we arrived in Cairns too early for our room and met a few clouds-our reputation preceded us. So, we signed up to take a ride to Kuranda, a village in a rain forest. One does this by taking a 7.5 kilometer cable car which travels right above the canopy of this huge rain forest. There are a couple of stops along the way to get out and walk in the rain forest, view beautiful waterfalls and read lots of placards about your surroundings. In a canopy rainforest, only 1 percent of sunlight reaches the forest floor, so plants adapt. Several plants are epiphytes-I’ll wait while you look that one up-so many plants live as part of another, without harming them, so they can get closer to the light. Nature is amazing. Finally reached the village, where we had lunch at Katie O’Reilly’s pub, of course. Wandered the shops-oh, surprise-started to rain, so we headed to the train station to return to Cairns via a two-hour train trip through the rain forest. The train is a historic one with hand-painted carriages. The train tracks were created in 1886 to provide a way for the miners of nearby Herberton to reach a real town. Without modern equipment and working on slopes of 45 degrees, the men moved tons of earth and created 15 tunnels and dozens of bridges. It was truly a remarkable achievement.

Being on the edge of the ocean, Cairns has created an Esplanade walkway, along which sit dozens of shops and restaurants, most of which provide outdoor seating. Prices continued to be insane, but many have early dining options-we were there. We were in season, so people were everywhere. The scenery, however, continued to be palm trees swaying in the breeze, so we had no complaints. Be sure to ask us about the bathrooms and the one-way mirrors.

The next day, we took a tour out to the Great Barrier Reef via a large catamaran, which was quite comfortable with good viewing. We did not end up doing any snorkeling, but they had a semi-submersible, a relatively small boat holding about 50 people, with a v-shaped viewing area chamber attached to its bottom. We were able to take three tours on it, twice right at the bow windows. We were just below the surface, but actually our viewing was about 3-4 feet down and, of course, we could see so much more. The reef is home to over 1,500 fish species and 400 coral species, 350 of which are hard varieties and 50 soft. How they all live together and provide life for each other is amazing. The colors of the fish are too much to absorb all at once. Our pictures don’t reflect any of this wonderment because pictures had to be taken through glass 3 inches thick. You’ll have to trust us on this one. The boat also had a stationary viewing area attached to the boat, which provided additional viewing opportunities. Anyone who undergoes this experience and doesn’t accept the majesty of God and His creative powers has truly “missed the boat.”

The next day, we took a tour to the Cape Tribulation area, just north of Cairns. We started early in the day and worked our way past Port Douglas, now a common American movie location, where they were working on the sequel to Band of Brothers. In fact, we had just missed Tom Hanks. Our driver was very well-informed about the area and especially the plants and animals. As we drove along the scenic coast, he told us about the 120 million year old rain forest. This tidbit is important because while waiting for the cable ferry across the Daintree river, Bert won a box of locally produced tea for remembering this fact. We had a barbeque lunch next to the lovely stream setting and not far from the bug museum. The butterflies were gorgeous, but the mask made entirely of giant insects didn’t quite do it for us. You will not see a picture of this. We had a local fish called barramundi, which was very tasty.

We learned about interesting plants, one vine called the lawyer vine, since it has many prickly hooks (no good for grabbing by Tarzan), which grabs you and never lets go-sound familiar? Unlike typical lawyers, however, it did actually have some useful purposes in the forest. We also learned about the fish lovingly called the gender bender. In this species of fresh water fish, all start out as males and after seven years, they swim out to salt water, which activates a sex changes, making them all female, which is not reversible. So, adults looking for some action have to go find the younger guys-boy toys as he called them-to fertilize their eggs. There is a rare, very large bird, called the cassowary, which lives in the rain forest. There is a tree by the same name, which produces a large, like small lemon size, purple seed, which cannot germinate and produce a new tree because it has a poison surrounding it that will prevent the germination. However, if eaten by our cassowary bird, its digestive system will neutralize this poison. Then, it poops out the seed, which now has a chance to become a new tree. Isn’t nature amazing? So, if this bird becomes extinct, we will also lose the tree.

We finally reached Cape Tribulation, a very scenic beach area, where we met a three-foot lizard crossing our path-we did give way. While walking the beach, we noticed little sand crabs working away at gathering perfectly round balls of sand and pushing them up to the beach surface and placing them in very artistic patterns. Don’t know how they know what they are doing from their surface perspective-another wonderment.

The next day would be spent flying back to Sydney-1200 miles in the wrong direction-and then on to Phuket, which was 4300 miles, plus the layover. The saddest part of this was that we were flying clearly almost one-star airlines. The long trip folks did give us one small bottle of water for our 9 hour flight. Luckily, we had packed our Subway sandwiches and DVD player and books. Landed almost one time, but aborted due to weather and finally set down late that evening-yes, in the rain. Off by cab to the Marriott, where we found Marc waiting with his beer for our arrival. Mom hugged Marc for a long time as she had not seen him since March.

Details on the Thailand’s monsoon season to follow.

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Photos

Inside the main hall
This is the largest hall. We lucked out - no one working in the hall - so we were allowed to take a picture. One of five halls.

take off
The movie shows more action.