Live Every Week Like It's Shark Week

So the title doesn’t have much to do with this post other than we did see a shark today and it’s one of my favorite Tracey Morgan quotes.  My day actually began really early.  I woke up for some reason at 4:20 and was surprised to find that the sun was rising.  We have a magnificent view of the beach from our hotel room, and I can’t say I’ve ever been up to witness a sunrise over the ocean before.  I decided to grab the camera and take a few pictures before I went back to bed:

We were very pleased with our hotel.  The Gold Coast is very built up with high rise hotels, casinos, and clubs, so I was glad to find a place that rented apartments away from all the noise.  I got a great rate (I guess most people want to be in all the hub bub of Surfer’s Paradise) and top floor one bedroom facing the ocean.  Wahoo!

In addition to the lovely beaches, the Gold Coast is the home of several amusement parks.  We got a multiple park pass, and the first day we hit Sea World.  I haven’t actually ever been to a Sea World in the US, so I can’t compare, but I did notice the absence of Free Willy.  No whales at this one, so I guess they made a successful break out in Australia.  Willy stayed free, no sequels here.

They had a few rides, but the main objective was to see the shows and animals.  The animals were a hoot, even the untrained ones.  We weren’t there long and I caught this pelican and another bird with their mouths open at the same time:

We went to a sea lion show, and then road a roller coaster.  Daniel and I kept remarking on the inefficiencies.  The people weren’t lined up for each spot.  They didn’t load and unload at the same time, there was no place to put your belongings, etc.  We really felt they needed to get a team from Busch Gardens down here to give a seminar.  We both remarked that we were nerds and needed to let it go.

We went afterwards to a place where you could touch stingrays.  Daniel decided they were too slimy, so he just took my picture:

We also got to see some tidal pools where you could touch starfish and sea cucumbers and such.  The sea cucumber was really soft and squishy.  I made Daniel touch it just because I knew it would gross him out.  He looked disappointedly at me and said, “You’re supposed to protect me from these sorts of things.”  They also had a huge coral reef viewing tank where we saw the sharks and huge sting rays, and this school of fish that was all bunched up together:

Then it was on to polar bears, where I learned that they actually have black skin underneath the white fur.  This one was doing some fun flips for me.  I decided to move on after he pulled up a huge mangled fish carcass he had put aside for a snack.

It was on to the penguins, who are soooo fast it was impossible to get a good picture of them in the water.  I went up to the top viewing area and found out that most of them were snoozing, where it was much easier to get a picture of a sleeping penguin:

Of course, it wouldn’t be Sea World without a dolphin show.  I managed to snap it at just the right time to get four of the dolphins leaping over the boat with the trainer in it:

We kept with the theme and had fish tacos for dinner, and stopped to see the beach at Surfer’s Paradise.  Daniel finally got to see the surf again:

Brisbane

The object of Brisbane for me was to cram as many big city delights in as possible.  We left Wednesday morning and drove the 3.5 hours south into the city.  Brisbane is big, more so than I had expected, so I was kind of glad we were staying in an out of the way B&B in a close suburb.  That meant we had free parking, and the room was very nice, too.  It was different than other B&B’s I’ve stayed in, though.  There was actually a small table in our room and a mini fridge, and they had stocked our room with our breakfast supplies so we could eat in whenever we liked.  For Daniel one night this meant 1:30 in the morning when he got the munchies.  Thankfully they supplied us with enough stuff he got a real breakfast, too.  Here’s a picture of our little table all set up:

It was also the chance to use all the groupon/living social deals I had collected since it isn’t popular enough in Australia to have it anywhere but the big cities.  The first one was for a sit down Chinese place.  Well, that’s what the picture looked like.  It was actually a very, very hard to find hole in the wall noodle bar with not very good food, so that was disappointing, especially after spending an hour trying to find it.  However, it did enable us to see the CBD of Brisbane at night, which was very pretty.  Brisbane is laid around the dips and bends of the Brisbane River, so you are never too far from water.    Here’s some of the city along the river:

We also had tickets to see a play that night, Sweet Charity at one of the arts centers.  I hadn’t heard of it before, but it’s a Neil Simon play that actually was very popular when it first came out—nominated for 12 Tony Awards.  It was funny and the actors were really good, but admittedly had a less than happy ending, which I wasn’t expecting.  Still, it was good, and Daniel even liked it even though it was a musical.  It was a little odd, though, because they did the whole play in American accents.  Daniel commented that he didn’t come half way around the world to listen to a Jersey accent.

The next day was my pamper day.  I got my hair done.  I was in desperate need since I hadn’t had it cut since Sydney and it was poorly done then.  Daniel met me for lunch and we went to the first big mall we had seen in a while, too.  They don’t seem to like malls very much here.  It’s mostly strip malls and even the malls can be very sectioned so that you have to go in and out to get to the next series of shops.  I got sushi, which is cheap and plentiful in the cities here, but isn’t to be found in Hervey Bay, and a Gloria Jean’s Coffee, which we are also lacking in HB.  Afterward, I had a groupon for a traditional Thai massage, which was awesome.  Here’s the main area of the place, where they served me tea and spring rolls while I waited:

That night I had another groupon, this time for a Thai place in the West End, a hip downtown neighborhood.  It was really good, some of the best food I’d had in while.  I had the mixed entrée starter which was a spring roll, curry puff, money purse (hadn’t had this before, but was really good), and a fish cake:

Then I had an excellent green prawn curry with rice in a fancy silver bucket. 

Daniel got a spicy mixed seafood noodles with prawns, squid, and scallops that came with these pretty carrot flowers.  I studied them for awhile, trying to figure out how they did them, and I’m still not quite sure:

The last day in Brisbane was the Good Food and Wine Show.  This was AWESOME!  It was just tons and tons of food, kitchen gadget, and alcohol vendors giving away free samples and doing cooking demonstrations to get you to buy their products.  Ha!  I’m not that weak.  Well, I got some cheese, chocolate, and avocado oil, but not much.  Most people bought trolleys on wheels and filled them to the brim.  However, buying lunch was completely unnecessary.  It was like if the Costco Sample section was the size of a football field.  It took me three hours just to walk through all of it.  I also got to see a show at the celebrity chef theater.  I went to see two of the guys on Masterchef Australia.  I hadn’t heard of either before I got here, but they are a really big deal here.  Sort of like if I got to see Emeril and Paula Deen together live, sort of thing.  They were really entertaining, so I enjoyed it. 

I was sort of awed at the amount of alcohol, though.  It wasn’t just wine, but hard liquor, too, and you could sample as many as you liked as many times as you liked, so I could see how you could get sloshed pretty quickly.  I tried to limit myself.  I laughed out loud when I was this vendor, who should have been letting people sample their product:

There were also classes you could take in cocktail making, cupcake making, pasta, and barista skills, but they all cost extra, so I just sort of looked in every so often.  Eventually I could eat nor drink anymore, so I called Daniel to come collect me and then dump off again at Queen Street, the shopping district in Brisbane.  It was pretty immense, and I spent another good couple of hours in there.  I really liked this store in particular, which still had all the fancy race day dresses in the window since the Melbourne Cup was this week:

I had just said to Daniel that morning how I would give my eye teeth for a Starbucks Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate, and lo and behold, there was that beautiful green logo!  Sadly, I had a bit too much of an American experience there as they did not have the salt sprinkles for it (which is the whole point, thank you very much).  That seems to happen to me about 75% of the time at home, too, which is really frustrating.  Get on that Starbucks!  Anyway, so I was about to get my second favorite thing, a mocha with toffee nut syrup, only to be informed that they wouldn’t have toffee nut syrup until next week.  Curses!  A pumpkin latte or a peppermint mocha were not to be found, either, since it is almost summer here.  I actually whined to the barista, “I came in here to get a taste of home, and you’re telling me you don’t have any of my favorites?”  In typical Aussie customer service fashion, he was polite but couldn’t help me in the slightest.  I just gave up and walked out sans drink.

All my shopping worked to Daniel’s advantage, as I spied some street vendors selling German bratwurst and Nutella crepes.  No parking anywhere, though, so I had to buy it all and balance it while Daniel rounded the block and then came back and picked me up.  We eventually found a parking lot to pull into and consume our goodies.  Then it was off to the Gold Coast, just an hour away.  

Whale Watching

Hervey Bay's biggest claim to fame is it's whale watching.  From August through October the Humpback whales of Antarctica come to the warm shallow waters of the Bay to breed and give birth.  Most females will give birth at the beginning and then immediately get pregnant again for another long 11 month gestation until she returns to the Bay the following year to give birth again.  Our tour guide shared that this is all they do while they are here--they don't eat.  They feed on the crill in Antarctica, and the 3ish months they spend in the bay, neither the males or females eat anything.  However, the calves eat like crazy, putting on about 60 kilos (that's about 120 pounds) a day, feeding for 16 of the 24 hours in a day.  He also told us that the calves don't directly nurse.  The mom excretes the milk into the water near the calf.  This is possible because while human milk fat is about 2% and very liquid, whales milk fat is more like 48%, so it comes out the consistency of peanut butter, for easy chomping.  I thought that was fascinating, so I had to share.

Anyway, we kept putting it off because it was expensive and it didn't matter how many times people told us it was amazing and majestic, we just weren't sure it was majestic enough to justify the price.  However, I finally stumbled upon a buy on get one 50% ticket deal, so we decided to lump it and go.  It was really good.  I, of course, was enjoying another boat ride if nothing else.  This was a big one, with three levels for whale viewing:

We took off from Urangan Marina, which itself is very pretty:  

We cruised along the coast of Fraser Island up to Platypus Bay, where most of the whales that haven't already left were congregating.  We ended up seeing around 7 different pods (groups) of whales.  We saw probably 3-4 different Mom and calf groups.  One was just sleeping right under the surface and didn't budge even though we got really close in the boat.  One toward the end was actually breaching and doing a lot of acrobatics from afar (the guide guessed it was because one of the many sharks was trying to get a calf), but by the time we got over there the shark and left and everyone had calmed down again.  It was a calm day on the water, which usually means the whales are calm, too.  We didn't see any full breaching or flips or anything, but we did get to see a few interesting pods.  

The first was a group of 7 adult male whales that were fighting.  They got pretty rough, and they were using the barnacles on their undersides to scrape up the tops of the competing whales.  Here's a shot of a few of them, and you can see the scrapes on their top fins.  A couple were even bleeding:

They were very obliging and swam all around and under the boat, so we got a few good pictures of them.  This is probably the closest, so close I really needed to zoom out, but didn't have time.  You can see some of his barnacles, snout and blowhole:

The real "money" shot is the tail, and I began to see why.  It is very difficult to get a decent shot of the tail.  They don't need to bring their tails out of the water like their blow holes, so it doesn't happen near as often, and when it does, it's quick.  I heard many sighs of exasperated, "Missed it!" every time a tail popped out from my fellow passengers.  I did manage to get a couple good tail shots, one here of the upper side of the tail:

And another of the underside, the hardest of all:  

I also discovered that the blowhole is actually holes.  They are more like two slits, as you can see here:

Which is why the blow hole spray is actually V shaped, like this:

We also snapped a few pictures of us.  We were trying to get a whale in the background with us, but were somewhat less than successful.  Here's Daniel:

On mine in the right hand corner, you can see the whale "footprint" the big oval shaped ring they leave after they dive under, so we just missed it:

They were just so fast, the only good way to capture them was video.  Here's a link to a short one of the fighting pod:

From 2011-10-24 Whale Watching

Toward the end we came upon a mom, calf, and escort, which is a nice way of saying a male that is trying to get busy with mom.  The calf sticks to mom like glue, though, so it makes things a bit difficult.  The male kept scooping up the calf and tossing it to the side, which doesn't actually hurt it.  He did get a little irritated with the persistent calf at one point and slap a fin at it, which I managed to catch.

It was definitely a cool trip, and I managed to get my first sunburn.  I had gotten kind of lazy with the sunscreen because I had't burned yet, or really even tanned much.  Well, that will teach me.  

Forgot one-1770

I went back and was looking at my pictures, and I realized we forgot the last stop on our trip.  We took a detour at the last minute.  Katy asked if we'd like to stop at the town of 1770.  We said sure, why not.  1770 is a small village on the coast that's claim to fame is that it is the place where Captain Cook first landed in Australia.  There wasn't much there, just looked like so many towns on the Queensland coast:  pretty but small:

The fun part was that Daniel really wanted us to spell out 1770 with our bodies and take a picture.  However, he kept insisting there was a double zero (I think he thought it was called 1700).  Katy and I kept saying no, but he got down on the boardwalk and made a double zero with his arms and legs and pleaded there a while for us to make the 1 and 7.  We just laughed and took pictures.  I think he was getting a bit delirious from being in the car so long.

The real find was a little cafe in Agnes Water where we had dinner.  We got a very tasty plate of fish and chips, but the real event was this bakery case.  Oh, what to get!

Holiday and Home

House swapping means you get to experience a vacation and a new home.  You experience exotic tropical rain forests and exotic light bulbs, with B22 fittings instead of screws, to replace.
In the period of a week or two, we experienced Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday island, with some of the purest sand in the world.  The sand doesn't even get hot in the sun, and there is no development on the island.
Here's a panorama view from my cheap not-so-i Phone:

Fuller view here

And then we get back to Hervey Bay, and while still within view of the Bay and majestic Fraser Island, there is a house and a lawn to be tended to.  So you get majestic pictures like this:

When you pack for several months in two suitcases, you leave out important things, like your old lawn shoes that can get dirty.  So I improvised and wrapped plastic bags around my only sneakers.  I was conscious about getting matching bags - who wants to be tacky in front of the neighbor's.  I'm still not used to the fumes of and sounds of a gas mower, but it has the power to get the job done.

Townsville and Magnetic Island

So our friend Elizabeth lived in Townsville for 6 months and loved it and told us we needed to see Magnetic Island off the coast there.  Both were fine, but, I'm sorry to say we were a little underwhelmed.  If we hadn't already seen the beautiful islands along the reef or the rainforest city of Cairns, we might have appreciated it more, I guess.  Plus, we were getting tired, which made it a bit less interesting.  Still, there were some highlights.  Like Airlie, they have a large saltwater lagoon for swimming (even more important since you can't swim there because of the jellyfish), but it was closed for maintenance, so we didn't get to swim.  They did have a nice beach we walked along and there was full moon.  Katy tried a couple different night settings on her camera, and got a good picture:

They also had a gigantic golden orb spider sculpture along their main street.  Katy and I both thought this was a bit creepy.  Here is her "squishing" it:

The next morning we got up early so we could have some time on Magnetic Island in the morning before driving back to Airlie Beach for the night.  The ferry was quick--only 20 minutes.  Magnetic is different from a lot of the islands we visited because it's not a resort island.  About 2,000 people live there so it just looks like a small suburb, nothing fancy.  We took a bus to Picnic Bay, where they had the largest section of beach that was netted to keep out the jellyfish.  Daniel got really far out and yelled for me to take his picture while doing the Oscar wave:

We took the bus around the island to the different bays.  The biggest was Horseshoe Bay.  Here's a picture:

I spent most of my time there drinking coffee at a cafe and looking at the small selection of shops on their main street.  As you can see, it didn't take me long:  

I found a second hand cookbook, so I spent some time reading that.  Eventually Katy and Daniel caught up with me and we decided to walk to Acadia.  We took some pictures of the frangrant frangipangi that are all over the island and are a popular scent here for everything from hand soap to laundry detergent:

About 10 minutes into our walk we realized this was a very bad idea.  It was in the nineties, the sun was high overhead, and no shade.  But we had to persevere on until we could at least get to a bus stop and wait for the bus to come around again.  Luckily, we met a pleasant Israeli couple to talk to while we were waiting for our grumpy bus driver.  We ended up taking it right back to Horseshoe Bay where Katy and Daniel got right back into the water to cool down and I got an ice cream bar.  Eventually we called it quits and headed back to Townsville to drive back to Airlie.  We had a nice surprise waiting for us.  Because of our kangaroo issue, we were arriving a day later than we had originally scheduled.  Our bed and breakfast was kind enough to let us stay a different day at short notice, and because the inn part was booked, let us stay in a beach house they rent out, too, across the street.   It was swanky.  We got a good night's sleep and then drove back to Hervey Bay.  We then spent the next few days recovering.  That was a lot of excitement and we were tired. Katy stayed a few days and then was off to continue exploring Australia before flying to New Zealand at the end of the month.  She's be there for at least a month and might actually still be there when we get there, so there's a slim chance we might catch up with her again.

Atherton Tablelands-great food and nudists

About an hour from Cairns is the agricultural region known as the Atherton Tablelands.  It's the plateau part of the mountains nearby, so they grow a lot of coffee, tea, sugarcane, and bananas to name a few things.  Katy found a brochure for a food tour, and while we had no intention of paying $150 a piece to go on it, we thought there was no reason we couldn't take the same route and do some sampling ourselves.  Here's a picture of an overview of the area:

Our first stop was Jacques coffee plantation.  It was interesting to say the least.  We weren't there long and the owner started in on Katy.  He's married, but this didn't seem to stop him, and he was even so bold to tell her he'd give her a free plane ride if she'd ride naked.  Once he heard she was a masseuse, he was trying hard to get her to come work at the plantation for while.  He just would not leave her alone, so she agreed to take a short ride and see the place where the workers lived.  She got to talk to a couple of the workers who informed her that he and his wife were naturalists, so if she didn't like to see nude people walking around, than should probably wouldn't enjoy it here.  Made you wonder why anyone worked there.  

For all of Mr. Jacques annoying habits, he did grow and roast very tasty coffee.  I bought some beans to take home, and finally decided to try an Australian iced coffee while I was there.  They aren't at all like an iced coffee from Starbucks.  They start with a scoop of icecream, then They start with a scoop of ice cream, then add a shot of hot espresso, chocolate syrup, milk, whipped cream, and then chocolate shavings.  It was gooooood.

The drive out of the plantation was interesting, with a line of giant termite mounds:

At Jacques we found a brochure that gave us a free wine tasting at Golden Drop winery, which specializes in  mango wines.  They were really tasty, but too expensive for me.  After the winery we went to the Mount Uncle distillery, which did tropical liqueurs like plum, mulberry, banana, and coffee.  They were awesome, but my favorite was actually their bright pink marshmellow liqueur.  Daniel took a nap in the car, but Katy and I did a tasting.  Sadly, they only currently ship within Australia, so I you couldn't get in in the US.  They even had some wild guinea fowl and a peacock on the grounds, and a wonderful tea room to boot, not to mention the banana plantation.  The peacock was fast, but I got a slightly blurry pic:

After that we decided to forgo further food delights and instead try to see the platypuses (platypi?) that were supposed to be at a nearby river.  These are very, very shy creatures, so you have to be really quiet, but we eventually saw more and more as we wandered along the river.  They are fast, too, and don't have to come up for air often, which made taking their picture difficult, but I got a couple.  

This whole day had pretty much bored poor Daniel to tears even though Katy and I were enjoying it immensely.  He started to get a bit mischievous, so he climbed way up in a tree, and made me go back and get Katy where she was still taking pictures of platypuses/platypi.  The plan was to bring her back and he'd yell, "The British are coming!" and scare her. Reminder:  Katy is from England, so we like to tease her about that sometimes.  So, I went back but she had managed to get really close to a platypus, so I didn't want to disturb her.  I started to go down the hill so I could get a picture, too, and ended up sliding all the way down the hill on my white shorts (yeah, I know I should have known better, but they were only $5).  After pictures and collecting myself, I thought sure Daniel would haven given up, but he had only climbed higher in the tree, so he was able to do his shouting at Katy.  I think she thought is was more funny than it scared her, and we made him stay there so we could take a picture:

He said several people had passed but no one had noticed him.  I guess most people aren't expecting a grown man in a tree.  We headed home after that.