Category: Australia 2018 (Page 3 of 4)

This morning we awoke to a really really REALLY nice home-made breakfast which was included in our Airbnb.  Besides really good bread, we also got smoothies, so we decided to test out the latest investment in our anti-plastic-crusade – Turtely strawesome straws!

Smoothies, a rose and turtley straws

Breakfast!

Flowers at our Airbnb

Our Airbnb in Mon Repos

Turns out, metal straws are great for smoothies, especially if there is still some bits of fruit remaining!

Unfortunately it was already time for us to head off for the next bit of serious driving, all the way up to Rockhampton today.  But first we decided to stop off at the Bundaberg barrel to pick up some refreshments for the drive. Manja was a little obsessed with the ginger beer, and after some tastings I got to say that they make some fine lemonades! We decided to get a couple of different sets to see us through the rest of our trip.

The Bundaberg range

Excellent advertising

Some guy infront of a sign

Drinks in-hand we drove on, stopping for lunch at a little place called the Miriam Vale cafe. While waiting for our lunch we saw this little guy scavenging the tables with serious focus.

A few more hours of driving and we arrived in Rockhampton where we had a really basic room in a shared apartment. Manja really likes botanic gardens and after our experience in Noosa we decided to give the Rockhampton gardens a chance too. We were greeted by a flock of angry geese. Well, maybe hungry, but they were not well pleased by us not feeding them.

Unimpressed Geese are unimpressed

With the botanic gardens being at the river, we quickly found out that there was a LOT of mosquitos around again, so after a quick bird-watching photo-shoot on a mini-pier, we retreated inland.

Beautiful path

Mirrored bird

Swan bird

Leg bird

Laughter bird

Hot bird

Melting trees

Unfortunately it was dusk, so not long before the mosquitoes followed us!

We power-walked back to the car and grabbed some dinner at a local sushi bar before having an early night.

Looking back, it was a nice drive

Sushi

more sushi

Sunset

We left our awesome accommodation with a bit of a heavy heart because it was so nice, but also happy because today was going to be a special day.  A few nights ago we had managed to secure our tickets to the night encounter tour at the Mon Repos Turtle Center.

But first we had a 3.5 hour drive between our Airbnbs, so we grabbed some yummy breakfast at a Jimmy Foxx, which was really nice.  Only downside is that they used plastic cups for the smoothies…  ah well, you can’t have it all I guess.  Breakfast was super delicious though!

Fully charged up we set off and drove straight through to our Airbnb near Bundaberg.  We were greeted by the friendliest Airbnb host yet, who used to be a German baker and promised us good old German quality bread for breakfast the next day!  Yum!

Manja felt right at home in the balcony hammock!

Skipping lunch, but somewhat early for dinner, we decided to visit a local beach and have some fish and chips on the beach.  Seemed like a great concept, except that today it was blowing a gale.  We took shelter at a picnic area nearby, and then went for a walk along Eliott head beach.

Rather than risk being late for our night walk, we decided to walk around the Mon Repos nature reserve for a bit before our tour.  We didn’t see turtles, but we did spot a Kookaburra!

Retreating tide

Kookaburra!

Another bird on the beach

It wasn’t that long before it was time to head over to the Turtle center for our night walk and information session.  I can not recommend the night tour highly enough, it really was awesome.  No guarantee to see a turtle, we were presented with plenty of information about turtles while we waited.  Meanwhile rangers patrolled the beaches and the visitors were split into groups of about 10, in order of booking.  Group 1 would get to see the first turtle sighted, group 2 the second etc. etc.  We were lucky enough to have been in group 1!

Kudos to Manja for booking us in so early!

We watched and waited, then suddenly around 10pm we got a call that group 1 had to assemble on the easterly gate. We were going to watch a loggerhead turtle lay her eggs on the beach! Yay!!!

Most of the time was completely “lights out” which the rangers definitely ensured really well.  At a few points, though, we were allowed to take photos because the turtle would not care. Here is some videos of people taking photos of turtles paparazzi-style!

And here is some photos of the whole experience, including one of me being very very proud to carry turtle eggs!

Loggerhead Turtle

Laying eggs

Still laying eggs

Loggerhead turtle

Covering the nest

Loggerhead turtle

Loggerhead human carrying turtle eggs

That square is a square of eggs

The very last eggs are transported by Manja!

Our turtles details

As the rangers thought she laid a bit close to the waters edge, we also go to help carry the eggs into a manmade replica nest – into which the eggs were laid in the same order.  It was an absolutely and turtley awesome night!

The video below is of the eggs leaving the nest in the safe hands of an expert volunteer.

We got back a bit before 1am and dropped into bed.

Today we woke feeling really refreshed, after a night of comfortable beds and excellent climate control. As we got up we noticed this guy chilling out on our cutlery.  We relocated him outside to the lawn.

A bug between a spoon and a knife

Being a Sunday, there was a little local market a 5 minute walk away, so we decided to head on down for breakfast. It was really lovely and we found these awesome little reusable vegetable bags (a little like fly-screens) which we decided to buy, because we could dedicate one of them to collecting rubbish on our walks and on beaches. The problem thus far had been that we end up carrying around a bunch of sand with the rubbish and we hoped that this would solve that problem.

We decided on some more smoothies and pancakes for breakfast, which were awesome.

Todays plan was a day of walking before an evening on a boat, so we headed over to the famous Alexandria bay.  Parking was theoretically going to be a nightmare, but we got lucky and a car left the carpark right at the entrance as we arrived.

Full of energy we set off…

… and were quickly rewarded with our first Koala of the trip, chilling out and watching the beach from his tree-top.

Chill-Bill

We kept walking and soon got to boiling point lookout, where we got a real postcard photo opportunity.

About 15 minutes later we got to Dolphin point lookout, where we spotted this guy:

Spot the creature

Can’t spot him? Hint: He’s on the 4th “railing” stone on the left. We nearly missed him too, and HEAPS of tourists walked past him before Manja and I took photos.  Sorry little dude! … Although you did go ahead and pose for everyone…

The view wasn’t bad either! We randomly had some WWII planes fly overhead. In the image you can see their shadow on the water as they turned around in the distance.

Dolphin

Point

Lookout

Simon on Point at Lookout

WWII Planes

Heading down to a beach I spotted something scuttle across the sand.  We had been seeing these guys the last few days, and I finally had the patience to try and capture one!

We wanted to do the full walk, but as we got to about 3/4 of the way there was suddenly a fence which precluded us from continuing along the coastline, forcing us to do a pretty tough inland hike straight up the hill instead. Making the best of the sudden change of direction and pitch, we found this awesome little spider!

(It was smaller than a 5c piece, took a while to get it so crisp!)

On the other side, though, we were rewarded with a pretty nice beach to cool off on.

Aaaaaand then we had to walk all the way back.  We decided to take the inland path which was a bit harder, but also a whole lot more direct. And it was walking through some awesome rainforest like this, and even got to see a nice butterfly on the way.

As we were chatting away, I suddenly jumped and pulled Manja backward, which made her jump.  All because this guy was crossing the path!  Totally safe, but my instincts didn’t know he was friendly 😉

You can see how the path transitioned from sand to rainforest and back again on these photos too 🙂

We got back to the car completely exhausted and sweated through, so we headed back to the Airbnb for a short cleanup and break before heading over to the Noosa river dinner cruise which was absolutely awesome. I can NOT recommend this one highly enough. They were even kind enough to offer Manja an alternative to the seafood last minute.  Its pretty amazing what the chef was able to conjure up in such a small space, and the sunset was just perfect.

We got back to the Airbnb exhausted but happy, which seems to be how most nights on this trip concluded!

Today we got up early and headed to the famous Eumundi Markets, “the biggest and the best art and craft market in Australia”. I had been there a few years back and had pretty positive memories.  We started well, getting ourselves some healthy shakes for breakfast.

Some of the markets were still as good as I remembered, but unfortunately large parts had also been taken over by your standard “Plastic souvenir rubbish” stores.  Import for 10c and sell for 20c kind of deals.  We enjoyed the good parts and skipped over the rest.  On a whim we decided to have some tacos for lunch and found ourselves being served traditional Mexican quasedias by an elderly German couple in an Australian country town.  Ah, Ausmany.  Or is it Germstralia?

Not quite sure what to do next we stopped by the tourism office, also known as a small old house filled with brochures guarded by a kindly little old lady.  She recommended a national park and a scenic drive for our route home, and we decided to also check out a local cheese monger on the way.

We headed on over to Kenilworth Dairy who are apparently makers of fine cheese and dairy.  We both love cheese, so we tasted the cheese on offer…  Finding out quickly that it wasn’t great.  Instead of cheese we settled for some iced-chocolates, hoping that the ice-cream would be much better than the cheese.  Unfortunately it wasn’t that memorable either.  Never-the-less, the surroundings were really nice and we enjoyed a nice break slurping away our milkshakes.

Full of dairy, we decided to head on over to the recommended national park to walk off some calories.  We took a fair number of wrong turns before we eventually got to the Mary Cairncross reserve…. which was really not that hard to find!  It has a beautiful new lookout at the front and a voluntary gold-coin donation at the interactive education center at the entrance.  It was obviously maintained by people with a passion for nature and for the place.  We walked through the park quite slowly, primarily looking for birds.  We were particularly fascinated by this guy (Video unfortunately not ours!): The Eastern Whipbird (Psophodes olivaceus).

We did spot some small recently hatched birds, and then Manja spotted this cutie in the distance.

A couple of minutes of walking later we got to a nesting ground for flying foxes and spent a while watching them play and fly about.

Wondrous Rainforest

Pretty Birds!

Pretty… well, okay, dead bugs

Worm-Like-Roots

Rainforest

Rainforest!

Rainforest!!

Rainforest!!!

Rainforest!!!!

Bats!

Photography

We really enjoyed this reserve, it’s totally worth a visit if you love nature!

On the way back to Noosa Heads we took the scenic route…  literally!  We took the scenic drive that the little old tourist-guide lady recommended and Manja was not disappointed. Beautiful views over the countryside!  I, on the other hand, was a little busy navigating the winding roads.

As we got back we took one more stop, heading over to the Noosa Heads botanic gardens for a bit of a stroll.  It turned out to be really, really lovely.  We took some photos, especially of what was becoming our favourite kind of tree.

Such a vibrant red tree

Such contrast against the sky

Such matching nails

Goose

Non-Pineapple Pineapple

Pelican Mc Bigmouth

Plant

Purple tree

As it started to get Dark, we started to get hungry. We had scoped out a nice-looking asian restaurant on our way out of Noosa Heads and decided to stop there for dinner.  Turns out this was a fantastic place!  We were hungry enough to only photograph the entree…

After another day of wandering around the sites and wondering at the flora and fauna, we dropped into bed exhausted but happy.

The airbnb from the carpark. Such a pretty place!

I planned our next morning immaculately.  We have to get up at 8:30, get ready, check out and leave by 9:30 latest to make it to Bribe island for a boat tour by 10:30.  The trip would take 1 hour and 2 minutes according to Google. No worries, said I, as we left at 9:15.

Do worry, said I, as I took a wrong turn and Google advised I would now arrive at 10:55.

We drove as fast as we “legally” could and I called the boat. Please don’t leave… We are 5 minutes late, so sorry!!

The lady at the other end of the phone said she’d tell the skipper but could not guarantee he could wait for us. We continued to race.

One minute over time and we were here… What?!?

But this is a street. No dock in sight…

F**ck!
We had arrived at the office not to the dock.

After wasting another minute on google we raced to the boat and stopped on the dirt-road carpark in a cloud of dust. The boat was still there! Quick, grab the bags and run over. What? The gate is locked? Ah there is a dude walking over from the ship. We wave and he says “G’day, no need to rush. This is Bribie, the most relaxed place on earth. Give us a moment and I’ll unlock the gate for ya”.

After that slightly stressful start to the day, we had a fantastic boat trip through Pumicestone Passage, with more information being supplied that I could remember. The weather was pretty good too, though a touch cold, but we were provided blankets and we cuddled up on the top deck and “braved” the “cold” (it was maybe 20 degrees, with a touch of wind).  We had the whole deck to ourselves for 90% of the trip. It was magical, we only came down for food and drinks! We didn’t see any turtles or dolphins, but plenty of cool birds and some jellyfish on the way back.

By the time we docked again we were perfectly relaxed. We decided to head over to the local beach and have some ice-cream and check out the local museum.  The museum really wasn’t all that interesting for us, but it was free, so no harm no foul.  We did appreciate the air-conditioned reprise as it got a fair bit warmer by now!

Next we headed over to Buckleys hole conservation park, where we were going to hit Red Beach which was just down sleepy hollow drive….

In the conservation park there are also ruins of an old seawater aquarium, which is all that remains from a tourism initiative in 1962 when the bridge to bribe was first completed. It was pretty cool to see nature take back what remains from the big concrete and glass tanks which were all cross connected back in the day. The story itself is pretty cool too, the diver who had incepted the idea spent so much time trying to catch specimen that the business of running the park was neglected to the point of disrepair. Talk about passion gone awry!

We hiked to red beach and Manja managed to capture a seagull running along the beach.

Bribie is quite a pretty place with a lot o pretty beaches, Red Beach even had some cool pink flowers, and we also saw a looooot of washed up jellyfish!

After a hike to red beach we headed to our Airbnb for the night, this time in Noosa Heads. I have to say this place was awesome. If you ever travel to Noosa, ask me for the details and stay there. It was absolutely first class, and we will definitely be back there sometime.

As we arrived pretty late we took the advice of our hosts and headed to a local asian place, but it was unfortunately completely booked out. So we walked a bit further and found a Korean place which we stopped at. It reminded us of the first time we had dinner together earlier in the year when Manja was visiting Adelaide for Johan and Stefs wedding, way before we ever got together. It was a really nice evening.

When we returned we spent a bit of time writing blogs and planning out the next few nights before dropping into bed exhausted.

Having a good nights sleep made all the difference and we used the opportunity to have a slow and relaxed morning. Rather than rushing off we made use of the good internet and comfortable sitting areas to make plans and book a few things for the next few days.

The idillic verandah

In the afternoon we had booked ourselves into a tour at the Brisbane City Hall, which was surprisingly interesting and even included a lot about the history of Brisbane itself. I really would recommend the tour to anyone visiting the city! Unfortunately we were both so engrossed we actually failed to take photos!

View FROM City Hall.  We failed to photograph the actual city hall! 😀

After the tour we self-created a bit of a walking tour along the Brisbane river down to Streets Beach (A man-made beach near the river) and through the Botanic gardens. We stopped plenty of times for photos of flora and fauna and it was a really nice and relaxed afternoon.

South Bank Boomerang

Streets Beach

The Skyscrapers from Streets Beach

Botanic Gardens

Botanic Gardens

Botanic Gardens

Botanic Gardens

Botanic Gardens

Botanic Gardens

Botanic Simon

Botanic Gardens

Botanic Garden Lizards

Botanic Gardens Swamp Hen

Botanic Gardens

Pretty Picture

Pretty Lady taking Pretty Picture

It was pretty cool to be walking through the botanic gardens with the background of the skyscrapers of the Brisbane CBD!

Pedestrians walking on wifi bikes?

By the time we got back to the city we were ravenous. We decided to trust trip advisor and check out Corbett and Claude, an Italian restaurant with pretty good reviews. It was a bit of a hike to get there and we decided to walk along the river. At one point I noticed this strange sign. Standard symbols tell me it’s something about wifi and bikes?

It actually means that bike riders should ring their bell when overtaking pedestrians of course, but I just thought it was terrible use of symbols!

The dinner was super nice though. We both had a pretty basic pasta and they were both delicious.

With our parking getting close to expiry we rushed back…. The Parking fees were a touch high!

$35 for the day until 6pm and $5 for every hour thereafter.

When we got home we decided to have an early night because we knew  had an early start coming up!

As exhausted as we were, we did not sleep well. We had some home-made cereal for breakfast before packing up and, somewhat tired, started making our way over to Brisbane. Rather than go direct, we decided to explore a bit along the way. And so it was that we stopped at a couple of beaches along the Gold Coast, including the beautiful and vast Kirra beach, where we saw some washed-up stingers. I have no idea how to tell them apart, but this one had a mean blue shade to it.

Dead Blue Stinger

Given that we didn’t have stinger suits, we decided it probably wasn’t really warm enough to go for a swim anyway and headed inland a bit toward Springbrook National park. At one point we decided to take a break from driving and stopped at the “Advance town water reservoir” which turned out to be a nice little lake.

Randomly there was chickens walking around the carpark too…

It wasn’t long after that we got to the Springbrook falls, where we hiked to the waterfalls. They really were spectacular views!

(if you took the pictures just right you could even hide the railing 😉 )

After relaxing for a bit we started on the circuit hike in the park, but after about 20 minutes we decided we were both too tired.  We were about to turn around when we spotted this litte one dancing on the railing – Manja managed to take fantastic photos!

Little Mantis

Hello Mister!

By the time we got back to the car we were ravenous, so we found ourselves some lunch in the nearby “Lost Fawn Cafe” before the somewhat longer drive back to Brisbane.

A bit of a drive through the beautiful Queensland countryside later, we arrived at our accommodation in Brisbane.  We were pleasantly surprised – it was an old mansion run as a professional Bed & Breakfast.  We had a fully equipped room for ourselves, which included Aircon and even had a continental breakfast. For dinner we took a short stroll to a little Sri-Lankan restaurant, which turned out to have pretty decent food and excellent and unusual Milkshake/Smoothie things.

We were so full of food that we decided to go for a bit of a wander around the suburb, in the general direction of town find a little hill to watch the sunset from….  As it turned out that hill was impossible to find and a mosquito filled green area made us turn around and head back to our accommodation. We spent a while updating blogs and relaxing on the porch before retreating into our gloriously climate-controlled room for some sleep.

We didn’t sleep well, but one of the nice things about our accommodation was that there was a hiking guide. We decided to make use of it and head over to hike the Cape Byron walking track which promised spectacular coastal views, a hike through the rainforest and a lighthouse. All sounded good to us!

The first part of the hike was along the beach and as we walked we noticed some plastic rubbish lying on the ground. And by us I mean Manja noticed and pointed it out, I think it used to be a pen or something like that. We picked it up to dump it in the next bin, but it spawned a conversation in which we decided that we’d make a point of removing plastics from beaches and nature as see it. It may not make a huge difference, but as per The starfish parable, every little bit may help to save some poor creature from a horrible demise.

Path to the beach

Fishermans cove

Taking the photo of the birds

Black Seagulls?

This chick could surf!

Trees

Watching the waves

Our first real stop was Fishermans lookout. Personally I didn’t see many fishermen, but it was a pretty good spot to watch the surfers. Manja and I were particularly amused to see a small lady between a bunch of surfer blokes showing them how it was done. In the spirit of our animal photos, we also took a bunch of pictures of some black birds which behaved like seagulls.

The path lead us along a road for a few meters, where we saw this classic Aussie sign. A simple sticker made the purpose of the sign so much more clear.

A short time later we were back on a walking track along the coast. There we really did get to see some spectacular coastal views and we followed every scramble path to explore every beach.  ventually we got to the most easterly point of the Australian mainland.  Yipee!

We took a short break watching the ocean when a teenager nearby squealed and pointed. Sure enough we saw a whale in the distance. Seems Australia wants to show its Animals to Manja 🙂

Thanks to a steady hand and a pretty good camera lens, Manja was able to get this shots:

We kept bumping into some critters on the way up.  We saw two awesome-coloured sets of ants, one red and one gold. We named the gold ones gold-butt-ants (“Gold-Popo-Ameisen”).

Fiery looking ants

Gold butt ants!

At one point we even saw this cool lizard:

Can’t find him? He’s right in the center having a sun-bath.  Once again Manjas photography skills proved superior to my phone-cam-snap.  This is why you still need a camera kids!

Because we really didn’t take an easy path, we got to the lighthouse pretty exhausted and decided to stop for a well-deserved milkshake. I narrowly missed the opportunity to take a photo of a Wallaby (or little Kangaroo?) exploring a Lizard and get freaked out… but I got the lizard!

Lighthouse

Simon and Lighthouse

Lighthouse without Simon

Lizard who scared a Room

On the way back we noticed an important sign, advising that someone is playing sim-snake in the area…  Today we didn’t see any of them around though.

The way back turned out to be a downhill walk through the rainforest, which was pretty spectacular in its own right.  We also found yet another lizard!

Because walking is kind what we do, we also decided to check out the fine sand of Tallow Beach. I’m not the biggest sand fan and it was windy…  Things I do! Check out the wind blowing about us!

Footsteps in the sand. Aaawh

Sand. Everywhere

Seriously.

Sand Everywhere

Tree growing in the sand.

There was a walking track back which lead us through some bushlands. Google said it was a path and I guess *technically* it was. One step above bush-bashing, but a path was juuust visible. After we hit a few spider webs, I got to walk in front the rest of the way too.

The view from the 30cm “track” we followed

By the time we got back to the car we just had time to hit the supermarket to grab a few things and we noticed that Byron Bay really takes shopping cart safety seriously. You are not allowed to abandon your shopping cart….

With our provisions we headed back to our apartment for a quick shower and a debate on what to have for dinner. We weren’t super impressed with the options in Byron itself and we were a bit further out already, so we decided to make the trip down to the Lennox head pizza shop. It was worth the drive. Seriously, this was possibly the best pizza I had and Manjas was pretty damn good too. I guess one could argue that we were both starved from a day of moving, but we really enjoyed it.

Not much to look at, but great pizza!

The pizza other pizza imitates

After dinner we had a look at the beach and watched the moon and stars. We did take some photos, but they didn’t turn out…  Just some back rectangles.
Never the less, once we got home we were full, happy and exhausted from a day of walking. So we dropped into bed and slept – in spite of the noisy fans.

The next week was a massive family event, in that my brother got married to his long-term partner and co-parent. It was a really beautiful event which was hosted in the backyard of my parents place which was totally decked out for the occasion. It was a really fantastic party, about which I won’t write too many details on this public blog 😉

Off we go!

After the wedding weekend Manja and I flew over to Brisbane to tour Queensland. In all my years in Australia, I had never made it to the reef, so this was a great opportunity to catch this up!

After flying to Gold Coast, we got into our little rental car and made our way down to Byron Bay. That was kind of the wrong way, but hey, when you’re so close you just have to go and check out the famous sites 😀

Our little vehicle for the trip

About an hours drive later, we arrived at our Airbnb and I have to say it looked awesome. We found out later that evening that looks aren’t everything, but check out this brochure-like view from the entrance and the little welcoming committee which was there for us.

With checkin complete, we drove into town to grab some lunch at the google-recommended Mana Haven Cafe. It turned out to be really delicious and we also found ourselves some info on hikes around the area!

We decided to head over to Arakwal National Park for an afternoon hike. You may have heard of the three sisters, which are visible from this walking track. It promised a nice walk and stunning scenery.

The scenery was absolutely stunning.  Manja is an avid photographer and we tend to take our time to take some photos of the local wildlife.  Today we saw this guy!

… I should say that he was actually the size of a 50c piece, this shot makes him look massive though :D.
We also took plenty of postcard-style pictures, and here’s some of our favourites:

And of course we saw the three sisters:

On our way back we both jumped when this guy crossed our path!

After recovering from the scare, Manja spent a bit of time taking those photos of him. Neither of us know a damn thing about snakes… or legless lizards as this one probably was – so we kept a respectful distance.

By the time we got back to the car, we were both quite hungry.  Some research later, we headed to town to Chihuahua Taco for some awesome Tacos for dinner. It really was super tasty!

It was a beautiful evening, so we headed to the beach via a fro-yo place and settled down to watch the seaside for a bit.  Eventually we decided to head back to our Airbnb to get some sleep, but on the way there we came across this little lake where there was a very very large flock of cockatoos settling into a tree. We watched them for a bit, intending to stay for sunset, but….   It’s a lake. In Queensland. That meant that there was about a billion mosquitos coming for us, so we retreated a bit more quickly than intended. But here is a short video with the awesome sound of Australian wildlife.

When we returned we saw that the Airbnb really put form over substance: Besides showers which didn’t have sufficient slope to drain properly, the Airbnb did not have any sort of air-conditioning, only a pretty-but-not-very-functional-and-very-nosiy fan allowing us to fall into no more than an uncomfortable half-doze for the night.