From Australia

From Australia

I don't know where the time is going but it feels like we are perpetually racing against it. There is so much to see & do, and plenty of boat projects too, and we'll never fit it all in but we're trying! We are still at Newport Marina. It's nice here, easy to leave the boat, easy to work on it and the weather is dependably great. Peter told me the old slogan for Queensland was "Today is beautiful, tomorrow is perfect" and that about sums it up. Speaking of Peter & Laura, we have enjoyed several outings with them. These are friends of Jan & Rich (we're still neighbors) and they've politely adopted all of us during our stay here. From dinner parties to a music concert at Brisbane's botanical garden, to bike rides & errands, they've really made it fun to be here. So much so that Jon & I considered just parking here and buying a car for the season rather than sailing to Sydney. But then we rented a car for a week recently to get into the mountains and camp and by the end of that we decided that living in a car/tent full time for several months is not what we want so we are now looking at at weather to move down to Sydney! It is about 400 miles and surely many airborne waves south of here. It will feel really good to arrive and see the harbor after all these years of anticipation. We aren't exactly looking forward to any crummy weather (we're getting pretty soft these days), but there is a distinct weather shift just to the south. Our plan is to sail back up here in February anyway and leave the boat here while we travel home to the US for a couple of months so at least it isn't goodbye forever. I often associate a bird's song with a place if there is one particular song that stands out and here at this marina, it is the Australian magpie. They sit at the top of the masts and belt out this song that is so lovely. You can't help but hear it and smile.
From Australia

From Australia

Speaking of birds, this past week with the car was like a twitchers paradise. When we left NZ I was worried that we were leaving all the birds behind (what a stupid thought) but Australia has even more birds and parrots are the everyday bird here. We haven't quite gotten used to just seeing flocks of brightly colored parrots hopping around people's front yards yet. We took the car up into the mountains of Lamington National Park, followed by Springbrook park in the same Gondwana World Heritage Site area. I figure I must have been throwing spitballs the day we learned about the significance of Gondwana in school but I now have a basic understanding that Australia was part of a huge super-continent some 180 million years ago that included much of the southern hemisphere land masses. After it split, some plant species have successfully kept growing on their own in isolated areas such as very old Antarctic beech trees in the rainforest at Springbrook. These are the some of the most beautiful and oldest rainforested mountain areas in Australia, saved from much of the logging by Europeans with some really spectacular, massive trees. The birds there are like nothing we've ever seen. They became the focus of our hikes and we put many miles on our legs during that week. Our favorite campground was on the O'Reilly's side of Lamington National Park and it had a whole pack of varied birds that liked the tree right above our tent. Anytime we were sitting at the site, standing at the car getting food together or even walking around, we usually had a parrot or two on our shoulder or head or one sitting on the tent, hopping around it or trying to borrow a Cheerio from my cereal bowl. The story with O'Reillys, which is a guesthouse and restaurant within the park, is that they've been feeding the parrots for over 50 years so they are tame and most of them tagged even and that's why they're comfortable hanging out on your head. On the beautiful sloping grass lawn that formed the campground, the pademelons (a small kangaroo) grazed like deer between the tents and the turkeys rooted around for bugs. It was like a zoo there! During the day we took long hikes on park trails passing many waterfalls, gorges, mountain views, and cliff faces. We heard, then saw a koala on one trail- you can hear the males calling a loud grunting sound which gives them away if you can stand there long enough with your neck bent to pick them out among the treetop leaves.

From Australia

We thoroughly enjoyed the days and of course the birds were getting us up at 430 but the evenings were tough in that we couldn't get comfortable after a full day of hiking around- once it got dark we had no nightlife to speak of and so missed our camper back home a lot. We were also power challenged in that we couldn't charge our phone/tablets very well with the setup we'd brought. You might think that wouldn't matter but the way things are headed, you need a computer for everything, even researching & making your campsite reservations! Everything is online so it has become more a necessity than anything. That's when we realized that 6 weeks of tent life (that is what we have planned coming up) would probably be enough. Then one morning we were hiking along and Jon reached down to scratch his leg and found a wood tick attached. Then another one, and another and another. We got them off with a credit card but ended up driving in to town to get a tick remover and to buy a camp table so we could avoid having anything on the ground. At one point, Jon turned to me with clenched teeth and said "I love the outdoors!" After that we were more careful and no more ticks got free rides on us. On the uphill road to & from the park, we saw loads of wallabies, a large friendly carpet python snake which we prodded off the road so he wouldn't get hit and a full on thunderstorm complete with the largest hail we've ever been in. We were a little concerned about getting dents in the rented car, but I guess you don't run into issues until it is golf ball sized hail- phew!

From Australia

After a few days up in the mountains, we drove down to the seashore one day to visit another wildlife park called Currumbin that we'd bought discounted tickets to a while back before we'd visited Lone Pine sanctuary. Coming down into the built up part of the Surf Coast with names like Palm Beach & Miami, we both felt sort of uncomfortable and all we wanted to do was head back up again! They had a few nice things to see such as tree kangaroos & an awesome looking wedge tailed eagle (commonly known here as a wedgie) but overall, this place had nothing on the Lone Pine sanctuary so it didn't take us long. I don't know how it got going but Aussie slang tends to put an "ie" on the end of everything. After a nice big breakie, you fill up the eskie, slide some sodas into stubbie holders, put on your sunnies, get on your pushie (bike) and head out looking for wedgies. It's easy peasey!... or something like that......
From Australia

Back up in the mountains, we explored & camped at Springbrook NP where they had a natural bridge formation, more great trails and views and peaceful surroundings. On the last day, we scurried over to Mt Warning in New South Wales to climb it. Named by Capt Cook, it is a volcanic plug, near the eastern most point, Cape Byron, in Australia and therefore the first place to see the suns rays each morning. We didn't make sunrise but we were there for lunch! It was a crystal clear day with good views after a steep but very manicured trail climb up. I often wonder if Capt Cook was a nervous person given the names he often chose for places. This marina is in Deception Bay, we climbed up Mt Warning... there are lots of other examples. Anyway, we trotted down the mountain and rushed back toward Brisbane to try & catch the Queensland koala sanctuary during opening hours but missed it by 10 minutes (but we saw a couple of them through the gate) so we called it a week and headed back to the boat. It was a great week and we continue to be amazed at our misconception of how (at least along the coast) lush & green AU is. Sometimes it reminds us of NZ, sometimes of the US and others, like no other place we've seen.
From Australia

Picking up & dropping off the car was so much fun. You might think that riding a bike the 35k to and from Brisbane airport area would be a yucky rude but oh no, not here! There's a bike path the whole way! It passes along the shore, through a huge wetlands reserve complete with bridges and boardwalks, nearly the entire way is off road out on it's own. So after dropping the car off, we stopped to have a picnic lunch at the Boondall wetlands and took a walk. That is where we saw 2 sets of Tawny Frogmouth birds that were nesting. They look something like owls but are not related. Common in AU, they blend in well with the trees and can be hard to spot, especially when they stretch their necks out long to look just like a branch. But this time of year, they are sitting on nests and tending to hatchlings so I suppose we had an advantage since the little puffball babies are still wobbly and conspicuous.
From Australia

And the past couple of days we've been back at boat projects. Yesterday we took the windvane off the stern (this is a back-up self steering device that we seldom use in favor of the lazy push button autopilot but it will surely come into it's own when that eventually fails). It took us all day to get the little replacement parts in place and polish off all the rust so now today, after a bike ride for exercise and some varnish coats on our wood projects, we'll hopefully get the windvane back on the stern all serviced and moving smoothly.

I'm sure there are details I wanted to tell you about what we've been doing that I've forgotten, but that is the bulk of it. We have another car rental lined up for Dec 2nd, from Sydney, which is why we are nervous about getting down there in time to be ready. We got some good discounts by booking early and we so want to explore this huge place before we have to drag ourselves away so we have to keep moving! We're still trying to figure out our route and how many miles we want to cover to see as many different areas of AU as we can to get a good feel for it without spending too much time in the car. This will be another 3 weeks in the tent.... well, we have the table now, we're getting a lamp for more ambiance and Jon ordered up some good Chinese power supply cords to hopefully solve our charging issue. Of course this all adds to what we carry to and from the boat, have to store, have to move whenever we want something. We figure about a third of our life is spent moving junk from one place to the next whatever we're doing. It doesn't matter where we are, we are still moving stuff around. The only part that makes it seem less ridiculous is that we can commiserate with others in the same boat.