Australia has been good to us! Check in at Burnett Head was pretty painless other than what we expressed before--$390 for visas and $380 for the privilege to give officials your fresh and frozen fruit, meat and veggies. We didn't have to wait long since you warn them again and again when you're coming in but in the meantime we were able to get some water and talk to locals about heading up the Burnett river to Bundaberg. They gave us one more number to call and try to get our $330 visa overcharge returned but the government wouldn't budge on that.

Bio-Security was actually more interested in termites than food. As the officer opened every locker he would comment that it was all clean white epoxy inside with no wood. He said again and again this boat has great construction and he wished all boats were like that. The little wood we do have he looked closely at, with lights and mirrors. He finally proclaimed termites would not have any interest in our boat. Moving on he said I'm sure you have a clean bottom right? (Yes just repainted in Fiji) then he asked do you have bikes? (Yes but they are folded and in carry cases) then he said Oh then you must have cleaned the tires! (Yes of course) he then found a jar full sea shells and just put them back (why are these ok?) only land snails are a problem. He was so nice that he thanked us for showing him such a unique boat as he left.

With our local knowledge. we carefully made our way the 10 miles to Bundaberg. With our 9 ft draft, it was scary but no scrapes on the bottom.

Our two weeks went fast as we revisited and took pictures of the hospital where Celeste was born, the school Nathan attended for 5 months, the little free zoo with birds, emus, wallabies, lizards and dingos-a great start to getting to know Aussie animals. The picture I chose was from the Lone Pine Sanctuary where we got to pet koalas, feed and pet kangaroos and much more. This trip we did with another friend from Brisbane. But in Bundaberg, we were thrilled to visit friends who were still in the area after 23 years!!

When it was time to go, we carefully motored down the Burnett river at high tide and saw a minimum depth of 11 feet. It was a nervous time for a deep water ocean boat like ours. We anchored at the Burnett heads and called the coast guard for a report on the shallow sandy straights. It was impassable for 5 days until the new moon tides. So we had to beat 50 miles back out of Hervey Bay to get to the open ocean. The good news was that the forecast was for NW winds for the next 36 hours. We sailed the 50 miles out of the bay in light winds and averaged 3-4 knots, at the offshore buoy the wind filled in from the North just at sunset and we blasted south down the coast at 10-11 knts. We made up so much time that after we had sailed 235 Nmi we anchored in Morton Bay in just 35 hours. Just before the heavy winds hit from the south. We are now in Brisbane tied to the piles just off of the Botanical gardens right in the down town area. It's only $70 a week but you can't book ahead so its touch and go if you will get a mooring. Anchoring is done all along the river also. It feels good to be in this beautiful spot and we will be meeting some old Aussie friends from when Celeste was born. They took us up to Toowomba and Chinchilla where we saw wild emus and wallabies and enjoyed the festival of flowers in Toowomba!

Brisbane has their festival Sept 27 which was 20 minutes of fireworks we could see from our boat! We had friends aboard to enjoy it with us. Last weekend was their open house so we went inside lots of their heritage buildings and churches for free. Brisbane has lots of free art galleries but the open house was well worth it.

Now we're off for Port Stephens to meet up with 3 other Seattle couples! After that is Sydney where our son Nathan and his wife will join us.