Our Travel Blog

We started off with another small breakfast, which seems to be a good idea as I risked going on the scales and found I had lost 2lb since leaving home!!

After packing our bags we headed out towards the coast and Bribie Island for a bit of sightseeing and exercise, we crossed over the bridge onto the island and headed fro Red Beach. I have no idea why it is called Red Beach as there was no hint red anywhere around. There was:

But nothing red.

We backtracked to the mainland and picked up the Steve Irwin Highway; off in the distance we caught a glimpse of the Glass House Mountains. These are volcanic plugs.

We continued on towards our destination, Maroochydore, with a brief stop for lunch. We arrived at Lyn’s cousins house early afternoon and were met by Alasdair and Lynn. After a couple of hours of reminiscing by Alasdair and Lyn (there’s too many Lyn(n)s here) we were taken out for a tour of the local area.

We went back to the house for some liquid refreshment, more reminiscing and an excellent home cooked meal.

Tomorrow we head further north, now it’s time to enjoy the thunder storm that is brewing in the distance.

Maybe a day late, but I gained hero status today, more later!

After a good nights sleep we had our first “small” breakfast of the trip, a single small croissant and jam with “Canadian” coffee, all courtesy of food left by our hosts and a French press coffee maker. 

I again tried to fix Lyn’s notebook, hoping that after a good nights rest it may have healed itself, no such luck! We looked up a couple of computer places that may have power supplies and headed out. The first store we tried couldn’t help us, but sent us to a store called Jaycar. We went there, and I thought I was in Heaven! The store had a fantastic selection of electrical components. We spoke to one of the assistants who found us a power supply, but unfortunately, despite having a selection of 10 ore so computer plugs, it would not fit Lyn’s machine. I asked if the guy could test our power supply, and after a bit of fiddling with wire strippers, staples and a voltmeter we proved that the power supply was producing the requisite amount of volts when plugged into the notepad. Bad news; now we knew we had a dead notebook. The service from the staff at this store was fantastic, just a shame we didn’t have a better result

We headed out in search of Koalas. After a stern talking to last night my GPS realised the error of its ways and directed us to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary on the south side of Brisbane. We bought our tickets at the discounted Seniors rate, none of the N. American $2 off stuff, we got a full 33% off saving $12 each.

Apart from being a Koala sanctuary, there were may other species of Australian wild life there. As usual the pictures will do most of the talking.

The Koalas reminded me very much of the Pandas we saw at Chegdu, cute, cuddly and lethargic! They sleep for about 20 hours a day and eat eucalyptus leaves, which like the Panda’s bamboo is very low in nutrients.

Some Birds!

Now for some Kangaroos, you were allowed inside their area and were also allowed to interact with them. They have amazingly soft fur.

Smallest first.

A familiar sight from S. Africa last year, the Jacaranda tree, which is native to Brazil.

Sharing space with the Kangaroos were a couple of Emus.

And another Australian special

By the time we had walked around the sanctuary we were pretty beat, the temperature was 35C / 95F and I had managed to develop a cold overnight as well! We headed of to the cafe to get some lunch a recover.

Next stop was Mt. Coot-Tah to go to a look-out point to see the city.

We had planned to go into the city area for a walk along the river, but gave up on the idea due to the heat and humidity, we need a couple more days to acclimatise!

On the way back to the apartment we stopped off for some essential shopping, wine and cough drops!

Back “home”, Lyn’s computer was still not playing well so it was off to you tube to see how to disassemble it. I found a video and set to work with 3 kitchen knives, very soon the back was off. There was no smell of burning so I don’t think any smoke escaped from the components. I started checking all the cables on the motherboard, lo and behold the one connecting the power switch was so loose it came away from its socket when I touched it! Worked out how to open up the socket, reinserted the cable and locked the socket pushed the power button and………. it was as good as new, Lyn was suitability impressed and I am now her hero, at least for a couple of hours!!

Tomorrow we are off to visit relatives so there may not be a blog entry.

Not sure what to say about today! For our 42nd wedding anniversary many things did not go too well!

We went off to get breakfast, then returned to the hotel to finish packing. We had booked a shuttle van to the airport and it picked us up right on time, that was the end of the good vibes for a while.

When we arrived at Sydney Airport I discovered that all that was left of my FitBit was the strap…. the electronics element had disappeared. A quick call to the hotel set the search process in motion but unfortunately nothing was found. I have since discovered how it happened. When putting the backpack on the strap rubs against my left wrist and rotates the FitBit bracelet allowing the element to pop out.

We checked in for the flight and hit the lounge for an hour or so, then headed off to the gate. At boarding time a whole slew of people came through the gate from the wrong direction; our plane had only just arrived. The ground crew must have been on their toes as I think they had the aircraft turned around in less than 20 minutes. On board we found that there were 3 children under the age of  3 in the business class cabin of 12 seats. Luckily they quietened down as time progressed.

Just as we thought QANTAS had done a great job of mitigating the delay there was an announcement that one of the passengers had decided not fly, this meant all the bags had to be taken off and the offending passengers bags retrieved. We finally got airborne about 1 hour late. For a flight of just over 1 hour a meal service was provided throughout the aircraft, none of this Buy on Board stuff that Air Canada offers on flights over 3 hours. Very impressive!

We arrived in a very warm (30C  / 85F) Brisbane. We picked up our rental car and started to set up the GPS we had brought with us. We plugged in the address and the GPS politely informed us it couldn’t find it. Double and treble checked the address but the GPS wouldn’t play. A quick check of the car revealed it too had a GPS, unfortunately it would only tell us our LAT/LON and how many satellites it was receiving. Finally tried the phone, no problem, we were on our way.

We found our  apartment and decided our luck had changed, it was excellent! The owners had left the fridge stocked with goodies for breakfast as well as coffee and milk. Not only that, they had left us a bottle of wine for our wedding anniversary!

Once we had settled in Lyn switched her notebook on, nothing! We thought the battery had run too low so plugged in the charger. Still no life. Tried many things but no effect, it seemed as though no power was getting to the notebook, but without a voltmeter it was hard to tell In desperation I tried the well tested tongue across the power wires trick, no power. Now to try and find a replacement power supply.

We have no real plans for Brisbane, the main reason we stopped here for a couple of nights was because I hooked up with a cousin from the UK who now lives here. When I contacted him he seemed pleased with the idea of meeting up, but despite a number of e-Mails I heard no more from him.

That’s enough first world  doom and gloom for today, it’s time for dinner.

As many of you know, we are not great city explorers and (most) museums don’t interest us, so today was to be a lazy wander around the suburbs day with an ulterior motive or two.

We decided to go further afield from the hotel for breakfast as their prices were a little steep; we settled for a Chinese run pavement patio place. The food was good and the prices far more reasonable. The one thing we miss over here is the bottomless coffee concept of home at breakfast time, ah the sacrifices we make when traveling!

Back to the hotel to collect our stuff and finalise the route, then off we went to Kings Cross station where we needed to top up the Opal cards before heading out. Lyn had found a crafts store she wanted to visit, and I had been put in contact with a company that specialises in parts for the MGB. A project before next summer is to rebuild the carburetors, this company had the required kits for less than half the price I’d have to pay to get them from the USA. Conveniently their location was about two train stops from where Lyn wanted to go.

It took about 40 minutes to get there, with a 15 minute walk through a residential area at the end. One thing I have noticed here is there seem to be many ethnic areas rather then the more integrated society we are used to in Ottawa. This are was very much an Arab area with the shops selling produce to match. So far, even in the ‘burbs, we haven’t seen any new housing areas, most of the houses appear to have been built in the 50’s or 60’s. There are some apartment buildings going up, but nowhere near as fast as we are used to back home. It’ll be interesting to see if their population is growing or declining.

Once I had my goodies we trekked back to the station and headed off to out next destination. The store Lyn wanted was in a large shopping centre so we got to check that out as well. Lunch was first on the agenda so it was off to the 5* (not) food court. Lyn then spent a while in the stores while I played on the phone. Given the cheapness of data over here for the cell phones it seemed a waste not to use it.

After shopping was finished we headed back on the train for our final journey, one disadvantage for tourists using the Opal card is that any unused money cannot be refunded. This morning we were in the position of having $7 on the card but needed $9 for the trips so we had to top up. Topping up left us with $8 on the card at the end of the day. Opal will not make $8 profit off each of us, we’ll leave the cards at reception for some deserving tourists!

Back at the hotel we lounged around for a while, and then headed out to try to find a local geocache. Again we had no luck, but we couldn’t do too much searching as there were a lot of people around.

The geocache was centred around one of Sydney’s many sculptures, this one was the El Alamein Fountain designed by Robert Woodward as a memorial to the Australian Imperial Forces 9th Division and commemorates the Battle of El Alamein, Egypt, in World War II.

Around the edge of the fountain were a number of Australian Ibis, two of them appeared to be acting aggressively towards each other, but after a while we discovered one was a (large) chick, still been fed by parents.

In the background of the picture above is another sculpture, Angled Wheels of Fortune.

Tomorrow we head off to Brisbane for a couple of days.

Today’s plan was to head west to the Blue Mountains. The weather wasn’t as warm as yesterday and it was overcast. The forecast looked promising and the clouds were due give-way to some sun.

We headed down to breakfast, it was just warm enough to eat “al fresco’ so we had a repeat of yesterdays breakfast, but given the size of the sausages we cut down from 2 to 1.

Next off we made our way to Kings Cross station in search of an Opal card. The transport system here appears to be cashless with all transactions being conducted by tap cards. Surprisingly the transport company does not sell Opal cards, luckily the newsagents in the station did! One good thing about the system is that on Sunday the maximum amount debited from the cards balance is $2.70 Aus or $2.50 Cdn (aprrox. 25c US!!!) Considering it was to be a 2 hour trip each way this was fantastic value for money. Other days of the week the maximum amount debited is $15 which means you can use all the city buses and trains that you want and not spend more than $15. Pretty good value. Anyway that was the good news part.

The train was comfortable, but the track was all welded so no comforting clankedy-clank sounds as we traveled. The suburbs seemed to go on forever, but we finally broke out into the countryside and the hills, unfortunately the further west we went, the lower the cloud got. By the time we god to our destination at Katoomba we were well into the cloud. This was bad news as the plan was to take a bus and aerial tram tour around the area for its views. Given the visibility (or lack thereof) we decided not to splurge out on tickets, rather we walked around the town.

We also tried for our first Geocache of the trip, but we couldn’t it! Good news 1 Bad news 2!

We found a “bombed” tree at one of the churches, if you don’t know what a bombed tree is then e-Mail Lyn.

We stopped for lunch and as we looked out of the window we became convinced that the weather was not going to clear, so we made the decision to head back to Sydney. A disappointing trip, but at least it only cost us $2.70 each. You can’t win them all!!

Headed off for our final breakfast this morning. Lyn had done most of the packing last night, for some reason she wouldn’t let me help her! Last night for dinner we sampled some local meats, I had crocodile, Lyn had warthog ribs. Previously we had tried ostrich and gembok. We survived.

After leaving our bags at reception we took a taxi to the waterfront as we couldn’t be bothered to navigate the downtown traffic AND find somewhere to park! Our destination to day was Robben Island. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, some people say it’s a must do trip, others say don’t bother and yet others find it very emotional. The history of the island goes back many centuries and has been used variously for defence of Cape Town, a leper colony and more recently a prison for black, coloured and Asian male political prisoners. I had planned to describe it a little more, but it is one of those places I don’t think I could do justice to in a written description. You’ll have to come visit it yourself.

After we returned to the mainland we did some last minute shopping (Paul and Amanda, enjoy what little peace you can….. there may be very little after we meet the kids!!!).

We headed back to the hotel, the cab fare was 100 Rand on the outbound trip but the return trip was in rush hour and I saw the meter climbing quicker than my final 120 Rand liked. I told the driver I was running short on cash, but he said no problem we’d make it with change to spare…. He was right!

Having seen the traffic on the highway to the airport in the last few days we decide to leave in plenty of time, as it turned out we made good time after an initial delay where two highways converged.

We are now in the lounge with about an hour to go until we board, so this is just about the end of another great trip. We will be back? Yes we hope to be. Hopefully next time I do a better job of the planning and we get to do the train trip up to Victoria Falls. Despite all the overt signs of security e.g. wall, electric fences and guard dogs at many houses we always felt safe wherever we were. I believe as long as you apply a modicum of common sense, S. Africa is no more dangerous than many other places. So now you know!

The survey I mentioned yesterday is:

Where should we go next year?

A.   S. America

B.  European Riverboat Cruise

C.  Australian Gold Coast

I think I have the answer already but it would be interesting to here what you think.

That’s all for this trip, we’re off to Alabama again in the New Year, and another adventure next fall.