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 Star Attarctions
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.