Friday December 1st – Saturday December 9th, 2000
Latitude 27 degrees 11 minutes 06 seconds South
Longitude: 153 degrees 06 minutes 03 seconds East
Scarborough Harbor Marina
David and I spent the next few days exploring Sydney with Carolyn and Richard. We visited the Sydney Aquarium only to find out we arrived the same day as 200 2nd grade children did. That made for a very noisy trip through the aquarium, but we enjoyed it despite the screaming children. They had many wonderful displays at the aquarium, including sharks and giant manta rays. The Great Barrier Reef display had many of the wonderful fish we had been seeing along the way. It was a very interesting aquarium. After some lunch at the Temple of Love we wandered over to the famous Sydney Opera House. It was locked up so you couldn’t go inside but we walked around the exterior and had many photo opportunities of the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge. The Opera house was designed by the Danish architect Joern Utzon. Construction began in 1959, and wasn’t fully completed until 1973. David and I picked up a schedule for the events and hope to make it back there sometime for a show.
Saturday we started the long drive back to Scarborough. We had one interesting stop along the way at the Billibong Koala Bear Park. This was a petting type zoo, with all kinds of typical Australian animals. We were able to see Wallabies, Kangaroos, and even get my hand just about pecked off while feeding an Emu! We were very lucky to arrive during the time when the Koala bears are awake. Being that these little creatures are marsupials they have to sleep around 18 hours a day. If they don’t, they are unable to digest their food of eucalyptus leaves and will eventually die. So the keeper of the bears is very careful about how long the koalas are awake. We were able to touch and pet the little guys. The baby even tried to give me a kiss on the cheek! I can’t remember the last time I saw anything so cute in my life! They are so soft and cuddly, I wish I could have taken him home, but they are hard to take care of and Dewey wouldn’t be too happy when he got back home either. We finally managed to tear ourselves away from the bears and head back down the road. The scenery along the Australian coast was spectacular, scattered with beautiful beaches, banana plantations and horse ranches with rolling hills.
Base camp for the next week of adventure was the Scarborough marina, from here we took many day trips. One day was spent exploring and touring the Mount Cotton Estate Winery. They make some lovely wines here in Australia and we had the pleasure of tasting a few. David had arranged for us to go horseback riding in the outback, so that day of adventure was pretty exciting considering I’m the only one with any horse experience. After everyone was geared up with their crash helmets, off we went into the mountains and outback. It was fun, for they ride English style here and we all had those lovely English derby helmets on, we were quite the site. Halfway through the ride they stopped us at a lovely creek and served us English tea with bread and jam. Only the English would stop for tea on a horse back ride. We had a great time crossing rivers, trotting along the outback and spying the occasional kangaroo, various unidentified birds and lizards! After the horse back ride was over we ventured onward to a cave that was to have glowworms in it, but being that it was still daylight it was impossible to see them, guess I’ll have to go back at night sometime.
The next few days we spent traveling around to various beaches on the sunshine coast and hiking along some beautiful trails through the forest. We saw dolphins, sea turtles, the famous kookaburra bird and a koala way up in the tree. We had great adventures with Carolyn and Richard and now it was time for them to leave and take the plane down to Sydney. Something tells me they still had a couple of days of hard core exploring in Sydney to do before they flew back home. David and I were wiped out so we spent the next few days relaxing before adventuring again.
New Australian terminology for the day: Billabong is a water hole in a dried up river bed, know to those in the know as a ox-bow bend in the river that has been cut off in the dry season.
Sunday December 10th - Friday December 22, 2000
Latitude 27 degrees 11 minutes 06 seconds South
Longitude: 153 degrees 06 minutes 03 seconds East
Scarborough Harbor Marina
Thursday David and I drove down to Surfer’s Paradise to visit our friends Shiriri for the day. They are anchored in a bay called Southport and we hadn’t seen them since they left New Caledonia in October. We celebrated Heather’s and Anne’s birthday and spent the day exploring the countryside in the area. We came across a roadside stand selling bananas and avocados. It was a pretty humorous stand called “Banana Benders” and had a giant Popeye bending a banana. We had a good time reminiscing with them and then it was time to head back to our neck of the woods again.
On Friday the marina hosted a spectacular Christmas party for everyone marina. It was held in the adjacent park for there were over 150 people in attendance. We were to bring our country flag to hang in the park so we could see how many different countries were there. The local news paper photographer showed up to take group pictures by country. It was pretty exciting seeing all the different flags from around the world; American, Canadian, German, Swiss, English, Finish, Danish, Italian, Brazilian, French, New Zealand, and Australian. There was quite an assortment of people, with English being the common language amongst the majority, the others were just plain hard to talk to. It was a fun night of making new friends and celebrating.
Unfortunately I have come down with another deadly disease. This time I have phenomena and started taking antibiotics, so I spent the next week quarantined in the v-berth so I wouldn’t make David sick. David was busy running around arranging for Deweys return. We will have him picked up at quarantine and flown up to Brisbane. It’s a long two days of driving from Sydney and the poor guy has been through enough with out a two day car ride. The whole week before Christmas (known as “Chrissy” in the land down under), the city of Brisbane was to have fireworks and celebrations on the river by the South Bank area. By Friday I was feeling well enough for an outing so David and I, along with Ed and Kirsten ventured into the city for a night of fun. We checked out the South Bank Urban Arbor. It was fantastic and has won several urban design awards. We found some dinner at one of the restaurants and then walked around waiting for the fireworks to begin. Finally the fireworks happened. They were absolutely fantastic. They were shot off a barge in the Brisbane River. They really go all out in this town for Christmas. Of course it’s the height of their summer here and so lots of people are out on the park lawns having picnics and watching the fireworks. After the fireworks were over we wandered back over to the Queen Street mall area and had a visit inside the giant Treasury Casino. They almost didn’t let David in because he didn’t have the right kind of shorts on. The interior of the building was spectacular, lots to look at and take in. We didn’t do any gambling but had fun watching everyone else. As we walked back to the car, via Queen Street we were treated to an Ariel Circus taking place as well as many street performers and musicians. This place really rocks at “Chirssy”!
New Australian terminology for the day: Banana Bender- is a resident of Queensland. Queensland is the state in Australia that we are living in.
Chrissy- Christmas
Pressy- presents
Saturday December 23 – Thursday December 28th, 2000
Latitude 27 degrees 11 minutes 06 seconds South
Longitude: 153 degrees 06 minutes 03 seconds East
Scarborough Harbor Marina
We spent the next few days relaxing and working on a few boat projects as well as getting ready for Christmas. The stores and malls were jammed packed with people getting ready for the hustle and bustle of Christmas. None of that is going on at our boat. Things are very relaxed at the marina. Christmas day arrived and we spent a nice quite morning together until we were visited by Ed. We gave him a present and sent him on his way so we could open ours. It was so hot here today. At noon the temperature was 97 degrees and the humidity is extremely high as well, no one felt like baking or cooking, yet there was a gathering of food and people in the park today. All of us boaties that had no where else to go, all met up in the park for some food, company and fun. One of the boaties had wrapped all the picnic tables up like giant Christmas packages and had little koala bears on them. It was very cute. There was lots of cooking on the barbie as well as lots of food on the tables. We had a very jolly afternoon celebrating with our fellow boaties.
The day after Christmas, known, as “Boxing Day” in the land down under, is another holiday. But more importantly this is the day we get Dewey back! We drove out to the airport to get him and he was there waiting for us. Apparently they were able to get him on an earlier flight, but nobody called us to let us know. He was so happy to see us. I think he had worn out his meow, for he could barely squeak one out for us. When he got back to the boat he jumped right into the cockpit, down the companion way and into his bed. He hadn’t forgotten a thing. I think he was extremely glad to back home. After a little time of adjustment we gave him a good bath. They didn’t ever clean or brush him in quarantine because Dewey wouldn’t let them near him. We gave him a good scrubbing and got all that extra hair off him. That cooled him and us off on this hot day. Now things are feeling like they are back to normal with our Dewey back!
Thursday we got a big Christmas package from my brother Mark and his family, it was stuffed with all kinds of goodies from home. David was so happy when he discovered that they sent him the movie Gladiator. We can’t buy any movies here, for they are the wrong format to fit in our DVD player and VCR, so this was a big treat for him. He immediately stuck it in the player and spent the day watching his movie. I’m saving my movie for New Years Eve entertainment.
New Australian terminology for the day: Barbie- barbecue (BBQ)
Boxing Day- Holiday on December 26th
Friday December 29th, 2000 – Tuesday January 2nd, 2001
Latitude 27 degrees 11 minutes 06 seconds South
Longitude: 153 degrees 06 minutes 03 seconds East
Scarborough Harbor Marina
David and I drove down to Southport to get Anne and bring her back up to Scarborough to spend New Years with us. We had a nice day exploring the area with her parents and then it was back to Scarborough. Saturday we had Martin and Christie over from the boat Windrunner to watch my new movie. Martin treated us to some of his home brew beer for refreshments. Sunday, David, Anne and I packed up for a day celebrating New Year’s eve the Australian way in Brisbane. We soon found ourselves on Queen Street in David’s new favorite Irish pub. We were told that we couldn’t stay in the pub past 6:00 because we weren’t dressed up enough. We soon saw young men coming in suits and tuxedoes. Well it was on to find a new spot, but everywhere we went we were being turned away for having shorts on or not being dressed up enough. Are these guys crazy? Its only about 100 degrees outside, who’s going to dress up when its that hot, but apparently that is how they do things in oz on New Years Eve. We finally found an Irish pub that would let us in to get something to eat and drink. Even though they said they had a dress code on the door, they let us in. There were a lot of suits and nice dresses in the joint, but there were a few people dressed like us as well. By now it’s getting dark so we make our way over to the South Bank area of the Brisbane River. They had 3 bands playing in the park plus many other attractions. At 8:00 the first set of fireworks were fired off a barge in the river. After the fireworks we found a reggae band to listen too and then at 9:00 the fireworks went off again! This happened every hour until midnight. By 10:00 the park was getting too crowed to enjoy so we wandered back to Queen Street where there were several locations where there was a DJ with large screen TV’s playing music videos. There were a wide variety of people dancing and enjoying the music. By 11:30 we made our way back to the river to watch the fireworks. By this time they had closed off the bridge over the river to all traffic and the bridge was packed with people. We made our way down to the banks of the river and found a place to sit amongst the crowd. At midnight we were treated to a fireworks display like none I had ever seen before. They had 3 barges in the river all shooting off fire works at the same time. From our perch on the banks of the river we had to watch the fireworks through some eucalyptus trees, which seemed a fitting way to watch the firework spectacular in Australia. After the 40 minutes of fireworks we headed back through the crowds and found our hotel room for the night. We decided it was best to stay in town and walk rather then get on the road and drive with all the drunks. We found our room, popped the Champaign and toasted the wonderful year that had just ended and the promise of the new one ahead.
Just when we thought the celebrations were over, it turns out that January 1st, 2001 starts the year long centennial celebration in Australia! January 1st marks the 100 years of Australian Federation. It is the day that 6 separate British states came together to form the Australian Federation. So the country as we know it today is now 100 years old. As most things in Australia, any cause for a celebration brings out the best of everything. We settled in to watch the 3-hour parade on TV that was taking place in Sydney. We learned a lot about Australian history by watching this parade and all the achievements that Australians of proud of. How lucky for us that we are here for this celebration. There will be many wonderful events taking place while we are here to celebrate the 100th birthday of this country. Tuesday we drove back to Southport to deliver Anne back to her parents. We did a little exploring in Surfer’s Paradise before we took her back. The big find of the day was the Starbucks coffee shop! The first one we have seen since we left California. It was fun to go in and have a coffee. It was a little taste of home in this somewhat foreign land.