Tour Down Under

I went to the race today to get a picture of Lance and success! It only took 422 tries! Seriously. That is him in the lead. I think it was the second to last lap and he pulled ahead just in time for me to get a good shot. It was actually a pretty fun day, I couldn't believe how fast they go! And the weather was beautiful. I probably managed to get a few other pics of him, if you want to try to pick him out of the pack of a hundred guys on bikes. These 2 just were the best.

Dolphins!

There is a boat that leaves from the marina in front of my apartment that will take you our to swim with the dolphins. While I didn't like the swim part, you had to hold on to a rope attached to the back of the boat while snorkeling and the boat was still moving, just watching the dolphins was awesome. They came right up to the boat and watched us as much as we watched them.

The Rainforest

One of our days in Cairns was spent in the Rain Forest. Wee took a cable car ride above it (I think they said it was the longest cable car ride in the world, it took about 90 min with 2 stops) to get to the town in the center where there were some artsy markets. Then we took a train ride through it to get back to Cairns. It was a great day. Not much wildlife, but a lot of plants to see and waterfalls!

The Great Barrier Reef!

The Great Barrier Reef was wonderful! Mom and I took a boat ride out to Green Island where we spent the day on the beach snorkeling. We also took a semi submersible through the reef and they fed the fish while we were out there so we got to see a lot of fish!

Bendigo Ballarat and Melbourne

Ok so there are no pics of Melbourne here. i looked through the camera and realised we didn't take any. It was not a great city, very stressful driving. Basically, you had to make a left turn from the right lane all the time and I was lost. And they close the streets around our hotel to make it all a big sidewalk, nice to walk around but not nice driving in. We had a nice time after we got checked in and saw a good musical about drag queens, It was really good! But sorry, no pictures.

These are Bendigo. It was a nice pretty small city. Lots of older buildings and a great wool mill and pottery place!
In Ballarat we went to Sovereign Village, it is like Greenfield village except it is set up as an old gold mining town. This is all the little kids looking for gold!

The Great Ocean Road

Part of Mom and my road trip was the Great Ocean Road. I goes pretty much from Melbourne to Adelaide right along, you guessed it, the ocean. It is a really pretty drive and I bet it would be fun to drive it if you had the right car, mine made it not so fun. There are tons of twists and turns and hills, I think I went 30km per hour the whole trip.

We thought these were funny. They used to be used to tie boats too and they were everywhere.
One of the main sights is London Bridge. This used to be connected to the mainland and you could walk across it. Until about ten years ago when it collapsed in the middle and left a few people stranded on the other side.
This is called the 12 apostles. I think there used to be 12 of them, but we couldn't see that many. Plus It was super cold and ugly out so we didn't stick around long to try!
We drove through the rain forest and got to see many koalas in the trees. They would stare right at you and watch your every move, it was pretty cool.

Christmas Parade

This past weekend was the big Christmas Parade, or Pageant as they say here. It was kinda weird wearing a sun dress to watch a Christmas Parade, but I guess that is normal here. It was a lot bigger then I thought it would be, I guess there were about half a million people there, I thought it would just be a little parade!

Animal Park

We took a trip to the Gorge Animal Sanctuary. VERY nice place. This is mom feeding the kangaroos. Aren't the white ones unusual? I have never seen a peacock like this before. He was up on the roof of a picnic shelter just spinning in a circle.

And we got to hold Koalas!!!! We both held Molly. It was such a cool experience. She just sat there and ate her eucalyptus.

Coober Pedy

My mom has been here for the past 3 weeks for a very nice visit. We have had tons of fun together and went on several trips. Towards the end of her trip we decided to visit Coober Pedy, Opal Capital of the World. We decided t0 take an overnight bus trip there. I would not recommend it. Anywho. Coober Pedy was basically a small town in the middle of the outback. The only shops were about a dozen jewelry stores selling opal jewelry. We ended up getting some real pretty mosaic pendants. We got into town at 5:40 am. Yep, that was due to the fun bus ride. Of course nothing was open, But we were lucky to find a bakery that opened up for us and we had a nice morning and had some very good apple cake. Then of course we explored the shops to find the best jewelry. Then we took a tour that took us all over town and in to the outback and the opal fields. It was really good. Our tour guy was an opal miner and he had lived in the town for over 40 years, so he had tons of good stories. His real name was some unusual Greek name, but everyone in town called him Jimmy the Runner. (He runs marathons). Anywho, enough talk, here are some pics of Coober Pedy and the Outback.

Me and Mom in the Outback. This area all used to be an inland sea.

This is a mining field. All those hills are from the shafts they dig to find opals.

Did I forget to mention they live UNDER GROUND here?????

Look closely at this graveyard.... Do you see the keg as a tomb stone???? The stone says something like Stay and have a drink on me.

Not a very big town, huh?

Sunset

The clouds looked realyl pretty the other night after the sun went down. This si the view from my apartment!

More Granite Island

I liked how they carved things out of the granite on the island.
This is the trolley you can take to the island.

Full shot of Granite Island

Victor Harbor

I took friday off of work and drove down to Victor Harbor. Supposedly, this is where you can see the whales. I did not see them, but it was a pretty drive down and a nice place to spend the day. This is Granite island. You walk across this bridge to get to it. Or you can take a horse drawn trolley.


This is the species of penguin that lives in Australia and they were out on the island.

A natural pile of rocks on Granite Island