Long live the Queen!

This week Queen Elizabeth II made her 16th visit to Australia as reigning monarch.  Australia has a rather strong republican movement but they were no where in sight this week, as thousands of people gathered for a view of her where ever the Queen went.

The Queen was in Brisbane on Monday for a 4 hour visit.  She met with flood victims and unveiled a new rainforest garden.  People lined up for hours just to catch a glimpse of her and we were able to see the crowds from our office.  Like a good colonial, JB went down to the nearest bridge with some co-workers to watch the Queen's ship dock at Southbank. 

Security Sea-doos ahead of her arrival

The Queen's ship docking

JB was a little too far back to really be able to see her, but there was no doubt when the Queen stepped onto the dock as the crowd went completely wild!  The cheers could be heard well on the other side of the river, so there is no doubting the support she has here.   Later in the week there was a "mooning" incident, so maybe not quite everyone was celebrating her arrival the same way.

There were numerous headlines and stories about this being her farewell visit and how this is the last opportunity to see her.  She is a rather spry 85 and Phillip is an extremely well kept 90.  Her mother lived to be 101, so the Queen could well have another 20 years on the throne.  We hope the next time she's here she reads the articles from this year out loud and proudly declares herself to be still alive.  And then Phillip can clock the guy who mooned them. 

Spring

Bougainvillea walkway

Spring is the air in Brisbane, but we still aren't quite accustomed to all of the signs of the season.  In Canada we have melting snow, trees that seem to turn green overnight and all kinds of flowers and perennials that poke their heads out of the soil once it starts to thaw.  Here, since it doesn't freeze and the native trees don't drop their leaves, we need to work a little harder to see the signs of the season.

All along the Southbank suburb is a walkway borderd by a wire trellis.  Bougainvillea line the trellis and they are in bloom the entire year.  We noticed yesterday, though, that the blooms definitely have more punch than they did a month ago.  The entire walkway is slowly turning magenta and it will be completely flowered in by the end of summer.

Oooohhhhh...pretty

The one sign that seems the most "Canadian" (well, from a temperate zone) to us is seeing the Jacaranda trees go into bloom.  Jacarandas are not native to Australia and they drop their leaves for the winter.  Beginning in early spring they bloom beautiful purple flowers.  These are quite large trees, up to 30m, and they line the river as well as feature as a prominent tree in yards and parks.  Looking out over the city they appear as great purple clouds.  They really are a wonderful sign of spring and a fantastic import from South America and the Carribean.  We can only imagine how much the squirrels would love leaping around in these!

Jacarandas along the Brisbane River

Jacaranda "clouds"

Nature's Fury

We have been inundated by nature these past couple of weeks.  We have had crazy winds that have made it hard to walk, sharks in golf course water hazards (giving hazards a whole new and meaningful definition) and almost 50mm of rain in the past 3 days.   For all of this, nothing compares to the spider that we found in our bedroom the other night.
We had a spate of cool nights recently and have been sleeping with the window open.  Like most Australian homes we don't have screens in the windows, so we only had the window open a crack, but obviously it was enough.  We went upstairs to get ready for bed and there it was, a gigantic golden orb weaver.  It was easily the size of an adult's hand (legs span) and it did not go down without a fight!  We had a can of bug killer that can drop a cockroach in it's tracks, but a 10 second shot barely stopped this monster.  All it did was knock the spider off the wall...and directly onto our bed!  Finally after 10 horrifying minutes of spraying and a well aimed vacuum nozzle, the spider was gone.  It was bad enough to find it in the bedroom but we couldn't help but ask ourselves: how long was it there and it is the only one?  The bug spray now resides on our bedside table.

Adelaide

Adelaide

After spending a week in Cairns and Port Douglas, JB had one day at home before heading off to Adelaide for a three day work conference.  It was a whirl-wind tour, but well worth the trip.

Adelaide is a very pretty city, with wide streets and low buildings.  The office tower on the left hand side of the picture (above) is one of the taller buildings in the city.  It seems like a very small town compared to Brisbane, although it has about 1.2 million people, making it about the size of Calgary.  Unfortunately there was no chance to visit the Barossa or any other wine regions, as the entire three days were taken up with work.  It will be worth paying another visit for a holiday, or at least getting in a weekend before or after a work trip.

River park, outside of the convention centre

Adelaide is unique in Australia as it is the only city that was created as the centre of a "free" state, meaning this is not a city that was founded to be settled by convicts or victims of transport.  It is very well planned and laid out.  The city centre is nicely laid out and everything is within a square mile plan.  There are numerous fine restaurants and it has a great reputation for all things food and wine related.

We spent some of the weekend watching sports, as it was almost impossible to completely avoid.  The Australian Rules Football League and the Rubgy League both have their grand finals this weekend.  This is also the final weekend of regular play in the World Cup of Rugby.  (This is the league in which Mike Tindall, recently wed to Zara Phillips aka grand-daughter of the Queen, plays.)  We joined many other Canadians to watch Team Canada take on the New Zealand All Blacks, arguably the best team in the world.  We may not have won the game, but by far our team has the best beards!

Read all about it here:  http://sports.nationalpost.com/2011/09/16/adam-kleebergers-beard-gets-plenty-of-attention-at-the-rugby-world-cup/

FNQ - Part 2 of 2

Our first full day in Port Douglas was spent walking through the serene (at this time of year...it is a raging and violent river during the rainy seaon) Mossman Gorge, with it's lovely waterfalls and pathway through the rainforest.  Then came the first highlight of our trip: a cruise on the Daintree River.  The Daintree River is an estuary, full of snakes, crocodiles and sometimes even sharks!  Where could you find more danger!

Mossman Gorge

The crocodiles are really quite sneaky.  They can stay very still for hours at a time, and you really wouldn't know they are there.

We were lucky to pull up right beside one that was resting on a sandbar (her name is Gump, she is about 10 years old, and is approx 3 metres long), then we chugged around and tried to spot some lurking in the water.  They are VERY hard to spot, even when the guide points them out.  They look very much like semi-submerged logs, and have a tendency to hang out amongst the logs, so it takes a well trained eye to see them right away.  We saw a number of sizes of crocodiles, lots of birds and even a pretty cute tree snake.  It might sound like a creepy trip, but we both enjoyed it immensely and would strongly recommend it to anyone.

Gump the croc on her sandbar, log-looking sneaky croc...just waiting for one of us to fall in the water!

Tree snake, her head is in the middle of the photo

The following day we drove out to Cape Tribulation, where Captain Cook and his crew were stranded for three months, doing repairs to their ship after the Endeavour hit the reef.  There are much worse places to be stranded than this!

Cape Tribulation

On Thursday we took a catamaran trip out to the Low Isles on the inner Great Barrier Reef.  It was a fantastic trip and an easily the second highlight of our trip (although it ties for first place!)  We were really lucky to be on a boat that can take up to 23 passengers, but only 7 were booked that day.  It felt like we were on a private charter.  The water was lovely and we saw all kinds of beautiful soft corals, turtles, brilliantly coloured fish (we found Nemo!) and even some rather cute black-tipped reef sharks.  The sharks hung around the boat after lunch, waiting for the free prawns, left over from lunch.  They know how to get a free meal!  This was a wonderful way to see the reef...it was a brilliant sunny day, JB learned how to snorkel and JT got to steer the boat...the $2.5 million dollar boat! 

Green Turtle out for a swim

Low Isles, where we went snorkelling

Finally we had one last day to see Four Mile Beach in Port Douglas and go for a swim in the sea and then again back at the hotel pool.  We loved this trip so much that we realize we could easily spend all of our vacations travelling around to see Australia.  Our only problem is trying to decide where to go next!

Four Mile Beach, Port Douglas

FNQ (Far North Queensland) (Part 1 of 2)

We are now back from our fabulous week in Far North Queensland.  We spent two days in Cairns and 5 days in Port Douglas, about 45 minutes north of Cairns.  We saw Paronella Park, took the skyrail tram up to Kurunda, walked through the Mossman Gorge, took a Daintree River Cruise, drove up to Cape Tribulation and snorkelled off the inner Great Barrier Reef.  We travelled by just about every means imaginable and really need a weekend of R and R to get ready for the work week.

Cairns Lagoon

We started our trip in Cairns, where we spent one day looking around and one day driving to and from Paronella Park.  Cairns is a city of about 150,000 people.  It is a city that is right on the coast, but that section of the coast is all mudflats, no beach, so they have built up a great park area and lagoon for swimming.  It looked like it was very well used and enjoyed by everyone.

We went to Paronella Park to see the ruins of a modern castle that was started in the 1930s.  It is a pretty neat place to wander around and it really has a "tropical ruin" feel about it (in a good way).  The main castle building looks out over a water fall that was the source of the first water-powered generator in the area.  The Park actually had power before the nearest town of Innisfail!

Main Castle at Paronella Park

There is a guided tour to one end of the park, then the guide leaves you on your own to find your own way back to the entrance.  There a plenty of places to poke around and they also give everyone a bag of fish food the feed the fishes.  We somehow managed to attract a very scary looking eel to our feeding spot!

Scary looking but harmless eel



On Monday we drove to the "skyrail" station to take us to the town of Kurunda.  The skyrail offers some really beautiful vistas of the area and of the rainforest canopy.  There are two stops within the rainforest, so the whole ride up takes about an hour.

Rainforest from the skyrail

We had about 4 hours in Kurunda, which is a pretty small town.  We went for a jungle walk, had a long lunch and looked in every possible shop and gallery the town had to offer.  There is an old train that takes about 90 minutes to get you from Kurunda back to a little transfer point that is about 5 minutes from the skyrail station.

Kurunda Train

View from the train

The train has cars are from the early 1900's to 1930's and run pretty slowly along a winding track.  There is narration that highlights some of the difficulties in building the railway and the hardships that early settlers encountered.  There is plenty to see and, at the end of the train, plenty to be thankful for, since neither one of us can imagine living in that hot of an area without air conditioning or running water!

Cairns

After a very hectic week at work, rushing to get everything done so that we could have a relaxing holiday, we are now in Cairns.  This is our first time in Northern Queensland and it has a very different feel from Brisbane.  This is a very hot and tropic place, and has a resorty-ness to it that gives it a much slower pace. 
Today we drove from Cairns to Paronella Park, about 90 minutes south.  We actually drove through both Edmonton and Innisfail to get there and, like in Alberta, Edmonton is north of Innisfail.  It was a little bit of Canada!
Paronella Park (pictures to be posted once we have a better internet connection) is a really beautiful park in a rainforest setting.  It started in the 1930s when a Spaniard, Jose Paronella, fulfilled his dream of building a Spanish castle in the tropics.  The grounds were set up with a ballroom/movie theatre, swimming hole, boce green, tennis court and walking path.  It was a very early theme park.  After Jose died and his family were no longer able to run it, the park was sold to a third party.  In 1979 a fire went through the castle grounds.  The entire place fell into ruin until the 1990s, when the new owners took over.  They haven't refurbished anything, but they have opened up the park to the public and we can now all walk through castle ruins in the midst of the jungle!  It is a fascinating place!