An Illustrated and Abbreviated Account of Australia

With every day, week, month that passes I feel a little bit more guilty about this blog. It’s a bit like forgetting to call a friend or relative back –  the longer it goes the more nervous you become, building and building the tension in your head until instead of a simple phone call (or in this case blog update) it becomes an insurmountable task. You make up ridiculous scenarios that involve being berated for not calling sooner, or losing the respect of the person for life.

In this case it’s not just the respect of one person we are losing with bad blogger behavior, it’s the respect of all three of our devoted readers.  So, to the three of you  (or is it two now? Mom, are you still reading this?) we apologize. We will try and do better in the future with our updates. But no promises because sometimes life just happens.  So here begins a series of cliff’s notes style blog entry of our Australia photos and stories.

Our Australia photos illustrate many of the lovely things we did, including visiting Stradbroke island, diving on the Great Barrier Reef and falling in love with Sydney. Stradbroke island, just off the coast of Brisbane, is a land of amazing Australian wildlife, tea tree lakes, incredible sunsets and picturesque fishermen and surfermen just going about their daily lives in paradise.

My cousin Kyle who is awesome and also a great instigator lit a fire under our tushies to go out on the reef on a diving/snorkeling live aboard. It was great fun and included such highlights as my first dive, my first night dive, Tom’s up close experiences with tiny clownfish and gigantic clams and a school of 24 squid!  And of course – Twister on the deck.

Back on land we also managed to have a good time. I think the pictures say a lot more than I even want to.

After the party-time excellent scene in Cairns we enjoyed some quieter rainforest and beach time in Cape Tribulation before heading off into the sunset to Sydney.

I most definitely liked Sydney the first time that I visited. It was August which in opposite land (Australia) means it was smack dab in the middle of winter. Sydney in the winter is a very nice city. Sydney in the full throes of summer is absolutely irresistible and she knows it!

In Sydney we saw a Harry Potter museum exhibit, had a fancy high tea with cocktails at the Victoria Tea Room and walked all over the place, succumbing to Sydney’s charms at every turn.

Now if you’ll excuse me. I have some phone calls I need to make.