We are really enjoying seeing Australia, up close and personal. Tuesday March 11, we drove our little motor home south from Cairns to Townsville; it was about 350 Kilometers (about 250 miles). It was a slower drive than we expected, the posted speed was 100 km, but we rarely could go that fast; not freeway driving, but two lane traffic with quite a few road repair slowdowns and stops. We got into Townsville mid afternoon and spent the rest of the afternoon resting, reading and enjoying our “down time”. The drive was very beautiful, a real look of the tropics, LOTS, lots and lots more sugar cane along the road. We also saw many banana plantations. The bananas were curiously all covered up in plastic bags. Many different colored bags, so it gave them an interesting look. Because we have seen so many fruit bats, we are wondering if that is why they were under wraps(you can view fruit bats with 4 foot wing spans on the Daintree blog).
Wednesday morning – Mike's BIG 60th Birthday, we took the ferry from Townsville to Magnetic Island, Maggie as the locals refer to it. We enjoyed a nice tour of the island and saw many interesting things. Karen’s favorite was feeding the Rock Wallabies. We visited many of the locations that we had been to 36 years ago, of course everything is different. Returning to the mainland we went to the Reef HQ – Aquarium based on life of the Great Barrier Reef. It was interesting and had a great number of fish that we didn’t get to see on our visit to the GBR. We celebrated Mike’s natal anniversary at a restaurant on the wharf, sitting outside, it was still very warm, oh, and yes we are still in the tropics. Australia is in the middle of a real heat wave. Many of the major cities are reaching record temperatures (38-40 degrees C, or 106-110F), we have been lucky; it has been in the low 30 degrees Celsius (90degrees Fahrenheit or so) with quite high humidity. Each day we get a bit more accustomed to it.
Thursday morning, March 13, 2008 we headed south again towards Mackay (386 kilometers) away. It was a very pretty drive, still lots of cane fields and eucalyptus trees. We didn’t see any Koala Bears, but we did see some interesting road kill, a kangaroo, wallaby, echidna, boa snake and many colorful birds. The trip so far has been such a wonderful adventure, we are loving it. It is everything we had hoped it would be and more. Wish we had more time in each little city. Till the next blog – Mike & Karen
1 comment:
Good morning, mates! When I was in Kauai, there were signs up about some sort of banana disease there. I checked on line, and saw that in July of last year there were articles in the local papers about BBTV (banana bunchy top virus). Yikes...perhaps it's spreading!
Cleave -- Your hair in the picture with French and the margaritas reminds me of my school picture the first year I was in Florida. I walked with my class from one building to another (and it wasn't far) for pictures, and I looked like I'd run a marathon, then added Vaseline to my hair! I got used to the humidity there but it took a while. Thank goodness for hats!
Have fun, you two crazy kids!
Char
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