The Sometime Coast

The coastal path to Kings Beach

We traveled north of Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast. I am calling it the Sometime Coast because sometime we'll have to come back and have more of a look about. Coming here was part of a home exchange with Jerry and Cathy McBrien, who stayed at our family's house in Lake Tahoe during their "Ski Around the World trip" (I love this: three months on the same ski pass to resorts in Colorado, Lake Tahoe, France, Switzerland and Japan!). This exchange gave us two weeks in Pelican Waters, in their lovely, new, and very comfortable home. We were lucky enough to be met by Lyn and Jeff Freebody who live across the street and who gave us a great intro to the local beaches, shopping and the coastal trail. They have been our constant source of local knowledge, beer, laughs, and all around assistance. And just his morning, Jeff delivered our dive gear which we weren't sure was ever going to make it through customs, quarantine, DHL, and the robots. Long story but Jeff and Lyn are our heros.

Rainbow lorikeets boozing it up

When we first landed here Jeff said "We went to sleep in Brisbane and woke up in Florida". He was right, this area closely resembles where I grew up on the west coast of Florida with lots of water, development, retirees, and holiday rentals. As we got to know the place, the differences became more apparent. There is the vast open ocean and accompanying surf; the nearby mountains and hinterlands; the amazing birdlife; marsupials (kangaroos, wallabies and koalas which we have seen nearby out in the bush), and the charming Aussie accent. OK, so not so much like Florida when we got to know it more.

The vegetation leans towards more tropical species but two ubiquitous trees there remind me of Florida: Australian pines and Melaleuca trees (paper bark). Those are two trees introduced to Florida for various reasons and have become invasive species there. This is their natural habitat and you see swaths of them. One difference here with the Australian pines is that they feed several incredible birds including the glossy black cockatoo, corellas and the riotous rainbow lorikeet. We've seen flocks of them in the coastal trees. Apparently they get a little sauced on the sugars in the cones causing them to squawk up a storm and sometimes fall from the trees. The other tree, Melaleuca were planted in Florida to drain low lying areas and spread to cause many problems. Here's they are quite lovely and produce tea tree oil. But I digress...

Paper bark tree forest

With two weeks in one place, you think we would have gotten out and explored all the area has to offer: the nearby Glass House Mountains, numerous small hinterland towns, Steve Irwin's Australian Zoo, the Big Pineapple and so much more. While we did get out in the mountains a bit and got to explore Noosa, we've seen very little. And that's OK. There are four simple reasons for this:

1. The house is too comfortable. It has central air, a great kitchen and lots of room. It's hot here and, like Florida in the summer, inside is the place to be after, say 10 AM until the late afternoon. 
2. We have both have had colds. It was bound to happen sometime over this year and it's really good that it happened here where we can recuperate and before we start the Great Barrier Reef portion of our trip. 
3. It is so nice to cook our own food. We'll be on Lady Elliot Island eating their food for a week and then on a liveaboard dive boat for another week soon after that. So for now, we cook our own food and enjoy what we like to eat. 
4. It's a very relaxed vibe on the Sunshine Coast. We've enjoyed just riding bikes along the coastal trail (see above), watching the surfers and swimming. Inside the shark net* and flags, of course. It's serious ocean out here folks. 

The concept of  Shark nets are a new for me. Apparently they sprung up along the Queensland Coast in the early '60's as an attempt to control the incidents of shark/human interactions that may actually bring more sharks in to feed on things that get caught and die in these huge nets. Baited drumlines were also a part of this scheme. While swimming one day, I heard the lifeguards come over the loudspeaker and announce "there's been a few sharks spotted in the area and we suggest you stay in knee deep water". Of course, no one moved. I decided to use that as my cue to get out. And it made me think about sharks a bit more than I'd like to, especially since our upcoming liveaboard trip includes several shark dives... yikers. I discovered a new favorite website, Shark Tracker. The website tracks shards from around the world that have been tagged with GPS to collect data on their natural history. I've adopted a tiger shark named Maroochy as my totem shark, she lives off Hervey Bay and travels around the lower reef, and out around Lady Elliot Island where we are headed. I hope that I don't see her. 

There, again we are lazy, bad tourists. Or easily entertained. From here we drive north to Hervey Bay to fly out to Lady Elliot Island. Let the diving begin!

The Glass House Mountains

Noosa Head National Park coastal trail

Can you find the rainforest wallaby in this picture? 

Welcome to Oz!

Welcome to Australia! 

Brisbane was our first port of call into Australia. We left the cool temps of Christchurch for 90+ F in tropical Queensland. Unseasonably hot, all the locals say, summer hasn't broken. The thermometer reached 104 F the first day we were here. Movie time, a nice air-conditioned cinema that serves cold beer in walking distance of our house... sign us up! Luckily it cooled off to 90 after that.

Queensland Art Gallery

Brisbane is a lovely city build along the Brisbane River. We stayed in Paddington, an up-and-coming neighborhood just a few miles from the CBD. Getting around was easy since Brisbane has the same bike share program that Paris has (and many other cities). It was an easy ride to the river and then dedicated bike highway along the river. Riding through the Botanical Gardens that grace the CBD along the river, it was easy access to everything we wanted to do. Across the river from the CBD is the South Bank Culture area with the Queensland Art Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art, both fabulous with good examples of Aboriginal artists, current and historical.

If we didn't feel like riding, our other fun option was the City Cat, a water taxi service that cruised about ten miles from one end of the Brisbane suburbs to the other.

the deadly cassowary 

Our time here was highlighted by visiting with Jane and Bill Hopsick and their wonderful daughters Sophie and Emily. Jane was my sister's housemate in grad school and threw a traditional Aussie barbecue for us with heaps of local delights (lamingtons, lemon-lime bitters, tasmanian cheeses, and of course, vegamite!) along with heaps of meats on the barbie. We also met them for dinner at the historical Breakfast Creek Hotel. Thanks guys, hope we see you in our neck of the woods to return the hospitality!

We also visited the classic Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. This low-key tourist attraction had tons of koalas, kangaroos and wallabies, Tasmanian devils, platypus, wombats, many great birds, crocodiles and, our favorite, the cassowary. We could get so close to this massive bird (a good six feet tall) that it was easy to see the stiletto claw that is reputed to slice open it's prey, or a human that's annoying it, disemboweling it's victim. Yikers. All the pens are very accessible pins where you could get quite close to them. Now we can pass on the Australia Zoo, the late Steve Irwin's major attraction.

Brisbane is a great gateway to Australia. Now we are just north of there in Pelican Waters doing the house exchange. Looks a bit like Florida here until a cockatoo flies over or you hear people talk. I'll post about this place as soon as I get done relaxing in this comfortable home and actually see something besides the coastal bike path and the beach.

City Cat makes getting around Brisbane easy, scenic and fun.

Feeding the roos at Lone Pine. 

Pedestrian bridge connecting the CBD and South Bank Cultural Park

Kookaburra, the largest of the kingfisher family and what a laugh!

Done-in in Dunedin

The beach at St. Clair is popular with many mammals

We pulled into Dunedin on a crystal clear, sunny summer day. After finding our beach house in the St. Clair neighborhood (I know, they misspelled it) we headed to the beach. Surfers out riding the perfect break, outdoor cafes and people enjoying the day. Picture perfect little beach town. Our plans for exploring this far end of the south island from Dundedin kind of faded away when we realized how sweet it was right here in St. Clair. It was obvious that we were going to be very bad tourists this week.

penguin ponderings

The weather didn't hold of course, it's rather dreary here quite often. Although there are some very good museums in Dunedin, we didn't see them. We did walk through the beautiful old campus of the University of Otago and into the Botanical Gardens, a rather remarkable, large, well-curated botanical garden. Other than that we didn't see much more of the town.
Instead we saw penguins! The nearby, beautiful Otago Peninsula has nesting colonies of the little blue penguin (smallest penguin in the world) and beaches where the solitary yellow-eyed penguins nest. Our first attempt was Sandfly Bay. We dutifully followed the Dept of Conservation instructions on how to approach the beach, where to find the hide to watch them and what not to do. We made our way into the hide and proceeded to watch a great deal of human/sea lion interaction as groups of people walked onto the beach to take pictures of the sea lions. No self-respecting penguin would ever come ashore here. Why didn't these people follow penguin protocol? Struck out.
Earlier that day, a local restaurant owner in the nearby town of Portobello told us about Allan's beach where she's seen both little blues and yellow-eyed penguins. We decided to give that a try the next night. We drove out to the car park and found a beautiful, deserted beach. It was looking good. We found the large rock she mentioned and parked ourselves in front of it as we heard the penguins are near-sighted on land and don't see you. Luckily for us and the penguins, a local fellow came a long who told us to move behind the rock, otherwise they won't come ashore. They have very good land eyesight (can't believe everything you read on the web!). He knew their behavior and told us it's a colony of little blues who come up in rafts of 5-6, lift out of the water and congregate on a flat rock at the waters edge. Then one will make a run for it right by the rock we were behind into the cliffs behind us. By now there were six of us behind this very large rock, it was getting dark and we heard them start vocalizing and could make out the first raft waddling up to the first rock. Sure enough, one made a run for it to the left of the rock, passed very close to us and then waited at the base of the cliff. The others followed. Even in the dusk you could make out their little bodies waddling along, it was so fun to watch. And they are amazing cliff climbers as well. We watched a couple of more rafts come in and called it a night when it was just too dark to see anything.

Crested Fiordland penguins recuperating in the hospital

But that wasn't enough of a penguin fix, we needed to see the larger, more solitary yellow-eyed penguin. We elected to visit a private conservation project called Penguin Place. Their work started on their sheep farm in 1985 where they began restoring habitat, trapping predators and building nesting boxes. As they learned to care for sick penguins, a "hospital" developed and people began sending wounded birds there from around the island. At the time of our visit they had 50 penguins in for rehabilitation including two crested Fiordland penguins that live in remote areas of the very south end of the island. They were brought in starving a few weeks ago, have put on wieght and will be released in about a week back in their normal habitat. In small groups, we then went out on the extensive reserve that stretched out along a beautiful beach. The penguins feed all day and come in at night and the yellow-eyes don't come in together like the little blues but individually. We were lucky enough to see two come up out of the water and travel across the beach and up into the habitat to find their young. I managed to catch this video of one of the determined little trucker as he passed by our hide. It's fledgling time for the birds so the young still rely on their parents for bringing food. The nests are pretty informal so we could see a number of young (almost as big as their parents!) among the bush. It was amazing to see the work these people had done to foster the survival of these endangered birds.

click to expand map

So that was it for being tourists. We rested and relaxed in St. Clair, caught up on life at home and a few movies. Another great thing about this neighborhood: best ever outdoor saltwater pool! Built on the cliff, right by the ocean. Spectacular. A nice ending to our time in New Zealand. It's been a great journey.
We've landed in Brisbane and it's going to be around 104 degrees today. We mailed our cool weather clothes home, we won't need much more than shorts, jandals and swimming costumes where we are heading. We will no doubt miss the cool, cloudy skies of Dunedin as we explore tropical Queensland and the great barrier reef until the end of April.

The beach at Penguin Place

St Clair salt water pool