Our last stop, Sydney and the Blue Mountains

The iconic Harbor Bridge

  

After a long days travel from Cairns to Sydney, we made it to our apartment in Elizabeth Bay, a few clicks east of the central business district (CBD). Venturing out for dinner that night, we discovered what an exclusive area we now found ourselves in for the next week, evidenced by the small, chic restaurants and boutiques. Like shops that sell only French shoes, beautiful design shops, that kind of thing. Luckily there was also a great Thai restaurant, our favorite, and with the land still moving we settled into a good nights rest on terra firma.

Kookaburra doing a good job ignoring me.

Seems like Sydney is all about the harbor so we wanted to stay near the water. We found this great apartment on AirBnB with a water view but no heat and windows that sort of leaked. No problem, it’s bright and sunny out so off we went. It was Jeff’s birthday the first day there so we spent the day walking around and seeing some of the great iconic sights of Sydney: The Opera House, Harbor Bridge and the Royal Botanical Garden (RBG). The garden was one we passed through many times during our stay since it lay between our house and the CBD. It was Friday and at our birthday lunch at Café Sydney, we discovered how Australian business culture might truly differ from American (at least Seattle-side biz folk). First off, we noticed lots of suits and formal biz attire, something rarely seen anymore as corporate casual has taken hold. Second, the amount of alcohol quaffed during lunch: cocktails, then a bottle of white, then red. Our waiter informed us “We get a lot of corporates on Friday, they knock off early afternoon and start their weekend”. He coined a new word for us: “corporates”.

It looked like the weather was going to get rainy about mid-week during our visit so we opted to get out to the beaches while the weather was good. First we visited famous Bondi Beach and did the coastal beach walk to Coogee. Lovely. Next day Manly, which meant we could travel the length of the Harbor from the CBD to the mouth where Manly lay on the north side by ferry. It was Sunday and the ferry was packed with all types of people from families to visitors like us from all over the world. We took in the beach scene there, decidedly different than Bondi and hiked up in the national park around the harbor mouth. Both were great days filled with lots of beautiful Sydney Harbor scenery.

Manley Beach surf scene

And then the weather did change, something we underestimated it at first and went out anyway. Gusts up to 65 mph and inches of rain fell. We came home that night soaked and wind blown. Turns out it was the biggest storm of the century (OK, that’s only 15 years!), one that brewed up in the Tasman Sea and created the perfect storm. Hundreds of thousands were without power, people had died in flash floods: it was serious. The front moved slowly across Sydney for three days total. The good news was that we needed to turn some attention to the details of arriving home, the bad news was the lack of heat and leaky windows in our apartment! On our last night we met friends of our friend, Ellen for dinner in the CBD, Cathy and Shaun. The wind had died down but it was still raining. We arrived looking like drowned rats after walking up on the Harbor Bridge and had a lovely dinner with these two wonderful people. We missed you Ellen!

During dinner Cathy  asked me if Australia had lived up to my expectations. I found that I didn’t know how to answer this question. We saw so little of Australia really, only the coast of Queensland and now this part of New South Wales. It’s an epic country with a fascinating history and a culture that seems very much like America but is, of course, very different. The hospitality of the people we met has exceeded my expectations and some of the scenery as well. It’s always the people who make a place special. I hope we get the chance to come back and unpack this place a little more.

Not everyone gets to this extreme weather view from the Harbor Bridge...

The weather finally cleared the morning we left. Our wet and cold apartment had lost it’s charm by  then and we were ready to pack up and head out of the city.

Curious lorikeets on our windowsill, seeing how we fared the storm.

Our next stop was Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, just two hours west from Sydney. We couldn’t have picked a better place for our last stop on this trip. Blackheath is a small town that reminds me of our home on Vashon. Talking to folks here I detect a sense of community here. And some awesome hiking a short distance from our house. Beautiful scenery, crisp mountain air and some sunshine. And then hail. We were surprised one day but a freak hailstorm that managed to dump half inch sized hail everywhere. We stood out in the street and talked to our neighbors who said it was a very unusual occurrence. It melted after a few hours and convinced us that they do big weather here in Australia.

As I write this final travel post, the sun is out and it’s a brilliant blue day. I wish I could go for a last hike or maybe get in the car and drive west until we hit the desert. But there’s a plane to catch in Sydney. The year of travel has finally come to an end and we return home to pick up where we left off. I am grateful for all the experiences and blessed to be able to take this year. Reflection is in order so one more post will follow. Thanks for reading!

Bondi to Coogee coastal walk, great Pacific views and amazing geology

The Grose Valley in the Blue Mountains, more spectacular geology!

Clouds rolling in behind the landmark Opera house

Coral Sea Safari

Osprey Reef along the outer Great Barrier Reef from the upper deck of Spoilsport

Around day five on our Coral Sea Safari that I noted a strange phenomena: Each time I closed my eyes, an underwater video passed before in front of them. Nothing specific, just lots of fish, swaying soft corals and general underwater coral reef movement. I guess that is the cumulative result of spending 4-5 hours a day underwater.

What a world it is underwater, teaming with life. Impossible to describe in words so I will rely on my fellow divers photos and videos to help tell the story. And despite the rumor that the GBR is dying it was thrilling to dive the outer waters. We did see some coral bleaching due to climate change and lots of broken coral damage from the recent cyclone but on the whole, it's still a phenomenal experience to dive what's considered the largest living organism on earth.

Mike Ball's Spoilsport was the perfect way to see it. Amazing crew and guests, both from all around the world living together for the week. Heaps of fun, laughs and of course, diving. The first night we sailed from Cairns was raining and blowing sideways across the dive deck. Luckily that was the only rain to speak of, some wind and confused seas but we were pretty far off shore in the middle of the Coral Sea so it's to be expected. The boat is stable and takes rough water well. And we were lucky enough to have the charming and mischievous Mike Ball himself with us for the week. Howard Womersly, the staff videographer brilliantly captured much of the trip underwater created this 90 second video created for the first 4 days of our weeklong trip. Mario Hermann also provided the photos below, all of which link to his blog.

Can you hear the Jaws theme starting? (Mario Herrmann)

One of the diving highlights was the shark attraction dive out on Osprey reef. This sounds so much scarier than it really is... it's a regular occurrence, same location, where the staff attach huge tuna heads to a chain in a large metal can that is covered with a lid. There's an underwater pulley system that allows them to get it down to a spot on the reef called the amphitheater. The sharks seem to know what's coming and start arriving when they see a boat on the mooring. They are mostly white and black tips along with some grey reef, no real aggressive species. Hammerheads can be seen off in the distance but they don't come in for the actual feed. The divers are all arranged in a semi circle about 20 feet from the bin against dead coral, Roman theater style. The sharks come very close as they circle the closed tin in front of us all and then carefully remove with a long pole and the sharks go into their feeding frenzy. Very awesome to see and a good reminder of how just very wild these creatures are! Our dive buddy Neha Singh caught this two minute video. It was Neha's first trip with her GoPro and she did a great job. The end is my favorite part!

Soft corals & fish at the top of the reef

Large predators are awesome, but to me, the best parts of the diving were all the colorful, odd-shaped fish that we just don't have in the cold northern Pacific and all their interesting behaviors. I loved the shallower parts of the dives where the water was gin clear, the diversity of corals were amazing and tons of little fish flitted about. The challenge is to focus on one thing while there is so much activity going on, that's the only way you can manage to catch a glimpse of some reclusive creature. For example, we were doing our safety stop at the top of a bommie and I happened to see a peacock

mantis shrimp come out one whole of his lair and dash into another one of it's entrances. A quick flash that all took place right underneath another diver. Such a beautiful animal and I'd never seen a whole one before! Just the right look at the right time is all you can hope for! (Check out that link for a 3 minute video by smithsonian and see what jailbreakers the mantis shrimp!)

Another amazing creature we saw out on Osprey Reef was a nautilus. These deepsea molluscs live at

Nautilus captured (Mario Hermann) 

100-300 meters and are trapped and brought up to a depth of 40 feet so that divers can look at them. The nautilus has the extremely rare ability to withstand being brought to the surface from its deep natural habitat without suffering any apparent damage from the experience. There is a research element also as they are then measured, photographed and then sent back to depth and released. Chicken has been found to be the best bait. How this ancient mollusc developed a taste for yardbird is beyond me but apparently it works. When our crew brought up the trap there were three in it. These animals are the smallest of the species and captivating to look at. and I promise, no nautilus were hurt in the taking of this photo.

We stepped off the boat in Cairns early in the morning and flew to Sydney. The land was still rocking for at least a day. The underwater video has stopped but the memories of that week on the Great Barrier Reef live on.

Australian cuddlefish (huge!) with Woody in the background (Mario Hermann) 

Potato cod poses for the paparazzi! (Mario Hermann)

Yellow boxfish - such a face!

our motley crew (photo from mikeball.com)

Of course, the real Nemo! 

a page from my dive log...

Far North Queensland

Beautiful and wild Wonga Beach

As we drove north out of Cairns, we could tell that we had entered a very new world. It's a jungle up here. The scenic drive along the coast to Port Douglas was beautiful. The lush mountains down to the ocean are reminiscent of Kauai or the Big Island of Hawaii, just a lot more of it! We were headed to our home for the next week in Wonga Beach, a very small beach community nestled within the Daintree National Park.

Daintree is a rainforest area that's apparently getting larger as the Park acquires more land. Signs warn you that Wonga Beach is the last petrol stop before Cape Tribulation. You have to cross the Daintree River on a wee ferry to drive the 35 miles up to Cape Tribulation and that's where the sealed road ends. From there its mostly impassible during the "wet" season unless you have a proper vehicle. This is the Cape York peninsula, that pointy part of Australia that aims towards Indonesia. It's wild up here, Daintree is the attraction for visitors but only if you aren't into the rainforest, you stay south in the resort areas of Port Douglas, Palm Cove and the like.
 

Blue dragon nudibranch (wikipedia)

Our home this week is the Reef Cottage. Wonga Beach has a gas station and a pharmacy. Apparently the tavern shut it's doors a few years ago. I think there might be 200 houses here, and what's remarkable to me is the beach front. There is absolutely no development along the beach. The houses stand a good 100 yards from the actual beach with pretty dense forest in between. This gives the beach a wild, South Pacific feel and it goes on for 10 miles up to the mouth of the Daintree River. Not only is it beautiful but it makes a good buffer for cyclone protection. Cyclone Nathan came through here just three weeks earlier. Why haven't we learned that in states like Florida which get hit by hurricanes? Again, rhetorical question.

Daintree is a hotspot for biodiversity, tones of everything here including a few things that will seriously harm or kill you. Crocodiles being the most obvious. The beach is off limits for swimming because of stingers (box jellies and blue bottles) some of which will merely hurt you and one species apparently will kill you quickly. As I was looking up stingers online, I found this amazing pelagic (open water) nudibranch called a blue dragon that feeds on stingers. It is beautiful. Of course there's a YouTube video of one "dancing" (more likely this is how it gets around).

Beach stone curlew

But it's mainly tons of harmless life: incredible birds, butterflies, insects, and reptiles (despite Bill Bryson's exaggerations in The Sunburned Country). In the Daintree there are no native placental mammals, just those monotremes (e.g., playtpus) and marsupials like possums and the tree kangaroo. There is one very interesting endangered bird called the beach stone curlew that seems to thrive right here in Wonga Beach. I have seen a few on the beach and they have this very twitchy way of walking that probably has something to do with food. But they come up onto the streets at night and look for food. It's funny to see them out under that streetlights in the subdivision walking like drunken sailors. September and October are the months to be here for birds, many pass through here or breed here then. My favorites are the kookaburros for their bad-ass look and incredibly ape like call. Gives the place a real jungle feel while they converse between each other.

Shrubfowl nest - at least 15 rt hy 4 ft!

Lots of interesting stuff right outside our door. Behind our house is a heap of leaves and compost. Looks like someones leaf mulch pile but turns out it belongs to a pair of nesting orange-footed shrubfowl.  Instead of roosting on eggs they let the heat from decaying organic matter do the job for them. They will lay up to 15 eggs under these piles and the hatchling will kick it's way out of the shell, dig it's way to the surface (may take two days) and then fly out of harms way, independent from the get-go. Fascinating. Another interesting bird in the hood is the bee-eater, beautiful little bird that eats insects out of the air but burrows in the ground to lay eggs.

I spent a day in the rainforest with Pete Baxendell and learned heaps about how the place ticks. Pete told me lots of stories about how the aboriginal people used different plants for both practical and medicinal purposes. And, amazingly, we were able to watch a cassowary and two chicks briefly as they crossed the road in front of us as we headed north to Cape Tribulation. Whooooooaaaaaa, were we lucky!

Now we are off to Cairns to join the Spoilsport for a week of diving on the outer parts of theGreat Barrier Reef. No internet so it'll be a good break from electrons.

Souther cassowary and two chicks, a rare site as only 48-52 live up in this area!

Wonga Beach sunrise

The Great Barrier Reef

Flying into Lady Elliot Island

When I was 15 and attending Seacamp, we had a visiting science speaker from Australia who gave a talk on the Great Barrier Reef. Ever since then I have longed to see it. Forty years later, I finally made the trip. What the heck took me so long? Rhetorical question, of course!

For our first experience diving on the reef we visited Lady Elliot Island, a small island 80 km off the Queensland coast. It's the very southern part of the reef and the closest to Brisbane. Accessible only by plane, it feels like an adventure just getting out there. The short runway pretty much bisects the island which makes for fast take offs and landings.

Noddie and fledgling

The first thing you notice when you get off the plane are the white-capped noddies. They are everywhere... on the ground, in the trees, and on the buildings, I expected to see them underwater! Their name comes from the nodding behavior that they do in the breeding season. These seabirds use this tiny speck of an island for nesting (hard to nest at sea). They also have a lot to say about that nesting, the sound of their activities permeates the island, increasing during the evening as the birds return from fishing at sea. We watched streams of them coming in during the sunset and dusk. They are accompanied by mutton birds who are stopping over on their way south. Mutton birds make an amazing migration from Tasmania to Japan and Alaska and then returning, some 15,000 km. Their night sounds were first described to us as babies crying. So between the noddies and the mutton birds, it's a very dominate evening sound track, particularly in the evening. We found that they usually settled down for an hour between 3-4 am.  But after that first day of diving, we didn't hardly notice them and slept like babies.

Teaming with life

Mother nature did not disappoint: the diving around Lady Elliot was fantastic. The island is surrounded by coral bommies on the west side and has a wall on the more exposed east side. And very easy access, every site is within 5-10 minute boat ride. We were lucky to have a few calm days at the beginning that allowed us to get around to the east side wall. Every dive consisted of lush corals, tons of tiny fish, loads of big stuff like sharks, rays, groupers (as big as me!) and too many turtles to count. The days were spent diving in the AM and then trying to ID all the many things we saw and then repeating the process in the afternoon. Needless to say, our week flew by.

As always, it's the people who make a place really special. The dive staff, Nikki, Alesh, Ryan along with their great boat drivers, Phil, Simmo (number 10!) and others made our diving easy, safe and filled with great sitings. They know these reefs so well and where critters can usually be found. Wonderful guests as well, we had the pleasure of diving with the hilarious duo, Donna and Fiona, lifelong friends from Adelaide and then Phil and Amy Townsing and with their kids, Brook, Sam and Brendon. All great divers. Their friends Diana and Westy from Melbourne rounded out a great crew. Luckily for us, Phil and Westy had GoPro cameras and shared some great video footage.

Heaps of big fish, photo courtesy of Westy,

and heaps of wee fish

The giant mantas of Lady Elliot are really the star of the show. When one of these amazing and large rays (wingspan 6-8 feet!) came into our diving vicinity, we would all go to the bottom and wait. These beautiful creatures would eventually swim up to the bommie (coral head) and pick up some cleaning fish, then keep circling it as fish dropped off in order to pick up more. They would soar over us in the process, so graceful and etherial. Phil Townsing captured a beautiful video (below) and I have trimmed it down to fit on this blog. Be sure and use the full screen mode. (this may not appear in IOS devices like iphone and ipad, sorry!)

How about that? A video shows a thousand words. Thank you Phil.

Now we are in up north of Cairns in the wet tropical north Queensland. It feels very lush and remote up here. After this week on land, we will join the Spoilsport in Cairns for another week diving on the outer parts of the Great Barrier Reef!