Back to the USA

3/12/2007 - 3/13/2007

Today was the last day of the trip and a huge travel day. We drove about an hour to the Brisbane airport to catch our 11:30 am flight back to Auckland. This flight was 2 hours and 45 minutes. Our next flight was about 13 or 14 hours to Los Angeles. While it was a long flight, everyone had personal video players, so we were able to have our choice from about 50 movies. Then I had a short layover in LA to say goodbye to everyone and catch my next flight to Dallas, which was followed my a final flight to Orlando that got in at 12:20 am March 13. It was a long, long day.


Well, my trip to New Zealand and Australia is done. I had a great time, and I thank you for reading my blog and hope you enjoyed it. Now I have to find a job for a couple months before my next adventure (if you have any ideas for a job, PLEASE let me know). This summer I'll be riding my bike across the country from Providence, RI, to Seattle, WA, with a non-profit organization called Bike & Build (http://www.bikeandbuild.org). Bike & Build runs 6 cycling trips across the country to raise awareness and funds for the affordable housing cause. Each trip has 30 riders between 18 and 24 years in age. Basically we bike across the country, help to spread awareness about affordable housing in the places we stay at night, and also take a day off every one or two weeks to build houses at local affordable housing projects. I think it is a great opportunity. Check out the website if you're interested. I will keep another blog for that trip, and I'll post the address here when I set it up.

Again, thank you for reading my NZ and Australia blog!

Nathan

Mooloolaba

3/10/2007 - 3/11/2007

This morning we took the ferry from Great Keppel Island to Yeppoon and then had a really long drive to a beach town called Mooloolaba, which is located near Brisbane. We didn't get to Mooloolaba until about 7 pm. We set up our tents and the holiday park and then grabbed some dinner.

After breakfast the following morning, I went to the Australia Zoo with Philip, Kim, and Jen. This is the zoo that Steve Irwin worked at before he recently passed away. It was brutally hot outside, but the zoo was great. We saw tons of animals. Just take a look at the pictures.

Alligators


Venomous snakes


Wombats


Parrots



Kangaroos in an open field



Koalas


The Steve Irwin shrine


Saltwater crocodile in the Crocoseum



Tigers


This crocodile is a model of what one of the largest saltwater crocodiles they've seen looks like. I think it was about 26 feet. Pretty big.



Maybe the dingo ate your baby?


Tortoises. Until a few years ago the zoo actually had a tortoise named Harriet that Darwin observed down in the Galapagos Islands.


After the zoo we drove by the Glass House Mountains and then back to the campsite. We went out to a Tibetan restaurant for dinner, which was great. I've never seen goat on a menu before this, so I figured I had to try it. It was amazing. After dinner we walked by the beach for a bit and then went back to the campsite. I played some Backgammon and Hearts and then went to sleep.

Keppel Island

3/5/2007 - 3/9/2007

This morning we took the ferry from Yeppoon to Great Keppel Island, which would be our home for the next 5 days. Unfortunately, it was raining, which made us worry about how the weather would be for our 2 days of sea kayaking and then 3 days of scuba diving. There is a cyclone out in the ocean that has looked potentially threatening. While it has turned aways from us, there is still the possibility of disrupted weather due to the cyclone. Nevertheless, we were headed to Keppel Island on the south end of the Great Barrier Reef, so we had to make the most of it regardless of the weather.

After the 30 minute ferry, we walked to our accommodation called the Roundhouse, which was a great place as you can see in the following picture. The house had 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, a kitchen, dining room, and a living room. We had it all to ourselves. There were birds and lizards all over the place (see second picture).



After a swim and some lunch, we walked down to the dive shop with our gear to get started on our sea kayaking mini-expedition. Basically we were kayaking to another island called Hump Island where we would stay for 2 nights and then kayak back to Keppel Island on the following morning. At the dive shop, we met our guide named Scott. We had a quick paddle and then headed out toward Humpy Island in our double kayaks. The weather ended up being great with the sun shining. We made it to Humpy Island in an hour and a half or so. It was a nice easy paddle with some fun bumpy spots. We saw some big sea turtles and a ton of jellyfish.

When we landed on the beach, we moved the boats and set up camp. We were unbelievably fortunate to have the entire island to ourselves since it had been shut down due to the impending cyclone (that didn't come, heh). Thus, we had a 60 person campsite to ourselves with bathrooms, footwashes, and showers. Pretty sweet.


The next day we took a walk around Humpy Island. It was really beautiful. Take a look at the pictures.


This rock tower is called a cairn.







I really enjoyed the walk, and I actually did it a second time since I didn't have a camera the first time around. After lunch we kayaked for about 2 hours. We paddled to another part of Great Keppel Island and checked out a couple caves. We had to surf our kayaks on some decent sized waves to get to the beach where the caves were. Most people tipped, but it was fun. I found out later that the caves had been used a long time ago to lock Aborigines causing them to die when the tide came in, which is pretty disturbing. After the caves we paddled back to Humpy Island and just relaxed or played cards for the rest of the evening.

We kayaked back to the dive shop at Great Keppel Island early the next morning. After cleaning up the boats, we went back to the house for breakfast. Then Andy, Philip, and I went back to the dive shop to get started on our open water dives for our scuba certification with Adam. It's awesome that we are getting our certification on the Great Barrier Reef. Today we did 2 dives. The first was at the Big Peninsula, and the second was at the Underwater Observatory, which was closed preventing us from seeing people looking at us underwater. Both were great dives. There were a ton of pretty fish and coral; unfortunately I don't really know many names. We were also able to see a sunken ship on the Underwater Observatory dive. I spent the rest of the day taking my exams for the scuba book work and then just hanging out.

The next day was similar. In the morning we did another certification dive. We went back to the Big Peninsula. It was the same site as yesterday, but fortunately we did a different segment making it feel like a completely different dive. The visibility was awesome, and I saw 2 bull rays, which were definitely the coolest things I've seen so far. They were huge rays that were blue in color and almost circular. They seemed otherworldly and reminded me of something out of The Matrix as they hovered in the water and moved from location to location.

After the dive I finished my Secret Kiwi gift and did my scuba final exam. Later I went snorkeling with Philip out at the beach. It was low tide and thus really shallow with poor visibility. There were tons of sea cucumbers on the ground, and it was extremely eerie since you could only see a few feet away. Once Philip saw a wobegon shark on the floor between us, we were spooked and got out of there.

That night we exchanged our Secret Kiwi gifts. Everyone had nice gifts, but I especially liked what Andy gave to Philip. It was a coconut that had a face carved out of it. It was really good, especially since he did it this afternoon.


On our last full day in Keppel, we did two more dives. The first was at a site called Man and Wife Rock, which was a nice dive. We only actually had to complete 4 open water dives to get or PADI scuba certification, but we decided to do another dive for fun. This Half Rocks site was supposed to have a good amount of sea snakes, which have an incredibly lethal bite but apparently are nothing to worry about since they pretty much never do bite. We only saw one, which is fine with me since I'm a little scared of snakes.

After lunch I went for a walk around the island. It was about a 2 hour walk up to Mt. Wyndam and back, and there were many great views. Check out the photos.



Yes, camels (probably not indigenous).













For our last night on Keppel, the entire group went out to the beach at sunset for some champagne. The sunset was spectacular.

Emu Park/Yeppoon

3/4/2007

Today was fairly uneventful. After breakfast and packing up our gear, we had a long drive to a town called Yeppoon, which is where we would catch the ferry tomorrow to go to Great Keppel Island for the next 5 days on the Great Barrier Reef. There wasn't a whole lot to do in Yeppoon. We checked out the town and did some grocery shopping for the next 5 days. Then we went to our accommodation for the night nearby in a place called Emu Park. Here's a picture of the house we stayed at.

Fraser Island

3/2/2007 - 3/3/2007

Today we took a ferry to Fraser Island, which is the "largest sand island in the world." I'm still not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds cool. Since the island is all sand, we had to rent a 4 wheel drive vehicle. Adam got up early and picked up our Toyota Land Cruiser for the next two days, and then we loaded up all our gear and hopped in. It was a cozy ride. We then caught the 45 minute ferry to Fraser Island. It was insanely hot outside. Here are a couple pictures from the ferry.



When we started driving on the island, it was immediately apparent why 4 wheel drive vehicles are required. The roads were pretty good, but it was a bit bumpy.


We drove to a freshwater lake called Lake McKenzie. While walking to the lake, I saw this goanna (I think) on a tree. These lizards are pretty common in Australia.

Lake McKenzie was incredibly beautiful with it white sandy beach and clear blue water. There were a lot of people there, and I suspect many of them were Americans based on their voices, youth, drinking, and frivolous conversation (sorry, but it's true). A group of us swam to the opposite beach and back, which was good exercise. My swimming skills have definitely deteriorated from my prime in elementary school P.E.



After lunch at Lake McKenzie, we drove to the beach and checked out the Maheno shipwreck, which was pretty cool. Fraser Island is fairly large, so it takes a while to drive from place to place. We could only stay at the Maheno for a few minutes before we had to find a campsite on the beach. The rental company does not allow the vehicles to be driven in salt water, so we were not allowed to be on the beach at high tide, which today was at 4:30 pm. We found a campsite and got everything set up. There were these large, green march flies all over the place, and their bites actually hurt. I may have had limited immunity to the sandflies in NZ, but not these guys. I quickly lathered up with some DEET. I may get cancer eventually, but it feels good now. However, I still got a few bites through my shirt!



The next morning we hung out for a while until the tide went out at 10:30 am. You could swim in the ocean, but only if you want to get bit by a shark. That's one of the drawbacks at Fraser Island. I didn't have any desire to take that risk. When we finally were able to drive on the beach, we went to another freshwater lake called Lake Wobby. We had to walk about 15 minutes to get to the lake, and there were some great views on the walk. Check it out.



I enjoyed Lake McKenzie more than Lake Wobby, but Wobby was still nice. After a good swim we had to drive back to the main dock to catch the ferry. We were running a little late, so Adam put the pedal to the floor and drove like a madman to get us there on time. It was extremely bumpy. Adam seemed a bit crazy, but he knew what he was doing. I thought we definitely wouldn't make it once we got caught behind some slow drivers for a few minutes, but we barely made it as the last car on. It was a huge relief. We took the ferry back to Hervey Bay where we camped for another night.