Australia is a BIG country!

More on our "Home away from Home"
During our one-week stay at Christel and Dieter’s we’ve had a chance to learn about Australia and more importantly, we’ve spent time with cousin Celeste and three of her daughters (Stephanie, Amber, and Jessica) as well as Onkel Dieter and Tante Christel. There’ve been many games of “Menche Arge Dich Nich” a popular German board game with Tante Christel. Onkel Dieter, a retired electrician is not only a walking encyclopedia, but also a modern renaissance man specializing in healthy cooking, carpentry, history and you name it. We’ve enjoyed many hours of discussion about the war and learned that Onkel Dieter missed serving in the German airforce (Luftwaffe) by one day. As a young man he met Hitler and Mussolini as they passed through his hometown (1942).

One day we took a trip up Pacific Highway to Middle Harbour where we saw Lion Island, had lunch at Newport Beach, and hiked around Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park. We also went to Barrenjoey Headland, North Bilgola Lookout, and Whale Beach. Barrenjoey Lighthouse is built of sandstone quarried from the headland. This lighthouse has been operational since 1881.

A convict-built walking trail leads to the top of the Headland where views of the northern beaches central coast and Broken Bay can be viewed. We are grateful to our host Marianne who arranged this tour AND was our chauffeur and tour guide as well! Please note that in discussion with Marianne we have learned that the word SNAKE is pronounced Snyke here. I guess this makes sense as G’Dye is Australian for Good Day.

Week two and we are in tropical North Queensland staying in a lovely two-bedroom apartment in Cairns (pronounced Cannes) of course.

Queensland is very different from the rest of Australia. While there are droughts in the south, Queensland is home to the Wet Tropics Rainforest. There are three World Heritage sites here in Queensland: The Great Barrier Reef; The Wet Tropics Rainforest; and the Riversleigh Fossil Fields. Although it was quite costly to travel from one end of the continent to the other, we absolutely needed to see this area and experience the region.

Our activities for this week include: Kuranda Train and Skyrail tour: Scuba Diving and Snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef and a Wildlife adventure in the Daintree Rainforest.

The Kuranda Scenic Rail winds past waterfalls and through tunnels to Kuranda where we will explore a quaint little village in the rainforest. We will also see the Birdworld attraction and the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary (necessary for our entomologists) before we take the skyrail over the rainforest canopy to Caravonica Lakes.

Lying just off the coast of the Tropical North, the Great Barrier Reef extends over 1500 kilometers, and is home to the greatest variety of flora and fauna species found in any one location in the world. The scope of the reef is magnificent, encompassing some 21,900 individual reefs and hundreds of continental islands , reef islands and cays in an area of 348,000 square kilometers, larger than the combined total area of Ireland and the United Kingdom! The Great Barrier Reef, now a national marine park, provides the most awe inspiring recreational activities of snorkeling, diving, swimming and coral viewing.

The rainforests of the Wet Tropics, regarded by world authorities as a living museum of flora and fauna, were World Heritage listed in 1988. The Wet Tropics covers an area of nearly 900,000 hectares of rainforest and tropical vegetation, stretching for more than 400 kilometers. Here, pockets of primitive plants have remained undisturbed for millions of years, and rare, even previously unidentified species of birds, insects and mammals have emerged.