Karunda Highland...

After two days in Cairns, we hired a rental car and set out exploring the area and driving north from the city. Our first stop for the day was the Tjapukai Cultural Park. This is an Aboriginal owned and run cultural center giving a wealth of information, history, tours, and song and dance about the local Aboriginal culture and customs. It was really informative, enjoyable, and well run. They had exhibits on the Aboriginal creation legend, boomerang and spearthrowing workshops, movies about colonization clashes with European settlers, and theater performances with song and dance describing the local customs and religious ritauls. We also got to hear presentations on Aboriginal bush tucker and what they eat in the wild. Aboriginies are very tied to the land and it is reflected in their culture and beliefs.



Tjupukai performance and dance with clapsticks, boomerang, spears, and the digeridoo. This ceremony is performed for preperation and anticipation for a successuful hunting journey.



Here they show how to quickly and successfully start a fire with friction from sticks in the bush.



After a workshop on spearthrowing, Kim quickly learned how to go about hunting a kangaroo!


We later made our way up the small mountain town of Karunda. Karunda is a small mountain town set in a beautiful rainforest. We walked around the town and went to the Arts Co-op and Barron Falls.



Barron Falls and Gorge. The falls drops more than 300 feet.



Spider web reflecting through the light on a hike in the rainforest.



View from Karunda looking back down towards Cairns.

Fitzroy Island...

Kim and I took a day trip out to Fitzroy Island off the coast from Carins. The island is about 5km wide and sits 40km off the coast of Cairns past Cape Grafton. The boat ride out to the island was on a small jet boat called the "Thunderbolt". This boat went extremly fast and the water was choppy making for a fun, bumpy ride. We traveled the 35km out to the island in just under thirty minutes. We got to the island and relaxed on the beach and snorkeled for the afternoon basking in the sunshine. The island has coral littered beaches everywhere, and has some nice hiking trails. On the far side of the island there is a great beach called "Nudey Beach".



Kim relaxing on the beach.



Kayakers towing a few boats just off the coast of the beach.




Washed up coral covers the beach all around the island.

Cairns...

The desert part of our two week trip was over and we were looking forward to the next stage of our adventures in tropical north Queensland. Cairns seemed like the perfect starting point. It has easy acess to the Great Barrier Reef, great beaches, restraunts, and weather. It is very close to the Daintree and Cape Tribulation, which are areas of lush tropical rainforests that we wanted to see. The are really only two seasons - the wet and the dry. The dry season is during the winter- it is the busiest time for tourism and the weather is warm but not to humid or hot. We had two days to check out the city. There is a great esplanade downtown and the city has some great beaches.



View of Carins from the air as we make our landing approach.




One of the many nice beaches we went to just north of Cairns near Yorkies Knob. We liked the surf rescue sign on the waveboard.



The beach front esplanade with fancy hotels, nice places to eat, and pubs. You definetly won't die of thirst in Cairns. There are pubs and bars on every street corner. The pubs also stay open until 5AM in the morning! Although Cairns is considered by many to be a wild party town, we had a nice quiet relaxing stay there.



Here is the foreshore downtown promendade. It is a fairly new 4000 square meter saltwater swimming lagoon that sits on the beach- the was so relaxing after spending a week in the dry dusty outback! We went to a great market and arts fair right alongside the esplanade. Interestingly upon opening of the lagoon, there was local and media intrest regarding the issue of topless bathing (apparently the unoffical rule seems to now allow it, but discourages running while topless).



Boats lined up at the downtown pier ready to head out to the reef and tropical islands. We took a day trip out to Fitzroy Island.

Alice Springs...

We finally made it all the way to Alice Springs. After three days of camping and 2000km of driving we arrived in good spirits ane were looking forward to a nice hot shower, relaxing, and a break from being in the car for so long. The distances between places in the Northern Territory in Australia are huge.

We found Alice Springs to be a nice small town. It is smack dab in the middle of the country of Australia and the only town that can claim it is the closest to every beach and coastline in Australia! The town started out as an outback outpost for the Overland Telegraph Line and over the next 125 years slowly grew into a small town. It has a permanent watersource by the bed of the normally dry Todd River, and thus it has major services and conviences of any small town. The Macdonnell mountain range runs westword alongside the town making for nice scenery and hiking around the area. There are very strong ties with the local Aboriginal tribes and communites. Kim and I really enjoyed learning about their culture, heritage, and spent time appreciating their artwork and music.

Alice Springs is also home to an interesting service called the Royal Flying Doctor. This operates airflights and services to remote isolated communites in the outback. It also has The School of the Air, which is an educational system that is unique to Australia and brodcasts lessons to children who are living on remote villages and stations.

We visited the Alice Springs Reptile Center which has a huge colleciton of snakes, lizards, and even a salt water crocodille. They have over a 100 types of reptiles and 40 different species and a fossil cave room, providing a comprehensive and educational overview of the reptiles within the Northern Territory.



Two Australian thorny devils. This is a remarkable, though small, lizard. The Thorny Devil's colouration can adapt to its surroundings and camoflauge itself quite well, thus making it hard to see. Despite their fierce appearance and razor sharp thorns, these are slow-moving and harmless lizards. Their diet consits of the many species of ants which occur in the arid desert.



The Australian Frilled Lizard. When frightened or to scare off predators, this lizard rears on its hind legs, spreads an enormous frill out on each side of its neck, opens its mouth, and hisses. I didn't get to see this unfourtanety but it is still one cool looking creature.



We went to an awesome digeridoo performance called the Sounds of Starlight. It was owned and operated by the digerdoo performer Andrew Langford. It was a spellbinding visual journey through the ancient land forms, history and space of Australia's outback with amazing images and photos. The musical journey takes you from the heart of the desert to beyond the stars with dynamic rhythms as the didgeridoo creates the pulse for the visual images. After the show, people were invited to come onstage and jam. Here Caroline is playing the didj with Andrew, and Mike and Patrick are on the djembe playing percussion.



Local Aboriginal paintings from Alice Springs artists.



After two relaxing days at Alice Springs, we boarded a plane and headed off to Cairns for our next Australian adventure- Tropical North Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef. Here you can see the vast arid land below from our flight!

Kings Canyon...

After a great two days at Uluru and Kata Tjuta we headed out for Kings Canyon and then on to Alice Springs. Kings Canyon is another Australian gem and has a deep canyon with sheer cliff walls and aweosome scenery. Kings Canyon is situated within the Watarrka National Park, and is a huge canyon with walls 270m high. We hiked around the rim of the canyon and saw some great views. Halfway through the hike we went down into the canyon to see the tropical pools and watering hole called the Garden of Eden. There were neat geolocial rock formations that looked like giant beehives called the Lost City.

Uluru...

The second day of our stay at Yulara we spent visiting Uluru. Uluru also know as Ayers Rock is a huge giant rock rising from the broad desert plain. It is a world famous icon for Australia and is 348 meters high and sits like an iceberg with most of the rock below the surface. The rock has very special cultural and religous significance for the local Aboriginal tribe Anagu. Kim choose to do the base walk around the rock and I climbed the rock to the summit. We meet up later in the day to witness something very special. The rock changes colors as the sunsets and it is quite stunning to see.



Night and day at Uluru.






The climb up to the top. It is very steep and there is a chain fence to hold on to you as you go up.



Geological marker on the summit of Ayers Rock.



Magnificent views from the summit into the vast outback.



Here you can see out to the Kata Tjuta mountain range which is 40 miles away.



Looking up the rock from the base hike. The black streak is from water erosion over time. It dosen't rain in the desert very much only about 4 inches a year. However when it does rain for 15 minutes or more the water will cascade over the rock forming small waterfalls for a short time. That would be an awesome sight to see!



This is a watering hole along the rock. It is a very sacred site for the local Aboriginal people.



The base walk is about 7 kilometers and goes around the entire rock.



Wavy rock texture on the walls of Ayers Rock.

The Olgas and Kata Tjuta...

Our next destination after visting Coober Pedy was Uluru (Ayers Rock). We drove for another 10 hours for 850km to reach the Yulara campground resort. We spent several days there and explored the area. On our first day we visited the Kata Tjuta park and hiked through the desert monolith rock formations called the Olgas along the Valley of the Winds trail. We ran into Mike, Paula, and their daughter Erin on exchange in Adelaide while we were there hiking. It was a great day hiking with fantastic views and we had blue skies all the way!



Kim and I on the Valley of the Wind trail in Kata Tuta.



Caroline, Erin, and Mike coming up the valley.

Coober Pedy and the Outback...

Kim's two week winter break finally came and gave us the chance to travel into the heart of the outback. We hired a car and drove from Adelaide up to Uluru and Alice Springs. Our friends Larry and Caroline joined us for the trip as well and it was nice to have some compnay for the long drive. The land was desolete and the vegetation sparsley populated with mostly scrub trees and the ocassional gum tree. It really gave me a sense of how vast the distances are between places in Australia and how much of the country is very inhospitable with dry barren desert land. We literally drove for hunderds of miles before coming to any roadhouse service station for gas and food. Along our trip on the Stuart Highway we passed several huge 24 wheeler tankers freighting cargo accross the outback. In Australia they are called road trains, and you could feel the vibrations from the oncoming road train rattle your car as they flew by. We gave them a wide berth whenver possible.



Our Subaru Outback rental for our long trip through the Outback! (Thanks Caroline for the great photo!)



This was the view from our car for hundreds of miles along the Stuart Highway.

The town of Coober Pedy was our first stop. It is a small town in the central part of the outback in South Australia. It is the Opal mining mecca in Australia and the world. The name for the town is derived from an Aboriginal phrase meaning "white man's hole in the ground" and it defines this place. More than half of the population lives underground due to the extreme heat during the summer where tempatures can reach over 50 degreess (122 Farenheit!) and the cold freezing nights. We stayed underground at Radeakas backpackers hostel. The are many tourist attractions that cater to the underground town by offering undergournd accomodations and lodging. You can even take tours of houses, churches, shops, restraunts, and museums all built underground. There are also several working mines you can go and tour as well.



Coober Pedy- the hot, dry, and dusty town is the outback frontier town for Opal mining in Australia.

The economy and lifeblood of the town is Opal Mining. Opal is formed from a silica that contains 6-10% water. The color in the opal is produced when the white light is being reflected and split up by the pattern arrangment from the silica. Its value is determined by the color and clarity of the opal and size of course. The brighter and clearer the color the more valuable it is. However, black is the rarest color in opals and the most expensive. Since it is hit or miss in finding opals- the mines are all run by small private companies- the uncertain nature of opal mining deters corporations from operating any mines. There have been individual fortunes made and lost in this town and the town had a lot of local character.



This funky little opal shop converted a VW bug into the "Opal Bug"- the sign below it says "Noodling" which is the term used to describe scrounging through the dirt looking for opals, gems, rocks, or whatever. Kim and I did our fair share of "Noodling" while there. The post sign beside the shop tells you just how far from nowhere you really are. Coober Pedy is only 14,492km from Nashville Tennesee USA.




Pyramid dirt mounds from the remains of underground mine shafts dug up in the quest for Opal. This type of lunar landscape dots the horizon all around Coober Pedy.



With over 250,000 mine shafts lying around the area, you need to pay extra attention to where you place your feet!

Victor Harbor and Granite Island...

Looking up the coast from Victor Harbor towards Encounter Bay.

Hello and happy July 4th to everyone back home in the USA! Enjoy the summer festivites as it is the dead of winter right now. It is not too cold however. Well whale watching season has finally begun so we decided to take a day trip down to the beachside town of Victor Harbor to see if we might be able to see them. Two humpback whales were spotted earlier in the morning but never resurfaced where they were visible. So alas, we never saw any. We had a great day however and walked around the town of Victor Harbor and out the causeway to Granite Island. Kim and I had been there in the summer, but it was nice to be there in winter, and this time we went down with Paul, Caroline, Larry, and Ginger. The beach down their is really spectacular and we caught some great clouds in the evening and a nice full moon out over the ocean which made for some nice photos.



Waves crashing along the rocks at Granite Island.



The visitor center in town was the only place we were able to spot a whale!



The gang - Patrick, Paul, Ginger, and Larry



Sunlight beaming through the clouds over the causeway out to Granite Island.
Kim likes to call the sunlight rays the "Jesus Effect"



Full moon out over the ocean.


We are leaving in a few days for holidays and heading out to Coober Pedy, The Outback Red Center, Alice Springs, and then flying on to Cairns. We are really looking forward to seeing Uluru (Ayers Rock) and the Great Barrier Reef. Much more to come very soon...

Ancient Egypt in Australia...

Last week we went to see an international exhibition in the Art Gallery of South Australia about Egyptian Antiquities that was simply fascinating. Kim used the gallery as an educational field trip for her students and I tagged along with her and the kids.

Here is a description of the gallery from their website http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/egypt/index.html

"Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre is a major new international exhibition opening at the Art Gallery of South Australia in March 2007. Over two hundred precious objects will be on show in the first exhibition to come to Australia from the Louvre in almost two decades.

Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre presents ancient Egyptian art and culture in all its beauty and diversity, following the soul through the Underworld on its journey from earthly life to eternity with the gods in the heavenly Field of Reeds.

The objects date from the time of the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza, around 5,000 years ago, to the age of Cleopatra, the last pharaoh. They not only encompass the splendid sculptures of gods and goddesses, kings and priests, sarcophagi and scarabs, but also smaller articles for daily and ritual use that increase our understanding of ancient Egyptian culture and belief.

The Musée du Louvre is home to one of the world's largest and most outstanding collections of Egyptian Antiquities. This unprecedented exhibition presents a unique opportunity for Australians to see the treasures of one of history's greatest civilisations, from one of the world's greatest museums, without leaving home."