with coworkers on the beach

I took a day off to go visit Waratah Park, a nice sanctuary:

I went to see Perth Zoo:

Later I went to see Fremantle and Rottnest Island:

I went diving for the first time of my life in Rottnest

I then happened to be there for Australia Day, we watched the festivities from the park, and then walked into town to go party at night. The early flight back from Perth to Sydney was very tough :)

drive through bottle shop, an Australian specialty :)

I took a day to go to Cleland Wildlife Park since I like Australian Animals :)

yes, I'm a sucker :)

Another day, went to see a beach and do some snorkling on a reef:

Then checked out Glenelg:

this wing should do :)

As a speakers gift, we got a balloon ride at the ass crack of down :)

Canberra has a fair aomunt of museums:

The flight to Sydney was about 13h, and thankfully I got upgraded to business with miles, so it was as pleasant as it could have been.

Before landing to sydney, I told my new watch to swap the display of the SFO and SYD timezones, and show Sydney on the main hands. They showed that I landed at 06:50, and my next flight was 09:15, so I thought "great, no rush".

I started being nervous when it took an extra 10-15mn for my laptop bag to show up at the carrousel (after my big luggage). This is one thing I really don't want to lose... but I got it in the end, just quite late. Note to self: deal with the morons in security who like to empty the bag each time instead of taking the risk of checking it in.

I then got nabbed by customs because of how I answered the pre-screening questions (I'm going on vacation in Cairns, diving, I have no idea what I said wrong). At the gate they say "we have a code 18" or somesuch, and I get my luggage opened up and questioned. Too bad for them, I had pretty much nothing I wasn't supposed to have.

Once out, I went to the vodaphone counter to get a refill for my Australian GSM SIM.
Then, I went to the United counter to get a paper for the damage they did to my luggage, again. And because they're skilled, out of 4 wheels, they always take out one of the two needed to roll the luggage while pulling it from the handle. Grr... That took a good 20mn.

Eventually, I made it to the Quantas counter, as it turned out that I was actually taking the first leg of an international flight to Japan to get to Cairns (took me a little while to figure that out, I was heading for the domestic terminal). I apologized for being a little late (usually, it's a 2H checkin for international flights), and the attendents looked a bit worried and made a special exception to get me on the plane. Mmmh, ok, it was like 07:40 for a 09:15 flight, but whatever.

I then went to duty free to find and buy a very overpriced battery for my underwater camera (yeah! I won't have to overly worry about running out of juice under water), and someone takes off with my boarding pass that was on the counter and leaves me his. Great...
Back to the checkin gate to get another boarding pass, through security, and direction the gate, where I was hoping to finally plug in my laptop and chill a little bit. Instead, I'm told "last boarding, hurry". Uh, it's barely 8?

Once in the plane, I hear some announcement that they're sorry the plane is late for departure. It's 08:15 for a 09:15 departure, I don't see the big deal...
I play with my phones to send an SMS :) and notice the time on my nokia which says Sydney: 09:20. Then, it finally downs on my that my watch had the Sydney timezone wrong and was one hour late (due to summer daylight savings time). Argh, argh, argh!

At that point, I replayed the last hour and a half and realized how incredibly late I was the entire time, and how I should have been running through the airport instead of getting my luggage inspected, buying SIM cards, camera batteries, and a huge tomblerone bar (homer voice)mmmh, tomblerone :)
I guess I got lucky on that one, and I now have a big tomblerone bar in my laptop bag. Yum :)

There is a fair bit to see around Cairns, both Kuranda and the rainforest tour. I started with Kuranda, a village in the rainforest that you reach by cable car, and can leave by train:

The next day, I did a draintree rainforest and coastal tour:

The evening, I went to see an aborigine show:

I took Jennifer to Kuranda too, but this time we got there a bit earlier, and got to see the animal sanctuaries (including very friendly birds, as well as butterflies):

hello :)

this parrot liked me and just flew on me and stayed with me during the visit

the gift shop had another big parrot that liked my hat :)

nice nibble

Jennifer went to pet those very small kangaroos :)

After we were all done, we took the train back down:

The next day, we did a Draintree, Cape Tribulation tour, sadly it was raining quite a bit:

From Cairns, I was able to rent a plane, and we did a quick flight over the great barrier reef:

We then went diving on the Spirit of Freedom:

And that was it for Cairns, nice little town:

lots of bats sleeping in the trees

The next day, to make things interesting, the next day we rented a car, and drove to the Healesville Sanctuary, where I was hoping we'd find some roaming animals, and have the chance to interact a bit with some of the animals (like feed/pet wallabies and emus), but the place felt more like a zoo.
Speaking of driving, I didn't find it overly hard, except for the following:

All in all, it wasn't that bad though, and thanks to my Garmin GPS with Australian routable maps, we got where we needed without problems.

We then went to the nearby Yarra Wine Country and visited 3 different wineries, which made Jennifer very happy :), and we finished the evening by driving up Mount Dandenon. It was only 2000ft high, but the poor little stick shift 60 horsepower rental I got, really had a hard time climbing us up, and I had to stick to 2nd gear :)

Then, during one of the evenings, we went to Melbourne Museum , as invited by the conference, and amount other things, we saw the last first generation computer left on earth, on par with ENIAC. That was cool to see:

In hindsight, we didn't have enough time to see as much as we could have, but better than nothing for this time. We'll fix that in 2016 when we're be back.

As soon as we got off the airport, I had a rental car lined up, and drove to St Helens/Bay of Fires to get there before sunset. This was the time when I drove the most on the left side of the road for a total of 600km or so. I actually got reasonably used to it, except for the part with the turn signal is on the wrong side of the car, where I would use the windshield wipers on the other side instead of the turn signal (to the point that it took me a while to readjust when I got home). The only part that was a bit tough was knowing exactly how far the right and left sides of the car were on a narrow road.

Anyway, here are the picts:

Our drive up from the airport to St Helens

The next morning, we had a very busy day from an early hike around the Bay of Fires, a visit of the area, a hike to the top of the highest local peak (after a drive up a dicey road for a wimpy 2WD), a visit to Natureworld, a 2H visit/hike of Douglas Apsley national park, and then getting to see baby penguins by the beach.

Bay of Fires

ok, it was a nice beach, sure. Notice no one in the water in full summer

oysters everywhere, we just weren't sure if they were fresh

the trail up to south sister was definitely 4wd

I got all the way up in our 2WD beater except on the little piece above :)

those were local geese

tasmanian devil

most those snakes were venomous and deadly

in Bicheno, we were able to see penguins at night

the parents come from the sea with fish to feed the young

On the second day, we first went diving in Bicheno where we had spent the night, visited a couple of wineries on the way back, and stopped by a fruit picking place where we just had to stop :)

The next 3 days, I went to the conference while Jennifer went to visit a few local attractions around Hobart, although in all honesty, there wasn't a whole to do there, and Jennifer hated the field trips with the slow people and screaming kids :-
Came saturday, the conference was over, so we went to Eaglehawk Neck for a couple more dives (boat dives this time), and after that went south to Port Arthur (you basically get to see the ruins of the convict port), we continued to the south most portion of the Island to see the remarkable cave, which wasn't all that remarkable but had nice coastline, and I then tried to get back in time for a sunset from Mt Wellington (almost made it, it was dusk).

Port Arthur

I love this sign, the bridge is only wide enough for one car, you can't pass anyway

View of Hobart from the top of Mt Wellington (4100ft)

Sunday, Jennifer was kind of suffering from a cold, so I went to Bonorong Park where she had been a couple of days earlier.

the small joeys that can't quite fit in the pocket are funny :)

this bird does look like a log, amazing

All in all Tasmania was interesting to drive around, the roads were nothing but straight (although it's usually more fun for me in a real car :) ), and the 100kph speed limit was actually fairly warranted for the nothing but straight roads we went through. We saw a lot of coastline and nature, although neither, quite frankly had anything on what we have on california, but they were nice nonetheless. The highlight for us was definitely the nature parks with local animals, which were quite good in the home of the Tasmanian Devil :)

waterfront restaurants didn't do well

Shitty Wok, may I help you? :)

A few night pictures:

On monday evening, we went to the top of Mt Cooh Tah for a nice view, but a somewhat poor dinner for the price paid (tourist trap):

view was decent at least

I took tuesday off from the conference, and we went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which was fairly fun:

Sheep dog at work

not quite a lorikeet

eating a mouse

and we spent the rest of the day at the Botanical Gardens:

On saturday, after the conference, we went to Mt Tamborine and had fun with a rope/exercise course in the middle of a forest. It was actually both challenging and fun. Even if you're supposed to be attached at all times (although you are responsible for that), I think stupid lawyers in the US would never allow that.

We then had a little time left over to head out to their sister location, the Currumbinm Wildlife Sanctuary (after a drive through the mountain), and had about 90mn to go through the park before it closed (turned out to be just enough).

tasmanian devils remind me of puppy dogs on occasion.

those guys were roaming around everywhere

feet are sticking out :)

yummy insect you're eating there :)

We used the rest of the day to have a look at the Gold Coast:

And that was it for Brisbane and surroundings. In hindsight we should have spent a 2nd day visiting the gold coast since Brisbane itself didn't have that much to see.

To get to Heron Island, you fly to Gladstone, and either pay a lot for helicopter ride which isn't very useful for saving time since it can only carry 15kg of luggage, which is useless for a diver (the rest goes by boat, so you have to wait for it either way). The cat does go at 30kts, so it flies. It's however very pricey ($240 return per person) and the ride is difficult when the sea is rough (we had stuff flying off tables and people throwing up left and right).

Gladstone has a single runway for the daily quantas turboprops

Qantas Bombardier Dash 8

The high speed cat takes people back and forth to Heron Island

Those who can't deal with the sea, can get a shorter scenic flight

Heron Island

However, I felt that seeing nesting turtles come at night, and baby turtles hatch at night and go to the sea, would be cool (it was). While I don't overly mind being on a boat for a week, it's also nice to be on non moving land and still go diving easily every day :).
My quick review of Heron Island is that the staff was fantastic, the island was fun to walk around, and accomodations were not bad, but it was hot and humid at night without AC and having windows opened meant more noise from the birds :-/ (while basic accomodations are already expensive to start with, there are even more expensive ones with windows and AC). Since we had the more basic accomodations (reef room), I was woken up every night by stupid birds with loud mating calls all night (this was because it was mating season). The upside is that it was also trail of turtle nesting season and the start of baby turtle hatching season.

A few pictures from Heron Island:

an old boat that got beached on the reef

our first reef room wasn't bad, just a bit far from the dive shop, so we moved to a closer one.

yummy :)

going out of turtles at sunset, got us a few sunsets :)

Heron Island Birds

those sea birds evolved to trees and make crappy nests out of dry leaves and poo, their efforts were cute :)

Egrets (another name for Herons), which Heron Island comes from

The shearwaters which only come at night, sleep on the ground, and keep everyone awake with loud mating calls

The seagulls were very defensive of their eggs (and see the newboarn baby)

Turtle Nesting

turtle watching: you're doing it wrong

tracks from the nesting turtles

they come after sunset close to high tide

and spend hours to make big holes

Lost Nesting Turtles

trying to get back to the ocean (we helped it)

this one was more stuck

took a few people to get it out :)

and back to the beach

Baby Turtle Hatchling

this is what the eggs look like

aren't those things cute? :)

to the ocean

you can use a flashlight to help the hatchlings to the sea

another nest I found

once the top ones got out, it was a swarm

watch the video to see how fast they go

watch the one on the left that flips over itself :) (light is in front of them so that they go for it)

by then, we found some lost turtles that were lured by the jetty light, we had to hand carry about 30 of them back to the beach where they could go to the water on their own. They weren't big, but they were squirly, it was hard to carry just 3 or 4 at a time since they tried to get out of your hands to fall back on the sand and run in the wrong direction :)

yes, it's tempting to take them home :)

Jennifer even managed to rescue one of them from an evil seagull, although we did see 3 more seagulls with hatchlings in their beak that we were not able to save :( (the sad truth is that their survival rate is actually one to one thousand from egg to not having been eaten by fish or sharks in the sea).

Diving

The diving, well, was ok but not great. We did get to see critters that we haven't seen elsewhere (including my 14 days diving the great barrier reef higher north), but there were a few issues:

So, diving was a bit annoying at times with the extra rules and restrictions, and the vis being ok or good less than half the time, wasn't ideal. Yet, we still saw some nice critters as I said above, so it wasn't all for naught, pictures below should show that. Diving came up to about $1000 per person for 16 dives, and BCD/reg rental (on top of the $340/day to stay at Heron Island on a 'special' they were running).

They had several weird sharks and rays we hadn't seen before, like the Wobbegong Shark, or the Shovelnose Ray, not counting some pretty huge (man size) cownose and cowtail rays.

plenty of green turtles

very nice big rays

they were not scared

this one was 'not quite right' :)

lunch was right there :)

not too sure what those were

wobbegon shark

teamwork

huge ray

huge loggerhead turtle

We also did some diving by the Jetty and found a few rays and sharks that like to hang out there:

As a first time ever, I was lucky enough to get a 1st class seat for a flight to Australia (actually I'd have been happy enough with business, but that was not available). I still don't think it's worth the 'list price', but considering the quite reduced price I was able to get it for, it almost felt ok :)

I setup a little office I could work in :)

So what is there to say about Ballarat. It's a former mining town. The town itself can be visited in an hour or so (count a day to see the nearby attractions). All in all, definitely not something you'd fly from abroad to go visit, but since Linux.conf.au, my favourite conference, was there, so so was I :)

Downtown had a few old buildings that were kind of nice:

Ballarat's birds were loud but pretty :)

They had an old observatory with vintage telescopes, we went there one evening to do a bit of stargazing

After the conference, I went to visit what seemed fun to visit. Bird World was a grandma and grandpa 'shop'. it could have been a lot of fun, but unfortunately their free flight cage net was broken, so they had to put all their great parrots in cages. It was a bit sad since I could tell some were very friendly and would have loved to interact with me.

this one was so friendly and definitely wanted to come say hi

Next, I went to Sovereign Hill. This is actually the highlight of this town, a recreation of what used to be this old gold mining town. They have shops and blacksmiths like 150 years ago, and people dressed in the style of the day. Kids can pan for gold in the river.

Someone also showed how they make gold bars:

They had authentic machinery using steam power:

They then had a night show that was a recreation of the mini insurrection that happened there against the British taxation. Too bad they got squelched by the British and never fought back after that.

After a ncie visit to Sovereign Hill, I went to see the local Ballarat Wildlife Park. What can I say, I'm a sucker for Autralian wildlife parks (which I much prefer to zoos). It's always fun to be able to pet a few unusual animals like a wombat, and hand feed kangaroos or wallabies.
While I didn't expect too much, at the same time I've actually been pleasantly surprised by such parks in the smaller towns, and that turned out to be true there too. Their crocodile feeding was particularly impressive, their kangaroos quite friendly, and petting wombats was cool :)

this was a very cool layed back kangaroo, nice claws too ;)

food, for me? :)

kangaroo was friends with wombat :)

food comma :)

those things peck hard when you feed them, they don't know any better :)

The crocodile feeding was quite impressive:

this guy really had balls, even by Australian standards :)

I hope he gets paid enough for this :)

While it was a small town, the places to visit still made for a fun day.

This time, I was able to score a much nicer flight in 1st class, which definitely made the long flight more bearable:

Straight off the plane in sydney, I actually took a bus to Canberra, which with 3H door to door, was simpler and just as fast, if not faster, than a plane while being faster. I dropped my stuff at the Uni accomodations and took my skateboard to Questacon to visit a few hours before they closed on that sunday afternoon:

Questacon

They had a really good robot playing air hockey:

Next, I just quickly stopped by the Parliament for a later visit, and went by a few ambassies:

Tuesday, I had a day off from the conference, so I went to revisit the National Museum of Australia, which quite frankly I had somewhat forgotten about:

Rabbits spread out... like rabbits

Next, I went to see the sculpture garden and the National Gallery of Australia

From there, I went to the Old Parliament House:

seeing the old equipment used up to 40 years ago was fun :)

After the old house, which is now a museum, I went to the current/new parliament:

it has a nice view on the old one and the war museum all the way down

Kangaroo and Emu, nice emblem

cute

And that was it for Canberra. There was a little more to see, like the war museum, but I had seen it years ago, and didn't have the time to go back with the conference schedule.

Right after the conference was over, I went back to Sydney with Linus and Dirk for a flight to Lord Howe Island.

Still, we did a good job. First a few pictures from the plane:

I picked hotel by Darling Harbour, so this is where we started from, just next to Chinatown:

it was chinese new year that weekend

We then went to visit Market City, it's huge:

We then went towards the gardens:

From there, we continued to a vista point for seeing the Opera and the bridge, and went through a park where you could feed wild cockatoos. They sure were more fun than pigeons, Australia rocks!

We eventually got to the peak where we could take pictures:

And we headed to the opera house itself via the government house gardens:

circulair quay

We finished the evening at the rocks, before it started pouring rain:

Since the weather had turned to crap, we went to see Sea Life Aquarium by Darling Harbour. Honestly I really expected the place to be kind of a tourist trap, and it was actually quite good, especially considering the constraints of the location. It definitely beats the aquarium by Pier 39 in San Francisco:

nice pincher

the battle of the lobsters

The Australian Dugong sure looks like a Manatee, but it lives in salt water only

By then, it was late, we were exhausted, and it was pouring rain, so we went back to our hotel:

The next day, we had the morning to spend, before having to go to the aiport early afternoon:

view from our hotel

not a bad window view

We went to check out the Darling Harbour zoo, which was also much better than planned:

pretty birdie

wallaby

those remind me of what I've seen in Jurrasic park :)

even their pigeons are colorful

this really is a beautiful bird too

I tyipcally never get the tourist trap pictures in those places, but they so exceeded my expectations, that I gave them the money:

and after that, we headed towards google, to go check it out and have lunch with friends:

nice view from the google patio

You can see more pictures of the Sydney Office.

After lunch and fun at google, we went back to the airport, for Jennifer to enjoy her first class seat, and me my business one. We stopped by the airline lounge on the way there:

business was not bad either, almos tas good as 1st class IMO.

Due to merely asking, and some super nice pilots in the B747 we were taking from SFO to Sydney, the captain not only let me sit in his chair, but even took the picture for me :)

cute!

After a dinner and night in Perth, we took an early private flight to Monkey Mia and Shark Bay. Putting the price aside (flying in Australia is not cheap), the owner unfortunately used the flight to check out one of his pilots, so we had an extra person in the plane which does not have much room, and we did a long 3H-ish flight in the cramped back seats of a Mooney. It was pretty miserable, but we got to Monkey Mia eventually. Unfortunately we got there too late for the last dolphin beach sighting of the day, so having arrived there after missing the main attraction was a bit disappointing.

I've flown the slightly faster version of this plane, I don't consider it a 4 seater

but we had 4 of us inside, it probably stretched the allowed payload

downtown perth

this board told us that we'd likely be out of luck for seeing dolphins that day

the dolphins swimming close to shore, but not interested in coming to see us

actually we got lucky and saw some wild emus

Next, we flew to Hamelin Pool to see Stromatolites by Shark Bay. Those cool organisms are now believed to have created part or most of the oxygen on earth, some 2 billion years ago. Unfortunately they helped create most of the animal life that exists on earth today, and in turn the fishes apparently though they tasted good and ate most of them. The few surviving ones are there because they are in very salty water that most sea animals don't like, and that's the case in Shark Bay:

this looks a bit dry, and it sure was hot and dry

this wild kangaroo didn't seem to mind.

After long flight back, I snapped a few pictures from Perth:

Naval museum and Fremantle in the back

Some pictures of Perth University:

the women are not impressed, tough crowd

but they could be bought with food easily :)

During the conference, one early morning, I went for a walk in the big park between Perth University and downtown Perth:

As for Perth itself, I didn't have any time to go visit it until the last evening after my flight in the B747 Simulator at Perth Flight Experience

I do have a few pictures from around the University where we had the conference, though:

And the university:

Jennifer and I walked around town a bit, had dinner, and got ready for our flight the next day to Christmas Island to see crabs and to dive

As seen from the plane, Xmas Island is reasonably large, you definitely need a car to get around

Thankfully they have a real runway that allows full size jets to land (along with proper luggage)

Our hotel was called "the sunset", I wonder why :)

Some dinners, we at in our hotel room with basic cooking facilities, others we ate in restaurants:

The island had a lot of industry linked to phosphate mining:

Unfortunately, people from other countries have figured out that they can just take boats to show up as refugees and flee to Australia:

Anyway, back to visiting the island, we covered a lot of the island thanks to the rental car:

This is the lovely 4x4 we got. It was full of dings and scratches, and that turned out to be a feature since we sure got a lot more scratches while driving between trees and plants and trying to avoid running over crabs that were everywhere.

We used our beaten up 4x4 rental to drive around the island to some hikes, remote beaches, and interesting viewing points, and it was definitely worth it. While they call themselves "the other galapagos" this is over-reaching, but they do have lots of cool birds, many many kinds of crabs, boobie birds, and more.

look at the webbed feet around the branches

We also got to see flying foxes (bats):

We also had many lizards and geckos:

This of course does not count the diving which was quite good in warm easy waters with great visibility.

After the dives in the morning, we used our rental car to go visit the Island, and it was a lot of fun to see so many crabs. From what we were told, the ubiquitous red crabs that are all over, including crossing the road everywhere, making driving interesting, aren't good to eat, but the robber/coconut crabs are, however they are protected. To be honest, I grew attached to those little red crabs, they are not afraid of humans, I've been able to give them food to their claw which they grabbed and ate slowly, and they do a great job recycling organic matter (animal or vegetal).
I have so many crab pictures, it was hard to select a few:

we missed the big crab migration, but some roads were still closed due to too many crabs

those little guys were fearless and all over, including the road

coconut crabs

we found this coconut crab white driving back at night

beauty

this little guy went hiding in the urinal during a rainfall, maybe not the best move

these guys were more shy

coconut crabs come in different colors

a beautiful blue one

the path was littered with crabs

this coconut crab found in the rocks had eggs

ghost crab

the ubiquitous red crabs eat all debris, vegetal or animal

we were able to feed the crabs some leaves, which they were happy to take from us

all shapes and sizes

unfortunately, many get run over

Many other pictures from driving around and hiking to beaches:

blowhole

we actually got to use the 4x4

remote beach we drove and hiked to

the tracks are from turtles that came to nest

these crabs can't swim, but they lay eggs in the ocean

they were underwhelming when we arrived, bad timing

A couple of late afternons, we went to Margaret Knol to finish the day. We got to see some birds and flying bats:

bikes are the best way to get around

We went to our room first, and right away we had a hungry quokka came to our room. Thankfully I had some bird seeds that are ok for them to eat, whereas other foods can make them sick. They are the cutest marsupials:

After that, we went for a bike ride for what we had left of the day:

Quokkas are actually nocturnal, so we saw many more at night:

The next morning, our little friend came back for more (we left some water for it):

And we went back out to take the first ferry out:

It was a fun little zoo to visit:

I love those birds

good thing I had bird seeds with me :)

Finally, it was time to go molest some kangaroos

After finishing the zoo, we took a cab back to Fremantle to spend the rest of the day before going to the airport for our flight home:

We had 15mn to visit the marine museum before it closed:

the fast ferry to Rottnest

After sunset on the beach, we had a good dinner before going to the airport for a hellish red eye to Sydney:

After our successful Sydney in a day last year, we tried Sydney in a half day this time :)

This was not really a plan to spend so little time in Sydney, but with our flights it worked out that way, we got a hellish red eye from Perth, and I figured it'd be more fun to spend 6 hours in Sydney than sit in the airport.

We went to the botanical gardens after stopping by Google to drop our luggage:

I had brought seeds to feed the cockatoos we saw last year. I love those birds:

I finally found some customers

an interested customer :)

it brought a twig to exchange for seeds :)

The video shows how one wasn't shy at all, but the two other ones really wanted the seeds, but were too shy to take them from our hands. Per Jennifer didn't get them to eat from her hand this year.

These are Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and many have been tagged so that people can report sightings on this Cockatoo Wingtag facebook page. They're fun and intelligent birds from what people have been reporting.

From there it was just a short walk to circular quay where we went to get a jet boat ride:

The jet boat ride was fun and wet (I know, what were the odds? :). That boat had enough power to do 360 turns in the water. Cool way to see the Sydney harbour :)

Last, but not least, we went to Google for lunch, and I got a few pictures from there, and then from the Sydney airport before flying home:

We took a nice flight to Melbourne via Auckland, nice flight as always and very nice lounge in Auckland:

Once we arrived in Melbourne, we got a rental car and first drove to the Royal Australia Air Force Museum, the oldest continuous air force base in the world (click the link for more pictures):

Next, we went to Serendip Sanctuary, which was no frills, but ok to spend 90mn at before it closed:

this bird is beautiful

happy colorful birds

this pigeon looks like it's on drugs with bloodshot eyes :)

birds, goofing off

After sleeping in Geelong saturday night, I got up early on sunday to drive to Queenscliff and do 3 dives (follow the link) while Jennifer took a snorkling/marine mammal watching tour. After our respective tours, we drove around Queenscliff and the coast a bit;

magpie bird

Geelong, the town where I had my LCA 2016 linux conference, didn't have much to see, but there were still a few things like the wool museum:

jacquard programmable loom

After the conference was over, on saturday morning, we had a private tour to the great ocean road with François, a nice english speaking French guide:

semi wild kangaroos in a golf course

I love cockatoos

wild koala

Eventually, we got to the 12 apostles, very scenic even you don't get a helicopter ride (huge line for that):

On the way back, our guide found a nice flock of birds, but they were not interested in my bird seeds :)

After driving back to Melbourne, we dropped our luggage in the hotel and went to St Kilda Pier to see the few wild penguins that come nest after sunset (sadly it was only 2 or 3 penguins that came from the water after a 90mn wait, but it was still nice to see them:

We found a few penguins nesting in the rocks, they were pretty good at jumping between rocks:

one penguin coming out of the water

nesting

The next day, we went to see some museums:

We started with the Sealife Aquarium (on its own page):

Next we went to the 2 NGVs (national gallery of victoria): local and international:

some silverware my dad doesn't even have :)

We then finished the day at the Melbourne Museum, about aboriginals and more recent history of Melbourne:

there were _many_ aboriginal tribes

By 17:00, all the museums are closed, so we headed towards a nice French restaurant and then went out to see the Chinese New Year celebrations and get pictures from Eureka Skydeck 88 around sunset:

The view from skydeck 88 wasn't bad, but the reflections from the windows were pretty bad, hard to take pictures: [rigimg:1024:647*|skydeck had a "ride" over the void]

confederation square

It was also Chinese New Year:

Our last day, we first took a tram to Queen Elizabeth's gardens to visit before our tour to Phillip Island:

Melbourne does a very good job with public transportation

that's the cactus we have in our yard, gets big when left unchecked :)

this one too I guess

my bird seeds came in handy :)

On the way out of the park, we hit the Shrine of Remembrance:

At 11:00, we had a small bus wildlife tour to penguin island tour with the little penguin bus:

I even found a wild echidna roaming around

don't shake the koalas off the trees :)

While at the Koala center, I could hear a racetrack, sure enough there was a nice racetrack nearby, I was able to get a few shots:

But there were wild Wallabies everywhere on our way to the penguin viewing:

happily eating something :)

did I mention wild wallabies? :)

Then, we got the noobies, where you can see penguins nesting, and rabbits:

And eventually we arrived to the penguin viewing location:

we had premium viewing tickets in this location

the penguins come from the ocean and walk up this path

general viewing area

So they have a no pictures policy after sunset, it's because they cannot trust people to take pictures without flash (I don't blame them) and besides most cameras and all cell phones would be unable to take any worthwhile shots. As a result, since I did have a camera capable of taking shots in full darkness, and without flash, I took a few shots when I could and without others seeing me so that they wouldn't get bad ideas. The penguins arrived in waves (they travel in numbers for safety), and walk up the path, sometimes up to 2H to the respective nests.

they had a penguin arrival counter :)

And this was the end of our trip to Melbourne, the next morning, we flew home.

After a longish trip to Hobart, Tasmania, the next morning I started with the botanical garden, which I found out later, I had already been to in 2009 during our previous visit to Tasmania, and wasn't that impressive, but it was open before everything else, so I went there:

of course I was up early, so I got to enjoy sunrise

I then went to Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, which I had seen in 2009 too, but I quite enjoyed it, and I signed up for a couple of animal encounters, which were quite worth it:

got to feed some tawny frogmouth

then, we got a baby wombat (they are cudly when they are small, but not when they grow up)

Then went to see the rest of the sanctuary, because it's fun:

some kangaroos were very nice, even if you didn't feed them

Next, I went to Mona, the local museum of modern art:

very small pretty spiders

this male was excited and showing off

and then the female spider gets conned :)

they had an unusual wall of vagina plasters

I didn't take the ferry to museum since I arrived from the north, but I took it back to the town

where you can ride on sheep, because why wouldn't you?

The ferry got me back to Hobart downtown where Jennifer eventually met me fresh off her plane:

Another evening, after the conference, we went for a nice dinner, and hiked down from a higher point in town, where we walked down and saw some wild wallabies:

And this was it for Hobart. We had already been 8 years ago, so there wasn't that much we hadn't seen already. We however the next Saturday morning, after the conference was over, we took a bus tour towards the north of the Island.

We had a quick stop on the way, showing an old sawmill:

And we finally got to Wineglass Bay:

beautiful rock beaches, like bay of fires we saw in 2009

and did I mention wallabies?

On the way out, we stopped at a winery and eventually got to Launceston, where we met my friend Andy who had driven there, and did a nice walk around Cataract Gorge Reserve:

We then enjoyed a nice dinner at Stillwater with Andy

Tasmania Zoo had fun animal encounters, so we did a couple :)

the keeper picked up a female tasmanian devil for us

I'm not sure I would put my fingers there though :)

Jennifer practised her wombat petting technique

cockatoos are awesome birds, they always love my sunflower seeds

they are very curious and fidgedy

From the zoo, we were originally going to stop at Trowunna Wildlife Park on the way, but given the limited time in the rest of our day, and the zoo we had just seen as well as the animal encounters, we were told that it would be a bit of a repeat, so I drove directly to Mole Creek Caves where we did their 3 cave tours. The first two had quite a bit of overlap but showed different parts of the cave, so doing both instead of one, wasn't an entire waste:

The cave had glow worms, although they were picky about allowing us to photograph them:

After the cave, we drove to Cradle Mountain and did some nice hikes in the evening, but those pictures are on the Cradle Mountain (next) page.

it didn't even mind being pet, which is unusual as adult wombats are usually not friendly

lots of wombats came out in the evening to go forage

more wallabies than we could count

we were hoping for this water hole to be overrun, but it wasn't

but we found some elsewhere

then I got super lucky and spotted this echidna

This was a great few hours out, the most wildlife we've never seen. After all that, we got some good sleep and got up bright and early the next morning for hiking the overland track all the way up to cradle mountain peak:

Wild life was limited, most animals stay put during the day:

The problem is that my hiking boots totally failed, the sole peeled off both of them:. I used the very limited amounts of duct tape I had, and then Jennifer's head band, and twisty ties, but honestly it barely held things together:

this is the peak we climbed, it was very steep and rocky at the top, and very hard with my broken shoes

finally got to the top

I did an Arturo at the top

Getting back down was not fun, especially with my broken shoes. It was actually kind of dangerous since I didn't know when my shoes were going to fail and slip, but eventually we got back to the trail, and finished the loop going towards the lake.

We eventually got back to Rony Creek bus stopped and got a ride back to the parking lot, picked up our car and then I drove to Strahan for our next 2 days.

R44

nice non straight road to Queenstown

queenstown is a big mining town

middle station where the steam train stop and can turn around

Our merc was a pleasure to drive and got us through the twisty roads to Strahan

After a quick dinner, we walked to Hogarth Falls but didn't get to see any Platypus

Nice view from our room, the big boat was the one we took for our tour

the british built a railroad line that went to the sea to load ships more easily

we then made it to gordon river and its rainforest

we got out for a quick walk

Next we went to mariah island, where many convicts were kept under bad conditions. A ranger gave us a great story of what happened:

Back on land, we had a look at a pine sawmill:

Next, we went to sand dunes to ride an 4WD ATV, that was a lot of fun:

we eventually got to the ocean dunes

our ATV guide

I made it up the sand dune the first time (where others bailed and rolled back)

Then, we got back to town to see The Ship That Never Was play. That was the biggest disappointment of the day, as well as waste of time. It was really silly and made for kids (only):

Next (yes, long days), we went to another river where we were hoping to see a wild platipus, but we weren't lucky enough:

And this was finally the end of our day. We had a sunset boat trip planned to see some mutton birds and penguins, but sadly it was cancelled, so that was it for our long day :)

We did the steam train ride between Strahan and Queenstown except since we were driving out anyway, and the rack and pinion train ride left from Queenstown, we did an early drive there, which despite the very curvy road, we arrived there in 30mn instead of the recommended 1h drive :)
Since we had time to burn, we drove to a viewing point before finally going to the train, which left by 09:00:

those steam trains were mostly used to move mining product to Strahan to get to ships

rack and pinion to go uphill and downhill steep grades

this is how it works

a few places allow an oncoming train to cross

the little engine is thirsty uphill

we had a few stops while the engine was getting more water

we crossed paths with the strahan to queenstown train

a tree fell on the tracks, but the engineers had a chainsaw to take care of that :)

If you like steam trains, here is a video summary:

When we got back to Queenstown, we got to pan for gold and went to visit the local historical museum:

On the drive out, we went to iron blow lookout, of one of the mining areas:

Then, we had the long drive back to Strahan, which we were able to do at very good pace though :)

I stopped for a quick hike

After that we got to the famous "The Wall" art gallery, a huge wood carving:

And back to Hobart for our very early flight home the next morning:

We had a good time and definitely got to see a lot more of Tasmania than last time.

We started by checking out the Amex lounge in SFO that Jennifer got access to (sadly on the wrong side of security for us, so we had to go through security twice):

made it to Incheon/Seoul, and connected to Brisbane

very nice seats

We then arrived in Brisbane around 06:00 to meet Clare from Air Safaris Int and the start of our tour. I have a few pictures on the Brisbane page.

We then took a bus to Toowoomba, about 2h inland from Brisbane, and got some briefings on how to fly in Australia, as well as check rides from the club that was going to rent us planes for the next 21 days. I'll sheepishly admit that I kind of sucked during that check ride given how little sleep I had gotten, but I guess whatever I had left was enough to pass:

On day #2, I was up before sunrise, fog to the ground, and then we got some very loud birds that all went off at the same time exactly at sunrise, despite the heavy fog:

more planning with Oz charts

this was the C172 I was going to use for the next 3 weeks, with a slightly faster engine and a G1000

Two legs of just under 2H, the first one took us to Surat, a small deserted airport with no facilities:

natural gas pipelines

seems that our planes were all equipped with ADS-B, so I was able to see other planes from our group

Surat

Our 2nd leg had a bit of convective weather, including this big rain cloud that shook the hell out of us when we had almost cleared the side of it

Charleville

Once in town, we got a short guided tour:

The first flight, we did some makeshift formation flying. That was definitely challenging and kept me on my toes, and I flew nowhere close to others compared to what the 2 best pilots, did:

morning pre-flight briefing

cute pink plane

formation takeoff

I was so happy to have a G1000 to show me where other planes, were.

'traffic alert, traffic alert!' :)

well done, guys

We then resumed our regular flight to Windorah, our lunch stop:

there were watering holes for cattle