We hope everybody had a good time at Xmas and New Year.
Jo and I were lucky enough to be invited to Brisbane for Christmas, by Kirsti's family (Mike and Kirsti are looking after our house while we're away). But first we headed off to visit Mike's parents, just south of Brisbane. On the way we stopped at Noosa Heads on the coast for a walk around, and here we saw another Koala snoozing in a tree. The eucalyptus leaves they eat have so little nutrition, they only have the energy for a few hours activity a day, so they're nearly always sleeping during the heat of the day.
Mike's parents - Nel and Henk had a Xmas dinner with colleagues organised for the evening, so we travelled with them to nearby 'Surfers Paradise', and spent some time wandering round the packed tourist shops. The next day we went to another wildlife sanctuary, where we watched the crocs being fed, and saw our first duck-billed platypus.
Henk works as a coach driver, so on the Sunday, we were taken on a free tour around O'Reillys mountaintop retreat, where parrots sat on our hands and ate the seed we were holding (a bit like feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, but in multi-colour, and walked along the suspended walkway through the trees. On the way back, the 'tour' took us through Tambourine Mountain.
After a quick visit to meet Mike's brother and his family (including little Dutch girl Summer), it was time to meet up with Kirsti's parents - Bronwen and Brian. The first night we went for a drive round to see an Australian speciality - incredibly gaudy and over-the-top Christmas decorations. They even have bus tours around some of the worst areas. Unfortunately this year a lot of them have had an attack of semi-tastefulness, so it was quite disappointing. We did manage to find a few to stir the stomach though. We then had a couple of quiet days, taking in the city (Brisbane would be a really nice city, if they could just figure out a way to turn off the heat), B & B took us on the river cat ferry for a spot of nighttime sightseeing.
Christmas with the family was really nice, we went to church with B & B, and were treated to a Christmas performance of song and dance like I've never seen in church, then spent the day eating and chatting.
On boxing day we had to leave early, as we had an appointment with the Platypus of Eungella National Park on the 27th, and it was an 1100Km drive to get there. We stopped overnight at Rockhampton, the beef capital of Australia, so we followed up our overeating of the days before with the obligatory huge Rockhampton steak.
Having made good time, we arrived in Eungella during the afternoon, and went for a swim while waiting for the platypus to appear at dusk. When we got down to the river, we waited for an hour and a half, watching the fresh-water turtles and the kingfishers, and had just about given up on the platypus, when several of them started popping up out of the water. We watched them for an hour or two, before returning satisfied for our evening meal.
We set the alarm early for the next day, so that we would catch them at dawn again, but awoke to the sound of heavy rain, so we switched the alarm off, and went back to sleep, after all, we could try again the next morning. When we did wake up, we went for a walk along the river, but felt some large insects biting our ankles. We looked down to discover that it wasn't insects, but small leeches that were attached to our legs. Not very pleasant, but another experience to chalk up.
We got back just before the heavens opened again, so we ended up not seeing the platypus again until the following morning. This time we did manage to drag ourselves out of bed before dawn, and were rewarded with several more platypus sightings.
This day was the beginning of our yachting adventure. We drove to Airlie beach, where we boarded our yacht at 7pm, and shortly thereafter we were heading out to sea. After an hour and a half of sailing though, the skipper noticed that the electrics were playing up, and went down to the engine bay to check it out. On his return we were told to put our life jackets on, the engine bay was flooded! He then sent out a radio distress call, and went to investigate further. Drama on the ocean waves!
As nearby boats headed towards us, the skipper then discovered that the fresh water pump had malfunctioned, and it was fresh water from our own tanks that were in the hold. As the electrics had been shorted out, we couldn't pump the water out easily, and in any case, it wasn't a good idea to go on without electrics, so he cancelled the distress call, and headed back to harbour, where the mechanics were waiting.
While they worked on the boat overnight, we were sent to sleep on another yacht from the same company (Enid), as all the rooms in town were booked up. In the morning, the crew of the Enid arrived to get their boat ready for it's morning departure, to discover us sleeping aboard. The news from our boat wasn't good, the original problem was fixed in 2 minutes, but they now needed parts to fix the electrics. All the yachts scheduled for departure that day were full, so the company decided to organise for one of it's returning yachts, to be replenished, and to take us out, soon after it got back. One couple decided not to go, and so we ended up on our 3rd yacht within 24hrs, 'Freight Train', a 62ft pocket maxi racing yacht.
We spent the next 3 days sailing and snorkelling our way around the Whitsunday Islands. The original plan was to sail to the Great Barrier Reef, but the new boat wasn't licensed for this, plus there was a gale forecast, so we stayed close to the shelter of the islands. In the event the weather was good to us, although we did have one hectic afternoon sailing into the wind at 8.5 knots, with the boat keeled over at 45 degrees, and we were clinging on to the higher side of the deck. There were no comfortable seats on deck on this boat, it was built for racing.
New Years Eve found us at anchor in the islands. One of the other couples, Filip and Valerie from Antwerp, had brought party poppers and sparklers, and the night was spent singing and generally larking around under the stars.
After the extra day for the sailing trip we had little time left before our flight to Christchurch, so after spending 3 months leisurely travelling all round Australia, we ended up with no time to go to the Great Barrier Reef! We saw it from the plane flying out of Cairns, and it looked spectacular, so we've got something planned for our next trip to Australia.
We're now in Christchurch. The photos aren't downloaded onto disk yet, so I'll upload some to the web after we've done that.
This year will be a 367 day year for us. We have an extra day for leap year, and because of the direction we're flying in, we'll get an extra day when we fly over the dateline. In fact when we fly to Los Angeles, we'll set off in the evening on the 4th March, and arrive in the morning, on the 4th of March, and have the whole day again.
In the meantime, we'll update you on the news from New Zealand shortly.
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