Magnetic Island, Australia

 

Townsville is on the western side of Australia.  This is the start of the Great Barrier Reef which is more like a passage between islands you can see above the water and reefs below the water.  This is where the ship is required to take on a specialty pilot whose job it is to guide a ship through the intricacies of the reef.  

Our excursion choice was to take a ferry to Magnetic Island from Townsville.  Lt. Cook, yes, the young man who eventually became Capt. Cook, named this island because he was sure something on this island was messing with his compass.  Not true, but the name stuck.  

Today it is mostly a National Park with Mount Cook in the dead center.  The British were as eager as the Americans to attach their names to places which already had names for thousands of years.  

Basically, we did a bus tour of the island because we were looking forward to getting up close and personal with koalas.  Just our luck, the koalas were sick, and we couldn’t visit them.  I’m glad we went to the Toronga Zoo in Sydney to see koalas.  Koalas are actually very shy in the wild, and they are hard to spot.  

On the plus side of the Magnetic Island excursion, we did get to see Rock Wallabies, and as a bonus, saw joeys in situ (in the pouch).  These animals hop like kangaroos, but are much smaller.  They were as tall as around your knee.

Since I can’t get a multiple picture ‘link’, here are some rock wallaby pictures.

Our tour guide brought sanctioned food, so we were surrounded!

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0a8lb3VmiwEGva18gKDOWp2UQ

(The above link is supposed to be a video, but I don’t know whether it will work or not.)

On to more pictures:

Notice the joey peeking out?  It is about 6-7 months old.  They start leaving the pouch at about 9 months old, but stay close to mom and dive back in for warmth or if they feel they are in danger.

The moms ate all the treats - carrots were the favorites.

We landed at Nelly Bay, a very small settlement on the fringe of the National Park.  The island is very hilly.  Mount Cook is a shade under 1500 feet high.

There were also interesting birds on the island.  It’s hard to get pictures, but this curlew was posing.

I also took pictures of some trees and plants on Magnetic Island

This is a beach vitex and was a sand holder all along the shore line.

This is a flowering evergreen.  Its common name is horsetail tree, and it’s a beach tree.

The beaches on Magnetic Island and the coastline of Townsville are sea turtle hatching sites.  These are sacred animals to the First People, and all Australians protect hatching sites.

The tall trees are ‘gum’ trees which is what all Australians call eucalyptus trees.  There are 900 varieties of gum trees spread over Australia.

There are huge gray granite boulders all over Magnetic Island.  Norwegian pines were introduced here, and the climate must be perfect because they are huge.

Back to Townsville (ship dock), and the harbor.

And, we’ll finish up with Drake

https://photos.app.goo.gl/xFR4a4zhQ417QdBo8

 

 

Canberra, Australia

When you have Australian friends, they are delighte when you come ‘down under’, and can’t do enough. To entertain you.  So how do we have Australian friends?  Drake and I met them in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 2013.  We met our kiddos there for Thanksgiving.  I rented rooms for us in a B&B, and the only other people staying there were this lovely Australian couple.  Shocker:  Lancaster rolls up the sidewalks about 8pm, earlier on holidays, so we played cards, dice, and board games for several evenings with this couple.  I kept in touch, and they were super excited to host us when we told them we were coming to Australia.

They live in the capital of Australia, Canberra.  Canberra is a planed city, and it has all the national/governmental buildings.  We arrived on a Thursday afternoon and left mid day Saturday.  They provided a whirlwind tour.

Our first stop was the Australian National Museuem which houses a lot of First People (Aboriginal) art.  This art truly spoke to me.  It was powerful.  

 

That evening we attended the “Enlightened” festival.  The government buildings are lit in changing light patterns, and everyone walks around and looks at them.  Then, you eat ice cream!  The Aussies eat more ice cream than Americans.

On Friday we started at the National Art Museum.  It had some lovely works.  I discovered a famous Australian Bush Ranger (think outlaw in the sparsely settled regions) called Ned Kelly.  He’s an Australian icon, and our hostess was non-plussed to discover we’d never heard of him.  His claim to bush ranger fame was he wore a metal suit  while he was robbing people.

A famous primitive painter immortalized him in a series of paintings which are very popular.  This guy, Ned Kelly, is the equivalent to Jesse James.

There was also a stained glass house which drew my attention.

Aboriginal grave markers were something I’d never seen.  (These are reproductions/new works - not the actual markers.). They are about six feet tall.  

Finally, here is a genealogy record of ONE aboriginal family.  Ordinarily, this would be passed on orally, but the artist decided to write it down.  The sheer numbers of generations is astounding.  These First People arrived in Australia 65,000 years ago.  If you look at these pictures carefully, you’ll notice a few ‘holes’.  These represent massacres by the English.  

Genological record of an Aboriginal Family

Canberra has the most beautiful Parliamentary House I’ve ever seen.  This is 21st century architecture at its best.  The architectural committee decided not to copy the ‘capital dome’ which is very 19th century.  Instead of a dome, they have an upswoop of aluminium ribbons in a triangle with the Australian Commonwealth flag at the apex

Sorry about my finger!  We are actually walking on top of the Parliament building which is sodded with grass.  There are great pictures from the top of this building of the countryside as well as other monuments.  Australians have a great sense of humor.  There is a complete Parliament building constructed out of Legos.  Here’s the front of the Lego building and you can see how the Capital swoop looks in relation to the real building.  There’s also a glass pyramid which is similar to the Louve.  The Australian guide was quick to point out ‘their’ pyramid  was first.  Here’s the front of the Lego Parliament:

 

Sheep grazing on the top of the

Parliament Building

 

Protesters out front

Representative’s Chamber

Three flags fly over Australia:  The Commonwealth flag; the First People’s Flag’ and the Torres Straits Flag.  Here are all three in the Representative’s Chamber:

This is the real Representatives’ Chamber.  When Parliament is in session, there is a mace laid in place in the Chamber

The trough in front of the white boxes is where is Mace lays when Parliament is in session

The symbol of the House of Representatives is a square.  This symbol is repeated throughout the ‘house’ side of the Parliament Building.  It stands for the idea that Representatives come from all sides of the country with competing ideas.

 

The dominant color of the House side of the chambers are all shades of what could be called Australian green. It’s a dusty looking color of the ‘bush’.  

The dominant side of the Senate is all shades of the Australian desert.  It’s a dark pinkish red.

The Senate also has a symbol.  It is a circle which symbolizes the compromises the Senate makes to get legislation passed.

Another moving symbol of the Capital is the building at the other ed of the Capital Mall.  It is the War Memorial.

The War Memorial is the building with the dome.  The white building i front is the temporary capital while the real one was being built.  The POINT is for legislators to remember what war actually costs before starting one.  

Finally, I want to show you one piece of art which was my favorite.  It is a very large tapestry of the Australian bush.

This portion includes Halley’s Comet which appeared when the tapestry was finished

This portion contains the Australian White Cockatoo

I could go on and on about the art in the Capital Building.  I’ll just share one picture of Aboriginal Art:

The Australian birds are totally different from European/American birds.  We saw flocks of White Cockatoos flying over the trees at our friends’ house.  There were other colorful birds as well as a Black Cockatoo.

We also saw kangaroos in the wild thanks to both our friends as well as the extremely knowledgeable guide, Kerstin, who came out of retirement to give her Parliament House tour.  I could write and write about all the knowledge she imparted. I just hope I’ve done her justice.  

Kangaroos hanging out at the Royal Canberra Golf Course - they like to eat the grass!

Our friend, Dr. Mathews is a theologian who is moving toward retirement, but she is still a supervising professor to some doctoral candidates. Her campus is part of the Charles Stuart University.  Here is a billion year old rock at the start of the labyrinth which is part of the seminary school.

Finally, a snapshot of the Australian cattle raising countryside out of the train as we whizzed by on our way to get on the ship.  

Normally, I would have oodles of photos, but I’m still struggling with this slow internet.  We don’t hit port for another two days, so perhaps I can get a better signal and I will send everyone links to pictures.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/PJYHtWjtaqPgHVyo8

https://photos.app.goo.gl/a4JVBBhzHhPqaW479

The Blue Mountains of Australia

Blue Mountains-Katoomba, Australia 

Tourism - whisking them from the valley floor to the mountaintop

Blue Mountains Three Sisters

This is my favorite picture of this region.  It was taken from a cable car going across the valley which the mountains surround.  This would be the USA equivalent of going to the Great Smokey Mountains in Tennessee or the Blue Ridge Parkway running along the Appalacian Mountains.  However, the ‘blue’ in the US parks are a result of weather.  In Australia, the ‘blue’ is eucalyptus dust/pollen which rises in the air.  

Someone asked me if we could smell the eucalyptus in the air, and I didn’t smell it.  That was surprising considering there are 900 varieties of the eucalyptus tree in the Blue Mountains.

There are lots of wild koala bears who live in small communities and settle close to a variety of eucalyptus from which they can gain the most nitrogen which helps digest those tough leaves.

To get to the mountains we took a one hour commuter train to Katoomba, a gateway to this UNESCO hertitage area.  There are no cars in the park.  Instead, you take the shuttle bus which stops at over 15 entry points for various attractions/hikes/water falls/scenic viewpoints.  We bought the package which gave us the highlights including a short boardwalk hike in the tropical rain forest.  

Coal Miner

Two new industries developed in the Blue Mountains:  First, was tourism, and the second was coal mining.  The picture above is a bronze casting of a coal miner and a load of coal which would have been taken out of the mine and down the mountains by horse/mule.  These sculptures were on the boardwalk through the temperate rainforest.  

Boardwalk trail 

Finally, having difficulty loading the picture album, so check back in about 4 days.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/SMWhcs1WFVvtnfsH8