Day 50 (Magnetic Island to Cape Hillsborough National Park, 390 km):

The ferry took us back to Townsville with super fun memories from the island. Since we still hadn’t seen either any crocodiles or cassowaries, as we were driving by the Billabong Sanctuary, Faith suggested we stop. We flipped a quick u-turn and went back to the Sanctuary for a walkabout.

We watched them feed a huge crocodile. We got to hand-feed some kangaroos (imagine if I had written that the other way around). And we saw the cassowaries. They are huge. Then I melted like a popsicle (a tasty cherry one, not one of those nasty orange creamsicles) and made a beeline back the airconditioned car. Faith stuck around for a bit to take a few more pictures and enjoy the cassowaries.

One super sucky note for Faith. The day before, her phone gave up the ghost. The screen when white and we never got it to return to normal. We tried every tip I could find online. The screen went bad. The screen costs nearly $400 to replace. Not happening. So, she used my phone to take pictures at the sanctuary while I chilled out (and dried out) in the car.

We left Billabong around 1:30 PM and made one more stop before our next night’s stay inside the Cape Hillsborough National Park. We stopped at Mount Inkerman Scenic Lookout which sits atop a sudden peak at 219 meters (719 feet). I have never driven on a paved road that was so steep. Had I not pushed the car up to 35 km in first gear, I don’t know that it would have made the hill. It was crazy. I bet it was at least a 15% grade if not greater. The view was interesting. The easterly view of the coral sea is beautiful. The northerly view is a bit monotonous. Mile upon mile upon mile of sugar cane fields.

We met a couple of folks and talked with them for a good 30 minutes about American politics (would you be surprised if I told you how many times people have commented on the US presidential election outside of the US with stunned incredulity), we talked about sugar cane farming (Jim’s dad was a sugar cane farmer), and about the magnificent view we had.

We got caught in the rain just south of the lookout on the highway. What rain it was. The road was 100 km/h. Our best speed for nearly an hour was between 60 and 70. And with that, we could just barely see the road. Wow, was it pouring rain. Oklahoma or Georgia style of rain. Big fat rain. And lightning here and there to give the rain some pizzazz. A true part of the northeastern Australia experience as I understand it. There is a ton of rainforest. There is even "dry rainforest" up there which is an oxymoron if you ask me.

We arrived at Cape Hillsborough Tourist Park within the National Park just after 6. Thankfully, we left the rain an hour behind us. We checked into our cabin. The cabins there are super modern and so very nice for a cost-effective stay. Very much tiny-house style. After we checked in, we walked down to the beach.

On the way there and on the way back, we saw grey kangaroos right in the camp. One of them was so docile that people (Faith) were petting it (Faith) even though (Faith) all the signs say that they are wild animals (Faith) and that you shouldn’t pet them (Faith). No, I did not pet it! You can’t prove that. I would never do something that authority figures advised against. It would be out of character for…drat! Pictures. I plead the 5th. Do they have a 5th in Australia? I plead whatever it is in Australia.

Day 51 (Cape Hillsborough to Agnes Water, 617 km)

Wednesday, December 18. We got up at 4:30 AM by blind luck. We had planned to get up at 4:45 AM to go out to watch the sunrise and see the kangaroos. That was the whole reason for going to Cape Hillsborough. It is renowned for the kangaroos on the beach at sunrise.

One of my future posts, I expect to talk about the little differences between countries. One of the differences in Australia is that almost all the plugs have a little switch above them to turn them on. And if you don’t turn them on while you have your phone turned on as a hotspot for your blogging laptop, well now, I’m here to tell you what happens. Your phone dies. And then your alarm you were relying on to wake you at an obscenely early time, well that just plain doesn’t happen.

Blind luck probably isn’t quite right. I have this thing. NO, I AM NOT NEUROTIC!!!! It's just a thing. When I have something like this going on, I tend to wake up several times before it is time to get up. NOT NEUROTIC! Just…focused on my goal. Yeah, that’s it. Focused. On the goal. Not obsessed. Not fixated. Focused. Yes, most definitely focused. Laser focused. Technically, a laser isn't focused. A laser directly emits light versus passing light through a pair of lenses that enable variable focus. I guess I don't get laser focused. I get...microscope focused. More focused than this particular paragraph, that much is certain.

The Kangaroos were accompanied by half-a-dozen agile wallabies. It was great fun watching them and watching all the ga-ga tourists falling over each other trying to take pictures. I’m really not sure which was more interesting. The roos and wallabies were cuter, that much is certain. The people were sillier, us included. Ga-ga is probably the most apt description.

We were back in our room by 6:30 AM. Since we were already up and we had an even longer drive ahead of us than the day before, we packed up and left by 7:30.

Our first stop of the day was the Capricorn Caves. These are caves (not fully underground) versus caverns (fully underground). As such, they lacked the typical stalactite and stalagmite formations that we are accustomed to seeing in caverns. Their prime feature was the oddly-eroded, twisting pathways through the limestone rocks caused by the rain and carbonic acid. It was like Swiss cheese made out of limestone boulders.

As we were entering the caves, the guide told us to tell him if we saw any snakes. About a dozen people walked by one without seeing it. The folks right before us did and I got a picture. As it happens it was one of the most venomous snakes in all of Australia, the eastern brown snake. Well, now! There’s a sight to behold. It was about two feet off the path basking on the rocks. Right there where everybody was walking.

Our last stop before Agnes Water was the Archer Park Rail Museum in Rockhampton. The museum was at the train station for the town, and it had (of course) TRAINS! Choo-choos! Yes, I am a big kid when it comes to trains. This was a very small museum. Given the tight schedule we were maintaining with the long drives, it was terrific to get a taste of the local history and TRAINS with just about an hour of impact to our drive time to see TRAINS. I'm going to have to TRAIN myself to be more succinct with my blogging and not simply follow every TRAIN of thought that makes its way like a freight TRAIN through my head.

We checked into our motel in Agnes Water about 5:30. We just dropped our bags in the room and went straight to the beach. We wanted to catch the 6:40 sunset and have a nice evening walk on the beach. It was lovely. One thing caught my eye. Along the northeast coast, most of the beaches had dedicated areas for swimming. The swimming areas at those beaches have nets around their perimeter for two purposes. First, they have 20 foot long, 2000-pound crocodiles that live in that part of the sea that regularly eat people as a light aperitif. And they have “stingers”, various types of jelly fish and man-of-war type of fish that are lethally poisonous.

So, we get to this beach and there are perhaps 10 people swimming. No net. No buoys to mark the swimming area. Nothing for protection. I thought it seemed odd until a few minutes later as we were walking north on the beach away from the town area. There, in the sand not 300 feet from where folks were swimming were a pair of jelly fish. Not odd. Nuts.

30-some years ago I got stung by a bluebottle (related to a Portuguese man-of-war) while snorkeling in Hawaii. It was brutal. And that was tiny. I got one tentacle wrapped around my face, neck and arm. I was sick all evening.

So, yes, I can vouch that there are dipstick fools in Australia just like elsewhere in the world. I waded in that water up to my ankles and kept a close eye on the water for jellies that might be washing up in the tide.

Day 52 (Agnes Water to Kieran and Tammy’s place in Mountain Creek, 399 km):

We stayed on plan and woke up at 7:30 AM. The motel, while decent for an older place, had no breakfast. Faith can go without breakfast for hours. I need to have it within around 60 to 90 minutes of waking, or I’ll be physically ill most of the day. We had a banana and some saltine crackers left over from a grocery store stop several days earlier. It was enough to fight off the low-blood-sugar-bear for a good 2 hours. That carried us from Agnes Water to Bundaberg where we had our two enroute stops.

Three, if you count our gourmet breakfast of McDonalds. Ah, there is nothing quite like a double cheeseburger meal for breakfast. Fake cheese (American cheese is made from lard and yellow food coloring I’m absolutely, completely, pretty sure, kind of), hamburger patties, pickles, ketchup with a healthy topping of moderately greasy French fries to give it texture. Yes, a true health food choice if ever there was a health food choice from which choosey choosers might choose.

Our first planned stop was at the Bundaberg Botanical Gardens. We both thoroughly enjoy botanical gardens. The weather was cooler than it had been, so an outdoor activity seemed doable. We got to the gardens, parked the car, checked out the nearest map to orient ourselves and made a super-pleasant discovery. The gardens were also home to a flight museum in honor of Bert Hinkler, an early 20th century adventurer, inventor and pilot.

The museum houses five different planes that Hinkler owned and a glider. One of the planes and the glider he designed and built himself. He set several cross-country and cross-water records in his planes as a young fellow. His life was cut short at the age of 40 during an attempt to break the time record for flying from England to Australia. He crashed in the mountains in Italy. It was a fascinating museum in honor of an aviator with whom I was unfamiliar.

The grounds were also home to, well, Bert’s home. The people of Bundaberg along with a variety of sponsors saved Bert’s home in merry-old England where he was living in his last few years. The house was due to be demolished in favor of some new development. It now sits, brick-for-brick on the garden grounds in Bundaberg as a tribute to Bert, a native son.

We had allotted 2.5 hours in Bundaberg and burned 1.25 in the museum and house. Our second stop was the Bundaberg Rum distillery. We had hoped to take a tour of the distillery. Unfortunately, we arrived about 10 minutes after the tour started and the next tour was 50 minutes later. We didn’t have time. So we opted for the smaller museum tour. It was nice and we still got to sample Bundaberg rum when we were done with the tour.

The museum reviews the history of the distillery and the rum-making process. Most of the museum’s walk-through exhibits are inside actual oak barrels they had used to make their rum. It was a fun idea for the exhibits and a fun museum. Rum is made from molasses which is collected in the process of refining sugar cane into white table sugar.

As noted, Australia grows sugar cane as one of their main crops in Queensland. While a small percentage of the molasses from the refining process was sold to consumers, the supply was massively greater than the demand back in 1888 and they had started dumping it into the rivers. The distillery became their solution for handling the overload of molasses from the very successful sugar industry and thus was born Bundaberg Rum.

Three years ago, I had the opportunity to meetup up with one of my long-time friends from Microsoft in Ireland. Tammy had lived in Dublin for many years working for Microsoft, Ireland. She met Kieran there and they got married during a world tour they took around a dozen years ago. We were able to see them a couple of times in Ireland, and it was good fun.

Last year, they moved to Australia and we had the great joy of spending some time with them in their home. We arrived at their place near Mooloolaba in the late afternoon. We hung out at their house and enjoyed an Aussie barbie along. Kieran was the BBQ master. Faith had a beef steak, and I had kangaroo. It was a fantastic local treat. I was pleasantly surprised at how mellow and flavorful the kangaroo steak was.

Kieran had turned on a game of cricket before dinner and taught me the basic rules. It was a mystery before. Now it makes good sense. It was a fun game to watch and a tasty BBQ.

Day 53 (Mooloolaba):

Friday, December 20, Faith and I headed over to the coast for breakfast and a bit of touring in Mooloolaba. Tammy and Kieran were both working that morning. We parked the car right next to the beach and had a tasty breakfast outdoors. At every coastal town we visited, most of the eating establishments had outdoor seating. Few had air conditioning, and this place was no different. Thankfully the weather had cooled down before we arrived in the area. It was a delightfully pleasant breakfast in a bustling waterfront shopping area.

After breakfast we visited the post office and then walked around the strip malls window shopping. We struggled valiantly to find some ice cream as a treat in the gradually heating morning. Okay, the struggle was less around finding one as choosing one. There must have been ten of them along the strip. We made our selection and enjoyed our ice cream as we walked in the sun along the beach.

Early in the afternoon, Tammy pinged us a tip about a local park that has a waterfall. It is in a preserved section of natural rainforest just west of their home, Buderim Forest Park. After walking the beach, we went to the park. A trail in the park wound through “the bush”, down a gully to a creek with a beautiful waterfall and cave area.

People were swimming in the creek and one family was having a picnic about 50 meters downstream from the falls. Adjacent to the falls was a footbridge that had a fantastic view of the falls and the cave. It was a really nice walk. And Faith didn’t break any bones on the walk. Smack. “Ouch! Why did you hit me? It was the truth.” Smack. “Ouch, quit that.” And Faith had a lovely time on the walk. “Is that better, crazy lady?” Smack. “Okay, I earned that one.”  

That evening, we walked over to The Creek Tavern where the tavern was hosting a Christmas party. We bought raffle tickets for various door prizes, played Christmas music trivia, had a few beers and some snags (Australian sausage hot dog snacks). Collectively, the four of us won four of the door prizes including a breakfast platter that Tammy said we were going to win when we first got to the tavern!

We went back to their place and Kieran cooked us some Butter chicken with rice for dinner. It was super. He had some family-made minced red chilis that added a nice kick to mine. We spent the evening snacking and chilling outside on their patio enjoying their beautiful, tropical yard. It was a super day with our friends.

We left Kieran sitting out on the patio chilling while we headed off to bed around 10:30 or so. We had been watching the stars for the southern cross. Unfortunately, at this time of the year it was too far to the south to be visible from their house. Maybe at 2 AM. But I turn into a pumpkin well before then. We'll try again in Sydney.

- See you in Brisbane -