Scuba!

Ahoy Matey!

S.S. Yongala, our favorite dive site so far. I pulled some pictures off their website, but they don't do justice to the experience. It was amazing! Fish everywhere! There was so much to look at, I never knew where to look next. The amount of life was incredible. Little fish being eaten by the bigger fish, swirling around the even bigger fish. It was like swimming through a Blue Planet film.

After diving we headed across the Outback. Townsville to Alice Springs, to Coober Pedy(google it, weird place) to Port Augusta, and on to Albany.

Are we driving through a zoo?

We didn't drive between sunset and sunrise so as to avoid hitting critters in the dark.

Miles and miles of road. It got a bit tedious after awhile. Especially with temps above 100F, highest was 118, and no A/C in the car. When I stuck my hand out the window it felt like it was being scorched. We were slowly melting and wasted no time in getting to the South coast.

And yet, the outback does have its own strange empty beauty. It was a bit mesmerizing.

Days and days of dusty red earth. 

This was near Uluru. Well worth seeing, but maybe better at a different time of year...

One of our roadside camps along the way

Our current home. Taking a few days to recover in this lovely spot. A tiny camping area and packed full this time of year, but still have the beach to ourselves!

Sightseeing in Esperance. Great swimming, dolphins, blindingly white sandy beaches, reasonable temperatures, what more could we want?

A lot of the campers are here for the hang-gliding. About 15 of them flew over while we were making breakfast this morning.

 

Playing on the rocks! Tyrell takes all the pictures so I don't have any of him.

Telgazlie- a taste of the outback

Telgazlie is the name of the cattle station where we spent two weeks.

We had a great time, made some new friends, learned some Aussie lingo, saw kangaroos and emus everyday, survived mustering cattle on dirt bikes, and more...

We helped set up this up at the end of the driveway. Merry Christmas!

Sunset over the ranch

Preparing to muster the cattle

Dinner. We spent a day making these delicious sausages from wild pigs.

Feeding the poddy calves.

Ready for a good days work

This is me learning to drive. Had a lot more experience by the end.

Tyrell driving the ute(work truck)

We shifted this mob of cows with calves almost every day, probably about 800 all together.

The pig trap. Selected the biggest for sausages

Heading down the road

Sun, Sand, and Thunderstorms

Sydney! 

We made it into and out of the city, and saw the major sights while we were there. The rain was pouring down when we arrived but let up shortly so we were able to walk about without getting soaked. Walked across the bridge and around the opera house, through the botanical gardens and the art gallery. Definitely one of my favorite cities. 

One of the waterfalls in the Blue Mountains. We also went on a tour into the Jenolan Caves-highly recommended. The tour was well done and the caves were amazing. (Hard to take good pictures while in a cave though.)

On our way to the beach... Lots of little lizards around here, some not so little.

Our camp in Coff's Harbour. This is where we had the thunderstorm last night. The little car has been doing well. Tyrell changed the air filter and fuel filter and fixed some sputtering issues it was having. And, thinking of the hot summer ahead of us, christened it Hot Tamale! We have adjusted well to driving on the wrong side of the road, and the car for that matter. Although, we still get the windshield wipers going while intending to use the turn signals.

We are now on our way to a WWOOF farm west of Brisbane. A cattle ranch that promises to show us some "real Aussie bush life'. We plan to stay about 10 days and then will probably head to the Great Barrier Reef for some diving!

We Found Australia's Ski Resort!

Brrr! We wanted to climb Mt. Kosciuszco, Australia's highest mountain at 2,228m, but when we drove up to the trailhead it was blowing hail, foggy, and cold! Maybe another time...

Somewhere along our drive through Alpine National Park. We saw bounding kangaroos, wallabies, emus, parrots, and a big snake on the road. No wombats yet.

Aaah, this is what vacation is supposed to be like:) 

Our little car is doing well. Gets somewhere between 30 and 40 mpg (we can't seem to get a definite number). Still so many miles to go! 

Next few stops: 3 day hike in the Blue Mountains, Canberra- capitol, Sydney- everybody knows Sydney, WWOOF farm?, and the beach!

This week... The Great Ocean Road!

Hooray! We are in our little red 1996 Mitsubishi Lancer and touring the famous Great Ocean Road. It is nice to be out of the big city of Melbourne, population 4 million. Although we did enjoy our stay there. The highlight was the 153rd Melbourne Cup horse race. We got dressed up and joined the 104,000 other race goers at the track.

This was earlier in the morning, by midday we could barely move.

It was exciting to be on the rail with the horses thundering by.

We had to go shopping before race day...

For the rest of our trip we found a great book: Camps Australia Wide, with listings of thousands of free sites.

Melbourne, Australia

Federation Square

Our new car!

Today was our fifth day in Australia. We found a little vehicle to tour the country in and are going to the IMAX tonight- the third largest screen in the world!

Tomorrow is Melbourne Cup day!!!  Excited to get all dressed up...what do you do with a "fascinator"?!

The weather has been great, mostly sunny and temps in the 50s and 60s.

More to come later.