Round-About Australia 2023

Our first day in Sydney we went for a morning walk in the Botanic Gardens. Then we went to the Art Gallery of NSW. There was a Kazinsky exhibit that included earlier works and displayed the changes in artistic progression over his life. Then we wandered through the museum collection. Afterwards we had lunch at a restaurant located in the Opera House. We had a sampler plate that included crocodile, emu and kangaroo meat. Later in the afternoon we had a drink at the Opera Bar with the people Madeleine worked with in Saudi Arabia.  There we also met the sea gull patrol dog.  Sea gulls don't like dogs so they stay away and don't sneak up and grab your food at the outdoor tables.

We left Gladstone by ferry to Heron Island.  It is a two-hour ride that we repeated on the morning of Saturday, November 25 to get back to Gladstone (enroute to Sydney!).  In the ferry area there was a warning about crocodiles but we didn't see one.  Crocodiles are only found along the coast and not near Heron Island. Heron Island is in the Great Barrier Reef and part of the Capricorn Cays National Park.  The island is located on the Tropic of Capricorn.                   View from our cabin porch.                     Beach side of our cabin. We arrived during turtle nesting season.  Each day and night we were on the island, we saw green sea turtles coming and going to lay eggs. Look carefully and see the egg between flippers.   ...

Today was a transit day to the Great Barrier Reef.  We flew from Melbourne to Brisbane to Gladstone.  Tomorrow we take a boat for a three-day stay on an island.  The island has no cell phone service and limited wifi.  So the blog may not be updated until the weekend.

Yesterday, some of the cliff and beach areas we visited were crowded.  This morning we had a few places all to ourselves. We also visited an animal reserve in the crater of an ancient volcano. Animals we saw included emu and Koalas.  The emu are about the size of an ostrich.

We woke up this morning and saw our first two Koalas.  They live - eat and sleep - in eucalyptus trees.  At breakfast in Apollo Bay, we saw two more Koalas near the beach. Down the road a bit we stopped for a rainforest walk.  Some of the plants here date back to the time of the dinosaurs. Further down the road we visited a lighthouse.  There were many stops during the rest of the day and some more great views!  In some places we could walk down to the beach on stairs.  We also saw an echidna.  It looks a bit like a porcupine but lays eggs and the back feet face backwards not forwards like their front feet. In case you were wondering, we didn't see any snakes but plenty of warnings about them...