Wild Places and Open Spaces

We were to meet our Canadian friends, Kathy and Steve, in Brisbane for Christmas. They had booked an apartment in ‘Surfers Paradise’ (just south of Brisbane on the Gold Coast) that they had generously told us we could stay at! The apartment turned out to be quite a luxurious place with a view on the top floor (31st floor) of a highrise! We had an ocean view, and it was only a 2 minute walk to the beach.

It proved rather difficult to sleep in at all though, because the sun literally rose at 4:30am and there were so many windows in the place we woke up sweating and burning to death by 5am! It took us a couple days to figure out if we drew the blinds (Kathy was the brains behind this one) we might be able to get a bit more sleep…

The week together was full of fun and lots of laughs. We did a lot of relaxing and beaching it – Steve and Jim tried out their surfing skills which I am sure would have been great if they could ever get past the waves to begin with! The waves were so fast and constant, pounding at the shore, that they were virtually impossible to get by in order to catch them on the way back in.

We travelled one day to the Glass House Mountains, just northwest of Brisbane to visit Steve Irwin’s zoo. The zoo was smaller than we had envisioned, but very well done. We watched the famous croc show in the ‘crocoseum’ and watched Steve Irwin on the big screen talk about his crocs and zoo as if he were right there with us. A tribute to him was set up at the zoo – khaki shirts like the one he wears were lined up with people’s messages from all over the world, flowers, drawings, stuffed animals, letters etc etc. I couldn’t help but shed a couple of tears. Animals and nature in general have lost an incredible and much needed ally.

Another day we went snorkelling. The Great Barrier Reef does not extend as south as Brisbane, so we decided (after much discussion) to go off of North Stradbrook Island. Hopped on a car ferry, hiked on the island in the am and went snorkelling in the early afternoon. The dive company that took us out to the snorkel site boasted seeing large sea life – especially manta rays. It was because of this that we had decided on this particular island.

The boat ride out to sea was, well, pretty darn exciting. There was about 12 of us in a Zodiac boat, and the driver of the boat had no fear of speed or waves! We figured that if we didn’t see anything snorkelling, at least we had the ride of our life out there! When we got to the site the water was extremely rough, and we figured it would be difficult to snorkel. But, once in the water, it wasn’t that bad… at least at first.

The site proved to be amazing. Not long after being out there we saw a magnificant Manta Ray! I knew what they were before, but I had no idea how huge they are – this one must have been 600 sqft in total – a gentle giant flying effortlessly through the water. A definite highlight and eye opening experience. During our time in the water we saw wobagong sharks, bull rays, leopard sharks, sea turtles and another giant manta ray.

At one point we heard a loud gagging and looked over and saw Steve trying to cough up a lung. We figured he got a mouthful of salt water and was gagging a bit on it. A few minutes later he motioned to us that he was going in because he felt ill. Kathy, Jim and myself kept going, but not for much longer as no sooner did I get stung by a jellyfish, so did Kathy, then Jim, then me a second time. Suddenly it seemed like there were hundreds of jellyfish surrounding us and dodging them was difficult (these jellyfish luckily for us are NOT the deadly kind – their ‘sting’ was more an irritating/scratchy feeling that left your skin sore, bumpy and red). It was at this point that I noticed I had a slight feeling of nausea coming upon me…

So, we headed back to the boat, and found Steve clinging to the anchor line trying his best to keep staring at the horizon as he bobbed up and down – the gagging before was actually him trying to vomit from sea sickness! We all clambered into the boat, including Steve, and he immediately started puking over the side of the Zodiac. At this point, the nausea that I had felt earlier overcame me and I found myself assuming the position alongside Steve, puking my guts out. So, Steve and I took turns vomiting over the side, one after another, me silently and Steve as if he was trying to tell the entire world that he was not feeling good. It was pretty hilarious.

Although it seemed like hours, it was probably only about 15 minutes we had to wait until all the others got back on board and we were off. Remember that great, exciting Zodiac ride out to the site earlier? Yeah, well, not so great going back in. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably because I was cold, not to mention it is kind of hard trying to control where your vomit is going to end up when one is going 40 miles/hr!

Steve and I kissed the ground when we reached land and he almost immediately recovered. I on the other hand was knackered for the rest of the day. But, regardless of the stingers and puking, it was well worth the trip to the sea to see the amazing wildlife we encountered (not to mention the laughs that I now have when I think back to it!!).

Christmas day was very different from home – we spent the majority of it sunning on the beach and playing in the waves. Our Christmas dinner was just as unique as the day – we ate Kangaroo. Kathy and Steve – and their New Zealand friends in the next apartment – had never eaten Kangaroo, so Jim made it for them on the ‘barbie’. We had a really nice meal, the 7 of us, and got to know the ‘Kiwis’ a bit better – Dave, Liz and their son Kayden (who are actually Canadian and moved to NZ last year, so they aren’t true “kiwis”). They have invited us over to visit when we travel there in February.

Although Surfers Paradise was wonderful in many ways, it was somewhat(okay, totally) lacking in any wildlife whatsoever. Even the most common birds were no where to be seen in the “miami beach like” area. We really wanted to show Kathy some of what Australia is really like….because Surfers Paradise doesn’t represent it at all. So, while Steve, Dave and Kayden went to a Warner Brothers theme park, Jim and I took Kathy on a search for some kangaroos. The day unfortunately was rainy, but we managed to get a good walk in. We went to an inland national park (Lamington, but not too far in from the coast. We were excited to hear from the visitors centre that they had spotted pademelons earlier in the day. (pademelons are marsupials that look like tiny wallabies – click here for more information.)Jim and I had not yet seen these, but had been on the search for them. We drove to where the trailhead was, and we were greeted by about 10 pademelons grazing on a patch of grass! Very lucky indeed, and we were glad to be able to show Kathy a small, but incredible part of wild Aussie wildlife.

Shortly after we began our hike we spotted yet another sight Jima nd I hadn’t seen before – a big fat skink (the name eludes me right now). May not seem too thrilling, but it was to us. We also stopped at one point to marvel at a Monarch caterpillar (although they call them the ‘Wandering Butterfly’ here), and as most of you (should) know, they are quite a beautiful creature. It was shortly after this that Jim felt something crawling up his leg – he looked down and saw a leech! He flicked it off(with some effort to get it “unsucked”) then noticed he had a couple more around his feet and ankles. This prompted me to look at my own feet – and low and behold I was covered in them. They were everywhere – even in between my toes. I managed to flick them all off – about 15 in total – and then proceded to bleed from the sites for about 10 minutes. (To this day -Jan 12- both Jim and myself have small lumps where they were ‘chowing down’ on us….) Kathy was smart and had on socks and boots so she didn’t have the pleasure of being lunch, but Jim and myself have become somewhat lackadaisical in our hiking attire – we both had sandals and barefeet. We continued, but checked our feet every few minutes.

Along the trail we met a couple who were staring up into the tree tops – they were looking at a koala! At this point we wanted to keep Kathy with us for the rest of the trip, because she was obviously packing a lucky horseshoe somewhere… Sure enough, high up in a gum tree (eucalypt)there was a koala…not only that, he was moving and eating! We tried to portray to Kathy how lucky a sighting this was, not only to see a koala, but actually see it move! Then, low and behold, it started groaning for her! This was just too lucky, we couldn’t believe it. It didn’t do its full-out guttural call we had heard before, but at least she had a taste of the noise. What a successful hike! After de-leaching once again, we were on our way back to the beach and the cozy apartment.

Our time with Kathy and Steve was full of fun, laughs and ice cream. (We are now going through withdrawal symptoms because we ate so much ice cream and now we can’t because we have no freezer to keep it frozen…) We can’t thank them enough for letting us stay with them and for spending their vacation with us. Definitely a highlight of our trip. We can only hope they had as much fun as we did! We miss having them around!

Next stop, Tasmania. We really needed to “boot it” to Melbourne where we’d catch the ferry to Tasmania on New Years Eve. On the way south we stopped at our friendly farmer friends (that we met earlier in our trip) house and spent the night. They showed us around their sorghum farm, and took us to their friends farm where they have cattle and a gravel pit along with their sorghum fields. It was a terrific learning experience – especially about how they irrigate their fields when they are in a drought – not to mention they fed us very well and we had a bed to sleep in again!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 25th, 2006 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.