Wild Places and Open Spaces

Camping: is pretty easy as most caravan parks have a camp kitchen (fully equipped) and BBQ’s (their version is a stainless steel hot plate) are everywhere. We even travelled over 20km into the bush to find a lone BBQ! However, there are no picnic tables at the campsites like we are used to. Aussie campers bring their own portable tables with them.

Public toilets: tend to be clean as a whistle…much different than many we encountered in North America (this include the pit toilets in the bush). Every flush toilet we encountered had a much different ‘flushing mechanism’ than we had envisioned. We were waiting to watch the water swirl down the toilet in the other direction (isn’t that what everyone first does when they get to Australia??) but the water in the toilets does not ‘swirl’ due to the mechanism…instead it kind of bubbles up, and spurts everywhere in the toilet (and often on the seat which is quite disgusting when you think about it) and doesn’t seem to ‘get rid of’ all the wonderful things that go in a toilet. Very strange and not very hygenic I don’t think. However, nearly all flush toilets have two buttons on them to indicate if you need a ‘big flush’ or a ‘little flush’ – depending on the big or little mess you made in it. Good idea to save water. Okay, enough about toilets.

Topography: the whole east coast is way more mountainous than we had expected. The outback is very flat and full of scrub brush.

Water: Australia is either ina drought with fires (it’s amazing the whole country hasn’t burned to a crisp), or in a flood.
Freshwater: Australians drink three types of water: 1) treated water in the cities, 2) bore water (well water) 3) rainwater. 2 & 3 usually occur in the countr. The Aussies are keen on their rain water. The rain water tanks collect rain water off the roof…it could be the water from any building…outhouse, barn, garage or house. This tank has NO filter in it, simply a screen that removes the ‘big stuff’. They all drink rain water out of these tanks…what we don’t understand is that bird poo, frog pee, and anything else that gets on the roof ends up in these tanks…but no one seems to care. Needless to say, we didn’t drink it after e heard it is neither filtered or checked…and surprisingly (not) our upset stomachs magically disappeared. We bought 5L jugs of wate, but no water fill up stations exist in Australia. So, unfortunately every time you need to buy more water you need to buy a new 5 jug of it…what a terrible waste of plastic! (See recycling below)

Sea water: The water in the south is beautiful but freezing. The water around Sydney is beautiful and cool. The water around Brisbane is warm and stinger-free. The water in the north is quite warm but unswimmable in the summer due to stingers.

People: We found the people in Queensland to be the most laid back and friendly. There is no such thing as ‘No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service’ in Oz. It is not uncommon to see the majority of kids/teens with no shoes on, men in grocery stores with no shirt, and women on the beach with no shirt.
The road workers, in their fluorescent shirts and wide brimmed hats are much like our city workers – always on a break.
All school children wear uniforms and wide brimmed hats – the hats are mandatory to protect them from the sun as they claim to have the highest rate of skin cancer in the world.
The posties (mail carriers) ride mini Honda motorcycles over everyone’s lawns to deliver the mail (I don’t think that would go over well at home!).

Transportation: People drive either really small cars or utes. People usually don’t drive utes unless they need them for work – unlike we do in North America! Regardless of what they drive, Toyotas are the most popular type of cars. They drive Holdens (GM), Ford, Chrysler, Subaru, Hyundai, Honda, Mitsubishi and Citrons, although Chrysler owns a small portion of the market too.
It is common to come across Road Trains in the outback – they are transport trucks and can have up to 4 trailers on them.
Speedbumps are more like ‘speed jumps’, and there are millions of them.
Roundabouts are common (rather than traffic lights) and it takes a while to get used to them! There are hardly any stop signs (or street names for that matter), rather just ‘give ways’. Australia has fast drivers – 100km/hr on any road not in the city. Fuel prices are a little more expensive off the beaten track. Ferries cost a fortune.

Towns and Cities: Most ‘downtown’ areas are referred to as the CBD (central business district). Most towns have all their downtown on one main street. It is nice to see all the small industries still alive – there are usually a butcher, baker, barber, pub/bottleshop, and cafe in each town. Each town seems to pride themselves on winning the “Australia’s Tidiest Town” award, but it seems every town we entered had won it or is currently holding the title! Seriously though, their towns are clean for the most part, and each one has a public toilet on the main strip and usually a picnic area to boot.

Food: They ae huge meat-eaters in Australia. It was a common sight to see people have only meat for dinner, usually in the form of sausages. Kangaroo is sold in the grocery stores and it is quite tasty. Their fruits and veggies are AMAZING…not always cheap, but always tasty. Meat pies are sold everywhere, and are an Aussie staple. Their food is always well presented in their store fronts – ie deli sandwiches, prepared salads, desserts, etc. Food presentation is huge here and everything alwas looks fresh. However, fast food is on the rise, and most are American companies that we’d recognize: McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Subway, Burger King. They have wonderful coffee here – it’s expensive, but good. Took us a while to get the lingo down…there is no such thing as a ‘regular’, ‘double double’ etc. You need to order a ‘flat white’ if you want a regular, but you need to put your own sugar in. I think we only ever bought 2… we just couldn’t part with $4.00/cup.
Alcohol is bought in bottleshops, commonly called BWS (beer/wine/spirits). There wine is terrific and cheap as chips. Aussies love their beer – common brews are: XXXX, Carlton Mid, VB, Crown, Tooeys, but NOT Fosters.

Miscellaneous:
Movies are expensive to go watch, and they don’t put butter/topping on their popcorn.

Men wear short shorts, and big hollywood-style glasses are on both men and women.

Electricity is 240 volts and 50htz which wreaks havoc on Jim’s electric shaver. You can hear him a mile away when he shaves.

Radio stations play all different types of music on one station – you can go from Metallica to Enya to Hip Hop to Garth Brooks in 5 minutes. We NEVER found a good radio station.

Weather forecasts: their favorite expressio is “FINE” – we still don’t know what this means however, as it seems to be very subjective.

Internet was readily available in big city centers, but no where else, especially in Tasmania where they seem to be about 15 years behind…

Recycling appears to be almost non-existent much to our surprise. If it exists, it is not organized at all. Very sad.

Stamps are very expensive. $1.20 to send a postcard (hence why hardly anyone got one).

Books were even more expensive…ridiculous money for a small paperback ($18.00!).

We have now reached the unfortunate end of our Australian leg of our one year journey.

In four months, we have learned a great deal down here. The most unique part of being in Australia has definitely got to be its array of interesting animals.

If most people are like us, Australia conjures up imagaes of poisonous snakes, crocodiles, kangaroos, and platypus. Oz does have its fair share of the previously mentioned…but it is so much more!

I guess we’ll start with the myths and realities of snakes and reptiles.

We spent a lot of our time bushwalking and other than many tiger snake encounters in Tasmania, we never came across many snakes in the rest of Oz. Many of Australias snakes are highly venomous, but in most cases if they’re left alone and not trodden on, there is likely very little to worry about. They tend to just want to get out of the way – usually.

There are a vast array of other reptiles including the notorious crocodiles of the north. A lot of reptiles are easy to spot basking in the heat of the day. All of them are non-venomous and pose no threat to humans – except for the crocs. The croc is an animal Australians take heed of and warnings are abundant throughout tropical Australia.

One would be lucky to see a croc in the wild – if they are standing in the right place – and unlucky if one doesn’t follow a few simple rules: 1) Never camp near infested waters. Crocs will and do go a long way from water. 2) Never stand too close to a riverbank where you cannot see into the water clearly! Crocs can hide perfectly in 1.5ft of water. 3) Don’t swim in tropical waters near estuaries or river mouths. Crocs can be found 100kms up inland rivers!

Australia has some truly huge lizards! There are goannas (monitors) all over and some species rival the Komodo Dragon in size!

Australian mammals are truly unique, abundant and varied. There are three classes of mammals in existence and all present here: the placentals (which other than the bats are feral and/or introduced species); the monotremes (which are egg-laying mammals); and marsupials (which Australia has a plethora of!)

Placentals: the bats are indigenous to Australia. There are many species of bats (over sixty occur in Australia), but to us amateurs they all look similar except for the fruit munching flying foxes.These bats are enormous and plentiful, especially in the north-east.

The only other ‘Australian’ placental is the dingo, which is actually a wild dog introduced by the indonesians about 5000 years or so ago. Dingos are responsible for the demise or reduction of many native marsupials. Aussies have went to great lengths to try to contain dingos, although generally it’s to protect their livestock rather than threatened endemic animals.

The rest of the placental mammals in Australia are introduced and many have become thriving ferals. The most notorious being pigs, rabbits, foxes and cats. These animals have been a bane for endemic species. In most cases they compete with native species for food or eat them.

Our greatest lessons revolved around marsupials (pouched mammals). Before coming to Australia we would be hard pressed to name 5 marsupials, and I’d hazard to guess most people would only be sure of one marsupial for sure, and that would be the kangaroo. Try before reading on to see if you can name 5?!

Like everyone, we were familiar with the kangaroo – we thought… We were soon to learn that there are several macropods (big feet) in Australia, not to mention several species of kangaroo alone. We learned of wallabies (smaller than kangaroos), wallaroos (which need no explanation I believe), pademelons, tree kangaroos, bettongs and potoroos, which are all macropods and most containing several species. Excuse my taxonomy, but taxonomists can’t even seem to agree how to classify animals half the time.

Here’s a short list of other marsupials we’ve learned about, and on most occasions, have spotted. Eastern and Spotted-Tailed Quolls, Brown and Barred Bandicoots, Brush-Tailed and Ring-Tailed Possums, Dunnarts, Pygmy Possums, Sugar Gliders, Tasmanian Devils, Wombats, Koalas, Feather-Tailed Gliders, Antechinus, and hosts of others!

An added bonus for us in Australia was the abundance of incredibly beautiful birds. We had no idea of bird life in Australia, so it has been a terrific education. We identified over 160 birds! And that’s with a pair of broken binoculars! (they got busted when we dropped them on the pavement by accident…so now they have double vision…) I’m not going to list them all as not only would it be plain boring, but it would be darn meaningless. Suffice it to say a lot of the birds we have in cages in North America fly free here. Kookaburras are hilarious and we will mis them. Seeing the giant emus and cassowaries in the wild was like stepping back in time. If you are a birder, you won’t be disappointed with the sights and sounds of Australias bird life.

Australia is also infamous for some of its poisonous spiders. The funnelweb spider is the world’s most deadlyl spider, but unless you are a gardener, you probably won’t encounter one. The only ‘baddie’ to be concerned about is the red back spider, which are widespread and more likely to be encountered. They also pack a good whallup, but are unlikely to cause death. There are a lot of other interesting non-venomous’ish’ spiders, particularly notable are the very large Huntsmans. Although quite ominous, they are quite harmless.

We encountered many interesting insects (including huge termite mounds), but the only ones which caused us any real grief were the darn flies! They will drive anyone not used to them (which we aren’t) BONKERS.

Australia has enough moths and butterflies to keep the average lepidopterists interest. We were delighted with them, particularly in Queensland where the most spectacular are the Ulysees and Cairns Birdwing. Good luck photographing them though!

Australia is well noted for its amazing sealife. We swam with mammoth Manta Rays, lethal Bull Rays (responsible for Steve Irwin’s death), graceful Eagle Rays, Wobegong Sharks, Leopard Sharks; we encountered dolphins, seals, sealions, penguins and if you come at the right time of the year you’ll be treated to pods of migrating whales.

There are many interesting critters to be found in Oz tidal pools. We found many creatures we still haven’t figured out! Just be careful of poking around areas you can’t see, as you wouldn’t want to tangle with cone shells or a blue ring octopus. Both these creatures have lethal venom which can and have killed humans!

So, if you are into wildlife, come to Australia and discover a plethora of interesting animals!

Click HERE for some pictures. We had a great visit in the with our new friends on Australia Day in Tasmania. January 26, 1788 was the date on which the First Fleet, under Captain Arthur Phillip arrived at Sydney Cove ... [Continue reading this entry]

Okay....let me set the stage.... It's our 2nd last night in Tasmania. We are feeling really lazy...trying to decide if we should eat, sleep or go for a walk. We finally agree that we should telephone a couple that live in ... [Continue reading this entry]

Click HERE for some pictures. The southernmost point one can drive to in Australia is on the south east coast of Tasmania. We couldn't leave Australia and not go here! On the drive we got a great surprise... At 11:30am, ... [Continue reading this entry]

Driving off the boat we found ourselves in a traffic jam at 7:00 in the morning. We finally found out why - we were going through the agricultural checkpoint where they had dogs sniffing out cars! We opened all our ... [Continue reading this entry]

The ferry ride across the Bass Strait that I had been very worried about, turned out to be a very calm ride. (Don't get me wrong though - if you went on deck, you were almost blown off due to ... [Continue reading this entry]

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! ... [Continue reading this entry]

After Canberra, we were excited to once again visit my uncle Rolf in Manly, Sydney. My cousin's wife was very pregnant and due to pop any day. With any luck we'd be there to see the new baby. Sure enough, ... [Continue reading this entry]

Before we went to Kangaroo Island, a couple of blokes we bought fries off tipped us off about a secret hot spot called Deep Creek. So, once we were back on the mainland we figured it was logical to check ... [Continue reading this entry]