Australia trip - VF

We had been planning to visit Australia again for the last 8-10 months. Initially Jamie was going to go to a conference in Sydney, but 1) he didn't need the CME points and 2) he could only take 2 weeks and not the 3 weeks we were planning to go for if the conference was to be; so on 24th June we headed off for a restful holiday (vacation). People tell us we won't be having too many restful holidays for the next couple of decades (see the anouncement in our June posting below....) so we wanted to make the most of this one. Jamie's mom came with us for most of the time and we also met up with Jamie's best friend Chad from school days and my friend Maria (we have been best friends since we were 4 years old!) for the first week or so.

So first of all we flew straight to Cairns for a full week of sunshine (or so we thought - we had a few overcast days to start with, but that soon changed). We stayed in Palm Cove, where the Smith Family has had some previous memorable holidays. Palm Cove is more stylee and resort-like than Cairns itself, although not so full-on as Port Douglas appears to be. Jamie & I enjoyed lots of lying about reading time, whilst Chad and Maria preferred the more action-packed days of beaching and swimming-pooling. Our place of abode was the penthouse suite at Villa Paradiso which was right across the road from the beach - not good if you don't like surf noise, but we found it to be a fabulous way to get to sleep (think of those old new-age music tapes of wave sounds!). We had some very cool excursions including a river cruise to see the local fauna, a gondola trip up across the mountains to the rainforest, a visit to the tropical zoo and of course the highlight was snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef. Had the weather initially been brighter, we were planning to do a couple of different reef trips, but at least we got out there on our 2nd to last day for what was apparently the best day they had had on the reef for a couple of months.

After Palm Cove, we headed to Sydney where Maria left us and after zipping up and across the Harbour Bridge with Jamie and Joan on 4th July, so did Chad. We stayed at the Meriton World Tower (click on the link and scroll down to see the view!!) - an amazingly tall building where we were fortunate to be on about the 64th floor. In addition to the obligatory walk around Circular Quay to the Opera House, we also did a tour out the the Blue Mountains, a harbour cruise, visited Darling Harbour, the historic 'Rocks' area and the Queen Victoria Building as well as shopping in various locations. We also got to catch up with my sister Rebecca and her husband Jeremy as well as my mother who was in Sydney for 3 weeks and most of the Butler/Florida clan.

After Jamie and Joan left, it was very exciting to welcome our new nephew 'Oskar' who finally came into the world in the early hours of July 11th. Just as well I had arranged to stay on a couple of days or I would have missed him as he was 12 days overdue! He is very cool.

I will post some pictures of some of the highlights of the journey!

Here we all are setting off on our Great Barrier Reef Snorkelling Cruise! Chad catching a few more rays (not that he needed to with his awesome Northern Hemisphere Summer tan!), Maria, Me, Jamie and Jamies Mom.  

We did a 'Quiksilver Cruise' which went to the outer reef which was really worth the extra $$. Here is a pic of the pontoon that is moored out there that our big boat took us to. There is a permanent glass-viewing platform, glass-bottomed boats as well as helicopter flights that you can do. That might be me snork-ing off to see what I can see next....  

One of the pics from our underwater camera that we thoughfully purchased for $6 before we left the USA (which saved buying one for $30 on the boat!!) 

A crocodile on the edge of the river as we cruised along.... (very similar to the Disney 'Jungle Cruise' but with real animals - crocodiles, snakes in the trees etc etc). We did see more (and closer up) in the zoo later in the week, but this was very authentic! 

Blue Mountains scenery.... very typical Australiana.... quite different from the rainforest up near Cairns where we started our journey... In the distance you can see the blue haze from the eucalyptus oil rising into the atmosphere that gives the mountains their name. 

This is one of Jamies cool sunset pictures from the boat that we did our evening harbour cruise on. He has several he thinks are better than this, but I like the way it has the side of the boat in it! This cruise went from Circular Quay out towards Manly (past all the $10 million + houses) and back to Darling Harbour and then our Blue Mountains trip included a river cruise from Olympic Park down the Parramatta River to Darling Harbour. According to all the guidebooks, if you do nothing else in Sydney you MUST get on the water at least once, and it is so true so we were lucky to get to go twice!  

Sydney Harbour Bridge and one of the historic ferries that ply the harbour.  

Here is one of Jamies stunning sunrise pictures from the week we had in Palm Cove! 

Here we are snorkelling (a bit distorted by the underwater-ness of the picture!) on the Great Barrier Reef. 

Thank you Valerie!!

Finally, finally we get a blog comment!!!! Thanks Valerie - it is good to know that SOMEONE reads our blog. We know by the stats that there are several hundred viewings per month but it gets a bit discouraging with no feedback - hence the frequency of posting has slowed in recent months compared with the first year or so. Even just a "hi, I was here, from xxx" would be nice....'