Sand, Sun and Surf

After days of sun, sand and surf, the rain finally caught up with us in Australia. It really doesn’t matter much as we are nicely settled in Alistair’s parent’s holiday home, a couple of hours north of Brisbane, in a little town named Coolum.

This has been the perfect place for the Hanna family to do our third session of surf lessons. So far we have tried the surf in Norway, Portugal and Australia, and it is only getting better. Looking forward to more surfing after Christmas, as we are all getting the hang of doing some small turns now. Of course where there is surfing there are also the surf shops. With a 20% sale on before Christmas, we have spent some of our Christmas money on stylish surf clothing, so it was a good thing we decided to head out of here for some adventures on Fraser  Island, before all our money is spent.

Fraser Island is the world’s biggest sand island. The sand comes in many different beautiful colours, and it also sticks to everything you wear and everything you bring! We had a wonderful time on Fraser. The driving is an experience in itself, and you can only go there by a sturdy 4 wheel drive. Fortunately Alistair was able to borrow his parent’s land cruiser, so we could have some fun. The beach is the motorway, and the inland roads are deep and bumpy sand tracks. Alistair knew what he was doing, Ru soon got the hang of it, and me and the boys enjoyed being passengers, although I did worry we were going to be swept off to sea at times, or that we would have spinal injuries from all the nasty bumps.

Except for all the sand, Fraser is known for its beautiful inland lakes.  We visited 3 of the lakes, and two of them only reachable by foot. It was gorgeous swimming, but I must admit we got as soaked walking there, from sweating, as we did from jumping in the lake. Walking in sand is hard work!

Seeing the lakes makes it easy to understand why the aboriginals called the island “paradise island”. Now the area is called Great Sandy National Park. Isn’t it a lovely name? Great SandyJ

Our meeting with Australian animals continued on Fraser, as the island is the only place in Australia which still has pure bred dingoes. Unfortunately the dingoes are known to go after human scraps, and have become quite aggressive at times as they want to dominate humans and especially children. Luckily our encounters were only through the car windows as we drove along the beach. Lovely looking dogs, but I wouldn’t like to meet one with a sandwich in my hand.

                                                GOD JUL !  MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Fraser highway

Ru and our generous host Alistair :)

Ru enjoying the sandblow

Boys running for the lake

Amazing clear water

Family photo with sensible hats!

  

Atherton Tablelands

Never heard of the place. The Tablelands?! But again we have landed in paradise. It’s green and lush, and it a place full of volcanic craters filled with water. We stay in a camp site by Eacham Lake, and we have driven through charming little villages with adorable names like; Youngaburra (where Solli ended up doing some speedy wine tasting, and buying a bottle of Emu’s Wish), Mareeba, Malanda and Millaa Millaa.

Yesterday we explored deep craters, pretty waterfalls and small and large lakes. On a short stroll looking for tree kangaroos we came across a tiny lake full of turtles. They were obviously used to being fed, as they all swam towards us as we stood on the edge. They were tiny turtles with cute little heads sticking out of the water. I love turtles, and seeing them in the wild, made my day.

It’s difficult being outside (or even inside) without coming across some, for us new and exciting animals or insects.  A kangaroo crossed the road while we were driving today, a pelican swam on the lake we went swimming in and insects attack us all the time. We quickly decided not to buy any sugary cereal again when we saw the numbers of sugar ants that were feasting on our honey roasted muesli one morning.

As we arrived in the campsite we are staying in now we had some serious animal action. Torkild came running to the cabin from the reception area, “ they are catching a snake! come and look” . We headed towards the reception, but unfortunately we missed the real action as the snake was already in a bucket with a lid. The camp site manager had caught a snake by the communal bathroom. He said he normally deals with small snakes and pythons himself by stepping carefully on them, and picking them up behind their heads. We had a little look at this one in the bucket, and then it was driven off to a new territory in the forest.

Just got offered to stay an extra night for free at this wonderful campsite !!!That means getting up really early tomorrow morning to travel to Cairns airport, but it also means that we can spend the money saved on going out for a meal. A bit fed up of home barbeques now:)

Going to see our friend Alistair in Brisbane next, and hoping for some good surf!

Our cute cabin, with no snakes or spiders...

...but plenty of these lovely creatures.

Ru and Erlend playing at Mossman Gorge. Very strong current after a thunderstorm in the night.  

This Brush Turkey is looking for food among our stuff.

Boyds Dragon 

I want more butterflies in my garden!

Very deep vulcanic crater. Did not go swimming here...

Millaa Millaa waterfall. We went for a swim here :)

Reef and Rainforest

A week and a half into our Australia journey, and we have done so much, and spent sooo much money. I don’t know how we can ever top our experiences here, or how we can cut down on the spending.

Great Barrier Reef was more than I ever expected. I have never really done proper snorkeling in the past, so having this as my first experience was maybe not wise, as it will never be the same anywhere else. The colours, the corals, the fish, it was breathtaking (and sometimes forgetting I was snorkeling, I did smile under water or open my mouth in amazement, and then very quickly out of breath…).

I did not know that fish came in so many of my favourite colours; blue, turquoise!,, blue-green… Beautiful! At one moment I was thinking, maybe I should have a fish tank at home, but no, luckily I came to my senses, it will not be as good. And of course a fish tank will not accommodate the two big sharks we swam over at one of our snorkeling sites. I was guessing they were about 1 metre long, but talking to the biologist onboard the boat, he confirmed that these sharks were between 1,60 -1,70 m long. Torkilds size in other words!

Talking of Tork, he did his first dive on our day at the reef. He had to go through a long info session about how you can easily make mistakes, and basically kill yourself while diving (he keeps talking about how easy it is to puncture one’s lungs while diving…), but he still dived in style!

Just back from a two nights stay in the Daintree Rainforest. To have a bit of contrast we went from staying in an apartment at a resort with 3 swimming pools, to staying in swag tents in a cheap campsite. Interesting experience, especially wading through the cane toads to go to the communal bathrooms at night. But the Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation was all worth it. We did a day of homeschooling at a discovery centre, on canopy walks, learning about some of the different trees, plants, vines, birds, butterflies, and we kept looking out for the local Cassowary. We did see some amazing butterflies; Blue Ulysses, Metallic Starling, White lipped Green Tree Frog, big unidentified lizard, but no cassowary. The Cassowary is a huge bird, similar to an Ostrich, they can be as tall as 2 meters, and weigh about 60 kilo. They are endangered, and local to the Daintree Rainforest. They also tend to run out onto the roads, just like our elks, so there are warning road signs everywhere.

Today we went on another scary adventure. Crocodile Safari! The banks of the Daintree river were searched for any signs of crocodiles, and we got lucky. At the end of the safari we had spotted 5 crocodiles, from a small 20 month old baby, to a 4 meter long female. All of them staring straight at us from the river edge a few meters away. As an extra bonus we did see a little python snake curled up on a branch just above our heads.   

While we are counting animals, I must not forget that on our little stay in Melbourne we actually saw 1 Koala and about 15 Kangaroos without going to the zoo. Did not expect that on our little city break in Melbourne, but on a Sunday walk just outside the city, that is apparently quite normal!



Erlend in his stingersuit.



Sol ready to snorkel.

Tork is taking learning seriously in the rainforest.

Our swag tent.

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Cape Tribulation.

Spot the crocodile!

Ru cooking kangaroo!

It is hard to find the words....

Angkor Wat at sunrise. It was only us and 1000 other people there!

….to describe Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples. One fact is that Angkor Wat is the worlds biggest religious building. We were all really impressed, and after 7 hours we were also really “templed out”! A beautiful day in amazing surroundings. We will let the photos speak for us.

Outside Bayon.

Bayon. We really liked this temple. The king who had this made loved himself. He preetnded all the faces were of a god, but really they all portrayed himself.

Ta Phron. Where the jungle is moving into the temple.

Business trip to Paradise Island - (with mosquitoes..)

In Cairns, Australia now, but continuing with the backlog of post, as I have internet at the moment. Off to Great Barrier Reef tomorrow….

My first ever visit to a volunteer conservation project was to the island Koh Rong Samleom.  In the Lonely Planet described as “ a paradise with mosquitoes”.

At Koh Rong Samleom the volunteers take a diving certificate within their first week, and then they are ready to take part in the marine research project. The project focuses on documenting reef-bleaching, population counts of sea horses and identifying fish and other sea creatures. Since the start of the project three years ago, the volunteers and project staff have identified 94 new fish species and added them to the official Cambodian register of sea species. The project has also successfully pushed the government and local authorities to protect the reef from fishing with nets and other harmful fishing methods. Hardly any of the volunteers have a science background, but they are still able to contribute amazingly on the project, with a little bit of training along the way. I am very impressed!

Only staying  for 1,5 days, we did not have a chance to learn to dive or to do any research ourselves, but we put some snorkels and masks on and swam out to the reef. No wetsuits needed as the water held 29 c degrees. We had been warned of the scary sea urchins, and of course the first thing we encountered was a huge spiky sea urchin! Getting over the initial scare, we enjoyed the tropical fish and a beautiful blue clam embedded in the coral.

On land we hung out with the volunteers, had a beer and coke in the small village (population of 200), kept huge geckos for pets in our bungalows, saw a newly slaughtered dog!, had bucket showers, slept under mosquito nets, but had plenty of mosquito bites!

Wish we could have stayed for longer, but  I am not complaining, as a business trip does not get much better than this.

The fishing village

Our pet!

Our neighbourhood. Tork and Erlend outside their bungalow.