Winter is coming

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. It is starting to get a bit chilly here!

Heron Island

We just got back from an outstanding trip to a coral cay called Heron Island on the southern Great Barrier Reef. Heron Island is right on the Tropic of Capricorn, in a region of the Australian Pacific called the Capricorn Coast. After flying into Brisbane and driving up through southern Queensland, we made a 2.5 hour voyage over to Heron Island in pretty stormy seas. All was well until one woman on the boat started to heave. A chain reaction followed that claimed Heather. Heather loves water activities, but they don't like her. I comforted her by giving her a mint. That is not our boat below.

The island and adjacent reef were spectacular. We got to swim with sharks, sea turtles, rays, and schools of reef fish. An extra benefit was that we were on the island at the time of year that hundreds of baby sea turtles hatched out of their shells and tumbled down the beach and into the water. It was hard to get these buggers on camera with the dim light, their fast movement, and the ill-suited camera lens I was using. Apparently the turtles navigate by the light of the moon once out in the water, and so we were told to keep all of our room lights to a minimum at night so as to not confuse them. Speaking of moon, see the last picture below of the lunar eclipse!

Watching the parade down the beach and into the water wasn't always for the faint of heart. At one point, a turtle reached the water after which a girl on the beach exclaimed "Aw, isn't it so cute!" Right after this, a shark proceeded to swim up and eat the turtle. The girl needed to be comforted. Sea gulls also contributed to the feeding frenzy. Only about 1 in 100 turtles reach adulthood, which explains the large number of eggs and hatchings that race down the beach. While snorkeling, Heather also got scared by an enormous Loggerhead turtle sitting on the reef. We were also all stung by jellyfish at one point! Luckily not the deadly poisonous kind that occurs on some parts of the coast.

Heading back to Brisbane, we stopped at Fraser Island, which is the largest sand island in the world and only about 30 minutes from the coast. We swam in some spectacularly clear island lakes, and waded in some clear streams that were fed by springs coming out of the sand. We even saw a dingo! It was all-in-all a very nice trip, and we are already scheming to make another trip to the Great Barrier reef in a future year.

On a last side note, when we arrived back in Melbourne, we were lucky enough to have clear skies for the lunar eclipse. Last night also happened to be the night that Daylight Savings Time ended here. I was able to get a pretty good shot of the eclipse even without my tripod. Fall is here and we only have 2 and a half months left in Australia! It is amazing how fast time has gone.

Aaahnold...

..... got busted for riding his bike without a helmet in Melbourne.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbourne-police-officers-pull-up-arnold-schwarzenegger-for-riding-a-bike-without-a-helmet-20150317-1m0s5c.html

Meat on the Barbie

We've been getting some complaints about leaving the same seagull post up for weeks. So here is some new material. We have been grilling on the public beach-side grills the last couple of weekends, one for Isabel's birthday (number 11!), and another for a get-together with some friends we've known since our time in Boulder. The beachside barbies are completely free. You just press a button, they heat up, and you can grill away. Numerous charred food bits often remain from the previous grillers, but as long as you scrape those off, we think you are OK.

We only have a few more weeks until we head to Heron Island in the Great Barrier Reef. Stay away cyclones! We're very excited.

More Seagulls

We have settled into our late summer routine here, and so haven't been inspired to post too much. Isabel started Grade 6, and Eric has just gotten back from a trip to Singapore. We've been planning some trips for the Fall in the home stretch of our time here.

This is the most interesting thing that we saw this weekend. The drink isn't alcoholic.

Watching the Tennis

We caught one day of the Australian Open this past week, and watched about 3 matches in their entirety. It was a very fun day.

Eric decided that he wants to be one of the line judges (the woman in blue behind Venus Williams). Isabel wants to be one of the ball kids (kid in red). Heather wants to be the person who puts up the shades for the players when they sit down to rest.

In addition to watching Venus and one other match, we watched the top rated U.S. mens player (John Isner). He is 6' 10" and though has a wicked serve, has an otherwise difficult time getting around the court. While he won the match we watched, you could tell he wasn't going to go that deep in the tournament. He lost last night in the 3rd round. Both Williams sisters are still in the tournament for now though.

Hello
Isabel Here.
We just went to New Zealand as you know. My favorite part was going to Hanmer Springs. The best part of the springs were the water slides. I loved it! I spent more time on the water slides than in the pools. I also really liked the zip lining! We went on 6 zip lines. The last one was the steepest one in the world! On our trip we got to stay at a castle! You can see the castle in the background of this picture

.

Random New Zealand Pictures

Here are more random pictures of Heather, Isabel, Grandpa, and Eric's trip to New Zealand, posted without comment.

Invasive Species

One thing that has surprised us a bit about New Zealand is how messed up the ecosystem is due to invasive species. Before humans arrived, New Zealand only had one land mammal, the bat. The bird species are typically slow and naive and have no natural defenses against the mammals that are prevalent on other continents. Possums and stoats (weasels), dogs, and cats were introduced to New Zealand and have taken a severe toll on the wildlife, including the native kiwi. Many of the forests we visited were mostly devoid of bird sounds. Interestingly, the possum is increasingly threatened in Australia, but has thrived with the nice climate and lack of predators in New Zealand. Plant species such as Douglas fir and broom have taken over much of the countryside as well. Douglas fir is considered a weedy pest, which is interesting given how fond we were of these trees in the Pacific Northwest.

One happy wildlife story is that the local New Zealand fur seal that was nearly hunted to extinction has made a strong comeback. We've spent a good amount of time with these creatures the last few days.

New Zealand

We wanted to relay everything we experienced on our travels here, including all of the interesting places we visited, but decided it would just be too difficult and tedious (to write and read!). Therefore, we'll just show you a picture from a nice boat trip down Milford Sound, and a peculiar picture of Steampunk, the eclectic art collection made of junk in the most interesting town we passed through, Oamaru.

We head back to Australia on Sunday after a trip to Hamner Springs. We accomplished getting Heather seasick in a sea kayak today, but we won't show any pictures or discuss that episode further (although two of us had fun).

Earthquake!

After posting about earthquakes yesterday in our blog, the Canterbury region around Christchurch just had its second strongest earthquake since the 2011 earthquake this morning! Magnitude 6.0. Heather was the only one who felt it though. Others were soundly asleep (Isabel) or in the shower (Eric), or elsewhere (Grandpa).

This will be short, but we began our travels in the mountainous western part of the South Island. We passed by a couple of cool lakes filled with glacial sediment that made the water a turquoise blue. We're off for more adventures the rest of the week. We're also eating too much Indian food.

Mambo Queen Redux

The mambo queen took her act on the road to New Zealand this morning. We've only been here for a few hours so far, but dancing is already happening in the streets.

Grandpa Maloney is visiting for a couple of weeks and we will spend most of our time on the South Island of New Zealand. We are spending the first two days in Christchurch. We knew that we would see quite a bit of damage from the 2011 earthquake, but we were still amazed to see the scale of it all. Almost all of the buildings in the central business district were destroyed or heavily damaged, including the tall one in back of the dancer that is boarded up. Christchurch is making innovative use of some of the open space created by the earthquake. The dance floor shown above has a coin operated disco machine where you plug in your iPad, insert your coin, and the lights and music start.

The city is slowly but surely starting to rebuild, although still has a desolate, eerie feel with a few solitary backpackers wandering aimlessly and looking lost while passing by block upon block of empty lots, cordoned off buildings, and rubble. Pockets of new development and renovated surviving structures are found in a few places. The closest analogue we've seen before is maybe some of the rebuilding cities we visited while we were in Bosnia, or some of the stories and pictures we've seen of Detroit.

Regardless, we are having a good time so far. We were happy to leave Melbourne for a bit because of the heat. It reached 105 the day before we left. No comments on the hat please.