Travel logs from a trip I took to Australia/New Zealand in 1993
Sitting here on an airplane on the way to Sydney. I feel kind of lucky that we’re on this flight. For some reason, I spent the entire week thinking we were leaving Sunday morning, and luckily found out before today (Saturday) that I was wrong. But that story will come out later
Today we took the Kuranda Train up to Kuranda (imagine that). It climbed from sea level up to 390 meters through vertical rainforest. The railway was built in 1891 using hand tools (picks and shovels). There are 15 tunnels and some large number (I believe 30+) bridges.
We went sport fishing today with 2 other people on a small boat. It was light tackle fishing. I think that means fishing for fish up to 250 pounds.
Well, we warned everybody we’ve met and told them to stay off the road, because we’re going to rent a car today. I think Bill’s going to drive, and he think’s I’m driving, so between the two of us, we’ll probably just sit in the car at the rental agency, and hope it goes by itself. Stay tuned, as this could be interesting. If you don’t hear from us again, call the police.
After a 1/2 hour ride through miles and miles and miles of sugarcane, we finally got to the river and the boat. From there it was a 20 minute boat ride through a slow, muddy estuary before open sea. From there it was 20 minutes straight out to sea, and the Frankland Islands, which are a national preserve and sanctuary. The 35 of us on the boat were the only people on the island (this particular company is the only group to have permits to go there).
Up this morning at the crack of dawn (yeah, right!). We grabbed a lift to the Botanical Gardens, where we went on a small walk-about. We climbed up a hill on the northern outskirts of town, through kind of a rain forest/bamboo forest. It ware really king of beautiful, and a little surprising at times.
Day Two : Bill got in this morning, ready for a long day. He waited at the airport for the 8:00am shuttle rather than taking a taxi like I did. By the time he got here, I’d been up for a couple of hours, and was ready to go. We had John drop us off downtown again. This time we ended up at a large open-air market, selling everything from fruits and vegetables to T-shirts to brass tables. It reminded me ALOT of the Itaewon Shopping District outside of Seoul.
I just woke up in the plane after actually sleeping for 5 hours. I still can’t believe that I’m on my way. The little computerized map displayed here in the cabin shows we’re over some islands (I think they are the Solomons, one of them is Guadalcanal).
The Denver-Dallas leg was uneventful, Dallas to Los Angeles was a little more eventful, but the event tended to resemble a paint shaker.
