October 12, 2007 by Rick.

Some odd meandering thoughts that have struck me in the last few weeks…

But first: H A P P Y 4 0 th L E E S A - M A R E E ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Welcome to the status of: OLD….

Ketchup - doesn’t really exist here. Not only is it called something different (tomatoe sauce) it is not physically like the North American “anticipation” (old Heinz commercial reference) that we North Americans are used to. It is much runnier and a little less sweet, and a tiny bit more tangy. Claudette forced us all to eat at Rotten Ronnies one day, and the only good thing about it was the (presumably) imported heinz McDonald’s labeled ketchup! It was nummy! (the only food part there that was any good at least). As an aside, Luke has a new saying besides “Rotten Ronnies” that I love. It’s sung to the tune of the current McD’s commercials: “Bah, dah, dup, bah… BLECH!”

Intenet WIFI - is way more locked up (encrypted) here in Australia than I’m used to in residential and even shiopping areas of Canada. In South America every tourist town had govt. supplied free WIFI hotspots, (usually in all the main squares and parks) fro the tourists. Not here in a civilized capitalist pig Western country, nope! There’s all kinds of hotspots but they all cost mucho dinero. Even in the South American main (non-tourist) cities I would find lots of open routers that we could use the phone on. I’ve spent a few hours walking around a few neighborhoods here looking for open connections to no avail. The only free spot I’ve found so far was at a little stip mall, near a (very yummy) bakery.

Pickup trucks - are practically non-existant! I mean really barely any at all. There are a few Toyota small sized work trucks around, and a very few little Ford’s, but of of these are actually slightly smaller than the Tacoma. The ford is just like a baby little Ford courier my Dad used to have in about 1972. As far as full size (1/2 ton, 3/4 ton or even 1 ton) pickups go there just aren’t any that we’ve seen on the roads. Conversely of course there are sport utility vehicles in massive abundance. They in fact are everywhere and I would say that over 80% have snorkles. This is so cool! Even though barely one in fifty would probably actually go in water deeper than 10cm, the fact that they can is just so exciting! If I had a snorkle vehicle at home we would be the envy of the whole town just based on cool factor. Shame we can’t even think about affording that kind of vehicle…

Toyota - vehicles are in massive abundance here and Latin America. They are just everywhere. As good as everyone know they are in Canada, people just tend to get sucked in by the hype and baloney of Fiord, GM, and Dodge I guess. The prices of toyota compared to the domestic three are starting to get much closer though, and that coupled with how incredibly well Toyota (or Mazda, or Nissan, or whatever other Aisian car company) vehicles last now certainly makes them a much more clear choice. Anyways, don’t feel bady for Toyata because they are incredibly successful in many other parts of the world it seems. Hyndi was another very common vehicle that we saw all ovver the place in Latin America that hasn’t seemed to have broken onto Aussie shores much yet.

BBQ’s - I’ve mentioned previously a few times, but there is an exception at this campground we’re at in Airlie Beach. They have the standard huge flat flame fired frying pan units, but they also have one consumer type unit with a grill that allows the flames to lick and caress your food. Good for them! I say…

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October 12, 2007 by Rick.

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9
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We stopped at a very quaint (as a matter of fact, one could call it quintessentially “Quaint”) town called SEVENTEEN SEVENTY. It was fairly smallish, and was obviously only recently (in the last decade or so) developed. The beach was quite nice, but had very small waves. The town (Hamlet really) is named for the year that Captain Cook first hit Queensland (his second landfall in Australia). They’re VERY prowd of that fact too! Just down the road from our campsite were a couple of tours for the area. One was a Great Barrier reef day tour which we did on our second day there. The other was an amphibious vehicle tour accross the bay, down the beach, accross a couple more seawater creeks, and up to the state’s first lighthouse. These (wonderful) local people were fanatical about their local lighthouse restoration, beleive me! The tour itself was pretty cool. It was a larger, US military amphibious vehicle which held about 30 tourists in the 5 ton cargo area. We put a couple pics up at the . The lighthouse was fun, and pretty standard, but the stories of the caretakers and community around it from 200 years ago were fabulous. Alex even bought one of the “stories” books about the area to read.

One other cool part of this Amphib. tour was a stop at an otherwise impossible to reach sand dune for some sand boarding. This was great for two reasons: (1) it’s a mega tonne of fun! (2) we had lost the disc with the pictures and video from the previous sandboarding tour we had taken. This was a little bit of a smaller hill than the previous one we went on and they used wave boogie boards instead of a wood laminate board (similar to a snowboard) that the other tour used. This one would actually end up in the water normally, but since we were at low tide, we just slid accross the mud. I set the distance record for that day on my first trip at which Alex and Luke were pretty proud. Since we have to walk UP! the hill, I only planned on going once (lazy old fart, I know…) but some y little 15 year old beat me and gave a very smug look afterwards. Thus, there I was once again trudging up the sandy hill (literally three steps forward and sliding two back!) to teach the little twirp a lesson. His rides were still not as smooth as I knew I could go, (thus gaining more distance) plus he had taken at least six or seven runs to beat my one. To much wild cheering from most of my family, (and a couple other 40 year old guys who also didn’t care for the attitude of the young whipper-snapper) I had a fairly nice run and sailed past the kid’s mark. I gave him a look that let him know how upset I’d be if he beat my mark again and made me scale that defying mound of desolate sand. He didn’t appear to care and tried a couple more times in earnest, yet unsuccessfully before it was time to leave.

The next day we finally got to go out to “The Reef”. It was the Southern portion, and the company screamed us out there in an hour and a half on a dual hull, 100 seat comfortable boat. Once in their “lease” area, there was an anchored pontoon platform at which the main boat, two glass bottomed boats, and a semi submersible docked, and the snorkling and diving tours left from. It was very well organized, and our day was very full. The snorkling was similar to what we experienced in the Galapagos, (which is of course to say absolutely phenominal!) but the Great Barrier Reef is just so much more vast. And this is just the local area we were in I’m refering to. The ability to thread their/our way in and around passages of reef in the glass bottomed boats, the semi-submersible or snorkling was mind boggling and very formidable (and REALLY cool!).

The trip out there wasn’t so much fun for Luke’s and my weaker stomaches, but we were ged up. When we had a bit further North to Airlie Beach we plan on taking another similar day tour as well as visiting a Rio Tinto Coal mine in the area.

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October 12, 2007 by AJ.

We are still in Australia. We leave soon (I think). Since I last wrote, we have seen some of the great barrior reef and done some caving( I think it is actually called spelunking or something like that, must have been a guy named George Spelunk :D) The great barrior reef was really cool but the part we saw was kinda disapionting. We didn’t see alot of anything or alot of bright colours. I think we all really preferred caving! It was way fun, first we did a tour were we walked around and she was telling us how these brides, lond ago would get married in the church(which I’ll tell you about in a sec) and they had to go this long long way, in knee deep guano (bat poop). and People would also go to sunday mass , what you would do is pay for it on saturday(which cost an arm and a leg!) then on sunday you would get up really early get into your best clothes and take a 3 hour horse and wagon ride, then walk in knee deep guano( which I forgot to tell you was filled with all sorts of bugs, roaches, worms and maggots, just to name a few :D) in there best clothes and get all sorts of stuff in their shoes! Then they would sit through mass which was about 3 hours with stuff moving around in thier shoes! Then they would tromp through the guano again and get even more stuff in their shoes! Afterwards there was a picnic and many people would use it as an excuse to sneek of and empty there shoes then, take the 3 hour ride back home. It was very popular aparently.
There church was so so pretty there had speakers set up so we sat in there and Luke sang, (he sang put a little love in your heart by the way)and we listened to a song and had a light show. I was very cool. Then there was some bridges and a very ziggy zaggy passage way that we had to exit out of. Our guide had to let us out in the light becaus it had rained that morning so it it was kinda slippery (there was many sighs of relief when she told us this!)
I have found the perfect sport for lots of kids! Adventure caving! Thats what we did once we finished the tour of the cave. We all liked the cave so much that is what we decideed to do. All you do is you get a guide and they tour you around the cave leading you to many spots where you do something like belly crawl into a pocket then look around and try and get out! My favorite was called the whales belly, and what we did was we got boosted into a wiggle hole then are in a big space enough for 5 adults. then you have to get another boost and you go into this spot where you crawl on your belly and get into another space big enough for 2 adult and you have to crawl out of the whales blow hole it was awesome fun! my dad had to turn around. Me and Luke made it through every single one! My dad didn’t do 2 and my mom did 1 I think. Another fun one was kids only. I was the smallest one and I was this crack in a rock only just big enough for me! you had to climb up it but there was only one hard spot which is hard to get your leg through. I manged to go up twice and down once before we had to go. Anyone under 9 would not have a single trouble!!
Bye bye!!!!!
Alex

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