Gnomes all alone

This gnome lives at my aunty's place in Orange, NSW.  I love my aunt dearly but I would have to say that one of her most endearing qualities is that she is the master of good intentions that kind of, well, don't quite endure.  On the other hand she teaches piano and is very talented and laughs all the time.  She is also a master of the jive, which for the information of people born after 1975 is a dance.  She mastered it in her teenage years and still does a great one now at age 68.

Green-eyed gnome on a tilt - does he have a big blue thumb or what?

You can see below that the green-eyed fellow has a pseudo companion.  This little guy looks a bit lost.  Also, there is a cute table and chairs set-up that hasn't seen much use by the looks of it, and is somewhat too close to that tree for comfort.  And those roses don't look too well.

Gnome all alone

On closer inspection, that chair on the right is actually broken and collapsing.

Nice spot for a cup of tea and scones

I don't think there have been too many morning or afternoon teas here, but there's a certain quaintness to it all.

Sunny Boy and a miserable cold

Bruce likes the winter sun.  And the spring sun, the summer sun, and the autumn sun.  His white coat glistens.  He's happy.  The green ball again makes an appearance.  This time with a secondary toy.  Even if I do have to grovel to get the green ball from under the house, I don't mind.  He's my mate. 

He doesn't look as disheveled as he did when we got home from Cairns, he's back to his chilled out self.

Bruce in the winter sun

I still feel pretty crappy with this cold that came on when we got back home.  It has kind of improved but I have a very annoying dry cough.  Sometimes the coughing finishes with a sneeze and I see stars before my eyes.  I wish it would finally go away.  It gives me a headache and all I want is oranges and chicken soup and for my nose to feel normal again.  I'm grumpy.  But I'm having fish for dinner and the house is warm and cosy.  After that, I'll be safe and warm in bed in winter sheets and hopefully tomorrow this miserableness will be on its way out.  I really hope so.

Cairns - our last morning

On our last morning in Cairns we woke up to see the P&O Cruise Ship Pacific Sun coming in.  This was a surprise change to the view we'd become accustomed to.

A lot bigger than the usual boats

It was quite dominating

There's a person up there in their bathrobe

 Here they are on their balcony:

Cropped bathrobe person

The ship did a 360 degree turn when it got to the end of the marina.

Turning

Then it backed into the terminal and out of sight.  It was an interesting manouvre to watch.

Backing up, actually it looks a bit rusty

We had breakfast and finished our packing, but our flight wasn't until 1:30pm so we hung out by the pool and read the newspaper.  This is a tacky photo but it proves we were there....

Inside the paper there was a reader's photo of the crocs currently hanging out in the Mowbray River.  We'd seen one of them on the river bank a few days earlier as we drove over the bridge on our way to Port Douglas.   This photo was taken by a crazy person who must have risked their life on that bridge over the river on the Cook Highway.  We did actually pull over and walk back to the bridge ourselves....but we only lasted a very short time until we realised it was for too dangerous with cars zooming past inches away at high speed.  There wasn't any walkway, just the road.  Either way, apparently there are 3 known crocs currently in the river.  Here's two of them hanging out.

Soon it was time to go.  Goodbye pool.

No time for swimming

At the airport, I found that book I'd been looking for the previous day.  It has beautiful pictures inside.

We had a Cascade beer before boarding time.  This is another Tasmanian "crisp" beer as the label states.  Also on the label is a depiction of Tasmanian Tigers, which were not tigers at all but carnivorous marsupials with tiger-like stripes.   Sadly these are now extinct, but they are a much loved symbol of Tasmania.  People say they sight them deep in the wilderness every now and then, but it is generally believed the last one died in Hobart Zoo in the mid 1930s.  They'd been hunted out.

Cascade and the Tasmanian Tigers

Believe it or not, the bar at the airport had an outdoor area, so we could get one final dose of sunshine before boarding.  Below is my last photo of Cairns and that blue sky.

Strangely, I never saw this beer anywhere on tap

When we got home, it was great to see Bruce.  He was a bit feral and bedraggled, but only because he'd had his own boy's own adventure whilst we were away.  Our friend Jonathan stayed over to look after him for the week we were in Cairns, and Bruce and him bond like he-men.  Bruce had stories he just couldn't tell us.  The green ball was lost too.  I found it the next day behind the shed.

Slightly feral and bedraggled, but Bruce looks pretty happy

Cairns - Day Seven

It was Tuesday, our last full day in Cairns, and we decided to just chill out.  We had a big breakfast - sausages, scrambled eggs, grilled tomatoes, bacon, pastries, juice and coffee.  It took a while to get through all that, but we felt well fortified for the day.  By this time it was about 10:00am so we did about three quarters of our packing in preparation for our departure the next afternoon.

I wanted to buy a small book I'd seen about the Great Barrier Reef, and a gift for my cousin for taking us around over the weekend. We also had to cash in those errant $5 casino chips we'd forgotten.  So we hit the streets about 11:00am and went straight to the Casino.  I just walked in and out again with our $55 cashed in, but I did notice that even at that time in the morning there were quite a lot of people in the casino.

We walked around the Cairns CBD and finally got to Cairns Central shopping mall.  You could really be in any city in the world in one of these malls.  We found a book shop and actually bought 5 books to read, but didn't find the touristy one I was looking for.  We also bought my cousin a sweet gold elephant charm because she loves elephants.  It had its trunk up, which means good luck.  By the time we got back we'd walked a fair bit and we were hot and thirsty for something other than water.  We had to drink those last two Asahi beers that we had in the fridge, so we did.

Chilled Asahi, we just had to get rid of it

We were meeting my cousin for an early dinner at 6:00pm, and we didn't really need to eat much after that breakfast earlier in the day.  So, mid afternoon, we ended off where we started on day one - Salt House, by the marina:

That red ship in the background is the Australian Customs Marine Unit ship ACV Ocean Protector.  I don't know why it was in Cairns, but it does go all over Australia for Customs and Border Protection.  It was impressive.

ACV Ocean Protector

Here's a longer shot of Salt House.  Note the muddy shoreline.  And the prints in the mud.

Prints in the mud

I don't know how we missed this before, but this sign was staring us in the face right where I took this shot.  On closer inspection the prints looked like they mostly came from water birds, but still....

A recent croc sighting, crikey

OK, so I'm not wading in that murky muddy water by the shore.  That's that, not negotiable, so we moved on. This is the entry to Salt House.  It's pretty relaxed.

Nice place to hang out

Yep, pretty chilled

I could go back there in an instant

We sat in the same spot as on day one, so that was cool.  Finish off where it all began I guess.

Relaxing spot

We started off with two James Boag's.  A Tasmanian beer.  The capital of Tasmania - Hobart - is over 3,500km south of Cairns (that's 2,100 miles).  It's that little island at the bottom of mainland Australia, across the Bass Strait.

James Boag's

Just a couple of shots of the general locale:

It was pretty, no crocs about

From the outside

A tourist helicopter disturbed the peace for a few minutes.  But soon all returned to normal.

Noisy.  It was low tide, hence the mud. No crocs there though

We are sitting to the left, behind this little garden bed, in the shade.

The next James Boag's.  They have interesting labels on the beer made in Tasmania, and they make claims that the springs from where they get their water are crystal clear (does beer contain water? must be good for us then).  Well yes the water would be clear and it would certainly be cold, so maybe that's why this beer is so crisp.

James Boag's Tasmanian Beer, I guess that's a picture of the spring water source

We needed to eat something small to get us through to our early dinner.  Do these look familiar?  Just like day one, only this time as yet untouched by us.

Tiger Prawns

There's something perfect about chilled prawns, chilled beer, being chilled, and sunshine.  As soon as I took this shot, I peeled and ate this prawn.

A sweet stripey giant

We met my cousin for our early 6:00pm dinner.  We were so early because she had to start work the next day at about 7:00am I think.  We went to an Indian restaurant on The Esplanade.  We ordered too much food, drank too much wine, talked too much and laughed ourselves silly.  But that's what cousins do.  At least in my family they do, but I'm sure that's common amongst cousins.  She liked the little elephant we bought her a lot.  We did take some pictures but I'm not posting them because, well, it's family. I miss her already and I hope her husband is OK wherever he is out in the ocean doing border protection and other Australian Navy duties.  He's on the HMAS Bundaberg.

 

Cairns Day Six - Fitzroy Island

We spent the whole day on Fiztroy Island.  It is a National Park, and not really big on the tourist trail, maybe just over 100 people go there a day - only about 30 got off the boat we took over to the island.  There is a small resort and a small camping ground and a turtle rehabilitation centre.  It is a continental island, meaning thousands of years ago it was connected to the mainland, hence the boulders I guess.  It also has a fringing coral reef which lies within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.  The Great Barrier Reef is the largest single living organism in the world.

This place is pristine, mostly coastal type rainforest. There are a few tracks that get rougher as you go along.  This is a photo of the first boulders in the easy bit as we walked to Nudey Beach (many visitors don't bother! And yes, it once was a nude beach but it isn't now).  It became more er, boulder-ish as we went along and we had to clamber. 

The start of the boulders, this is the easy bit at the start

That's the mainland over there

The Coral Sea

The track winds through coastal rainforest and out onto the coast

I think I see a beach

Above Nudey Beach

Boulders

We couldn't wait to get down there

The beach here is coral and sand

Nudey Beach - I love the colour of the water

The water was really cold

How beautiful is that?

On the way back we saw a tall ship sailing

This is the jetty at Welcome Bay.  The reef is very close to the shore here

We had some lunch and later we took a glass bottom boat round to Shark Fin Bay where there is some very impressive coral.  You can't take photos that work out in a glass bottom boat so I just took photos of the shoreline as we went round.

Leaving Welcome Bay

Turtle Rehab Centre can just be seen

Cool boulders

Shark Fin Bay

Shark Fin Bay

There was some really large coral here of all different varieties.  Plus we saw Nemo, and a green sea turtle.

My boulders

In the centre is the rock formation that looks like a shark fin, hence the name of the bay

I really liked these boulders in the water

Later I did some snorkeling at Welcome Bay, but it wasn't very successful for me.  The water was a lot warmer than Nudey Beach but the reef is very close to the surface and I kept thinking I was going to run into things, like huge coral for example.  Plus my snorkel clip kept falling off my mask, my mask was foggy and I got coral in one of my flippers when I first put them on, and dented my shins on the coral seabed doing the same.  It was kind of problematic.   I also cut my thumb - coral cuts can get infected easily so I had to get antiseptic onto it.  I also felt sunburned, so I gave up pretty quickly and we went to Foxy's Bar for a beer to wait for the boat to take us back to Cairns (Foxy's Bar serves the resort, campers and day visitors but don't get me wrong, it just has a roof and tables, although the beer is cold and they serve food too).  It had a rustic atmosphere.

View from Foxy's Bar

On the boat on the way back we met a really cool guy and his daughter from Iowa.  They had been on the trip of a lifetime, in their words.  All over the North Island of New Zealand and the east coast of Australia.  She was in her 20's I guess and I'd seen her snorkeling like all day.  Much more successful with the snorkeling than me.  Unbelievably they were flying home the next morning starting at 3:00am.  The itinerary (yes, starting at 3:00am) was Cairns - Brisbane - Los Angeles - Dallas - Des Moines - and then a drive to their home town (sadly, the name of that town I can't recall).  That's one big trip.  We wished them a safe, if tiring,  trip home.  They were cool people.