August 2024September 2024 Current Home Page

09/12 - Stanley Park in Vancouver

Our flight to Australia left late at night, so we had the day to explore. We headed to Stanley Park, one of Vancouver's gems. We took the tour along the water, so we had a good view of the heaps of sulfur across the way and the Lion's Gate Bridge. We made it almost all the way around. Then, we had dinner. The setting sun found us at Vancouver Airport waiting for our flight to board.

Sulfur

A hawk

That hawk from a distance

The coastal walk

More along the walk

The Lion's Gate Bridge

Low tide

A little seastack

The airport sunset

Keywords: australia, vancouver

09/11 - Taronga Zoo

Our flight to Sydney arrived early in the morning. Our hotel room wasn't ready. We decided to check our bags and take a ferry to the Taronga Zoo across the way. We always like the Taronga Zoo. It's an excellent zoo, and there is nothing like a bunch of kangaroos, wallabies, bush turkeys and emus to say welcome to Australia.

The sky from our flight as dawn broke

A view from the ferry









Taking a break from posing for the Australian national seal




The ferry back to our hotel

Keywords: australia

09/10 - Sydney Botanic Garden

We explored the Botanic Garden on a gray day. It didn't quite rain, but it clearly wanted to.











Keywords: australia

09/09 - Leaving Sydney

One of the things about jet lag is that one wakes up at ridiculous times. We had a morning flight to Perth, so we were nice and early.

Early AM in Sydney

Dawn approaching

A rainy day

Daylight, though

The view from where we got our taxi to the airport

Keywords: australia

09/08 - Royal Botanic Garden in Perth

We had never been as far west in Australia as Perth, so we were eager to explore the Royal Botanic Garden. We were going to take a taxi, but our hotel valet told us to go across the street and take the next bus. It was free and very convenient. The garden has plants from all over Western Australia, birds attracted by those plants and a sky walkway for canopy viewing.

We saw all kinds of amazing plants, pods and birds. Then we explored an upmarket neighborhood and bought some amazing Ethiopian coffee, so we aren't just bird and bush fanatics.























Keywords: australia, birds

09/07 - Ningaloo Reef Arrival

We flew from the Learmouth airport to Ningaloo Reef. There are flights to and from Perth daily but the times vary. We chose carefully to avoid having another predawn wakeup. Ningaloo Reef is accessible by road, but it is a long hard drive. The flights serve tourists, locals and people working for the mining industry. In fact, a lot of Western Australia seems to be about the mining industry with offshore oil and gas platforms and a variety of minerals. There were advertisements for heavy mining loaders in the Perth airport which were hard to miss.

We took a small plane from the airport to our hotel. The scenery was green, eroded and cut with channels. We cut across the peninsula and headed north a bit. We could see the reef with its protected waters, paler blue between the reef and the shore. There were rocky stream beds and fascinating vegetation. Our pilot circled a bit to look for whales or whale sharks, but we mainly saw wind sharks, white patches of water raised by the stiff breeze.

We landed on a dirt landing strip near Exmouth. It was a bit outside of town, but our pilot was reassuring. He said that once he got the plane turned around which involved some heavy hauling, he'd wait with us for our ride to the hotel. There didn't seem to be any cell phone coverage. Aside from the runway itself, there was also a windsock, but that was about it.

Our ride came and took us to our tented paradise. We had a big tent at the end of a boardwalk. There was a deck facing the sea and a comfortable bed with the same view, two small LED lamps and two USB plugs. The toilet was outside on a side deck along with the sink and shower. We had 20 liters of water each daily. To put a positive spin on it, the toilet was conveniently no-flush. The sink had a small switch to turn the water on and off. The shower had hot and cold water valves, and one could hear the gas water heater when the hot water was switched on. There was no air conditioning. Cool was provided by the stiff breeze mentioned earlier.

Meals were served at the main lodge in an area nicely sheltered from the wind. The food was excellent.

It was great.


A view from the window

A river bed

The reef follows the white line.

Possibly Yardie Creek


Chaparral?

Munga Munga

Another view of the reef


Evening light

Flowers among many

A visitor

Landscape

Rainbow

Evening light


Sunset




Venus just barely visible on the upper right


Venus, almost dark

Keywords: australia

09/06 - Yardie Creek at Dawn

Having avoided an early morning flight the previous day, we went on a dawn hike at Yardie Creek to compensate. The winds howled all night keeping us nice and cool in our tent. We woke before dawn and joined our guides at the main lodge for the shuttle ride to Yardie Creek. A lot of the pictures we took were blurred by low light and long exposure times. There was no way we were lugging a tripod. While our biological clocks were drifting towards local time, our computer clocks were horribly confused.

As the twilight brightened we headed out along the canyon. The rocks were once coral, part of the reef, so we had to watch our footing. We were promised rock wallabies, and we got rock wallabies. They are early risers. We saw bats resting in trees and a variety of hard to photograph birds. We clambered up and down clumsily, but thanks to our guides avoided injury, though we now know what it sounds like when a wallaby suppresses a laugh.


Early light

The sand bar at the mouth of Yardie Creek

A deep canyon

Bats

Rising light



Still early

Across the creek

The canyon wall


A cave?

A cave with somebody home


Rock wallabies







Seen flying

Keywords: australia

09/05 - Afternoon at Ningaloo Reef

The winds continued. We napped in our tent. We relaxed on our deck. We took a short walk along the beach right outside.

Coral

A view of the sea

A ray

The beach



We made it this far south.




A tiny crab


It had rained the night before, so our tent roof flaps were full of water. Here is one of the hotel staffers doing what she can to empty our tent roof flap.

Keywords: australia

09/04 - Moonrise at Ningaloo Reef

We watched the sun set and the moon rise. We may be confused. Our camera software didn't really handle the dateline crossing well. Presumably, the moon has better software.

Lines in the sand

Lines on the beach




Our tent

Relaxing

Sunset glow

Moonrise






Keywords: australia

09/03 - Ningaloo Reef Sunset

Here are some photos of a cloudy sunset.





Keywords: australia

09/02 - Snorkeling at Ningaloo Reef

We hadn't snorkeled in ages, but we had come all this way to Ningaloo Reef to see the reef. We were out of practice. We put our wet suits on backwards and worried about the bad fit. Luckily, one of the guides caught this. We put on our masks and flippers. We headed out into the water and were pleased to discover that we still understood the basics of how to swim. Flippers compensate for a lot.

The reef was beautiful. It wasn't as dramatic as the Great Coral Reef we had explored decades ago, but there were all sorts corals and fish. We even saw a couple of sea turtles. We sloshed around enthusiastically. The underwater camera that had been a birthday gift years ago was pressed into service and performed well.












Pike like fish

One of the sea turtles

Another sea turtle

Another look

Sand as we returned to shore

On land

On land again

Keywords: australia

09/01 - Moonset and Sunrise at Ningaloo Reef

Activities at Ningaloo Reef often start early. The reef is near the equator, so for much of the year the days are hot and vigorous activity is best done early in the morning. We've been getting up early, sometimes before the sun, so we got to watch the moon set.

Descending moon from our tent

Lower yet

Even lower

Low enough to show red

Passing down through the clouds

A perfect Halloween moon if a bit early

The moon set, then the sun rose.

Keywords: australia

August 2024September 2024 Current Home Page