Whales

Okay, so about 20 minutes drive from our home, there's a charter that takes you to watch whales.
Great! Let's do that. On the boat, a pretty quick catamaran, we see Moreton Island, its beaches the woods and the blue waters.

Once out of the bay and onto the ocean it takes us about 15 minutes to find the first pod of whales. I crack a couple of jokes:
- Where are the Japanese whale hunters?
- Can we get a Whale sandwich over here?

Here they come, blimey, these are big buggers. A pod of three is joined by a pod of five and later by another pod of three. There are a couple of dolphins around, but they are not the stars of this show.
They get a bit excited and start jumping out of the water and have a good look at us.
They come in really close and... whhhssssshhhhh!!! a spray of water and whale breath right in the face. It smells like fish that has been dead for 3 weeks.
We stay around them for a couple of hours when they decide they had enough of us and take off.

Great Barrier Reef!

Oh crap, it’s early, okay let’s hurry because today we’re going to the Great Barrier Reef!
At 08:00 AM we boarded a superfast mega luxurious cat and blasted close to the speed of sound through the waters to the outer barrier reef. After a flying low (mach 0.9) for an hour and a half we arrived at the first dive/snorkel site. and... the bloody sharks greet us. They're only babies but mum can't be far.

Splash! let's go and visit Nemo and Dorie. It doesn't take long to find a lot of fish. Emmanuelle and I leave the group and go snorkling in a large lagoon. Lovely, truly lovely.
The second site and third site are very nice indeed. A huge groper swims by and a couple of sting rays swim by.
I will return there but I'll be honest, the red sea (Sharm el Sheikh and Hurgada) are a bit better then the GBR. The colors are not that intense, and there are large area's where the coral has died.

Skyrail

Over the tops of the Trees back to the water. Skyrail is a tourist trap, but a lovely one. It flies through the mountains over the tree tops and gives a good impression of how inaccessible this tropical forest is.

KSR Train

The KSR train is one of the tourist attraction in the vicinity of Palm Cove. The KSR is a train winding through the mountains. 15 tunnels, very steep ....We took the train and had a fresh breakfast. Champagne (or rather an Australian variant of the bubbly), some very nice cakes and quiches. At a certain point the train nears a waterfall so close, you can see the individual drops and feel the droplets.

Palm Cove

To welcome Emmanuelle I had booked flights to Cairns (northern Queensland) and then a car to go to a resort a bit further up the coast. After all Emma had only been travelling for 36 hours, so I thought we'd fly some more.

I got the best room in the Hotel, after all 'noblesse oblige'. Palm cove is no more than a collection of resorts by the sea. The Pacific Ocean stretches for as far as the eye can see and the palm trees by the beach make it very nice place for long beach walks. The only thing missing is truly blue water, it has a grey color to it.

Apparently Palm Cove is Marriage central: walking down the beach at sun set we spotted 5 couples get their marriage pictures taken on the beach. (a picture perfect beach, I'd say).

We hired a car, and drove around a bit. Basically the surroundings are tropical forest and beach. It has some history fro a country where nothing is older than 2 centuries. The locals died en masse last century when they tried to create a long railway line between Cairns and the more northern cities. The death toll was so high, that the powers that be decided not to tempt fate and stopped the construction of the rail way at Kundura.

The Wifey!

It's 18:00 I haven't slept well last night, I'm quite excited because my wife will land in one hour. I haven't seen her in 125 days. All I can say: it's been too long.

The doors of the international arrivals gate open and... no. That's not her. Okay, this time then, Nope... After a little wait I find myself a bit nervous. And when I least expect it... there she is. Exactly how I remembered her.
Kisses, hugs, smiles. All is well.

She woke me up 4 times that night to check whether it was really me and we talked a bit. Happy happy joy joy, life in Australia can now truly commence.

We'll have to start from scratch and rebuild everything, from car to home, from clothes to friends. That'll keep us busy for a while.