Undara Lava Tubes

This weekend we went for our first overnight trip away from Cairns. We've done a fair few activities in and around the city so now we need to venture out a little farther. We hopped into the Jeep and went for a ride to the Undara Lava Tubes. To get there we headed south of the city to the Gillies Range. This is a pretty exciting road up the mountain range. Lots of switch back, a bikers dream. The climb takes a little while because the speed limit is 40kph and there aren't any guard rails. Eek.

Once you make to the top you reach the Tablelands. It doesn't take a very long time for the humid rainforest to give way to beautiful green rolling pasture land. It was almost surreal how green the greens were. This is the part of world around here where they grow all the tasty fruits and veggies. There are lots of little towns along the way, one of the best spots was just a round a corner where a bunch of windmills popped up. It was probably the most comfortable temperature we've felt in awhile. Not that I don't love the heat, but it was pretty refreshing up here. It also felt a lot like home, agriculture and all. It actually felt like Alberta, but that's close enough to home. Here's a picture of Tara playing with one of the windmills.

We kept traveling. Soon after this the lush fertile landscape gave way to roasting hot heat (the A/C in the Jeep isn't working). We watched the temp climb up to 34. We though this was hot until we drove back on Sunday when it it got up to 36. Anyhow, we cruised into scrub. It's not the kind of outback where there is nothing at all but red dirt. The dirt is red, but it's got grasses and tall trees. It definitely was vast though. On our way back we went for a short 1hr walk up this volcano crater and around the rim. Here's an example of the view from up top.

There's not a lot out there, except hotness. Anyhow, the reason we made this whole trip. You see in that picture above the line of darker green trees. There's a lava tube there. These lava tubes were formed when volcanos back in the day were slowly spewing lava. This area is all gradually sloping towards the west, so when a big shield volcano was slowly releasing lava it all ran downhill to the west. Then the top of the lava flow would harden, but the hot lava would keep flowing in the middle. Eventually the lava stopped coming out of the volcano and the rest of it drained out of the tubes. Now what's left is huge caves were the lava used to flow. That dark green in the bush is where the tubes have collapsed. They hold more water down there and it's a lot colder. Plus the rock walls don't let the bush fires get in. That's why it's green.

So there are tubes that aren't collapsed. That's what we got to go in. Like this.

This one made for nice picture. There were a few that you got to walk a fair ways in. Far enough in that it is pitch dark. It's was pretty amazing. I was half expecting this place to be a bit of a disappointment, but it proved me wrong. It was amazing. It makes the recommend list.

Then after all of this we went home. Back to work tomorrow. Next weekend is the AECOM Christmas party. Merry Christmas everyone. Talk soon.

Nick

Hungry to get offroad

Check out this beauty of a Jeep. She's ready to go explore the outback. There's a bit more painting and fix up work to go before I stop, but I had to show it off because I think it's beautiful. Lets go get it dirty.

Nick

Just hanging out

Hello. I figured I should put a little post up just to let everyone know that we're not dead. We didn't do much but relax last weekend. So it didn't warrant much of a post. Today we just got back from a BBQ down on the Esplanade with friend from work. It was lots of fun, but there was no shrimp. There was Spanish Mackerel though. Tasty.

This weekend we're going to the Cairns engineering excellence awards. It's the annual awards banquet to celebrate great engineering projects over the last year. It should be a fun little shindig to meet new people and have a good supper and drinks. Should be lots of fun. That's all I got to share. Talk soon.

Nick

And the winner is...

This weekend we had our first visitor. Not many people knew that somebody was going to come visit. The winner in Riley! Yup, Riley works in Australia a fair bit apparently and he had the weekend off. So a little flight up to Cairns and we got to have a nice weekend hanging out. Saturday we went out for a real nice dinner on the harbor. It was so tasty. They gave us a complimentary appetizer to try. It was raw salmon with some random other things on it. It was the best tasting fish thing I've ever eaten.

Saturday morning I had to take the Jeep to the shop while Tara and Riley got burnt by the pool. Then when I got back we picked up some pizza and beer and hung out on the beach. As far as I know there isn't a law that says no drinking at the beach. While walking around the beach we found a decent sized dead body washed up on the shore. After close examination we concluded it was a dolphin and it was clearly ravaged by a shark, likely a tiger shark from the size of bite. But we're not experts.

After the beach we went back into town for an ice cream and a shower. Then we went out for another tasty supper along the Esplanade at a thai place. A nice brekkie this morning on the patio and we dropped Riley off at the airport. A couple more days of work before he heads back to the mother land. Here's proof that he was actually here.

Good times.

Nick

Botanic Gardens/Tanks/Arrow Walk

On Saturday we were supposed to be doing the Blue Arrow walk with Dave, but rain the night before meant the track was too wet. So we put it off for Sunday. Me and Tara then went down to the Botanic Gardens to check out all the tropical vegetation. It's beautiful. Lots of neat plants and trees. We didn't end up spending too much time in there. It's pretty close quarters with the plants and the little buggers that live in the plants...

Nasty. That's probably 5 inches from front to back, including the legs. At that point Tara began to lose interest in the botanic gardens, but we ventured on and saw a bunch more cool plants. After the gardens we went and walked around a little bit on the Red Arrow walk. This is a short 1.3km track right close to the botanic gardens where locals go to work out. They all jog along the relatively mellow track through the forest. We saw a pile of wild scrub turkeys and a few more nasty spiders. We didn't do the walk, we just checked it out.

Then we went to the Tanks right next to that. The Tanks are a series of large oil tanks that were used during the second world war by the Americans. Apparently Cairns was a substantial base for their battle with Japan. The inlet (Trinity Inlet) was used to keep the boats safe and out of sight. These Tanks were hidden on the side of a little mountain to keep them hidden as well. Now one tank has been converted into a hall, one into an art gallery, one into a theatre and two have been torn down. Pretty neat.

Sunday I went on the Blue Arrow with Julian and Dave. It was fairly laid back compared to the other walks we've done so far. It took about 2.5 hours to get up and down. The terrain was still rough but nothing compared to the Pyramid. It was great. The view from the top is up close to the airport and you can see a lot of the beautiful water around the town. The Blue Arrow starts as the Red Arrow, but it breaks off half way along and turns into a real walk, not like the running track of the Red Arrow.

Sadly the picture doesn't do this any justice. But it's the best I've got. Later.

Nick

Walsh's Pyramid Walk

Today I went for another bush walk with Julian. This time we went up to the top Walsh's Pyramid. You may have seen it in another photo album from awhile ago. It's a mountain in the area that looks incredibly like a man made pyramid. It was a shorter walk than the Lamb's Head walk, but way more difficult. The rise is about 930m, and the distance you walk is 3300m. That's pretty steep if you are wondering what I'm getting at. The walk up was exhausting and the walk down was painful in the knees. It was another beautiful view again.

That's me at the top. You might think that these mountains aren't that high from the pictures. This one was about 930m, the Lamb's Head was about 1250m and there is another one behind me in this picture and off to the right that is around 1500m. That's the highest mountain in Queensland. I will be climbing that one soon. For reference, Mt. Everest is just under 9000m. So these are high enough to feel pretty good when you reach the top.

If anybody wants to give them a go I will take you when you come visit. :D

Nick

Hartley's Crocodile Farm

No post last weekend. It was a relaxation weekend with no events. But this weekend we went to Hartley's Crocodile Farm. It was pretty cool. It's pretty much a zoo, but they focus heavily on crocs. Aside from walking around like most zoos, you also get to go out in their boats to check out crocs in the lagoon. It's neat cause they're just swimming around. Then he feeds them a bit with his food on a stick. They jump way out of the water trying to get his chicken heads.

This is a little girl croc. They get much bigger. In this zoo there is also a small crocodile farm. Here they bread and raise crocs for their skin and for meat. He said they use all the skin for leather, the meat gets served around Cairns and Port Douglas and the hands get sold for back scratchers. There was a ton of crocs in pens being raised for this. It was a little sad cause they're so cute when they're small, but I'm still going to buy myself a crocodile leather belt one day ($200!!). That's all for today, I might go hiking tomorrow again depending on the weather.

Nick

Tully River Rafting

Wow, that was fun. Today we went white water rafting in the Tully River. I've been rafting once in Jasper when we were young, but this was something else. First off we had to meet the bus in town at 6:40am. The bus took us on a 2 hour journey to the town of Tully. It was a sleepy ride at this hour and it was raining the whole time. Luckily we were going white water rafting.

Once we made it to the river it didn't take long to get in. A little safety and rafting lesson started it all off. Normally the rafting groups can be as big as 20 boats. If you pay an extra 30 bucks you get to go on the extreme package, which guarantees you are part of a small group of no more than 4 boats. Not a lot of people were up for rafting today so we were part of a group of only 4 boats anyways. Bonus!

This was our crew. Two from Italy, two from around Sydney, the guide and his brother. This picture was taken about 3/4 of the way through. After dropping off about a 2m drop we all jumped in the water and swam to this little beach where they were taking pictures. When we started at the top of the river we went through a little rapid what we all thought was kinda fun. Then in the pool on the other side he told us that was a 2. The scale of rapids go from 0-6. Where 0 is a ripple and 6 is death (as he put it). So a two was pretty mild. Then he pointed ahead and said, "That's a four". It was way more fun.

Most of the river was made up of 3's and 4's. There was one closer to the end that I think he said was a five. After 2 hours of rowing we pulled over to the bank and walked up for a barbeque. We were all craving something to eat. In this first half of rowing he made us go down a mild rapid just in our life jackets. That was almost as much fun as the boat. This first half was about 4km.

The second half was about 12km, and he said we have a lot more fun on the second half because they let loose a bit more. I thought this meant it was going to be milder rapids, not the case. There were a few really wild rides and a few places that our guide purposely dumped us. Then we got to a stop where there was a little cliff and everybody climbed up an jumped down into a pool. I'm not a big cliff jumper so it felt like it was a mile, it wasn't.

Then we got to a few sets of rapids that rocked our socks off. We went through one place where it was a couple of really intense rapids in a row. We hit a hole pretty quick and lost 3 people from our boat. It seemed pretty intense when our guide told us to rescue people. One guy got pulled back in quickly, and another woman got rolled around in a wave for a little bit before hitting the boat and getting pulled back in. The third guy got pulled away from the boat and was held under water for a few seconds, but it seemed like minute. Then he some how ended up back by the boat and we got him in. The guide was asking us to act quickly because we were heading right into another intense section.

This was a pretty fun picture. At the end of the trip we were told not to jump into the water because it has crocs. There were being serious also, but we didn't see any. We recommend this trip to everybody, it was pricy but well worth it.

Nick

Lamb's Head Walk

To start this one off we need to discuss the difference between a walk and a hike. When you spend 6 hours trudging through the rain forest to reach a 1300m mountain peak I would call it a hike. Australians would call it a walk.

Yesterday four of us went for a walk to reach the peak of the Lamb's Head range. This walk is said to be the best walk in the Cairns area, now we understand why. We went on this walk with two people from my work (Julian and Dave). The trail head starts at the end of a dirt road in the Dinden National Park. The first half an hour was reasonable mellow and the trail was a maintained path. After crossing over an old bridge made of tree trunks the trail got tough. The next long section was quite steep and had been worked into a set of steps to make it easier to climb. I don't think it helped. That section was exhausting and required a number of rest stops.

After the set of death steps the trail changed from the wider path to a single file track. We continued along this path for probably another hour through the trees and grass. Unfortunately, in Australia the leaches don't live in the water. They live in the grass. Every few minutes we'd have to stop for a second and flick off the leaches before they got really attached.

Then the track suddenly ends as you walk into a huge piece of granite. The next hour is spent climbing over rocks and through the trees and vines. Eventually you walk out onto a large rock clear of the trees. The view is breath taking. From the rock you can see Lake Morris which is our drinking water. You can also see Cairns in the background and Trinity Inlet. The walk was difficult, but the view was completely worth it. After having some snacks on this rock was climbed a little higher. At the highest peak in the range is a communications tower. We cruised up another little track to the top up there we refilled our water bottle from a rain barrel and grabbed another view. Julian has been on the walk several times before so he knew where to go. He took us through some tall grass and bush and we popped out into a clearing. The slope was harsh and the result of slipping was a long roll down the hill to your death. But again the view was amazing. Any of you that make it out here at some point should do this if you feel fit enough.

The guy in this picture is Dave, he's from England. In the back just under the clouds you can see Cairns. Such a good view. I want to go back already, except my legs are sore. See you later.

Nick

Babinda Kayak Trip

This weekend has started out pretty good so far! Nick and I took our jeep out to a place called Babinda. It's about 30-40 minutes outside Cairns. The countryside was full of little cattle ranches, horses, and rolling hills all mixed together with the humid rain forest. We drove to a kayak rental place called Kayak Hire. They have a cool website also.

Basically it's a married couple that runs a kayak rental out of their property. They have a very nice yard right above a river. You just leave your vehicle on their yard and hike down a small trail to the creek. From there they send you off downstream and pick you up at the end 4 hours later! You can rent single or double kayaks, we opted for single. It was such a blast! The river water is crystal clear so you can just look down and see every rock and fish underneath you. Supposedly there are turtles and platypus there as well but we didn't see those. There were a lot of fish and birds that we saw though. There were also a few fun rapids to navigate. Nothing to scary :)

About 2 km into our trip nick flipped his boat trying to show off ;) He was trying to turn to sharp and the current got him! It was pretty hilarious to watch except when his GPS sunk to the bottom (its waterproof). Lucky for him his GPS is bright yellow and the creek was clear. So he found it right away. I caught his paddle and held the kayak while he jumped back in. lol yikes. In the process he also dunked his t-shirt and our shoes which were strapped to the back of his kayak. Luckily I had the camera and car keys! The rest of the trip was really fun and we stopped half way through under a bridge so nick could dump all the water out of his boat.

The whole thing took us about 3 hours and the couple that runs the company was so nice and friendly! We had a great time and will definitely do it again soon. Then we went out for fish and chips for supper! (not the frozen Manitoba variety) Very delicious. Tomorrow Nick will be going paint balling with some people from his work! Good times.

Tara

Having a good time

Hello everyone. So our contact to back home has been limited as of late. We've been struggling with Telstra (equivalent to MTS). It was some weird glitch in their system that took several weeks to resolve where our phone number was still registered under somebody else. It took forever. Then, everything got sorted out and we got our phone and then several weeks later our internet. Two days into having internet, the modem craps out. So they're sending us a new modem, which takes another 3-5 business days. Yikes it been a headache. But there is still a week signal on our patio that we can grab some internet time with.

That being said, we do have a phone. If anybody ever feels the need to give us a call you can go right ahead. I'm not going to post the numbers up here because I don't know how public blogspot is and I don't really want to get any random phone calls. So if you want our phone numbers just fire me an email and I'll let you know.

Today we went for a drive up to Crystal Cascades to check it out. It's supposed to be a neat little stream flowing down the mountain in a bunch of little waterfalls and pools. It was nice. There was a bunch of people hanging out at one spot cliff jumping into the pools. It looked terrifying. Not for me. So we went to another little spot and relaxed beside the water. We didn't end up swimming because another tourist told us they saw snakes in the water. We didn't see any, but we didn't jump in the water either. Here's a pictures of Tara hanging out by the waters edge.

It was a pretty relaxing place to visit. But it's time to go inside and watch some rugby. For those of you who like sports, this is a good place to visit. Australians love their sport and they have some really great games. AFL is amazing, rugby is awesome, and surprising I even enjoy watching a little bit of cricket (but it's tons of fun to play, especially with a few beers). Later.

Nick

Finally

We've got internet. It's about time. For the last three weeks we've been going out on the patio trying to pick up other peoples wireless internet signals. It feels nice to be back on the net. Now we can make a few more posts.

Well this last weekend I made a trip down to Brisbane. I found a nice 99 Toyota Rav4 for a good price so it was worth the trip. Not to mention it gave me a reason to drive the coast and see a bit of what the country side is about. It's a long drive, but it's a bit more interesting than the flat and straight highway 75 that I've driving so many times. It's always fun to drive a new highway. It took 19 hours of driving time which I completed in a 24 hour period. One 4 hour sleep in the middle, a half hour for supper and a couple of gas breaks. Maybe next time I'll do it over a longer period of time to actually see some sights. By the way, Tara was working on the dive boat at the time, that's why she couldn't come with me.

Later.

Busy times

Hello everybody. Sorry we haven't been blogging much lately. Things have been busy around here getting our lives in order. We moved out of the hotel and into a beautiful report type apartment. Right now I'm sitting on our ground floor patio with my laptop on the table listening the pools. It's a dream. But it's also been hectic. We don't have internet yet (I'm logged onto somebody's wireless), but we did finally get our phone hooked up. If anybody ever feels like giving us a call you have to dial 011-61-7-4041-7991.

Tara has been gone for a couple of days now. She started her Dive Control Specialist course with Cairns Dive Centre and is on an 8 day stint aboard the Kangaroo Explorer. It's a big boat that stays out on the reef all the time. Pretty exciting.

It looks like I'm going to be taking a flight out to Brisbane next weekend to pick up a 4 wheel drive. The flights in the country are cheap, but it'll be about a 24 hour drive back (road trip). Sadly I won't have time to really look at anything because it's going to be a lot of driving in a weekend. I haven't been able to find any vehicles up to my standard around here for a reasonable price. Found a good deal and I get to make a trip out of it.

When we moved into the new apartment a coworker borrowed us his car for the day. It was very nice of him but it was intimidating. I had to quickly learn how to drive on the right side of the car, the left side of the road, and shift the manual trans with my left hand. Surprisingly a lot easier then I thought it would be. Here's a picture of the car he borrowed us, it's worth a laugh.

Other than that, weather is awesome, 25 degrees is starting to feel cool. There has been a few days with high humidity which gives us an idea of the wet season. Looking forward to it. Cheers.

Cairns tropical zoo

If you haven't been to the zoo of a city you haven't truly been there. That's what I say, I love the zoo. Yesterday Tara and I went to the Cairns Tropical Zoo to check out the fun Australian animals. We don't have a car yet so this meant that we had to take the bus. The bus system works pretty slick around here. There are zones that are mapped out. The city is a zone, the area just north of the city is a zone, and a whole bunch of other areas around. Then when you ride the bus you pay for how many zones you're going to be traveling through.

At first I though, that sucks because you don't have to pay more for going farther in Winnipeg. But the nice thing that makes it worth it is how far you can go. The zoo was a decent ways north of the city. It was definitely not in the city at all. So you can ride the bus from Cairns up through about 6 small villages north of the city. This is where the zoo is.

It's not the biggest zoo, and it cost a fair bit more than the Winnipeg zoo. But really, the Winnipeg zoo is almost free. We got to see a pretty cool variety of animals. Most notably kangaroos, koalas and crocodiles.

That's right. It's a kangaroo eating out of Tara's hand. I did it also. So cute. There was about a million of these little guys jumping around the kangaroo sections. Then there was the crocodiles. First we saw a couple little ones and thought they looked freaky. But we realized they were small after we saw this guy.

Sorry the pictures isn't that clear, but trust me, it was amazing. It's also impressive how the guys works the croc. He said that their brains are so small that everything they do is based on instinct. So when the croc is in the water he just slaps his stick on the water and the big buy lumbers over to where the splash is. They he holds the chicken over it's head and waits for the monster to open his mouth. He said it's extremely easy to not get killed by a croc. You just stand at least 5 meters away from the waters edge and he won't be able to reach you. They are not fast. Really cool, I recommend seeing these things up close.

I added a new link. It's the dive company that Tara is going to be doing her training with. If you want to dive and watch Tara at work, that's the company you should book with. Now it's Sunday evening and we spend a nice afternoon sitting at the lagoon getting some rays. Later.

Nick

Fitzroy Island

Aussie Sun 1 - Nick + Tara's Skin 0. So I learn a lesson today. When it feels like your skin is getting hot, it's too late for sun screen. Today me and Tara grabbed the Fitzroy Ferry down to Fitzroy Island for a day on the beach. We figured it was about time we got our feet wet in the actual sea. The ferry loads up at the marina and takes 45 minutes to get to the island.

At first it seemed like we might have picked a bad day. It was so windy and the sea was a little chopped. Luckily when we arrived, the island protects it self from the wind on the beach side, and the day got better as well. It's about another 15 minutes to hike a little train through the forest which places you down on Nudey Beach. The name suggests that there would be naked people, but there were none. The beach isn't made of sand, it's all dried up pieces of dead coral. Beautiful.

After getting burnt and snorkeling around in the corals we went for a walk. We walked from the beach back to the jetty and then out around the corner. Here it was just a whole bunch of big rocks that we climbed all over.

All in all a wonderful day at the beach. Last night we went to the Cairns Underwater Film Festival. Every year in France there is a huge film festival featuring only underwater film and photos. Then the winners of the festival are featured in Cairns. This was also a really fun night of sweet films and hanging out at the theatre with a bunch of dive buffs.

Nick

Temp apartment

I'm a little behind on this whole blogging thing. I find it difficult to come home from a day of working on my computer at the office just to sit down and blog. But it's a new thing so I need to get used to.

After our 30 hour journey around the Pacific to get here we landed in a relatively simple tropical city. It's amazing here. Everyday I'm excited when I walk to work at 8am in the sunshine and fresh 20 degree winter air. Mid day it gets up to about 28 usually, but I don't notice it right now because I'm in a building. I think it's safe to say that the dry season is as perfect as you can imagine the weather to be. I'm told the wet season is a little less pleasant.

This is a picture from the patio at the Cairns Central Plaza Apartment Hotel complex. I don't know if you notice, but that's the ocean in the background. The first few days that we were here it was kinda rainy and damp. Now it's back to beautiful, but it was a little wet for awhile. 

The first Saturday that we were here happened to be company cricket night. It's a day when the guys from the office organize a cricket match with a bunch of clients. It was probably 350 times more fun than I expected. We played cricket on a soggy afternoon, drank some delicious Aussie beer, and had a tasty BBQ. It was a great way to meet the guys I work with, as well as the clients I'll work for.

Since getting here we haven't done a lot in the way of sight seeing, aside from walking around the city and the coast. Most critical things have been needing our attention. We opened an account at the local credit union, applied for and got an apartment which we can move into on 20 August, and tomorrow we hope to pick up our Queensland drivers license.

All is going great. Once I get some more pictures on my computer and once we get out there to do more stuff we'll be posting all sorts of stuff in the blog. We'll only put a few select pictures in the blog, to see the whole albums just check out Facebook. Cheers.

Nick

Let get this thing stared

Hello everybody. I suppose it's time to get this blog up and running before people start to forget about us. Some of you are probably wondering what happened to that website I said I was building. The truth is I'm no longer in an environment that encourages html code editing. With so many things to see and do, warm evening that require walking down the boardwalk, and pools everywhere, we've decided to just start up a blogger.

Needless to say, we've arrived safely and we're getting things moving. I've begun work and we're in the middle of hunting for an apartment. More in-depth blogs are coming, so welcome to our site and thanks for being interested.

Nick