January 1 (Aussie Time!)

Our first picture of a Kangaroo! That counts, right?...

Views of the Rainforest Mountains from our shuttle van.

So...we missed celebrating New Years this year.  It happened somewhere about mid-flight to Sydney...somewhere about the time we were trying to be asleep.  

Did we get to sit beside each other on our flight from Toronto to Los Angeles?  Sort of.  The plane was oversold, but they were able to rearrange seating to get us together.  Once we got to our seats though, we found a woman and her granddaughter sitting there.  (They had been detained in immigration for hours, missed their originally planned flight and had finally been able to squeeze onto ours.  On top of it all, the little 7 year old granddaughter had been vomiting throughout the day.  The attendant gave her Gravol and she was able to sleep and seemed to be feeling better when she woke up.)  Brittany willingly gave up her seat,  so I sat with them in row 29, and Brittany went to sit up in the 13th row. Once she got there, another lady was waiting to see if her row-mate [now Brittany] would switch seats with her boyfriend. Since Brittany was already switching seats, it really didn’t matter that she’d have to move again, so off she went to sit in row 3. Talk about musical chairs!   I enjoyed my trip with the lovely 82 year old Irish woman Mary who lives in London England.  She flies to Canada every year to make an Irish Christmas Dinner for her daughter & family in Bingham, Ontario! She was now flying to LA with her granddaughter to visit her son (a 50 something, never married, ICU doctor) for a visit.  Brittany and I both watched the movie ‘The Social Network’.  No food, but free movies.  We purposely didn’t sleep so that we would hopefully sleep better on the long flight to Sydney.

The connection at LAX went well...but it could have been a nightmare!  Thinking we had about an hour and a half before boarding, Brittany and I settled into a nice little airport panini deli to enjoy our $10 toasted sandwiches.  I decided to call home to check in with Joe & Ren as it was the last place that I could use my Blackberry on our trip.  Although it was 12:30am, Ren did answer the phone.  I don’t think it sounded like he was really missing us yet :)  As I was putting my phone away into my purse, I decided to check the boarding pass.  A moment of panic.  I asked the lady beside me to confirm the time on her watch.  We were 5 minutes late for our boarding call.  Brittany misinterpreted the time of boarding on the boarding pass.  Fortunately we were right around the corner and  the ticket agent confirmed that we did have a minute to spare to buy some bottled water.  

The flight to Sydney was 14 1/2 hours long.  We sat in row 50 beside a lovely girl who lives in Melbourne and had been able to enjoy her first cross continental trip to New York for the month of December where she got to experience a lot of snow.  Brittany and I were able to sleep for small chunks of time and when we landed at 7:50 am, we didn’t feel too bad at all.  The worst part was that each time we would awake from sleeping,  we would check the time to see how many hours had passed, but the longest stretch of time that had passed was about half an hour.  That made for a very long flight.  Two meals and one snack were served.

Once in Sydney, we collected our luggage and once having gone through our 3rd security check on this trip, we experienced our first ‘sniff test’.  All passengers must put all their luggage low no higher than waist height as they have a dog sniff every piece!  Are they looking for drugs?  Maybe, but primarily they are enforcing their very strict agriculture and food rules.  Better not pack any beef jerky...you could be charged $2000 for trying to sneak it in!  Our final flight was slightly delayed due to luggage conveyor belt issues, but every one of our pieces made it although a bit wet due to the downpour of rain when we arrived in Cairns.  Our shuttle was awaiting our arrival. What a drive!  I must say I am a little concerned about picking up our rental on the 4th.  It is going to take a lot of effort to get used to driving on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the street and navigating through all the round-a-bouts!  They have them everywhere.

Within 25 minutes of leaving the airport, we pulled up to the Melaleuca Resort Palm Cove where we were greeted by our host Stephen.  We have a wonderful one bedroom apartment that overlooks the pool & ocean.  A little overwhelmed with a need to freshen up after 33 hours of travel and being extremely sticky and hot after hauling around our luggage in extreme humidity, we quickly dropped our bags, changed into our swimsuits and went for a swim in the pool even though it was slightly drizzling.  It was wonderful, and as we lingered in the cool waters, the skies brightened and the sun almost shone through...just enough to make us squint when looking up at the sky.  Our host Margaret offered to drive us the local grocery store where many of the fresh food shelves were empty due to the fact that delivery trucks have not been able to get through the road closures due to the extreme flooding just south of here.  Note:  Australian bananas = yucky.  They have a thick peel, are rather tasteless, and leave a terrible film on your tongue.  For dinner we walked about a block to enjoy dinner at the“Apres - Beach Bar and Grill”.  We sat in the outdoor covered patio while experiencing a downpour of rain, and enjoying a very talented singer/guitar/harmonica player.

We are now back ‘at home‘ doing what we can to stay awake so that we adjust to the 15 hour time change from Canada (Sydney is 16 hours ahead, but the state of Queensland where we are now does not participate in the time change).  Brittany is reorganizing her suitcases so that we don’t need to take each of them into each of many planned destinations over the next 3000 km we plan to drive in the next 20 days.  As I create this post, I am sitting in our living room with the sliding door open, listening to the waves hit the shore and I had the news channel on.  The big news is the extreme flooding here in Queensland due to the cyclone that hit on Christmas day, and all the rain that continues to fall.  Most of the flooding is due to rising rivers and this is affecting the inland valley towns which are now draining further south to the coastal town of Rockhampton where the water levels have now risen 9.4 meters.  The airport there closed today as the runway is underwater.  Interestingly, when creating our itinerary, I booked accommodations for each and every night except for January 11th when we are supposed to be in Rockhampton!  We’ll know better as time passes what we should do, but we are praying that the highway is open at that point and we will most likely drive straight through to drier land.  It is devastating to see the damage being done by the flood waters.  Here further north we are expecting a lot of rain, but not flooding.  Even in the rain this is a beautiful place.  Can you believe that we still need to apply sunscreen!  The UV levels are still listed as ‘Extreme’ with cloud cover.

Looking forward to a wonderful day of relaxation tomorrow.  

Until then, thank you very much to those of you who have been covering this trip with your prayers.  We are doing very well, we are excited and we keep having to remind ourselves of how far we’ve come...we are really here!!!  A trip of a lifetime...DownUnder.

Love,

Kim (and Brittany)