There are 6 official states in Australia and by cruising up to Brisbane, we were now heading into the 4th one on our visit. (New South Wales: Sydney, Victoria: Melbourne, Tasmania: Hobart, South Australia: Adelaide and now Queensland: Brisbane and Hamilton Island) What a joy to get to see so much (and yet soooo little) of this place.
Right, so, Brisbane. Alright, we flew back to Brisbane and this time we knew how to walk out to the 3rd ring of airport pickups to wait for Karen, who was coming to fetch us. BTW, the Brisbane airport is really nice. But yet another interesting thing in air travel -- so, when you walk into the airport, you don't know where your airline counter is to check in without looking at large screens. I can't say for sure that they move around, but they could. In other words, most airports have fixed locations with permanent signage, etc. when you go to check in with American Airlines, for example. You know where it is and you go right to it. Nope. Here, you walk into this enormous check in gallery with rows and rows of unbranded kiosks and check in desks and you have no idea where you should go. We finally realized on the signs overhead it would tell you which row to go to. We didn't realize immediately that it also would tell you when check-in was "open". We had to wait an hour before a single human arrived on our flight out of Brisbane...but I'm ahead of myself!
Our first night back in Brizzy, as they say, we hung out at the apartment with Karen and Steve. Karen made a great dinner and we just talked and laughed and enjoyed their company. Karen is a fantastic hostess and really wanted to make sure we had a great time there -- and we did. She'd been busy trying to plan things for us to do the next couple of days based on our interests. Unfortunately, Steve had to work so he missed out on much of our fun.
The following day, we were determined that I get to hold a koala. See how great Australia is that this sentence can even be typed? Bam! Karen knew of a local koala sanctuary where you could get a chance to hold a koala for a small fee. We set off driving and found our way there before too long -- Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.
This was truly a great spot. It wasn't very big but they had all kinds of animals there. I really think it would be a perfect spot if you had littles. Some zoos and things are so big the kids wear out long before you've even gotten to see anything. Anyway, since Karen had been there before, she knew a great tip which was to buy your ticket to hold a koala immediately and then either get in line right at 10 when they first begin OR wait about an hour for the initial crowd to break up and then walk right up.
When it was almost my turn, I felt nervous. Likely because along our travels, several people had said things like, "Yeah, koalas look sweet and cuddly, but man can they be vicious." And here I was about to snuggle up to one. Is this a good idea? Was I going to end up on some lame TV show about vacations gone wrong, with only half my face? Well, if you know me, you know that there was no way I wasn't going to hold that koala, face or no face.
Now, here's the thing. You have to assume this slightly awkward position where you lace your fingers together to form a little shelf that the koala sits on. The koala wrangler (handler? whisperer?) places a koala on your self and then gently wraps their arms up on your shoulders or arms. After watching, I could tell that if they tried to put a koala arm up and the koala didn't want to, they would pick the koala back up and walk away for a moment. This must be the universal koala sign for, "I'm going to eat this person's face off if you don't get me out of here."
Anyway, I have a koala on my shelf and it is arm time. I'm trying to look calm. Boom! Both koala arms are up and there I am, snuggling a koala. Oh man. This is so awesome. Except, dang, koalas are HEAVY! This sucker was stout! How do you get so rotund laying around eating leaves all day? Also, whew! Stinky! Such a curious smell -- I kept thinking it was like a weird combination of body odor and pine-sol. We were able to take a few photos -- and the staff was awesome. They took pictures with our phones, too. Not the most flattering photos I've ever taken, but I have physical proof of my stellar koala snuggling skills.
After that joyous event, we continued looking around the sanctuary. We saw dingos and cassowaries, which I hadn't yet seen. I got to pet and feed more roos, which is such a joy. oh! We saw platypus swimming -- so cool. AND, the biggest wombat ever. Ok, maybe not ever, but the only other one I'd ever seen was the little orphaned baby wombat that was being bottle fed in Bonorong when we were in Tazzy (as they say).
Before long, it was suddenly really crowded. Cruise ship passengers! Those jerks! ;) We decided it was a good time to bail out, so off we went back towards Brizzy.
Karen has got this city figured out. She seems to know all the different places, streets, public trans options, etc. She wanted to show us another area downtown where we could do some shopping or go back to eat later in the week after she and Steve left for the States. We dropped the car off at Steve's office, stopping in to say hello, and then walked back over towards the area where we'd had the lovely Turkish meal days before. We found a little Greek place and grabbed some lunch -- so good. Afterward, we walked across one of the bridges over to the Queen Street Mall -- which is a massive, multi street, outdoor mall of sorts with everything you can imagine. We were hunting souvenirs and there were plenty:)
Now, our first night in town, when we went to the Turkish place, Steve picked up the tab. That sneaky guy! We were wanting and intending to buy THEIR dinner for being world's best hosts. So, we asked them to pick a night and one of their favorite places and we'd go out again and pay for their dinners this time! This was the night! We took an uber over to this insanely cool little Thai place that you access through a weird back alley that doesn't look like much ( you know I was loving that) and suddenly, you're in an amazing restaurant! Even better, it was called LongTime. :) Everything was awesome here -- the food was crazy good. The service was impeccable. We learned the guy that always stands at the door owns the place. So love that. We even loved the water glasses and tried to get them to sell us a couple. They were these unique, squat, silver looking vessels that we learned they buy from Bangkok for something like 80 cents each. Intriguing.
We decided to walk home -- only about a 15 minute walk, mostly downhill. We stopped off at a local bar to shoot some pool first. Longest game of pool any of us had ever played. Which, of course, means we absolutely suck at pool. Jason used to be pretty good because he had a table and played often. But those days were not these days and for awhile I thought we might never finish. The good news is, when you are with fun people, who cares? At some point, the entire bar erupted in screaming and scared the pee out of me. Only then did I notice they were all watching the Australia- Honduras soccer match. Duh. I decided I would cheer for Honduras because I do have loyalties there. Bad call cause they got absolutely romped.
Oh man, as we walked home, we saw a couple of the spiders I've had my eye on. As one might imagine if one was imagining Australian spiders, OH MY GOD these things are enormous. As a comfort to my stark terror, Steve pointed out that those spiders were, in fact, small. God save the queen.
The next day was our last day with Karen and Steve because they were flying back to the States the day before us. This is how awesome Karen is -- she didn't care that she was flying for 20 hours the next day, she wanted us to have a great day so she drove us 2 hours to Lambington national park to hike!
It was a beautiful drive through the country. Australia is absolutely gorgeous. We had about 45 minutes or so of mountain driving to get up to the trail head. They were doing some road work so that slowed us a down a little bit, but there wasn't much traffic so we moved through it well. Karen thought there were 2 hikes we should do -- one short and one longer one to a waterfall. We decided to do the shorter one, eat our picnic lunch, and then do the longer one. Off we went!
The first trail was awesome -- there were a couple of suspension bridges and some very tall and skinny rung ladders straight up a tree to a viewing platform way over head. I opted out of that;) Jason and Karen went up and checked out the views.
As we came back towards the parking lot area to grab our lunches, we saw 2 older gentlemen feeding wild birds. That is to say, they were covered with brilliantly colored birds who were desperately trying to eat the handfuls of seeds being offered. They called us over and tried to give me some seeds. Clearly, the look on my face made it obvious that this was NOT going to happen (my face knows I don't like birds) so they gave some to Jason. .001 seconds later, Jason was awash in birds. I was all laughing and taking photos right until one landed on my head. Then I began to panic. Can you slap a bird in the face in a national park in Australia? Asking for a friend. Just kidding. I didn't slap it. But I sure wanted it off my head.
We grabbed our sandwiches and found a nice picnic table to sit and enjoy our lunch. We were minding our own business when all the sudden a large turkey strolls over and gets all up in our business. What the heck? Why aren't Australian turkey afraid of people? I even told them I regularly eat their North American cousins but they didn't care in the least. I tried to ignore when one walked under the table, but I knew it was probably going to eat me, which is unsettling while trying to enjoy a ham sandwich. So, as we were distracted by this horrific development, all the sudden there was this massive white object in our faces with wild flapping and crazy movements and I hear Karen screaming, "OHHHHHH SHIIITTTTTTTT!" And then, it was gone. We all sat there stunned before dying laughing realizing that some wild bird just dive bombed our faces trying to eat our lunch right out of our mouth!
So now I'm just mad at everything with wings. I stand up (literally and figuratively) to the rude jerk turkey under the table and try a few things to get him to go away. For example, I leaned in and screamed NO into his face. This was ineffective. So, I stepped towards him and then stomped my feet like a big, whiny baby. I'm not ashamed. He took a few steps in the right direction and I felt cautiously pleased. I remained standing because I felt stark terror. But, whatever. And then, the bird attacked again. We were all screaming again and trying to slap and punch and get that bird away, all while holding our sandwiches with death grips. This is bad for sandwiches, by the way, but so are attack birds.
About this time, some rogue dirty turkey runs up and chases our 1st turkey right into the bushes near us. Who knows what that was about. Both turkeys mostly wander off after that, but the area near the bushes catches my eye because, well 2 turkeys in a bush is a lot of commotion. (I tried to come up with some 2 turkeys in the bush is better than ____ in the hand or sky or wherever the other thing is, but couldn't). I noticed a soda can top laying on the ground and bend down to pick it up, because, you know, I wouldn't want a bird to eat it and get hurt. This is true, albeit completely illogical. I get it. So there I am, bent over, hand out to pick up the top when I see a snake. The good times are rollin' now!
You might think I would do something ridiculous, based on my behavior the last 15 minutes, but instead I said, "Well, there's a snake." Jason and Karen got up to take a peek, from a distance, but it had moved back into a rocky area. Jason was able to take a couple of photos that we later used to identify it when we found a park ranger. First, the ranger assured us that in Lambington, they only have 8 of the 10 most deadly snakes in Australia. Isn't that nice? And then, he informed us that our snake was one of the 8 -- the death adder. Well. Awesome. I saw a death snake! BOOM! Am I an adventurer or what?
Having survived being assaulted by wild birds, turkeys and a death adder, we were ready for our long hike into the rain forest. Surely, nothing bad would happen then.
Truth is -- it was a stunningly gorgeous hike through tall, thick trees with lots of interesting nature sounds and no horrifying spiders or snakes were seen at any time. It was a long hike downhill the first hour and, as you could imagine, uphill the second hour. The middle was a beautiful waterfall. We could have gone a bit farther to a larger fall, but felt we needed to head back because we still had the 2 hour drive home.
It was a great day and I really enjoyed getting the extra time to talk with Karen. We're alike in many ways -- both see friends as family, have a desire to travel and live all over the world. I'm so thankful for the chance to get to know her better.
We stayed in that night as they needed to pack up. Even so, Karen made us dinner -- spicy jackfruit tacos, which were really yummy!
They left the next morning pretty early and we had the place to ourselves for 2 full days. More on that and our 2 days in Waikiki next:)
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