Around The World

Friday, February 18, 2011

Sydney Day 1 - 2 - & - 3

I arrived in Sydney at about 5 pm.

Pretty tired from all the flight delays. A simple 1.5 hour flight turned into a 5 hour adventure with all the delays.

Once I got to Sydney I regained my energy with sight of the Sydney Opera House and the Bridge over the bay. It was a pretty sight. I ended the day early and got up early the next day to attend an Autism workshop by Bobby Newman.

On the afternoon of Saturday Feb. 19th I finally saw Stephanie and Katrina!

They arrived from San Diego today while I was at the workshop and roamed around the city in a sleepy daze with Kevin.

We sadly wound up at a dodgy food place for dinner but went back to our Central Railway Hotel to relax.

Sunday Morning we got up and instantly started our first extremely productive day of sightseeing.

This included taking the Sydney Ferry to Darling Harbour where we had another magnificent view of the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Bridge. Not to mention the fake Coney Island called Luna Park.

We went to the Sydney Aquarium which we all agreed was great! I would recommend it!

The most awesome part was some woman walked up to me and said someone didn't show up for their ticket so she offered me free entrance into the aquarium! how lucky! Made the aquarium that much more enjoyable.

Afterwards we enjoyed $10 burgers and wandered over to the Sydney Wildlife Centre.

It had a lot of spiders and bugs which were pretty gross but it also showed beautiful kangaroos, koalas and more.

We found out New South Wales has made it illegal to "cuddle a koala" Good thing I got to hug my koala in Brisbane!

Stephanie and Katrina bought a package of tickets at a discount and checked out the SkyTower while we looked around the huge mall the tower was attached to.

After the Sky Tower we went to Hyde Park and The Botanical Gardens where the largest Short Film Festival was held. TROPFEST. we checked it out and realized we were under prepared.

We went back to the hotel rested and made our way back to the festival.

BATS!

7pm: We came to TropFest just in time for the introduction and sadly there were limited seats. We again got very lucky and a group left which allowed us a huge space to set up our Queen size sheet and the 4 of us enjoyed the whole night of short films sipping our boxed fruity wine.

We got back to the Hotel at 11pm or so and quickly passed out, out of exhaustion.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Fraser Island: Largest Sand Island in the WORLD!

Kevin and I took a 2 night 3 day camping tour to Fraser Island with Sunrover Tours in Brisbane and with a great tour guide named Graham... (ask for him).

Our campsite!

Fraser Island is the biggest sand island in the world. It is also Queensland's largest island, Australia's sixth largest island and the largest island on the East Coast of Australia.

The first day we took a ferry on to the island.

We drove along 75 Mile Surf Beach. Passed by Tea tree creeks that were orange and red and made your feet nice and soft after a dip.

The Tour included a Jeep 4x4 ride ON the beach right along the water's edge.

We visited Lake McKenzie. Lake McKenzie is a bit inland from the small town of Eurong. The beach sand of this lake is pure silica, very soft and white. It was such a great beach.

On the tour we visited Central Station Rainforest, , Indian Head, Lake Wabby, Maheno Shipwreck and Eli Creek, Diamond Head and the Champagne Pools.

Lake Wabby is made up of pure rainfall. There is black "coffee rock" underneath

which allows the water to stay above the sand. There is catfish living here.