Moving along

Today is our last full day on the east coast. The skies have parted for the past few days and the flooding is receding in the areas around us. We still have full access to the airport, so we are flying out tomorrow for Adelaide, Melbourne and area. I am ready to move on now and see a new area.

We have been trying to catch up on the ‘to do list around Alstonville. We have stayed close to home this past week. Nathan was in a full week of swimming lessons in the next town and we had a bit of pool weather. We went to Thursday plantation the tea tree oil producer and today we are going to rent some bikes to ride along the river in Ballina.

We really feel like we were the last tourists to see Brisbane. I am sure glad we went when we did. The flood is starting to recede now and the news is of the destruction left behind and the cleanup crews. When we went to Brisbane, we got a chance to go to the Australia Zoo. This was a really great zoo! We are not really zoo people, but I really wanted to go to this one because it is the zoo Steve Irwin grew up in and ran. There were great crocodiles and lots of animals we wouldn’t see in the wild and good information on all of them. I want to see some old Crocodile Hunter again.

I prefer to see them in the wild and we have quite a list now. Lots of birds; laughing kookaburras, Lorikeets eating breakfast with us, rosela’s, wild turkeys, 3 colors of galahs, one that is more like a black parrot that is 4 feet long with the tail feathers, a frogsmouth, which looks like an owl, thousands of big fruit bats, blue headed wrens that like to tap on our window at 6 am, and magpies. We have been very lucky with the animals too. We have seen wallabies in our back yard, a wild boar, 2 emus, which I mentioned earlier, kangaroos, dolphins, dragon lizards, tree frogs and cane toads, around our pool that Nathan likes to ‘hunt for’ before bed. and now we saw 2 platapus. These we had been hunting for also. We have been going to Tucki Tucki creek in Platapus park. Sounds likely, but it is rare to see them at this time of year and with the high water it’s less likely. We made a last attempt last night and poof along came a platypus! There was a small group of ‘friends of the park’ gathering in the park and they told us it is ‘not a good time of year’ and the ‘high water’…. Then one of them spotted it. I was so excited. We would have thought it was a baby if the local experts weren’t there to tell us it was full size. It was fully only 1.5 feet long. Then along came another one before it got too dark. Wow 2 platapus!  This was our last attempt as they only live on the east coast. Next a koala. We have a heads up on where to see koala’s in the wild for today, so fingers crossed.

Then packing and cleaning. I am not sure all our stuff will now fit!

I hope this finds you all happy and healthy.

Love Lana