Australia round up

I know you’re all wondering what we’re up to in Japan but we have a few loose ends to fix up for Australia first.

Here goes then:

GOOD THINGS

Wildlife.
It was worth going to Australia to experience the wildlife, even if we did have to endure some other things we didn’t like. Here’s a list of wildlife that got me really giddy:

Green Tree Ants – These little fellas are ace! They’re quite cute too. I liked them because they made really cool nests out of leaves. You could tap the edge and they would all come out to investigate. Unlike other ants they don’t seem to bite you just for the sake of it. They spend a lot of time wandering around aimlessly in circles (my kind of ant!) You can make them jump too and they suddenly become all alert and start looking around. My favourite Austailian creature without a doubt.

Flying foxes/fruit bats – Seriously fantastic large, noisy and messy. They are quite a sight and fling fruit stones at amazing velocities. Brilliant.

Sneaky the Croc – I LOVE SNEAKY THE CROC!

Froggies! – Loads of tree frogs, pretty tame too.

We also liked:

Cute little pademelons (tiny wallabies)
Kookaboras (Noisy and funny)
Really interesting insects (like the leafy Katydid which just looks like a leaf and the Rhino beetles)
Monitor lizards (The carpet carriers of the lizard world, when they basked in the sun they flattened their legs like a spaniel would)
Lots of snakes.

There were also wildlife experiences to note. We enjoyed camping in our little tent. It took a bit of getting used to with all of the strange noises. The Kookaboras sound like evil little goblins, tawney frog mouths (a little like owls) sound like darth vadar when they hang around your tent. Actually we only experienced this once, maybe our frog mouth was asthmatic…. Dingos howling and possums trying to break into the tent were other experiences.

Another thing to note is the number of things that can kill you. There are jelly fish that can leave you deceased so you have to wear a stinger suit. In southern queensland the water is too shark infested to swim in at all. There are 20 species of poisonous snake that could kill you and two deadly venamous spiders. On top of all of that we got leeches on our legs on one rainforest trip, not deadly but pretty unpleasant. It all adds up to make you a little nervous.

Ecology

Amazing rainforests protected by mangrove forests. Fire dependant Eucalypt forests. They all varied to an increadible degree between sites. I’m sure that those of you who’ve seen my flickr site recently will be worried about being bored to tears by me spouting off about a load of plants. I’ll leave it at that but they were fascinating.

BAD THINGS

This is where we risk repeating the rants. I’ll keep it brief.

The wrong kind of tourists

Bloody bratpackers! In truth we only really met one fellow traveller that was really on our wavelength and that was Jonas from Amsterdam. He was a bit nearer our age and was capable of intelligent conversation about interesting and important things. He was a good laugh and liked to drink too, (bonus Jonas!)

NO PUBLIC TRANSPONRT! BEING FORCED TO GO ON TOURS IF WE WANTED TO SEE ANYTHING! Grr!

There are some amazing natural treasures in Australia including some huge Lava tube formations. We couldn’t afford to go and see them because of the above reasons. I think it would have cost us about £200 each just for a day. I feel sorry for Australian children from less well off families who don’t have the funds to see some of the things that they should have right of access to as far as i’m concerned. The Lava tubes are privately owned and visitors are exploited.

Last but not least. The beer was crap.

HELLO JAPAN, HOW LOVELY TO SEE YOU! show_random($num=4, $tags=’Missionbeach’); ?>