Islands of Australia

We’ve been traveling up the northeastern coast of Australia and have stopped at two sets of islands, both of which were lovely to look at and not very populated; the kinds of places that cause one to wonder what makes someone want to live there, and then answer oneself that it’s probably the peace and quiet and beauty but only a select few must thrive on that life without much going on and with severe limitations in many areas. Enough of the speculation.

In the first islands, the Whitsundays, we took a nice long catamaran trip throughout the 70 some islands. It was a dreary day with rain falling all around us. The second set, including Thursday and Horn Islands, we will see more of today and pictures will be forthcoming.

That’s the rain, in case you were wondering why the picture is so out of focus!

In between islands we stopped at Cairns (locally pronounced Cans) where the local port put on a nice fire boat demonstration to welcome us.

Since the other options were mostly snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef (which I would have loved to do but was not thinking I was up to the swimming in the currents there), Dale and I both did the aquarium where we got to see all of the reef’s beautiful coral and fish up close without the need to swim. I must tell you, though, that everyone who went to the reef had a fabulous time and saw wonderful things.

The aquarium featured the inhabitants of the greater local area –the wet tropics rainforest, the freshwater streams and rivers, the mangroves, the Coral Sea and the Great Barrier Reef — so we actually got to see more variety than those who went to the reef itself — so there!

I always enjoy jellyfish (except, of course, I would not enjoy the dangerous ones because of which the reef snorkelers had to wear total body wet suits) and these upside down jellyfish were ones I hadn’t seen before.

The leaf tail gecko (he’s easier to see in my picture than he was to spot in the enclosure for sure) and the green tree python live on land, of course, as does the casowary. There were no live casowaries there for obvious reasons (they are the second largest flightless bird at 6.6 feet in height and they can run at 31 mph) but the information about them was interesting.

The displays of coral from the reef were fabulous; constantly moving parts and amazing colors. We tend to think of coral as stationary but it is certainly not.

The colors, shapes and patterns of the animals were amazing and a great reminder that God made His creation for Him and for us to enjoy.