Day 131 Visting the University and the Botannical Gardens

Today was my family's day to check out where I lived and see the city of Wollongong. They were also priviledged to see my university and the Botannical Gardens.

First I showed them the university where I studied.  This is the McKinley Building where I had a lecture.

The University is littered with small ponds, streams, and trees that are integrated with the buildings.  It has a beautiful lay out to it.  That ladies and gentlemen is an eel in one of the ponds on campus.  Apparently it was 4 feet long.

This was in the Hope Theater building where I had two lectures.  We all sat where we would in a college lecture class except for Nat who was making fun of John for sitting in the very front of all his classes.  Therefore I don't know where Natalie sits.  I do know that Kate and I sit in similar spots in college lectures. As for Nick....it's hard enough keeping him awake in any class.

I don't know the scientific name of this flower, but take a look at it.  Do you see the bird in flight? 

I just thought it was a cute picture of my Mom and Dad standing on a traditional Japanese bridge.

The whole family minus me sitting in front of the entrance to the University.

Just another picture of a plant in the gardens that was colorful.

Everybody in my family including Ally before she left got to meet Trent the Trenchtown Possum.  My cousin spotted him on a couch and of course we had to feed him.  Where I lived was called Trenchtown because it was not as nice as the other dormitories but hey I grew to love it.

Day 130 The Grand Pacific Drive

Well...Today was the day Ally had to leave to go home so we had to drop her off at the airport in Sydney.  Once she was flying home, we took our time getting down to Wollongong.  This location was called Bald Hill Lookout.  The beach in the forefront is Stanwell Park.

This is from Stanwell Park Beach looking back up at Bald Hill Lookout.  From the lookout we also were able to see dolphins.

Walking around we spotted a blue tongue skink.

I was excited to see my mom and brother watching and looking at the birds

Just a picture of the water and rocks along the drive.

You guys will have to ask Kate for her pictures on this rocky platform by the ocean.  Basically, I took the same picture of her as Nick but she was standing on the rock in the background.  Boy did she get soaked by a wave.  It was great

This was the path down to the bottom of the lighthouse.  I was excited to show my family where I had gone many times just to explore and check out the place.

My Dad took this photo as we were walking along the outside of the pennisula that the lighthouse is on.  We then spent the evening at dinner at the Outback after a relaxing day of driving down the coast.

Day 129 Jenolan Caves

The adventure for today consisted of checking out some caves in the Blue Mountains.  We took our time driving so we could enjoy the scenry. It was a nice drive till we got to the actual park where it turned into what seemed a one way road.  There was nothing more nerve racking than driving on the opposite side of the road with a steep drop off on one side and the chance of crumbling rock on the other.  Watching Nat, Kate, my mom, Nick get nervous was funny.

I'm telling you waterfalls are abudant in Australia.

The entrance to the caves ran along a small pond.  You could walk to where they artifically dammed it up.  The reason for the blue water was from all the minerals from the caves running into the underground streams which all converged to this area. 

Magnify this picture!!!! This is a wild platypus!!!! It was living in the mineral pond!

Dad, Mom, Kate, Nick, and I decided to go on a tour of the inner caves.  There were a rediculous amount of different caves and a number of tours.  The first cave was the largest of the three we got to see.  That center pillar is called the Pillar of Hercules.  The first room was called Persia, the second Egypt, and the third India.  The name of the tour was something like Orient or something in honor of a star constellation.   

This is my parents standing with "Egypt" behind them.  This is the second cave site. 

A family photo on the way down to the India cave site.

Here is a close up of some weird mineral formations. Nicknamed coral. The reason the caves were given these names is because early cave explorers did not want to get lost so they named things to help get them back out of the caves.

After lunch Nick, Kate, Ally, my mom, and I did a self guided tour of a large open cave.  Can you see the head that Nick is looking at?  It's a profile. 

My family brought a lot of luck with them.  We saw two things in the wild that I had never seen in my four months there without them: The lyrebird and the platypus.  Now we had the good fortune of watching an echidna cross the road in front of us.  I didn't get a great picture but I got proof that we saw it.

After the Jenolan Caves we drove back to Wentworth Falls for the sunset.  The sun truly brings out the beautiful colors of the mountains.  

This was one lookout that led down to the Falls.

From there we could see this cascading awesome waterfall.  If you enlarge it you can see a pathway over it.

This was the start of the rapids leading up to the big waterfall.

And this is the break in the rapids before heading over the falls behind me.

Day 128 Blue Mountains

After my family got what seemed like an eternal sleep, they woke Ally and I up at 7 to make our way to the Blue Mountains.  I believe my father was up the earliest at like 3 or something.  Anyway, we went to the lookout of the Three Sisters first. 

Here is my mother happily walking down the path to actually walk down to the Three Sisters.  Australia can get cold, I didn't know it would get as cold as it did in the Blue Mountains, they survived it though.

This is my father and I standing beneath one of the Three Sisters.  The bridge we had to cross when you looked over the side was a fair distance down.  You have to be pretty good with heights to get to this lookout.

After getting to the Three Sisters we hiked back to the main lookout and my mother got her picture with the whole blue mountains behind her.

So we drove around looking at different look out points.  At this particular one, Nick attempted to look like he was holding up that mountain in the background....yeah....doesn't quite look like that.  It looks like he just finished a dance number or something.  Lovely face there too Kate.

The next location we went to had the steepest railway in the world, so we had to ride it to say we did.  The train actually goes through a tunnel in the mountain as well, but I wanted it to be longer than it was.  However, it lived up to its reputation as being the steepest in the world. 

The train took us to the Blue Mountains Valley where we followed some trails around the rainforest that was in the valley.  That's where we found this big ole tree.

They also had some history displays showing the lives of the miners that used to work in the Blue Mountains.  Here I am riding my noble steed with my servant in the background.

The forest cut out a lot of the light so it is important to magnify this picture.  This beautiful bird is a lyrebird which also uses its array of tail feathers to attract a mate's attraction. Much like a peacock. Follow this link to check out the noise they make: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y  <----Really remarkable birds, did you hear the lasers?

So we had to get back to the top again, but rather than hike or take the railway we decided on the skyrail.  This picture was taken from the inside of the carriage and it passed through that gap in the rocks. 

To end the day, I took them to where I went abesailing.  The bare rock in the front was one of the ones I went off of.  Funny story though, the vehicle we rented didn't exactly have the best tires in world.  The road was all dirt so my family was nervous we weren't gonna be able to get back to pavement.  Well, we all loaded into the car and guess what happened?  Well, the car didn't move and was digging into the dirt.  I was panicing, what have I done!  How could a bus drive down this road but our van can't?  Well we got out and were pushing and my dad floored it.  Next thing we were smelling burning rubber.  Turns out my dad had left the parking brake on....sigh...I TOLD THEM WE'D BE FINE! Once the parking brake was off we had no trouble driving on the dirt.  For a while though, there was tension hahaha.  Stuck in a national park on a dirt road in Australia which in our insurance contract said we weren't supposed to do.  Thank the Lord my dad forgot the parking brake was on.

Back in America

Hey,
I'm back everybody! Took a few days to relax and everything but now...it's time to complete the story. I have internet again and the pictures so enjoy the finale.

Day 127 The Family's Arrival

The family is here and well!  They arrived looking tired but excited!

We spent the afternoon driving around Sydney looking for our hostel. Once we found it, I took them for a walk to Darling Harbor.  I don't have many pictures as everyone was more hungry than anything so we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for some food.

Nick and Ally decided to climb this jungle gym looking thing after lunch.  The rest of my family went to bed, they did pretty well considering all the jet lag and such.  Nick made it later than the rest of them and that was only till 6 pm.  Ally and I hit the bars of Sydney and had a wonderful night out while the rest of them slept.  Tomorrow we were headed for the Blue Mountains

Day 123-124 Gold Coast part 2

First of all, I would like to apologize for not being able to keep up the blog.  I have been running around with my family all over the place.  I'm doing my best to keep it updated but it gets difficult when you're traveling every other day with limited access to internet.  So sorry about that

This lookout overlooks the stretch of beach that goes all the way to Surfer's Paradise and Southport, the two larger resort towns. 

My beautiful girl with Coolangatta in the backround.

From this view we could tell how shallow it was and how nice the waves were for surfing. I really want to try surfing back home and I want to try paddle boarding again. 

A statue of the Sea Eagle overlooking the ocean.  The second largest bird of prey in Australia, this guy has an eight foot wingspan.

We went swimming and enjoyed the sun for the next two days.  It really was an enjoyable 3 days in the Gold Coast. 

Ally catching a wave!