Australia Arrival

I know some of you have been waiting patiently for a new post. Sometimes our life moves so fast and in so many different directions, we can barely keep up with it! So, occasionally, the writing suffers.

We actually arrived in Australia almost two months ago now. So much has happened since then there will be a few interesting posts coming up soon. First, let's back up to the beginning. We flew into Brisbane, about midway up the east coast of Australia.

From there, we immediately made our way up to Hervey (pronounced Harvey) Bay, about four hours north from Brisbane, where we had business with a boat, an aluminium catamaran we'd had our eye on for a while. We spent two weeks running the numbers (it needed a lot of work), dealing with the should we/shouldn't we conundrum and finally decided to put an offer in. Unfortunately, after a long wait, the owner rejected our offer and we were not  willing to increase it. This left us in a bit of a quandary: what to do now? There were no other boats of interest available at the moment.

We decided to hunker down at the Shelly Beach motel in Hervey Bay to decide. We found the motel on booking.com and with a rating of 9.2 (superb) we figured they had to be doing something right. We weren't disappointed.

It's a modest establishment that is owned by two sisters. The units are self-contained, clean, very homey, comfortable and reasonably priced for a longer-term stay. It was also off season which helped with the price. The beautiful, empty beach was just across the street, restaurants and shops a short walk away.

Best of all, we were on the second floor and had a continual sea breeze across our balcony. We needed it. For the first three weeks in Australia daytime temperatures never went below 35C (95F)!(they are still hovering between 30-34C). Every day the white hot sun rose at five, blazed all day until finally setting around six. There was no rain at all and over 90% of the state of Queensland was in official drought status. The ground was scorched, everything crispy dry and desiccated. After the cool, wet weather we left in NZ, we couldn't handle it and were thoroughly wilted at the end of each day. Even local residents only ventured out for exercise starting at five a.m. and the streets were busy then. We had groups of cyclists passing along the road below and people chatting while jogging and walking on the eighteen km path that runs along the oceanfront. In the middle of the day, only tourists were seen.

As the sun came up birds started arriving. Every morning a large flock of incredibly noisy, fast-flying, colourful parakeets massed in the trees. What a sight. We also had flocks of white cockatoos. They are very pretty birds, but, have an awful squawk.

The birds on the lawn at the back of the motel were also gorgeous.

The long esplanade includes a nice pier at Urangan and a boat harbour. They made a good walking destination in the evening.

The long commercial strip has many restaurants and hotels. The main attractions in the area are Fraser  Island, a large island just offshore which has a tropical rain forest growing on sand, freshwater lakes and many native dingoes (wild, dog-like creatures). The thought of walking through a hot rainforest and on scorching hot sand in 35C degree heat didn't appeal to us, so, we left a visit for another time.

The other attraction is humpback whales which congregate in the bay with their young. They don't just migrate by, they hang around for a while and apparently the viewing opportunities are spectacular. Unfortunately, the whale season doesn't start until August, so, we were too early for that as well. We've made a point of coming back later in the year to see them.

All in all, it was a good spot to sit for a while and contemplate next steps. Viewing interesting new wildlife, like this spectacular pelican cruising around the boat harbour, was an added bonus.