Mungo Mungo, don't cha wana....

Ok, Mungo Mungo national park is the site of many archeological wonders. They include what is thought to be the oldest known human remains found on earth and the oldest forms of ritualist burials and cremation known. These date back some 50,000 years. Walking on the same ground where life posibly began was a real humbling experience. There was a time line in the vistors center that had the Egyptian the Aztec and Myans shown and they date back only as far as 5000 years. The aboriginal people here were hunting and gathering and growing crops some 45,000 years before an Egyptian even thought about a pyrimid.

Uncovered at the park was also the largest cache of fossilized footprints in the world. There were footprints of 23 individuals, including a man thought to be running up to 12kmh based on the patterns and a one legged man seeming to move at a normal stride with no aide. We didnt actually see the footprints because they were reburried for preservation. The park is also one of the few run by the aboriginal community and they wanted to preserve their own history. The park has great wild life like Roos and Emus and snakes. We only saw the first two. Definitly worth the drive out here. We didn't get a good picture of the sunset the night before this one, and we are kicking ourselves for not doing it. The sky was blood red, I don't even think that taking a picture of it would have given it any credit.

Victoria - Very nice, how much?

We entered Victoria from the outback in New South Wales. We stayed and camped several days in the Grampian Mountains National Park. While at the park we did a number of trecks and all with amazing views. It was one of our favorite spots. The surrounding areas of the park are flat and dull, you know instantly when you are in the park because the hills turn into mountains and the road begin to follow gorges and narrow canyons.

This trek above was called the Pinnacals. The entire trek was over and through the segmented rock leading to the tip of the cliff called the Pinnacal. We followed the trail through the "grand canyon" and the "silent street" were almost as impressive as the views from the top. Both sections pass through the narrow sections of stone that was almost close enough to touch on both sides and tall enough to tower a six story building.


This trek was the Hollow Mountain trek that led to amazing views of the forests and mountains surrounding. It was here that we tried our hand at rock climbing... but I (Emma) got stuck. While Tony was debating about how to get me down he took pictures of my vunerable state. (But she made it and she was rewarded with a great view and the patch of courage!) We had no idea that this walk was going to so amazing, partly because the Victorian Park service is crap, we just decided to do it because it had a really cool name. The climb up the rock was completed despite the initial difficulty and we were rewarded with a large wind and water erroded cavern that looked out over the mountain. We took advantage of the shade.

The Grampians had a number of aboriginal rock painting sites. The content mainly consisted of stick figures, emu and kangaroo tracks, tally marks and hand prints. The picture to the right was a cavern that was almost entirely covered with the tally marks with just a few other markings. The meaning of the markings have been lost over time. One carvern had over 90 hand prints. They made the hand prints by mixing the red sand in their mouth and then spraying it over their hand to leave the void.

From the Grampians we drove down to "The Great Ocean Road". The entire coast was made up of these limestone formations. The most famous along the coast road are the Twelve Apostles, which are actually 7 now. The ocean has not been kind to the other four. The water was unfortunely really cold and you can see here that I have a jacket on. The southernly winds are coming accross the ocean from Antartica and making the wind chilly. There was one formation where you see us at here called the London Bridge, you used to be able to cross over there but the bridge fell down. This happend just a couple of years ago, no one was hurt but there were a dozen or so stranded on the new island formation.

Camp cooking is hard to do when you have a kitchen with views like this, distractions were prevelent and often. This particular campground was near an amazig river and a koala meca. And the last night here we found a koala just 20 feet from our tent hanging out in a tree. We had coffee, he had herbal tea and shared some biscuts. It was an amazing evening.

The last stop we made was in the beautiful city of Melbourne. I know we use the word beautiful to describe cities and national parks all the time but this city was beautiful in a different sence. The city had a real multicultural feel mixed into an Australian background. The city had excellent public transportation used by everyone. Our friends Aysen and Tim were kind enough to put us up in their beautiful new home. And having them there made the transtion from tent and national parks to the city life a lot easier and a lot more fun. We met Asyen and Tim in New Zealand and had a great time with them there and had just as equally good time with them here in Australia. The two of them just moved to Australia from Holland and were in the mists of setting up job interviews and getting their stuff out of port at customs. In between that we found time to eat mexican food and drink some wine and beer. We will definitely be going back in the near future. Here we have some pictures along the water front and some pictures taken around the city. Emma and Aysen had a tagging session in one of the allies, its more fun to run from cops when they don't carry guns.

Western Australia here we come!

OZ- Queensland

Frasier Island was the first time spent on the coast in Queensland. We rented a 4wd with seven other people and drove around for three days on this the largest sand island in the world. It was amazing...with all the beautiful beaches on the lakes and massive sand dunes in the surrounds. You can't go swimming in the ocean due to Tiger sharks and killer jellies but the lakes make up for it. The trip was three days, camping on the island. The impending cyclone off the coast almost prevented our trip but we made it to the last day before getting kicked off (with everyone else) when they evacuated the island due to the storm. We mannaged to miss the leaky tents and running out of food so our trip went smoothly, unlike a lot of other groups. We even were able to get one day of sun before leaving... of course it was the calm before the storm, but it counted.

This is lake McKenzie, one of the most beautiful beaches we have seen. And it is also one of the most beautiful beaches in the world according to many travel guides. Life is really hard when you have to spend hours laz'n about here. Our group had a lot of fun together, with alot of great group jump shots and laughs. The camp site held all the tours from the booking agent we went through so the site seeing and swimming in the day turned into debauchry by night. I actually believe that we had an excess of drink that we were unable to consume despite our best efforts. It just ment that we had another night together once we got back to the main land to try to rectify the situation. All in all Frasier Island was an amazing time.

The logger head turle below came to the beach to lay her eggs for breeding season. We saw her pop out seemingly hundreds of tough leathery little ping pong ball eggs. She was beautiful. Aparantly turles are deaf and can really only see light above water so we were not supposed to have disterbed her nesting even though there is no dought that she knew we were there.

The under water pictures were taken various places along the Great Barrier Reef. Some were taken on the Whitsunday Island sailing trip and others were taken on the snorkling tour we did in Cape Tribulation. Both amazing places and bright colored fish. The Whitsundays did seem to have a wider range of coral and brighter colors but it really depended on the weather... and since we went at the begininng of the rainy season we really were very lucky.

The whitsunday sailing trip was a three day boat trip on an americas cup boat called the Southern Cross. All of us slept on the boat and snorkled many hours of the day. This trip was almost cancelled due to weather as well... but again we got lucky and had amazing weather, while on the main land the flooding and rain continued. The town we left from was land locked due to the flooding the day we left and this turned out great because our group of 14 was down sized to 9 because no one could get into town. We came into town a day early on an accidental logistics problem. The night prior to our trip leaving the town recieved a half of a meter of rain over night and our tent nearly got washed away by the river that was a creek. Very exciting!

Terrorist marsupials!!!!!no dont do it! They threatened that they were going to blow us all up if we didnt hand over the food. After three long hours of negatiation we were able to talk them down peacefully without any bloodshed. It was a victory for mankind.

On our way inland in Queensland we took a road called Waterfall Way and on it were waterfalls.... many waterfalls. Since one waterfall can begin to look like every other waterfall we only put one on. It was in this area that we also saw our first Platypus, out of two. We were very excited but due to the rain and the dusk and the Platypus's preference to remain in the water none of the pictures came out very well. Also Australia has recieved record rainfall since we have arrive so every waterfall we have visited has been amazing. We spoke to one park ranger and he was telling us that for years this one particular waterfall we are looking at here was usually a trickle. As you can see it is not!

The Undara National Park is in the outback of Queensland and was defenitely worth the drive. The features were huge lava tubes extending over 100km. The lava from the nearby volcano flowed steadily for a long enough time that a number of these huge tunnels formed. With this picture it is hard to capture the enormity of the caves. That small tree in the background is a full grown eucalyptus and the tiny rocks on the ground are any where from 4 to 8 feet in diameter. So from that you can see that the tubes are big, really big.


Let us set the scene.... we were in Cape Tribulation walking back from a nice refressing swim in the croc free river when Tony looks down and gets excited at what he recognizes as Cassowary droppings from an information site that we had seen (the casaway is extremely important to the rainforest because their droppings spread the seeds of many of the trees, and they looked exactly like the wax version at the information site). We continue walking with Emma leading the way... when out of the bushes stands a very tall, very big Casawary, which Tony has not yet seen. I turn to Tony with wide eyes unable to say what lies ahead due to (at the time) unprovoced fear. Tony sees what lies ahead and pops the camera out of his pocket and begins snapping away with the pictures, following down the trail. The event was amazing to be able to see one of these rare creatures in the wild. About a week later I was flipping through the guide book looking for dangerous snakes and came across a picture of a Cassowary. Apparently Cassowary is one of the most dangerous things in Australia! They have massive nails on the end of their foot that can slice through human skin like a knife through butter and will kick out with both legs. And we were following it. Luckly for us they usually only strike when there are chicks around or in the breeding season, apparently both were not the case. The guide book suggest that you place a large object between you and the cassowary like a tree (or travel partner).

This picture was also taken in Cape Tribulation. We were camping at the national park camp ground which was rainforest. It is the oldest rainforest in the world and was one of the few places where the rainforest met the reef. It was an isolated beach, probably because you weren't able to swim in the water, but there were a few swimming holes nearby. All kinds of curious little creatures lulled us to sleep everynight.

A close encounter of the leech kind. We had heard that the leeches were very bad during the wet season and we did check ourselves after every treck to make sure we were leech free. This time we were not even trecking, just walking trough the trees to somewhere and hoped back in the car. It took a while for the little bugger to actually make its way up Tony's sock to his leg. Mmm, tasty man flesh!

Another aspect of the rainforest of course is the amzingly moist climate, which breeds all sorts of biting insects. This face was pretty much the feeling of the day with all the dang mozzie bites. The itching fades and the memories of the woderful things we have done and seen remain.