Townsville

We journeyed to Australia in part to visit our high school friend Melita. She lives in Townsville, Queensland. It is up the coast from Brisbane, about a 3 hour plane ride from Sydney. It is quite hot there, and we discovered it is also quite tropical. Describing the area as coastal tropics would be apt. Old friends meet up:

After the hustle and bustle of 8 nights in Sydney, Townsville was much more relaxed. It was very hot every day, even when it rained it was still hot. We spent a lot of time in Melita's backyard. I was in charge of cooking, this is literally
Shrimp on the Barbie:

The second day there we visited the Billabong Sanctuary, look below this post a couple for that post. The Billabong was definitely a highlight that deserved it's own post.

Townsville has it's very own hill in town. You can climb up it, taking approximately an hour or drive up (we drove). From here you can see 360 views of the city and just outside the city you can see the virtually neverending sugar cane fields. This is looking out toward The Strand (the beach area), Magnetic Island and the Great Barrier Reef beyond:

The Strand is 2.5 km stretch of beach in the heart of Townsville. But due to 'Stinger Season' you can only safely swin inside these nets:

Stingers are what we would call jelly fish. There are four types of stingers, a few of which can kill a person. The others just hurt like crazy. If you get stung, you need to flush the sting with vinegar for 30 seconds. And just in case you don't have a jar of balsamic ready:

These Aussies take their Stinger's very seriously, every beach without the nets looked like this:


Another thing that the Aussies take seriously is sunscreen and UV exposure. Every morning the radio would report the UV index along with the weather forecast. Each day we were in Townsville the UV index was 16. 0 is night, 11 is considered extremely dangerous and the highest ever recorded is 18. When you are outside and stand still for even a second, you can almost feel your skin burning. It is much more intense sun than we have ever felt. The hole in the Ozone layer that resides over the South Pole is definitely felt down here. Understandably, a lot of the news and papers have daily articles about climate change:

This child's play area would NEVER work in the US. Another example of the 'no worries, mate' lifestyle:

I might print this out and hand out as a postcard for all of you with kids so you don't have repeat:

Overall Townsville is pretty cool. It reminds me a bit of the Tri-Cities (180,000 residents) but with the ocean instead of the river. The town originated in support of the mines with farming a significant portion and a very active port shipping the mines and sugar cane refined output. Plus Townsville is the major city in an otherwise pretty isolated area. They do have teams in a lot of the major sports leagues including the A-League (soccer), NRL (Rugby League) and NBL (basketball). But Rugby along with state cricket is king.

Lastly, they do have these in some yards:

Billabong Sanctuary

Hold a Koala, pet a Wombat, have a Kangaroo eat out of your hand and see huge crocodiles jump for food; is that something I could interest you in?

Then Billabong Sanctuary is just your place. We spent Thanksgiving 2010 at the Billabong in Townsville with Melita and her daughter Jordy. I have a feeling this post is going to be picture intensive. We arrived at 10:30, just in time for the Koala show. Basically Koala’s are very lazy animals. They sleep around 20 hours a day and mostly just hang out in Eucalyptus trees all day. This pic is a mom and baby in the main tree where 4 koalas live.


For a little extra money you were able to hold a koala and get a professional photo printed in a frame. It was $33 for three photos. We were able to take additional photos with our camera as well.


Each Koala had a name, this was Ray Charles. He is basically blind, but the offshoot is he is super comfortable being pet. So while we were only able to hold Annie above for a few minutes, we pet Ray Charles as much as we wanted.

Paty is thinking of leaving me, for Ray:

Next up was the Wombats. This is Tonka:

And Cloe:

This wasn’t a zoo like in the States with a lot of rules. It was more of a ‘no worries mate’ situation with everything. There were geese everywhere in the sanctuary wandering around. And since it was maiting season, they were pretty aggressive. At one point both Paty and I were bit by a pissed off goose while trying to walk by. Instead of freaking out and having a lawsuit if this happened at Woodland Park Zoo, we pretty much just laughed it off.

Next up was the reptile show, not my favorite. Paty tried to volunteer me to participate in ‘What’s in the Bag’ time. I refused, but was able to channel her natural tendency for attention and convinced her to do it:


Four year old salt water crocodile:


Eight year old Ginger, as dangerous as the croc she is holding:

Strange reptile, maybe called a Shingleback:

Forty Four year old salt water crocodile:

There is a reason I am not in this picture, Paty and Melita:

Then it was off to feed the turtles:

Followed by a turtle race:

Suprisingly, the turtles could really move. The one on the right made a straight line to the water and won easily in the 'race'.

Watch out for the eel:


Next it was off to the big daddy’s of the show. The Australian Salt Water Crocs. Apparently, you need to ‘jump’ them or they won’t get any exercise.

Some jump better than others. It was about a 50% success rate on getting the crocs to do anything. This one basically just sat there until he put the chicken on his snout and wiggled it around for a bit. Then it barely leaned up to feign an attempt to devour, still intimidating:


That was the end of the formal show, but that was only about 1/3 of the animals in the sanctuary. The rest was a self guided walk around tour with some animals caged for show, quite a bit out and about and some exceptionally beautiful birds flying around (not including the evil geese):
Red Tailed Black Cockatoo:

And Kookaburras:

Dig I mention Kangaroos?




Huddle up fellas:

The aforementioned evil geese:

At the end of the day, Paty was debating between me and staying with the Joey’s:


All in all, it was a wonderful experience. Nothing against the more loyal readers of this space who missed us on the holiday, but this was a great way to spend Thanksgiving.
(Chris's Note: I'm not able to upload pictures yet to this computer. I know that img 3067 is a holder for a pic on my computer and not a mistake. I'll get it uploaded as soon as I can figure it out from Down Under. Right now I am using a zip drive to transfer things from the laptop to Melita's computer.) And done.

Townsville

Just got to Townsville, the land of Melita.

Currently she has some goofy wireless internet that I am having issues plugging into the laptop we brought on the trip. Basically it connects via an USB cable but there is some missing software. To make a long story short. I might not have a proper post with pictures for a while.

Cheers.

Sydney

Sydney in a nutshell:
There is this Opera House thingy:



A Bridge:



Some Beaches:
Manly:
Bondi:

All based around an immense harbor (Sydney Harbor) that dominates all aspects of life in Sydney:

Sydney, First Impressions

This is our first trip to Sydney. But the city feels exceptionally familiar and we are immediately comfortable here. The best way to describe Sydney is Vancouver, BC with better landmarks. The feel in the inner city and the central business district is virtually undistinguishable from Vancouver, which is good as Vancouver is one of the best cities in the world.

We arrived to our hotel at 10 AM Monday morning local time after the epic flight from LA to Sydney. I sit here writing this on Tuesday morning at 7 AM, so anyone who knows me can reasonably assume my internal clock is still a bit miscalibrated if I’m being productive this early.

First, let’s talk about the flight. Seattle – LA – Sydney makes for a long day in coach. I timed the actual flight and our time in the air from takeoff to landing was 13 hours and 58 minutes on the LA – Sydney leg. By the way, after a super long flight the last thing you want to hear as you get to the terminal is the PA in the plane saying “We are having problems starting the auxiliary generator and can not get the door open until that happens. They are sending a technician now. The Captain has lit the seat belt light so would you kindly take your seats.” Ugh. Besides that, the flight was not as excruciating as I thought it might be. Basically you leave at 11 PM and they give you a meal straight away. Then most people sleep. The in flight entertainment is really good, quite a few new movies that are not on DVD yet and tons of TV shows. After the first meal there is quite a bit of downtime until about 3 hours out from Sydney they serve breakfast. So basically everyone that is good at sleeping on the plane just treats the flight as one really long night time. Leave LA on Saturday night late and get to Sydney 14 hours later on Monday morning. Losing Sunday altogether.

The amount of airline miles it takes for this trip would give us the option of three flights of similar length in coach or two in business. Business was not available for this trip so the decision was made for us.

Of course upon arrival our hotel was not ready for early check in, so we left the bags (All the bags, including our rain coats which proved crucial. Only at the last second did I grab a jacket, also crucial.), grabbed a map and headed out into the city.

Sydney is probably the one city that has more coffee shops than Seattle so getting an espresso kick start was not a problem. We walked all around the downtown, eventually ending up down by the water with views of the Sydney Opera House. By this time it was raining really hard so I don’t have any pictures yet. It seemed a lot more like Seattle in November than Sydney in November. At least it wasn’t cold as I was really wet only having shorts, sandals and my Sounders jacket. We bought Paty and umbrella which was a good call.

We did stumble upon a big event in the Aussie sports calendar. There is a big bi-annual cricket match between England and Australia called The Ashes. It’s one of those best of 5 international test matches, meaning 5 sets of 5 day long cricket matches. What we stumbled into was the selection day press conference for the first match. The coach was reading off the names of the selected players on live TV at Noon. The captain and another player were there taking some questions. Here’s a horrible picture:

Now it was raining really hard, so what to do but find a pub? We ended up in The Rocks District, very friendly place. Decent food and good local beer.

Well, I’ve rambled on long enough with little pictures. We got into our hotel fine. Took a very refreshing nap and spent the evening walking around Sydney. This time we had jackets and hats so we were good. I also switched from my camera to the waterproof camera I borrowed in order to take underwater snorkeling pictures so I have pics of the Chinese place we went for dinner.


Yes, that’s me eating in China Town. Crazy, I know. But it was fabulously good and I imagine we will go back.

Afterward we walked around a bit more, as you can see from the pic below it was a pretty gloomy night, but the monsoon had passed. We then called it an early night.

Today we are meeting up with a walking tour of Sydney at 10:30 that takes a few hours. After that we’ll see if the tour gave us any good ideas for the day.

Sydney

We made it to Sydney safe and sound. Internet here is sporadic at best. I typed up a post on the laptop but probably won't be able to upload it until next week when we get to Melita's. This post is via my phone using a mix of the Sydney Custom House free wifi and McDonalds free wifi.

This morning we did the I'm free Sydney walking tour, great value!


Cheers,
Chris

What the heck?

Knock Knock...

Anyone out there?

Okay, so I've been a huge slacker on the blogging. Lack of user generated content has led to a dearth of posts. I mean really how much did you want to read me write about another Sounders win, rip on the Portland Timbers little brother syndrome, absolutely not care about the Mariners, give minute by minute updates on the 2018/2022 World Cup selection process, halfheartedly make fun of the Cougars, talk about the US Men's National Team (soccer) and bemoan the loss of Durant?

(By the way, is you want any of this content http://twitter.com/c_tobin is your home for wit, wisdom and beer talk by me; 140 characters at a time.)

But NO LONGER!

This space will be filled with pictures in November. Pictures of exotic lands, strange people and furry animals. You guessed it, we are visiting our friend Melita in the land of Oz. We haven't actually seen Melita for 18 years (remember high school anyone?) but she has agreed to take us in. Quite willingly I might add.

And here it is, I (as in Paty) found a high school graduation photo of the three of us plus Scott Wolfe:


Anyways, more details too follow.

PS-If Shannon leaves a comment in the next two hours I will be convinced that she has this blog in some sort of reader. No one is that has that much perseverance.

PPS-I just spent the last hour looking for old photos, as I know a picture of Paty, Metlita and Myself from High School exists somewhere in this house. All I seemed to find was a lot of pics from 2001-2004. Memorial Day 2001 looked almost exactly the same except Joey was in a lot of pictures, Patrick was much younger and Mike was posing with beers and not children.

Biggest Day in Seattle?

March 25th, 2010: Plans for the day:
8 AM, Paty has what we think is her final interview in the process to become a US citizen.

4:27 UW tipoff in the SWEET SIXTEEN v West Virginia

6:30 First Kick, i.e. the MLS season opener in Seattle v the Philly Union. BIG DAY!!!

That was the outline, here is the reality:
Paty goes to what turns out to be her last interview in the process of becoming a US citizen. (Cliff Notes version: Paty and I met in High School at the age of 18 in 1992. It is now 18 years later, we have been married for 10+ years and she is becoming a citizen of the United State of America (Health Care approved yesterday, coincidence?)).

Paty passed her personal interview and the Homeland Security agent asked if she had plans for later today?

Uh, no Mr Homeland Security Guy Paty does not have plans today. Thus:



I woke up this morning with a Mexican, I sleep tonight with an American Citizen!

After the ceremony I dropped Paty at home as we both are still suffering from the latest cold to go around. Since the UW was in the Sweet Sixteen I toughed it out at the pub before the Sounders game at Sluggers with my Amigos:

At Qwest, this was my second national anthem of the day. While 34,000 people watched this anthem, it was a bit less dramatic as the anthem at Paty's ceremony:

The Royal Brougham End was in fine form tonight, as evidenced by this massive flag made just for the Philly Union's only appearance in Seattle:

A pic of me before the rain became to bad:


In retrospect, the UW lost our sweet sixteen game for the fourth time in my lifetime. Also the third time since Romar has taken over the program and I have been a season ticket holder for UW Hoops. It crushes me to lose these games, but as a wise man once said: Better to have played the Sweet Sixteen and lost than not played at all!

The UW is out at the Sweet Sixteen again, but Paty is one of us. Net result for March 25th 2010: Winner!