Friday noon we took Miss Maddie down to the Cat House Hotel and she settled into her Junior Suite. We then packed up and left for LA at 3 PM, hitting very heavy traffic between Thousand Oaks and Calabasas. We stopped in Woodland Hills to have dinner with our friend, Craig, at the Rib Ranch and made it to LAX by nine. We caught up with my sister, Hilary, who had flown in from Tucson and was leaving for Sydney on the 10:40 flight. Our Qantas flight which was coming in from New York, was delayed a bit and we didn’t take off until 12:30 AM.
We immediately changed our watches to Sydney time (7:30 PM on Saturday) and thus were able to enjoy yet another dinner. A couple of movies later (Qantas gave us each a screen built into the seat in front of us with at least 200 movies and TV shows to choose from!) we managed to get a few hours of sleep and woke as we were approaching land north of Sydney. We came over the coast, crossed beautiful white beaches and then miles of mountainous uncut forest, and which gradually tuned into the Sydney suburbs and then Sydney it self with its iconic bridge and opera house! Quite spectacular!
We landed, went through immigration and into a chaotic luggage pickup area and long lines for customs. We finally emerged into Australia and found the bus for the domestic terminal and more chaos with crowds pushing to get on the bus. At the domestic terminal, things calmed down a bit and we got on a 737 for Cairns. Most of the passengers seem to be heading there for the eclipse which may account for some of the unusual disorder. We had a delicious lunch of Japanese pork & rice and landed in Cairns at 3:30. There was Hilary, and shortly afterwards we were joined by our friend from Brisbane, Frances, whom we first met on our birding trip to Thailand several years ago. We collected all our luggage and went out into the tropical heat of northern Queensland and packed our gear into our rental suv and took off.
We stopped briefly at the airport’s mangrove boardwalk and saw our first warning sign (“Achtung!“) for the dangerous saltwater crocodiles that inhabit the coastal area. There was no bird action there so we set off for our hotel up in the mountains above Cairns. We drove up a winding highway for 30 minutes and saw a turnoff for the Cedar Park Rainforest Resort, and after another ten minutes, arrived a beautiful small lodge set in lush forest. On the lawn in front of the open air restaurant were two pademelons, small kangeroos, grazing on the grass!
We checked into our spacious lovely room and cleaned up a bit before reassembling in the bar for drinks and then dinner. And very soon to bed!
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