Seeing Australia through children's eyes

We've just said good bye to the Keith and Karen Rader family. They were our first visitors from the US, Wisconsin to be accurate, and it was wonderful showing them around our neck of the woods. We had been planning this visit for a while and had previewed some of the attractions before they came, not wanting to waste their limited time here.  We had 10 days to show them our little piece of Queensland, so we concentrated on the Great Barrier Reef and wildlife.

Emma

Grace

We met their flight at Bundaberg International Airport (that's a joke) and got them settled in at the condo.

They look pretty good considered it was a 26 hour trip!

Thinking about getting them on our time zone we decided to keep them up until evening, which meant no nap until after we ate dinner.

                             Please, please let us sleep!

They arrived at 12pm, so lunch and a tour of Bundaberg was on the agenda. They had rented a car that would accommodate all 6 of us, which was great because we could ride around town together. The ride/tour started with an insane women almost killing us, and I'm not kidding. I've written before about the roads here and how narrow the lanes and shoulders are and what happened to us just proves how little the options are when you get into a situation. At the Bundaberg "round about" John noticed a car literally on our back bumper. He said something like "Wow, that car is really close" and then before he finished his sentence the car was passing us on the right between the 2 lanes of east and west traffic. She wasn't finished with just passing us, she continued passing and weaving in and out of cars and then we lost sight of her. 

      "Welcome to crazy Australia, Mate!!"

We didn't crash, and continued to Bundy for the tour. It was your basic showing them around where the hospital was, the shopping area, the tennis center, that sort of stuff. We also stopped to get the girls some fins and snorkeling things. We then headed back to Bargara for dinner at dusk at Bargara Beach Hotel. We chose this place because at dusk the parrots all head to the palm trees surrounding the hotel and make the loudest, craziest noise, so much so you can't carry on a conversation.

We thought they'd enjoy the show, which they did, and then they came back and crashed for the night. They all slept through the night a woke up bright and early (4-5am) ready for John's non-stop tramp through the land of Oz.

We started early Sunday morning at the Shalom College(this is a private school grades 1-12) farmer's market. It's your basic market with lots of produce and hand made things, fun for 30 minutes. Then the fun started as we headed to "SNAKES DOWN UNDER" wildlife park. This is the park with the poisonous snakes and croc shows. You know, the one with the crazy guy who lost his thumb to Macca, the male croc.

We had fun with the Roo's, Emu's, Koala's and the shows didn't disappoint.

We definitely got up close and personal with the Roos which made the Rader's nervous. John had told them about a case in the ER where a gardener had tried to chase a kangaroo out of his garden and the Roo attacked him, ripping a gash into his abdomen. Timing is everything, John.

We then saw the snake show. Keith being another ER physician, couldn't believe the snake handling. 

From there we went outside so the girls could handle one of the constrictors.

And crocs.....

And now for something really cute!!!!

The Bears were the cutest things, everyone enjoyed the up close experience of these furry friends.

Then things got DANGEROUS. We headed over to see the Taipan Snake handling.
Once again the hands on holding and display of these highly poisonous snakes made us gasp. 

Next up....THE CROCS MATE!

OK, we are officially nuts. 

This left us exhausted and ready for some lunch and a quiet afternoon. We stopped at a local pizza place for some wood fired pizzas and great conversation about the animals and their keepers.

 Next on the agenda was Heron Island and the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). This was the "big" trip for the Rader's and we hadn't previewed it so we held our breathe as we began our ferry ride over to the Island.

Pool Area

Little did we know that Karen was morbidly afraid of sharks, and what was at the jetty to meet us?

DA DA, DA DA.......holy scheinkies! But they were only little reef sharks, hardly even a shark...try to convince Karen of that.

We had 3 days and 2 nights here, with many activities included in the per Diem cost. This resort has "no keys" to your rooms, a first for us, and they've never had a problem. We settled in and went snorkeling just outside our rooms, which were right on the beach. It was lovely, but again, Karen saw a shark and was uncomfortable swimming. Having an issue with heights, I completely understand her fear of sharks. It's actually more sensible than my phobia, there have been numerous shark attacks this year in Australia, none near us, or Heron Island. But Karen's response to that is "They're due".

The girls were up for all the snorkeling, and anything else, truly fun and engaging. We thoroughly enjoyed having kids around to keep us on our toes. It's been awhile since we had this age kid around, we loved it.

The girls saw these "Clown" fish, Little Nemo and his friend the Angel Fish. They like to hide in the coral.

Now that's a happy face!

This is hard to see but we all (including Karen)went for a sunset snorkel on the far side of the 1.8km island. We had heard you could see a plethora of fish at this time of the day. What you're seeing in these snaps are Manta Rays, and there a lot of them. At first we saw a few moving as we walked in the shallow water, but as walked further out we could see the floor was littered with them. These little buggers do have stingers and you'll feel it if you get one.

.http://www.surfline.com/community/whoknows/whoknows.cfm?id=1035

We weren't sure if they stung so we walked and shuffled around the beasts, which is the right way to move with them around. The girls were amazing....they loved the experience. We did see a bunch of fins, quite transparent, and quickly moving. We thought it was a school of young sharks, out of the water we go again, but it was Eagle Rays moving around and the "fins" were their wings coming in and out of the shallow water. We saw some turtles moving about and a little Black Tipped Shark, darkness was now on us so we headed back to clean up for our last dinner there.

We do clean up well!

We left midday on Wednesday and had a lovely calm ride back to the Gladstone harbor. We really enjoyed the time on Heron Island and have booked our return trip with the kids in December.

We took Thursday off from sightseeing and traveling. We all needed a bit of a break, so Karen and I went shopping at some of my favorite shops and Keith and John took the girls to the beach. It all sounds very easy and non-stressful, doesn't it? Those of you who know John Tucker know that he can't just go to the local beach to lounge around, no, he takes them to the most remote beach that is only accessible with a "high" 4 wheel drive car. (Which we don't own.) No worries.....let take the rental car, it's a bit higher than our little Rav 4, and what the heck, it's a rental!!!!

Off they went (we didn't know his plans) to Palm Beach. This beach has been on John's "must do" list since he heard of it. It's about an hour from Bargara, before you get to the sand road.

 
 Girls making the last 600 meters to the beach.

This is where common sense popped in and they walked to the beach. The bottom of the car was hitting the ruts. 

 Well worth the effort as you can see they were the only ones on this amazing beach.

Group hug!

We met the group at home for a late lunch at one of our favorite restaurant, Indulge.

Their version of a burger, pork mince, not beef. Keith said it was amazing.

This is Grilled Octopus Salad with of course, Ginger Beer.

Yum Tum! This is Grace's happy meal!

The last adventure did not disappoint. We left Friday morning for Hervey Bay and whale watching. We used the same boat John and I used when previewing the whales a few weeks back, QuickCat II.

http://www.herveybaywhalewatch.com.au/

Christmas card worthy!!!!!

Don't know what's going on here?!

Now for the real show.....

This was a calf, maybe a month old, who was swimming with momma. He put on quite a show, breaching and hanging around the boat.

They offered the people on the boat a chance to swim with the whales, for a fee, which Keith and John both jumped at. They got all suited up and waited for the chance, which didn't come.

We went on line to find a place to stay for Friday night. Having stayed a night in Hervey Bay I knew the prices were up there for a nice place. ($300 and up) We I went to Hotels.com I found Fraser Coast Holiday Park with 2 rooms available for a little over $100/night. Wow, that's a great rate...and the rooms had bunks for the girls. What I didn't realize was that this was a caravan park with little villas that "non" caravaner's could rent. We drove in and was very pleasantly surprised at the whole set up. The rooms were spotlessly clean and very generous. There was a kitchenette and a beautiful bathroom. We had a very comfortable night and woke up to a bunch of birds looking for someone to feed them.

www.frasercoasttoptouristpark.com.au

We would definitely stay here again. And we enjoyed another beautiful dinner at Coast, the restaurant both my tennis friends and son, Scott gave us a gift certificate. We had a wonderful meal and then collapsed into our beds for the night.

We traveled to Eumundi for the Saturday market from Hervey Bay. It's a long 2 1/2 hour drive but we had fun with the kids finding their last souvenirs of Australia. 

www.eumundimarkets.com.au

Our time was just about over with the Rader's, they were leaving at the crack of dawn Monday. We did manage to "finish" this jigsaw puzzle the kids found in the closet. 

There must have been 100 pieces missing from this puzzle, so aggravating! We also taught the Rader's to play "Oh Hell" a family favorite of ours. The girls proved to be quite the card players....or maybe Keith knew that......just saying! (Money didn't change hands.)

The last night we invited our friends over for a a drink and munchies, we wanted the Rader's to meet real Aussie's. It was very relaxed and we convinced Lynda and Gavin to stay for a very light dinner. 

The time went very quickly and we got them back to Bundaberg International at 5:45am. The girls started school on September 1, they were traveling all of August 31 to get home in time for that. We loved having the time off with them, not easy for John or Keith. We wanted to make it memorable for all of us. We're hoping for more visitors, the NC Pelton's come in November, and our kids in December for the holidays. We have plenty of room, but our time is whittling down. You need to get here before the end of February, or plan a visit to Lake Geneva! (February, March is a great time in southeastern Wisconsin.....NOT.)