Ian and Gerry Down Under

2016 is massive year for us. In June I celebrated my 60th birthday. On September 4th Gerry and I proudly reached our ruby (40th) wedding anniversary. To celebrate these events we headed off to Australia.

As with all of our travels, our main goal was hunting out wildlife. As with most of my blog entries, this one will show you just a small selection of pictures of our many encounters as well as a few more normal 'holiday snaps'. There are too many pictures to give a write up on every one, so I have only added key comments. Hopefully those pictures with no text need no explanation.

Hope you all enjoy, comments will be really appreciated.

First Stop - Brisbane

First Night - First View

This was the view from our hotel in Brisbane. We were really impressed with the city. Clean, modern and vibrant. We had 3 nights here to acclimatise and recover from the long journey.  

Beautiful Bug - Beautiful Flower (Well, I think so).

It was the wrong time of year to fully explore my passion for reptiles (although we did see plenty) but bugs, flowers and birds were there in abundance.



Pelicans - Gerrys favourite bird!

One of the many amazing beaches we experienced.

The beaches in Australia were incredible. The one above was just one of many we saw, drove along and best of all, walked on. White sand, blue sea and blue sky. Perfick!!! The next 2 pictures were taken from rocks above one of these beaches.

 

 



Beautiful Turtle (But later, we swam with turtles)

A pod of dolphins passing by.

'Are you looking at me?'

A Lorikeet in Brisbane. A real treat to see!

 

We had a long walk on the river in Brisbane. The city is on one side of the river and a beautiful walk along the other with a free hop-on-hop-off ferry service to give lots of options. The bird in the foreground is an Ibis. A really exotic bird and quite common over there.

No time to identify this one yet, but what an intense stare!

Iguana

The lizard above was our first in Australia (First of many). We found 3 of these in a park in the heart of the city - Wow!!! I was in 'Ian Heaven'!

Praying Mantis.

After leaving Brisbane to begin out tour northwards we spent our first night on the road in a seafront hotel. Walking back in the dark after strolling into town for food, this delightful bug flew past and landed at our feet. Of course, even in the dark, in a shower I had my trusty camera to hand!

 



An Ant! Nothing living escapes my lens!

 

And on again to Fraser Island. A great day out.

 

 



Wartime relic - picture 1

Wartime relic - picture 2

 

A Day Spent Whale Watching

 



We had hoped for some pictures of whales 'Breaching'. That is,  catching them with most of their body out of the water. A choppy sea and whales that moved too quickly meant that in most cases we only caught their tails. It was great fun though and quite an addictive experience.

A kookaburra - we saw lots of these!

We were lucky enough to see quite a few Kookaburras! The one bird that is synonymous with Australia, we had no idea they were so common. Once they kick off with their laughter like noise you really cannot miss them.

One of a number of weird and wonderful spiders we found. Bizarre!!

As in many of the countries we've visited (including the UK) the butterflies were stunning and plentiful. Some were challenging to photograph but the two above posed very nicely.

 

A Crab guarding his (or her) hole.

The crabs had an unusual way of digging their holes. They roll the debris into small balls that are left surrounding the hole. We saw a number of different styles including one that left the balls in a bicycle spoke pattern. They must repeat this after every tide!

Another Kookaburra (Close up is below).

A 'St Andrews Cross Spider'.

The 'St Andrews Cross' spider is very similar in size and appearance to our own 'Wasp Spider'. It got its strange name from its habit of holding each pair of legs close together to form the shape of a cross. This picture also shows the tiny male hoping to avoid getting eaten and getting a chance to mate. This difference in size and dangerous mating ritual is common among spiders. This picture was taken in a public toilet (Don't worry, there was no-one else there to spot my camera).

100km to our next turning

A nice little demonstration of the enormous size of Australia. The satnav shows that our next turning was 100km further on. We slipped up and only thought of taking a this picture after we had missed the chance to photographs the largest distance to the next turning - 360km!!! A LONG drive indeed.

A 'Lace' monitor.

The lizard above is a 'Lace Monitor'. We saw quite a few of these and managed some good, close encounters. This one was on the beach shown above and was nearly 4 feet in length. My passion for reptiles was well satisfied. A little care is needed when getting very close. They can be aggressive and once they bite, they do not like to let go.

Not a good picture, he was very fast - but still a snake!

Gerry handling  snake

me handling a 'shingle back' lizard

What a big boy! (The crocodile).

This massive beast lived and died close to where his stuffed remains now stand. I would have loved to see him in his prime. What a specimen!

Loads of turtles.

Lime Ant (See note below)

These 'Lime Ants' were fascinating. We saw and photographed quite a few (more pictures further on).Why are they called 'Lime Ants'? If you pick one up and press its abdomen on your tongue, you get an intense burst of lime flavour. YES! We did try it and were amazed at how strong the taste was.

Junior still thinks there is room in the pouch!



Giant centipede (or 'Scolopendra').

I was actually searching for scorpions when I came across this little beaut! This is something I had always wanted to photograph but had no idea I might find one in Australia. This one was 4 or 5 inches long. A bite from the South American species can be very painful and even fatal. Apparently there are no recorded deaths from the Australian variety but it is likely to result in several days of 'Intense Agony'. A little care was needed here but it made my day (and reminded me to be careful when lifting logs and rocks!

Shhhhhh - Don't wake him......zzzzzzzzz

Sexy Tree????

The tree above was spotted outside a small café. And yes, the tree even had the right shapes in the right places! Someone has a good imagination!

This was an amazing walk.

There now follows a number of bugs, birds and other creatures. Hopefully they show that there is always something to photograph, wherever you happen to be!..enjoy....

I never tire of the detail on dragonflies!

Giant Cricket- a bit bigger than my thumb!

See Note below.

Still a bit of dispute over this one. I am pretty sure it is a common tree snake. My son sent the picture to some experts who think it might be a species of Brown Snake (Extremely venomous). I believe I am right but would love to think they were right and that we had found something really dramatic!
 

A Close up of a 'Lime Ant'.

Mud Skipper

We have photographed Mudskippers before, Strange little creatures that have lungs AND gills so can breath in and out of water!

he's behind you!

Gerry in front of some impressive bamboo.

Gerry with a lively little python

The next 3 photos of the 'Frilled' lizards were taken at an open air restaurant which oddly enough is famed for its 'Frilled Lizards'!

Really tiny but beautiful beetle.

Love the 'Punk' style hair cut

Another stunning Lace monitor

Kingfisher

Managed to get close enough for a frontal shot!

Possible the smallest grasshopper we have ever seen!

Whoops - we woke him up!

 

Looks like he means business

...and so does he!

Our first ever baby croc! About 6-8 inches long.

Here's mummy!

Another St Andrews Cross spider

See Note Below

This paradise island (above) was the base for our Great Barrier Reef snorkelling trip on our 40th Wedding Anniversary. Possibly one of the best days of our lives, and we have had many of these. The Island is tiny and can be walked around in about 10 minutes.

There was a rather poignant moment when we learnt that this was the same island that, 10 years ago to the day, Steve Irwin (TV's famous 'Crocodile Hunter' wildlife presenter) was taken to and pronounced dead after his accident with a giant Stingray. We stood in the small hut (just off picture) where he was taken.

The pictures below were taken while snorkelling. Unfortunately, we lack a really good underwater camera and even had the date set wrong on one (hence the wrong date stamp on a few pictures). One camera also was not waterproof, so pictures were taken through a special waterproof bag. This works reasonably well but does result in some distortion (we have the memories though - far better!!

Not very clear but lucky enough to encounter 2 turtles!

A Giant Clam with a hand for scale

A lot of brightly coloured fishes if you look closely.

Gerry preparing to go under!

Some of the stunning coral - shame our cameras were not better!

Coral and fish (Really annoyed at the incorrect date stamp!)

 Back to the mainland for bugs and more.......

Could not see the point of this web?????

Gerry approaching a bug....

One of hundreds of black swans on this lake

I've found you!

 

 

We booked a day and night with a locally well known wildlife expert, just for the 2 of us, to search for Platypus and other animals- it was worth every (of the many) pennies it cost! This was our last full day looking for wildlife before returning to the city of Cairns. The rest of the pictures were taken on this day and a few into the night...

Platypus

Weird, cute and also very venomous! One of Australia's oddest!

Tree Kangaroo posing nicely

Another of Gerrys little friends

Praying???

Spot the spider - great camouflage

Bats resting

Just chillin'

'So that's what the outside world looks like!'

A Possum in the pitch dark. Glad my camera works well in the dark!

Leaf tailed gecko (Nocturnal)

Python - about 6-8 feet long. Hard to get a good shot with the long grass.

Python again

That's all for now folks. I would have liked to add a lot more dialogue, but time is pressing and life goes on. This was a very small selection from thousands of photographs. There is a lot missing both in pictures and stories. Those of you who attend my wildlife talks will get to hear (and see) more of our adventures down under.

We went to celebrate our 40th Wedding Anniversary, my fairly recent 60th Birthday and Gerrys up and coming 60th Birthday and it truly was amazing and exciting experience. It could not have happened without Gerrys phenomenal planning skills. I am a very lucky man.

Hope you all enjoy this, let me know and watch out for the next one!
Bye for now. Stay happy and live for today.