Happy New Year

We are not planning any celebrations - just a quiet night at home

But click here to see a card from us - turn up your sound and enjoy it.

Christmas greetings

Click to Open the card and then you may have to click on Next to see each picture

Beagle Bells and Darwin (place & the man)

On a rainy Saturday in December, David and I ventured out into a park in Darwin (Australia) to take some photos of a memorial to Charles Darwin who sailed on the ship HMS Beagle to the Southern hemisphere

The Port of Darwin was sighted by John Lort Stokes in 1839 and was named in Darwin’s honour by his friend and former shipmate John Clements Wickham.

Featuring a series of 10 cast bronze bells and a replica HMS Beagle ship’s bell, cast in brass, the HMS Beagle Ship Bell Chime brings together the separate Eastern and Western bell traditions.

Whilst in Australia, Darwin was amazed at the varietal range of the parrot species, and a selection of these, cast in bronze, from the small Budgerigar to the large Black Cockatoo, are perched on top of each bell.

• G# Red Crested Black Cockatoo
• A# Galah
• C# Sulphur Crested Cockatoo
• D# Crimson Rosella
• F# Eastern Rosella
• G# Red-collared Lorikeet
• A# HMS Beagle
• C# Night Parrot
• D# Cockatiel
• F# Budgerigar
• G# Wild Budgerigar

David in the rain, with some of the bells.

Random pictures and thoughts on our trip

At our Hotel in Darwin one of the pillow choices was a Boomerang pillow - only in Australia!
As I mentioned earlier we had lots of rain in Darwin this was because we were actually in a cyclone and whilst I did not get any really good pictures, I did find this link

If you click on the video link in the middle column, it gives you an idea of the weather conditions
The photo above was taken from our hotel window - I took it to show the downspouts (yellow bar in center of picture) is not connected to anything and just sort of floods the street!
On the flight from Singapore to Tokyo I had the continental breakfast of cereal and fruit and was surprised to see my Kellogs Corn Flakes (packaged in Thailand) came complete with tiny instructions on how to eat them!

The Long Trip Home

The saga of our trip home was as follows...
We left our hotel in Darwin on Sunday afternoon at 3pm local time (which would be 9:30pm Saturday in Portland, just to give you a true concept of the times)It was a short ride to the airport, but this was the only time the shuttle ran, and so we got to the airport at 3.20 to discover that out 6.20pm flight was delayed for several hours. Now Darwin is a small international airport with not many facilities and there was no WiFi and just a bar and a coffee shop, which were all closed by 6:30 and yet our flight was delayed until 9:30 and several others were scheduled to leave after our and some into the early morning hours. Being on a budget carrier Jetstar there was no free meal, just buy on board, even the water is $3. So we made do with the food we had had earlier on in the day. Jetstar also has the most cramped seating I have experienced - so this is the last time I will fly them. We finally arrived in Singapore at midnight Singapore time (4 hour flight) and our next flight out was leaving at 7:30am (be at the airport by 5:30m) So we had this wonderful hotel room at the Crown Plaza at the airport and got to use it for about 4 1/2 hours! The Singapore airport did have some magnificent decorations
Then we flew on United Business from Singapore to Narita and then to Seattle - was able to stretch out and doze some on this leg of the trip, then a couple of hours in Seattle and finally arrived in Portland at noon Monday - that's 38.5 hours - minus the short stop in Singapore. No wonder we are tired.
As we passed through Narita, we spent some time in the United Lounge where they have this wonderful beer machine (now I am not a beer person, but David is and he has not stopped talking about this machine since last year), so this time I took photos. The way it works, is you put your chilled glass on the machine, it tips it back
then fills it, and then returns it to the upright position with just the right amount of froth (edited: David tells me the correct word is head! What do I know about Beer?)

Heading home

Well we will be leaving Australia if we can ever persuade the plane to go. Our 6.20 pm flight is now supposed to leave around 9.30pm which will make the overnight in Singapore very short as our United flight leaves at 7.20 am.
The stay in Darwin was washout - literally with about 6" rain falling during our stay and many streets flooded etc. We spent a lot of time in our hotel suite
really looking forward to getting home....

Day trip to Byron Bay

As this was our last full day in Queensland, we decided to take a day trip to Byron Bay, just about an hours drive south of here (quick now the freeway is built (the scenic road we used to drive some 15 years ago, was tedious) It's an area of beautiful beaches and a lot of gorgeous views

We drove up to the lighthouse, which may be the most easterly lighthouse in Australia

There were lots of birds, both feathered and 2 legged
David did a lot of people watching and commented that many of the swim suits were not much bigger than a Band aid

More Drinks

Today we drove up to Tambourine Mountain - a hillside comunity about an hours drive West of Surfers Paradise. We had lunch at a Fromagerie (cheese factory) and Brew Pub - David sampled the beers below - and enjoyed them - the cheeses were pretty good also.

For a link to a video of the area go here

Drinking in Australia

Just wanted to share a couple of the most popular drinks we have had here in Australia - remember its summer and its hot - so cool drinks are the order of the day.

VOLTAGE - extreme Coffee is a blend of ice, milk, vanilla, expresso beans and expresso coffee.Then hot expresso shots are poured into the cold, blended mixture to really get you going!

Then there is the Affogato - instead of desert have this - its icecream, with a shot of liquor (usually Franjelico or Amaretto) poured over the icecream, then followed by a shot of hot expresso poured on top - the perfect end to a meal.

Trip to Adelaide

Yes, the correct answer to the last post, was Adelaide. We went there for a few days. We toured the city the first day and explored both the botanical gardens and the nearby wine center. The wine center was an informational and educational display of wine growing and was very interesting. One of the displays allowed you to select grapes, and process them into wine and evaluate the results - mine was described as worthy of "floor cleaner!!" David's was something to accompany a truly awful meal. So I guess wine making is not in our future, unless we are much better educated! This was not using real grapes, just a computer program... A wander around the Botanic gardens was relaxing and enjoyable. We then stayed right down town at the Hilton and enjoyed a meal at a small Italian restaurant that night before heading out to the Barossa the next day to go wine tasting.
The first winery was Wolf Blass and they had just released a very innovative new package - a plastic wine bottle and the wine in it was quite good, its light to carry and does not break! It come with both red & white wine. We sampled many more wines and drove around the area and took some pictures of the architecture and other sites - see pictures at the end of the blog.


The next day we planned to fly to Kangaroo island and island just off the south of South Australia. It was just a 20 minute flight (but it saved the ferry crossing which can be very rough and I am not the best sailor in the world!) We arrived at the tiny airport collected our Hertz car (after being told that you only get 100 free KM and after that you pay .27 per km and as the island is about 100 KM long and to see anything you need to drive from one end to the other, they know you will exceed the mileage allowed - great revenue raiser. The airport was also planned with great expansion in mind, as it 14km from the nearest town (and that's also where the nearest petrol and accommodation is) - so going in and out of town uses up 28 of your "free" miles! We stayed in Kingscote for the night and the hotel was under renovation, the restaurant was mediocre. I did play the 1c poker machine and won $19...
The next day we drove around the island, visiting a Eucalyptus Farm, a honey farm and the National Park where we saw magnificent rock formations. After a full day of driving (and 300km later) we returned to the airport and headed back to Adelaide. We went a dog show on Saturday morning and then flew back to Queensland.
Enjoy the photos below