First four days in Brisbane, Australia

Sorry for the gap in emails. We were in no-man's land for four days. Likely have a few more days like this in the final days.

We started out with a hike in the Brisbane woods. We saw wallabies, a smaller version of the kangaroo, hopping around - they were fun to watch. We saw lots of birds - magpie, rainbow lorakeets, parakeets, and more. But the best was the kookaburra. I have many memories of the kookaburra song from childhood. I was surprised some of the group had not heard the song before. I tried to sing it for them, but all l could remember was my mom's version that involved me chasing after our parakeet.

We saw kangaroos on a golf course (can you imagine having to wait to play through because of kangaroos?).

Over the course of the two days we saw tons of birds and animals. Probably my favorite animal is the koala bear, but the most ubiquitous are the kangaroos and wallabies (they're everywhere).

One night we stopped at a huge group of bats (the stench gave them way). There were literally hundreds of bats hanging from this clump of trees. Every once in a while, one of the bats would decide he wanted someone else's space, and a battle would pursue (sounds like some people I know). Because this was their sleeping time, we didn't see many bats flying around (darn ;).

Last night, we saw a bearded dragon (think 2 foot lizard with personality) on the street with a broken leg. We took it back to the cabins we were staying to take care of it until morning, when we could pass it to someone in the area to take care of it. This led to the quote of the day from Kelly (add southern accent here): "I don't want anything else in this vehicle that has more legs than I do."

We've seen some cool trees, as well. The trees here seem different than back home. Many of them have bark that peels off or is stringy. The colors are different as well, with red, white, and green showing up alongside the brown trees. For one, the paperbark tree, the bark curls off it and what is left is an off-white, soft, sort of a cork-feeling trunk. Also, there is a form of eucalyptus tree that has a red-orange trunk (the various eucalyptus, also known as a gum tree, are a dominant tree types here).

But there were two highlights of this leg:

1. The B&B we stayed at Monday night - The owners were very gracious and their view was phenomenal. We had breakfast on there front porch, with around two dozen rainbow lorakeets (purple heads; green backs; yellow, red, and dark blue bellies).
2. David Fleay Wildlife Park - we drove all over looking for possums (theirs is very different from ours), koalas, and platypus. In the end, we did not see any of these until we entered this wildlife preserve for threatened species. We got to get up close and personal with one of the koalas.

One last comment before I end, WE MISS WYNSTON. There were many things he did as a guide that, at the time, I recognized was special and appreciated. Now, having had a different experience, I realize there were also small courtesies I took for granted.

Interesting fact days 13-16: kangaroos cool themselves using evaporative cooling. Basically, they lick their arms and wave them to cool down.