After a nice homemade breakfast at the hostel, we headed for the Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin's Zoo). The exhibits included crocodiles, alligators, native snakes, iguanas, monitors, skinks, cassowaries, dragons, dingoes, Tasmanian devils, tigers, elephants and more. What we liked most was how interactive everything was. We got to pet koalas, kangaroos, and wallabies. Everything was well kept and shady and lush and the animals all seemed happy and very active. We ma...

At 7:15 am, the bus came to pick us up for our one-day tour of Fraser Island. We had decided to only do one day mainly because of cost. It meant we wouldn't get up to Indian Head (a beautiful lookout point) but in every other way, the tour looked pretty complete. First on the agenda was a 30-minute ferry trip across the Great Sandy Strait to Fraser Island. Next, we boarded a special 4WD vehicle and drove along sand tracks through the forests to Central Station, ...

By 7:30 am, we bid a fond farewell to our friends. They felt more like family than ever and as we drove away, we all fell silent, filled with a mixture of sadness and contentment. What a wonderful few days. Australia had already matched our expectations, but we knew we still had a way to go in order to see everything we wanted to in our short three weeks. Our next stop along the way would be Fraser Island. In order to get there, however, we had another long driv...

Out the door by 6:30 am! The warm air greeted us along with an already high sun. It's no wonder many Australians are early risers. There is a lot going on early in the morning, including a variety of birds that fill the morning with a cacophony of calls. Airlie Beach was the start for our Whitsunday Cruise aboard the Camira high-performance sailing catamaran. The cruise director had entirely too much energy for that early in the morning, but it was contagious an...

Bertha and Pat prepared a lovely breakfast on the beach for us. There is a community barbeque right on the beach nearby and we brought all the fixings down from the house. It was quite an experience. After breakfast, we walked through the warm ocean water searching for starfish. There were stingers in the water, but we didn't have any problems at all with them since the water was so clear and calm. Later that morning, Pat drove us out to Airlie Beach where we...