Mom, Carol and Dale's Australian Vacation

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In the 1950's, Mom used to take my sister Carol and I on nature trips. This year we had a 12-day nature trip to Australia. The odyssey began in Sydney with an evening harbor cruise. We spent the second day across the harbor at the Taronga Zoo and the third touring the Blue Mountains which were scenic but not up to Sierra Nevada standards. We got to mingle with wallabies and throw boomerangs in an open field.

Our next destination was Cairns on the tropical northeast coast. The flowering trees around our waterfront hotel had colorful nectar-eating lorikeets by day and furry fruit-eating flying foxes by night. First we drove up the coast to a bird sanctuary in Port Douglas. The next day was a narrow-gauge railroad and aerial-tram tour of the rain forest around the mountain village of Kuranda. The trip's high-point was a one-day cruise to the Great Barrier Reef where Mom and Carol snorkeled and I took my first scuba dive. The reef was a fantasy world; the fish were similar to Hawaiian fish but our corals can't compete with the colors and forms found there. Carol took this picture with an underwater camera.

The journey's final leg was a drive from Melbourne along the scenic Great Ocean Road past fern tree forests and down to the majestic "Twelve Apostles" cliff formations. We saw two kangaroos and I got a picture of Carol almost touching an echidna. It has porcupine-like quills and doesn't worry much about strangers.