Archer's Knob Hike

Ben and I had been to Narwantapu National Park before but wanted to go for a hike there again with Sarah and Hannah.  We love this park because it is only about an hour's drive away and both times we have been there we have seen lots of wildlife-pademelons, wallabies, kangaroos, and my personal favorite-wombats.  It was rainy the day of our hike, but we still had a great time hiking the 6 miles up to Archer's Knob and back.  Here's the view from the top:

We stopped at Baker's Beach on the way back down.

We hiked back along the opposite side of Springlawn Lagoon than we did on the way up and saw these kangaroos:

Here's the Garmin map and stats from the hike:

Cadbury Half Marathon

We spent one night at our place in Launceston before driving to Hobart for the half marathon.  It was rainy the night before the race but we found an Italian place for dinner and were up early for the race on Sunday.  800 people particpated in the race.  There was a half marathon, marathon, and 2.5K.  The race was sponsored by Cadbury and started and finished at the Cadbury chocolate factory.

I really enjoyed this race!  I ended up finishing in about 2 hours 25 minutes.  It was a nice course, a little hilly though.  It was along the water for a while which was nice.  I got to see my cheering section (Ben, Sarah, and Hannah) 4 different times.  There was a big hill at the end of the course that was killer.  I wasn't sore at all the next day so maybe I could have pushed myself a little harder, but I was quite pleased with how it went.  Afterwards we showered at the hotel and had brunch at a little cafe in the Salamanca area of Hobart which has tons of cute restaurants and shops.  We did a little shopping and walked down by the harbor before driving back to Launceston.  We had dinner at Hallam's where Ben and I went for my birthday.  It was such a fun meal.  We shared a platter of oysters and all ordered a different seafood dish for our mains. 

Where are the Cassowaries?

Before I talk about the search to see a cassowary, I wanted to mention Yasi, the cyclone that hit up near Cairns last night.  The two major towns in the area, Cairns and Townsville, were spared major damage, but it sounds like Mission Beach, the town where we stayed with Sarah and Hannah, had severe damage.  We hope the fabulous little hotel where we stayed is okay. 

When we first got to the Mission Beach area we saw so many signs warning cars to be careful not to hit cassowaries.

Cassowaries are a large flightless bird third in size only to the ostrich and emu.  They are an important species in the rainforests because they eat fallen fruit whole and distribute the seeds.  Here is a picture of one Ben and I saw at Sydney Wildlife World.



We were excited to get into the rainforest and see one, but unfortunatley we never saw one.  We did stop for pictures in front of the big cassowary sculpture.

 
When we went to the waterfalls we saw a sign for tree kangaroos.

We didn't see a tree kangaroo either.  We have had pretty good luck spotting wildlife so I guess it is to be expected to not always be so lucky.  Mission Beach was great.  We loved having the pool and beach right there.  I ran on the beach a couple of times.  There were miles of hard packed sand that were great to run on.  Sarah and Hannah even walked down to the stinger net to swim.  It is stinger (jellyfish) season so it was only safe to swim in the areas of the beach with a stinger net.  Time to show the girls Tasmania!  

Tropical Tablelands

This day we drove to the Atherton Tablelands region to see some waterfalls.  We saw three near a town called Millaa Millaa. 

Ellinjaa Falls

Zillie Falls
We saw a beautiful blue Ulysses butterfly here.

Millaa Millaa Falls

We drove over to Malanda and had a nice little lunch at a cafe there.  Ben and Sarah had meat pies which are a common lunch here, kind of like a pot pie you eat out of your hand.  Hannah and I had sandwiches and we had delicious pastries for dessert before going to see one more waterfall.

Malanda Falls

We did a couple of short hikes near these falls that were quite muddy.  On tap for tomorrow's posts are one last post about Mission Beach and a post about our trip to Hobart.

Rainforest Walks

First of all, Happy Birthday Ben!

One of our favorite activities we've done while in Australia has been hiking.  We wanted to share this with Sarah and Hannah and did some hiking with them while in Mission Beach.  We did the Fan Palm Boardwalk and the Lacey Creek walk.  These were relatively short walks, which was good because it was very hot and humid and there were lots of mosquitoes.  We saw several fan palms on the first walk, hence the name.  These are very distinctive plants with accordion like leaves that can fold up in high winds or storms to protect themselves.

We also saw this Strangler Fig.  These plants adapt to the dark rainforest and the competition for light by enveloping another tree sometimes killing the other tree in the process.

Here are a couple of pictures from the Lacey Creek Walk:

This night we ate dinner at Rustica, a great pizza place.  I think we ate 3 pizzas between the 4 of us we were so hungry and it was so good.

The Great Barrier Reef!

We woke up bright and early to go snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef.  A van picked us up from Calypso Dive and Snorkel and took us to where the boat was docked.  It was a large two level boat that took us to Dunk Island first to pick up more passengers and then out to Eddy Reef.  It was quite a long boat trip-probably an hour or more, but so worth it.  I have to admit I was a little bummed that Ben and I weren't diving, but the snorkeling was amazing and it was a great experience to share with Sarah and Hannah.  We saw gorgeous giant clams and two anemones with clown fish darting in and out of them.  The coral was the most colorful we have ever seen in all of our diving and snorkeling trips.  We snorkeled once, ate lunch, and snorkeled again before heading back to Mission Beach. 


The dark blue areas are the reef.



Tomorrow we will be posting about some rainforest and waterfall walks we went on while still in Mission Beach.

100th post!

How appropriate that our first blog post back with our new computer is our 100th post!  Thanks to everyone who has been reading.  We love seeing who is reading the blog and it is a great way for us to document our trip.

So, where did we leave off-oh yes we were in Sydney with Sarah and Hannah.  After Sydney we flew up to Cairns, picked up our rental car and drove two hours south to Mission Beach.  We stayed at the Taihoa Holiday Units.  We loved these accommodations.  They were basically small apartments.  Ben and I had one unit and Sarah and Hannah shared a unit.  We had a view from our units of the pool and ocean.  We went to the grocery store that first day and bought stuff to grill out by the pool.  We had grilled steaks, grilled kangaroo (we wanted the girls to try it), potatoes, and broccoli.  It was a great first evening in Mission Beach.

View of the beach across the road from our hotel