Living in OZ....

Living in OZ...

It’s Christmas in Australia!  And yet the hot tropical sun peaking through puffy white Cumulonimbus clouds reminds us that we are in a subtropical climate.  Its hot when the pure sun pops out!  There is constant moisture rolling across the sky in varied cloud formations sometimes a thunderstorm with lightning forms, but always a changing skyscape.

Could be a storm...or not...clouds pass through everyday

We walk a lot  to Scarborough or Redcliffe. We don’t have a car. We take the bus if we need to. It’s just like sailing…a slow process and every errand takes longer. We know the route to the shopping center, we know the bus drivers.  We are part of the daily round of young, old and disabled.  We comment on how friendly the drivers are and how clean the buses are kept.

Santa pictures on the beach in Redcliffe

We brave the “Super Mall” on a  Saturday packed with Holiday shoppers! This is a friendly reminder of the reason we went sailing in the first place… the ocean is far, far away from  “this madness of people”!

Christmas shoppers in "Super Mall"!

Delicious bakery goodies!

One day we rent a car to see more sights…up into the mountains we go along an old logging road, Hwy 58.  We stop for lunch along with many other “Sunday-out-for-a-drivers” at the Old Crown Hotel in Dayboro, built in 1813.  It’s over 100 years old and a landmark to the original pioneers that settled this area. “Timber-getters” they were called and they stripped the land of all the hardwoods, leaving the cleared lands open for the next wave - cattle and dairy settlers.  What remains are clear open green rolling hills dotted with dairy ranches.

 A Sunday drive to the Crown Hotel in Dayboro.

I feel like the travel writer, Bill Bryson exploring the country backroads...anyone else read his hilarious accounts of traveling in Australia?!

Ocean View Winery on Mt. Mee

Next stop is high up  Mt Mee  to the estate bottled Ocean View winery  overlooking beautifully landscaped gardens and grapes with  a distant ocean view.  These grapes grow in stressed climate conditions so the flavors were bright and green; crispy whites and tannin laced reds. Unique flavors I'm not accustomed to. Not bad, just not Sonoma County styled.

Ocean View Winery. Note the net covered grapes...

Horses resting while riders taste wine

A favorite pastime hobby for Australians is the collector “muscle car”.  We passed a touring club  out for a Sunday drive and was amazed at the  pristine 57 Chevy's, Mustangs and yes...Datsuns!

Oldies, but goodies! Who knows what this one is?

 The Aussies love their clubs, too! Every few corners is another "club" with legal gambling, horse race betting and "pokies"...you know, you poke the slot machines with money!

Vroom!

Pokies is slot machines...and every club has them

We’ve decided these Aussies are truly genuine and nice people.  Everywhere we go, even the bus driver will take the time to explain or enlighten about their ways and go the extra mile to help you. This is refreshing.  The early pioneers where a salty batch of ex-convicts and their descendants are just as tough and opinionated as their forbears.  On that  subject, we are in a “white” land.  There is not much diversity.  We’ve met some pretty opinionated people who will tell you they would like Australia to stay “white”…so that's a little unsettling...

I picked the following off  Wikipedia...

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_history_of_Australia

"White Australia Policy"
The White Australia Policy, the policy of excluding all non-European people from immigrating into Australia, was the official policy of all governments and all mainstream political parties in Australia from the 1890s to the 1950s, and elements of the policy survived until the 1970s. Although the expression 'White Australia Policy' was never in official use, it was common in political and public debate throughout the period.[8]
During the 1970s and 1980s around 120,000 southern Asian refugees resettled in Australia. During that twenty years, Australia first began to adopt a policy termed "multiculturalism". The rapid increase of Asian immigrants was also due to the abolition of the White Australia Policy in 1972."

Interesting... seems Australia just "opened its doors" to immigration only recently and some people still vote for the"closed door" policy.  We haven’t been to any big cities, like Sydney, yet.  We hear its more culturally tolerant and diverse.  I hope so.

Unique Postal delivery vehicle.

A unique sight is the postal delivery man as he scoots around to each mail box on a Honda 50 motorcycle dressed in bright fluorescent green uniform, his helmet adorned with spikes so the birds don’t  dive bomb his head.  Funny.

What a fun job!

We are ‘killing time” in Scarborough while the sale of our boat, Wizard gets finalized.   (Yes…we sold Wizard for those of you who don’t do facebook. ) We knew that Australia would be the end of the line for us and are quite happy to have found a buyer so quickly.  The new owner will sail Wizard around the Queensland coast and moored off of Russell Island...in other words, Wizard is "out to pasture".  I don't think she will be cruising open ocean, again. She has made two South Pacific cruises, one before us and one with us!  That's at least 20,000 miles!
Here's our listing  http://farine.net.au/sail/sb373/Choate-Peterson-40.html

Wizard sailing in La Cruz, Mx

Its all working out as planned.  We’ve been here one month and were successful in selling the boat. But, now we're bored. Time to move on.  There’s only so much to see on foot.  We begin our car travels after Christmas on Boxing Day, December 26.  We leave Wizard behind in the Land of Oz.
And continue our adventures down the coast to Sydney...

Good-bye Moreton Bay...

Wizard stays in the land of OZ!

Good-bye Wizard!

Wizard In The Land of Oz!

Lift out by Scarborough Marina for  Wizard's new owner...

The End…in the land of OZ...Dorothy and Toto are starting home...
It’s bittersweet, the end…the end of our sailing adventures on Wizard.  We have realized our dreams of sailing through the South Pacific islands and have finally landed in OZ!  We’ve come so far! Never did we think we would sail to Australia!  And now, the end is near…we have sold our sailboat, Wizard.
 Both of us knew after 10,000 ocean miles and one and half years away from home that the end  of sailing was coming...
And now, the time has come for new adventures on land.  We will be “landlubbers” by next week when the sale is final.  We’ll be free to come and go as we please…a freedom we thought sailing would offer, but the truth is… when you own a boat, you are never really free from the worries and care of the boat, restricted by weather, ports and breakdowns.  Traveling by boat is much more restrictive than land travel and you are always tethered to the boat.
 I’m not complaining.  I wouldn’t change a thing!  Our travels have been exciting and challenging, which is why we all go in the first place.  We enjoyed boat travel; it just has its own set of limitations.  I’m glad we experienced sailing.  Wizard proved to be a strong and capable boat. We both learned a lot about ourselves; our strengths and weaknesses.  We've met a lot of great people along the way.  Others, just like us, who “dropped-out” of mainstream and decided to try something different.  We'll have memories to share , but only those who have gone to sea will appreciate and understand.  We did it!

Celebrating the end...

But, now we're on the road home.  We both agreed we didn’t want to sail around the world…too much time and money for that trip and we knew we didn’t want to sail back to California from Australia, too much against the seas…so, the only option left was to sell the boat here and that’s what we did.

Bittersweet, the end, …but looking forward to the next homeward bound travel adventures for us... just not on Wizard!

One of our last dinners  on Wizard...

Christmas lights signal the end of a year...

Here’s to "The End" and to New Adventures for Dorothy & Toto in the land of OZ!

Australia Zoo...Crikey!

Koalas are very sleepy All the time! 

Crikey!…let’s go to the zoo! We’d heard about the Australia Zoo, owned by the late Steve Irwin of famed “Crocodile Hunter” was a short drive north of here.  The family continues to expand and improve the zoo and carry on in his quest for animal conservation.

Crocodile trainer luring the beast out of the water with meat

Young  Robert feeding his first crocodile

We happened to visit on his son Robert’s 10th birthday with the park celebrating his “first crocodile feeding”! This of course, was built up a little too much, but hey, he’s doing it…following in his father’s footsteps…its show business! So the show was filled with photographers recording this event! He’s pretty good on stage and will probably be the next TV personality.

Too much ado about ...

We watched in a large arena as the crocodile trainers lure a large reptile into striking for the dangled piece of meat! It’s awesome and scary to think these creatures live in northern Australia in murky saltwater! Part of the show is to inform about how to live safely near crocs…don’t splash in the water, it attracts crocs…well, it’s plain to say you’d be stupid dead if you went swimming in posted croc waters…then they show pictures of “Crocodile Hunter” wrestling a huge croc from the TV show Lonely Planet. Crazy.

Cute as kittens! First pair born in Australia in 43 years.

We happened also to visit the zoo a week after a tiger trainer was mauled during the show!  He's Ok, but you can imagine how packed the tiger show exhibit was when we were there…everyone wanted to see what might happen? The news said the trainer used a new kind of play costume and the tiger became in “rough play” mode. They blame the trainer. The tigers are hand fed, trained from birth, something this zoo is proud to say and not many zoos in the world have these tamed animals.

Nice kitty...

 I don’t normally like zoos, but I knew this was the only place to get to see the many exotic Australian animals up close and personal! Each species had it’s own natural habitats created with lots of space to roam. The informative trainers were available in every animal section to answer questions.

 The Kangaroo  pen is wide open for hopping about... among visitors!

Petting the roo...soft like a horse!

HOO to you, too!

Beautiful cheetah

 There was lots of opportunity to get close and interact with the animals. Yes, these are not wild animal anymore.  But the experience to pet a kangaroo and a koala bear, see baby tiger cubs up close, look into the eyes of a condor, see a Tasmanian Devil, shiver as the crocodile snaps it’s jaws… priceless for me!

Cassowary, a flightless bird like an ostrich

Guadian of the animals

December 1st is the first day of summer in the land "down under"! It's hard to think about Christmas when its 28 Celcius (82 degrees)!

Beaches, Sharks & Wine Tasting

Mooloolaba Beach

 With two recent shark attacks in the news here in Australia ( one in Western Australia, one in Queensland) you wont find me frolicking in the surf!  I’d read the warnings about the dangers of Australian waters before we even landed, but now I’m certain I wont be swimming! Besides, the water here is rather murky…warm, but murky, at least where we are on the Sunshine Coast near Moreton Bay, you can’t see what’s "down under"!

…And since we’ve just come from some pretty awesome clear snorkeling waters in Tonga and other South Pacific islands, it’s hard to jump into these murky waters! The green color is pretty, but shallow.

Mooloolaba Beach

Mooloolaba is a very popular beach destination on the Sunshine Coast

Life guards watching for dangers...

I can still do a cart wheel!

Bribie Island shores

We spent a few days driving north in Moreton Bay and exploring, Mooloolaba, Bribie Island and Maroochydore beaches  ...

We meet a doggie day care walker on Bribie Island

Dry Eucalyptus deadwood

Miles of flat sand bar along the Moreton Bay shores of Bribie Island

Big blue jelly fish decorate the shores!

More shells for the collection!

Life guard protection on the ocean side of Bribie Island

Surf rescue ready!

Daily surf report is kind of nice.  

We notice the Australians are very protective of their people and there are all kinds of warnings, cautions, "dos & don't' posted at all public beaches, parks and instructions posted on the highways on how to drive safely. Even the speed limits are lighted with cameras to take pictures of speedsters!

Largest winery outside of Brisbane

 Then the next day, we invited our friend Mark (Compass Rosey) to visit us for Thanksgiving. The weather turned lousy and rained but we drove south of Brisbane, anyway,  to Mt. Cotton, visiting the Daisy Hill Koala Center and Sirromet winery…
in the pouring rain!…ah, the joys of the weather in a tropical rain forest climate!

Wine tasting was fun!

After the wine tastings....

Tomorrow we'll explore some more...where will that will be? We don't know....