Weird Australian Animals & Other Unspeakable Things

From Subaru Forester Tuncury we headed North to Nambucca Heads. En-route we fondled and fed jailed Australian wildlife such as kangaroos, wombats, koala bears, and spider monkeys. Yeah, we know what you are thinking. Spider monkeys in Australia? They must've come over from South America in tiki rafts. In any event, they are in custody now, so it's no problem. We didn't take any pictures of the spider monkeys. It just didn't seem right.

What do you do with a kangaroo?



Or an emu?

Or a wombat?


Koala.



We stopped by Crescent Head Surfing Reserve. Not enough energy to make a move.



After that, due to an incident involving a bridge and the side of the Sherwood Palace, we didn't take any other pictures for the day. We spent the evening lamenting our sorrows away with fish and chips, watching the locals play night tennis in lit courts. Those Australians are an active bunch. Always lawn bowling and playing tennis and all kinds of other strange sports. No wonder they earn the most olympic medals per capita (by some measures. Lichtenstein, Slovenia, and Armenia are tops by some other measures. But lets not lose track of our mission here). They are very sporty. Plus they are constantly honing their reflexes by dodging overactive bridges.

The next day we drove "The Waterfall Way" over to an inland city called Armindale that has lots of old churches. Waterfalls are cool. And the positive ions helped us forget about the above incident that I've already forgotten about. There were a lot of cows in the area. Cows and horses. Everybody said we'd see lots of kangaroos on the road. Perhaps the cows ate them. We only saw one.





We stayed at a hotel in Armindale that was designed to thwart the intentions of all children and little people. Check out the height of those doorknobs! That was a universal feature. We actually chose the place based on the guidebook's description: "offers good value and faux-fur bedspreads - very Miami Vice... or perhaps more '80s porn." No mention of eye level doorknobs.





And then, we wandered down through the Hunter Valley, Australia's oldest wine growing region, where we stopped at a cheese factory and a brewery (hey, we saw Sideways, no need to stop by an actual winery) and then called it a successful mission. On account of the above already forgotten incident involving the mysterious disappearance of the passenger side mirror and other parts of the Palace, we returned the Palace a day early. (All said, it wasn't too bad. We just got an email informing us that the repairs cost $380 Australian. It could've been worse. We could've gotten another parking ticket.)



We spent a glorious day and half wandering around Sydney and it's lovely landmarks. Again, the guidebook's descriptions can't be matched. The opera house, "architecturally orgasmic."

The best deal in town is to take the ferry and ride it around all day. So relaxing. So roomy. No bridges to dodge. Okay, enough of Australia. Back to Kodiak, where we've had stunningly long, hot, sunny days.