"Snowy" Sunday

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon today so we decided to go into the city to the market. So far we've been to the huge Queen Vic market in the city and the smaller but equally fantastic South Melbourne market so today we picked the Docklands market. 

Their website promised "a variety market in the heart of Melbourne's Docklands with arts and craft, vintage, ladies wear, plus sizes unique pieces of Jewelry, burbles, bangles and bright shiny beads, handmade soaps and natural body products, cards & wrapping, second hand books, and for the boys collectable model cars, kids face painting" It sounded exactly like what we were looking for. Too bad it turned out to be 5 stalls by the waterfront! I guess that summer is the better season for this particular market, so we'll try again in a few months. 

Luckily right around the corner is the Harbour Town Shopping Centre. A large outdoor shopping centre with heaps of outlet and specialty shops. Perfect. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and set to checking the place out. 

As we get closer to the centre we see one of these signs:

Snow play area? Well to Canadians this sounds like something we need to check out.  So we did...and we were a little surprised by what we found. 

Yep, you're not imagining things. That is a fenced off 10x10 sq ft patch of "snow" that kids are playing in.  I just had to take a picture... or 3 :)

Winter Holidays - The Gold Coast

Our last day of holidays had finally arrived. How had 17 days gone by so quickly? 

When we got up it was raining, so we decided to leave the not-so-sunny sunshine coast and follow the sunshine south to Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast.

This is definitely a place designed for the rich and famous and tourists looking to pretend to be rich and famous!

The beach had suffered major erosion and damage in the last year due to storms and king tides so a fair bit of it was still under construction as they redistributed the sand.

But the bit right ahead of the iconic arced sign was ready for action.

And the life guards were ready to go in case of emergency. But only if you were swimming between the flags. If you're not...well hope you're a strong swimmer!

It was such a lovely day we walked down the boardwalk taking in the sights.

To see a little more of the area and have a little fun with the kidlets we went on the local amphibious bus tour through the city and around the harbour.

Yes the boat is painted like a giant duck :) It is after all the Quack'r Duck!

It was super fun. We checked out the local celebrity mansions, the great views and the kids even got to drive the boat.

All the cities in Australia that have tourists, have Starbucks. I'm a happy tourist :)

As the sun went down we decided to stay a little longer to check out just one more market. This one runs along the beach foreshore from 5:00 pm on.

It was a great end to a great holiday. We've seen so much and yet I can't believe how much I still want to see before we come home. It's a good thing we still have 6 more months to get it all in!

Winter Holidays - Sunshine Coast

Our last day of driving was a short one. Just a couple of hours to the sunshine coast and Maroochydore. 

It was a cold and rainy day, but we arrived in Eumundi just in time for the Wednesday morning markets. It was huge - 300 stalls!

The kids love Aussie markets as much as we do. They love looking through all the stalls and comparing prices to see if there is anything worth spending their money on. And of course markets mean buskers and food. If Hannah can find some entertainment and a sausage roll anytime after 9:00 am she's a happy girl.

This one had balloon twisting clowns. One light saber and a minion coming up!

We scored some sunshine the next day so we made our way to the world famous Australia Zoo, home of the Crocodile Hunter.

Crikey!

We arrived just in time for the wildlife show in the Crocoseum, a huge outdoor auditorium often featured on Animal Planet. We were wowed by various tropical birds flying in and around the auditorium on cue from their trainers. You know an eagle is big, but it really sets in how big when it flies directly overhead! 

 

There were birds, snakes and of course crocodiles as part of the show. This little guy swam out into the enclosure to demonstrate to us how difficult it is to catch prey on land with short stubby legs. As we learned earlier in the trip at Hartleys, their tail really is their best asset.






It worked out really well that the weather was cool, since this was the most we've seen the tassie devils moving. They are super fast considering they are almost completely blind. Tasmanian devils are an endangered species. They suffer from what appears to be a genetic facial cancer, and their numbers are dropping quickly. The kids school even had a fundraiser earlier in the year in an effort to help.

No matter how long we've been here, seeing the koalas and kangaroos never seems to get old.

Wombats are a personal favourite of mine, I reckon that they resemble giant guinea pigs. I was eager to check them out and surprise there was a baby there too...extra cuteness!

The usual zoo animals were there to be seen as well. Amazing elephants, giraffes and zebras, and  surprise there was a bay white rhino too. Even the big babies are cute.

Hannah found a dingo that we could guarantee wouldn't eat her :)

The zoo was originally started by Steve Irwins' family long before he became the Crocodile Hunter and since his death his wife Terri, daughter Bindi and son Robert have kept the zoo running as a popular tourist destination, wildlife sanctuary and an honourable memory of Steve Irwin. We were concerned that it would be "just another zoo" and a bit of a tourist trap, but it turns out there was no need to be concerned. The animals are well cared for, the shows were fantastic and the keepers answered every question the kids had. It was a memorable day.

Crickey, who are those extra kids?!

Winter Holidays - The Fraser Coast

After a couple more days of driving and a stop overnight in a slightly sketchy holiday park in Rockhampton we arrived in Hervey Bay. Our two main plans for this stop in the trip were to take a whale watching tour as it's humpback whale season and to spend a day on Fraser Island.

Well it turns out that the humpbacks were running a couple of weeks behind and hadn't arrived in the area yet.  So we scrapped that idea and set out to see what else Hervey Bay had to offer.

The local aquarium wasn't very big, but it did offer great service and a personal tour.  We even got to feed the turtles their lunch. I haven't seen too many sea turtles this holiday so it was great to get up close and personal with a couple of them.

This is a rock fish. Ugly little guy isn't he? They're very poisonous and hide
amongst the rocks on the shore. I wasn't hard pressed to find this guy
 in the tank, I can't imagine looking for him on shore!

The sun was shining so we decided to walk out the local pier. It's almost 1km long! The pier was a
busy place with fishermen of all sorts (some feathered, some not) hoping for a good catch.

This guy is hoping for a good catch too!

After all that walking we treated ourselves to a well deserved lunch by the ocean. Hannah deems any day she can have fish and chips a great day!

We hung out at the beach the rest of the afternoon and were able to take in the amazing sunset. It just doesn't look like this in Osgoode!

Fraser Island is just over 123 kilometres in length and 22 kilometres at its widest point.  It is the largest sand island in the world and is a world heritage site. Fraser Island is also the only place in the world where tall rainforests are found growing on sand dunes. We were wrapped over our tour there for the day.

Murray, our guide for the day picked us up at the crack of dawn in our 4wd ride. Since the entire island is sand, you have need to have a 4wd and you have to know what you're doing to drive there!

We caught the ferry over to the island and started our day. We started at Central Station in the centre of the island where the forest is the densest. The vines growing everywhere were amazing, they're so long you could picture yourself swinging through the trees!

One of the most amazing parts of this tour was driving on the beach. It's amazing to be driving right along the ocean.

At one end of the beach is a shipwreck. It was a cruise liner once upon a time that broke away from the boat towing it on route to it's new home. It's been on the beach ever since. A bit more rugged looking perhaps as it's been bombed a few times as well as part of a military exercise. 

When you first arrive on the island you see these signs.

There are several hundred dingoes that live on the island. They are all tagged and their population is monitored by the rangers on the island. That being said they are wild dogs and the are always on the lookout for food. They compare to the coyotes we have at home, but I found it odd to see them as dangerous since they look so much like your average stray dog.

When we arrived at Eli Creek, this little guy came wondering down the beach to see us. Or sample us...hard to say.

He followed us for a while down the beach and when the ranger decided he had shown far too much interest in the little Canadians, he stepped in. So the dingo sat down on the creekside to watch the action. Looks pretty innocent doesn't he?

So we continue up the hill on the boardwalk to check out Eli Creek (I promise more on that in a bit) and this guy meets us at the top. He had walked up the hill from his earlier spot by the creek to meet us. It really showed how wild and food oriented they are. He had identified that the kids were small and might make an easy target. Fortunately the ranger noticed that the dingo was gone and we still hadn't returned back down the creek after a time and discovered us still up at the top of the boardwalk cornered by the dingo. He was aggressively circling us, barking and trying to find a way to separate us. But when he saw the ranger he took off. Busted! Never to be seen again that day!

We lost the dingo only to discover a couple of bush pythons. The first snakes we've seen in the wild since we arrived in January!

Eli Creek is a fresh water creek that continuously flows through the island and out to the ocean. Super cool. The water looks murky but in actuality the water is crystal clear and that's the sand bottom you can see. It has a natural current so people were walking party way up the creek on the boardwalk and then floating down towards the ocean. 

Our last stop of the day was Lake McKenzie. We were excited for this stop and spend some beach time in the afternoon. But as you can see from the sky, the weather was not interested in cooperating! Oh well, none this huge fresh water lake was incredible to see. It was amazing to see the trees growing in the sand.

This is what Lake McKenzie should have looked like

It was a long day (we were gone 12 hours) and we have lots of different weather, and some excitement, but when all was said and done we had fun!