Here we have Cobar the Kangaroo, everyone's favorite Eastern Grey from the Taronga Zoo in Sydney:

Boyd's Forest Dragon... endangered critter living in the Daintree rainforests.  We spotted this one on a night spotlight walk:



A horned devil: found in the desert, in this case in the Alice Springs Desert Park reptile house



This dude is a Merten's Water Monitor that I found in the camp ground of Wangi Falls in Litchfield park... big guy, around a meter long.. really cool.  By random chance, some pictures I have caught him with his tongue out





random wall lizard from Darwin:



And the Sydney Aquarium salt water Croc... if you can't read the sign, it says "if the fall doesn't kill you, the crocodile will" which was inordinately funny to me...

This guy is a wedge-tailed eagle. This particular one is part of a wildlife show at the NT park, but we saw them in the wild too.  Australia's largest bird of prey:




This is a white-bellied sea eagle, which we observed at Yellow Waters billabong, carrying fish back to their nest as well as sticks for the nest (it's been there for 8 years or so according to rangers)




This is a rosella(sp?) a type of parrot that I saw in Sydney, at Botany Bay Park

These next few are from the Jumping Crocodile cruise we did down the Adelaide River the first day of our trip into Kakadu... what they are is pretty self-explanatory:









Up next: The sulphur Crested cockatoos that plagued us just about everywhere on this trip... noisy little buggers:



And a red tail black cockatoo, followed by a rosy cockatoo:






Following on the Kakadu and birds theme, here's the fork-tailed kite that stalked us during lunch on the first day, including going for someone's sandwich:





And some other pictures taken before the jumping crocodile cruise:  Myself with Medusa the water python (she's the gray one with yellow underside) and Olly the Olive python (he's bigger with no yellow)

Ok, so I'm working on sorting out the digital pictures, sizing them and getting them on my WAM webspace... I'll be putting up animal pictures first, then Darwin, Alice/Uluru, Sydney and Cairns in that order. Just now I'm about to run, so I figured I'd put up the schedule post with a sample picture of everyone's pal Mr. Jones the red kangaroo from Sydney:

The day after Green Island, we had our final exam for the Wildlife class.  Nothing too difficult, and Geoff said they were good after he graded them, so no worries there... Right after, I headed out to Cairns Tropical Zoo.  I had my picture taken holding a koala, which was awesome for an animal dork such as myself... His name was Aussie, a young male. Very cute, soft, and sleepy. The picture was done by the zoo folks, so it looks great. The zoo was small, but they still had some cool stuff.  I saw adult cassowaries (very impressive) red pandas (so pretty, I think they're my favorite critters now) and some huge crocodiles (4.5-5 meters on some of them). I also bought a dollar bag of kangaroo food and fed some Eastern Greys and Antilepine Wallaroos.  Nice, friendly critters who enjoyed a chin scratching.  I spent a while there watching one female who obviously had a joey in her pouch, but the kid wasn't showing. Then, back to town to take a nap... The sunburn was getting to me, I think, feeling a bit off but not too bad.  I went out to get dinner and came back to watch some Law and Order and type this up before sleeping.  I'll get a lot of sleep and do my best vampire impression tomorrow, hiding from the sun before my weekend on the Reef.  I'll probably check this blog and my email tomorrow night, but after that there'll be nothing till I'm back in the States. I'll spend Saturday and Sunday on the Reef, then up at 4:30 AM Monday to fly to Brisbane and then on to LAX and points east. I'm really looking forward to this weekend, as Hastings, Saxon and Norman reefs are supposedly amazing, with lots of turtles, reef sharks, and all sorts of cool stuff. It's unlimited snorkelling and diving if I pay a little (65$ for first, 35 after for introductory) so I may do that Saturday... I also get to do a nifty bit of time travel on the way home. My trip back will take minus 40 minutes! I leave Sydney at 11:25 AM Monday and get to LA at 10:35 AM on Monday (or something like that, time may not be exact). Anyway, the Reef should be incredible but I'm also looking forward to seeing all y'all again... It'll be nice to get home.  See you in a few days! (when I'm back alive after jet lag, anyway :-p)

As we left Crocodylus for good on the morning of the 27th, a bunch of kookaburras cheered us on our way... they kept going on and on, all around. It was strange since we hadn't seen any before then. We hopped the buses and headed back the way we came, along the beautiful coastal road. We took a Dreamtime Walk with Aboriginal guide through Mossman Gorge, which was pretty cool.  We heard all sorts of stuff about plants used as food and medicine, and saw some really ancient trees and such. After Mossman, we went to Port Douglas for lunch on the way to Cairns.  As we pulled into the hotel, we all wondered if there'd been a mistake: this place was awesome and right on the beach!  Apparently we stayed in cells in Alice, Uluru and the Daintree to afford a good hotel for the last bit... I did some laundry and got a good shower (the lodge showers in the forest sucked) and went to get some underwater cameras for the next day. Then it was sleep, anticipating Green Island.

We headed out pretty early, around 7:30.  Green Island is a coral cay 16 nautical miles out from Cairns.  We got there, and had a tour through the resort (600$ per person... per night.. wow.) which focused on their sewage treatment and water recycling (since this is a conservation class).  No one paid much attention until we saw the flying foxes, cause none of us cared about the trip except as a snorkelling adventure later. As we sat on the beach at the end of the talk, we saw a pair of humpback whales breaching in the distance.  They were far enough away that they basically looked as big as the lead of a pencil rising up, and then making a ginormous splash. Geoff, our teacher, has excellent binoculars though so we passed those around.. The whales played for a good while, so pretty much everyone got to see them. Right after that, it was snorkel time!

We didn't go far out from the Island, basically hanging around the jetty where the boats came in. At first, it was low tide so some spots were inaccessible (unless you wanted to get scraped by coral and such swimming over. Still saw some awesome stuff like the giant clams (which blended right into the rocks.. they looked like mouths in solid rock or coral), and gorgeous rainbow parrot fish.. I could actually hear them crunching the coral, and they didn't seem to care that people were watching. There were various other colorful things too, but I don't know their names, so..  the tide coming back in made it much cooler.  Some good sized Cod showed up under the jetty, and Geoff found a large sea cucumber which was really cool.  On the way back in to get my second camera (the first ran out because I don't know how good it'll turn out, so I took multiple pictures of the same things) I swam right over a beautiful tan with blue spots sting ray.  I waved our group over so other folks got pics while I went for the other camera.  I got really lucky when I came back out: I found it again on my way in for the last time. He went to hide under a coral shelf, so I dove down and snapped two shots... hopefully one will come out, it was really pretty. On the boat back in, we saw some more whales spouting in the distance, which was cool. I discovered that my camera can also do video, so I took a short one.. really eats the memory though, so I may delete it if many more picture chances come up... got pretty seriously sunburnt, despite use of SPF 30... ah well, it was all worth it!

Alrighty, nothing going on tonight so I figured I'd pay up for some time on the computer and do a proper update...

We left Sydney around 9:30 AM on the 24th, flying to Cairns. We hopped a tour bus that took us to the city proper to eat lunch, and then headed out towards the Daintree Rainforest.  We had to bail on the big bus and go to two smaller ones so that  we could get across the Daintree River ferry.  After that, we were driving along the coast with some amazing beach and mountain views, everything covered in thick forest right down to the sand.  We got to Crocodylus Lodge a little while before dinner time. The eating/recreation area is a big tarped-over spot with many tables, a pool table, some couches, dart board and two computers that I posted from.  That night, we played lots of Hearts, Spades, darts, a game called Mafia and some pool.  It was pretty good relaxation before turning in. The rooms are basically bunk beds in large wood-floored tarp-roofed huts.  There was some *serious* rain the first night, but never after that. We actually slept best the night with the rain, because it kept the local scrub turkeys quiet...

The first full day began with the sounds of what we called the "bird-of-death" cause it sounded big and we knew cassowaries were around (which have been known to kill people from time to time). We took a walk along a muddy trail in the forest with the teacher leading, pointing out various plants and such along the way.  We were too noisy for any wildlife to show except a couple of scrub fowl and some turtles in the creek.  After that, we hopped the shuttle to the beach on Cow Bay (cause dugongs, sea cows, apparently live near there but we didn't see any).  There were three beaches, the first where we arrived and the other two reached by climbing over rocks and such.  It was a beautiful place, with a creek running out of the forest down to the water, and good waves.  We body surfed and basically enjoyed the sun and water.  I hear that crocs live around there too, but no signs so no harm done...

That night we took a spot light walk with Possum, the local guide.  Funny little guy, bald with a goatee, but very knowledgable.  We saw a Boyd's Forest Dragon, which is local-only and a threatened species, so that was cool.  Also saw some striped possums which are really cute, and again found nowhere else in the world.  A few bandicoots were around, but that was no big deal since there'd been one running around the dining room the night before. Also saw some birds, a lot of spiders, and one large and UGLY cane toad.

The next day (26th for reference) we were woken up waaay too early by some idjit looking for backpackers in the wrong room. We went with our teacher to some bat research place, where we were supposed to be met and lectured except that the person who was going to do that never showed up. So, we hit the beach for a bit to decide what to do. Really nice scenery again, mountains and ocean and rainforest. We eventually settled on doing a zipline course through the canopy instead of anything educational.  It was flat out awesome, being way up in trees to the point that we could see the fringing reefs and the barrier reef beyond them from within the rainforest looking over the beach.  There were five trees that we zipped between, sometimes going fairly fast and upside down... It's a whole new view of a rainforest from 90 feet in the air head down.  Lots of fun, everyone definitely went home happy from that.

We went back to the lodge, and basically had nothing to do so we resorted to playing cards and writing in journals. A young cassowary wandered by, but I missed the chance to take a picture cause the first time I noticed it I thought "meh, large turkey" and ignored it for a bit before realizing what it really was... bah. As there was really nothing to do, I went on the night walk with Possum again (our group was big enough that we were split over two nights).  Nothing new this time except for a few melomys (marsupial rats) and a large paddle-tailed eel in the creek.  No possums or cane toads, apparently both nights we went were abnormally quiet.. Stupid birds cost us some more sleep.  I went to bed, didn't hear one of the other guys come in... first thing I *did* here was "<bleep>ing BIRDS" and sure enough, the scrub fowl were going off again.. ugh.

The Daintree rainforest was really cool.  I won't go into full detail here cause I might miss something and I don't really have that much time to type since it was three dollars for half an hour... Basically, we did some night walks (guided by a dude named Possum), saw some critters that live here and nowhere else (even a cassowary that wandered past the dining area), had some time on great beaches (which probably had crocs nearby, but no one was eaten, so...) and did a zip line course through the rainforest canopy within view of the Great Barrier Reef.  At one point, I slid along head downward over 90 feet or so of nothing... fun times.

Now I'm in Cairns, and they've gone all out for the hotel... I guess we stayed in cells/hostels at Uluru, Alice and the Daintree so they could afford a good hotel here.    The views are great, it's right on the Esplanade walkway down to the main part of the town, and it's generally a really nice hotel.  Right (see, an "R" word) now I'm plotting what I'll do with the Friday/Sat/Sun free  days. The most attractive option right now is a 2 day 1 night trip on a boat around the Outer Reef.  I'd get to snorkel all I want, and also do introductory dives (quick course and hop on in) which would be up to 6 dives, including one at night (when the sharks come out and all sorts of other critters, and daytime ones do funky stuff like encase themselves in mucus coccoons {parrot fish}).  It's slightly pricy, but going on the logic of "Jervis Bay didn't happen and when am I going to be on the <expletive> GREAT BARRIER REEF again" I'm likely going to go for it anyway. That'll probably be Saturday/Sunday, since the end-o-program party is Friday night, and I don't want to miss that one.  So, when I arrive at BWI, I'll have been diving on the Reef less than 72 hours prior.  I have some decent underwater disposable cameras (I got two cheap ones at the Rainforest lodge, so did many others... on the bus to Cairns, we discovered they're three years expired. grrr.) so hopefully there'll be great pictures involved.

While Taronga Zoo in Sydney was awesome (got to feed some giraffes!), I think I might hit the one here too, because at this one they let you actually hold the koala for the picture instead of standing next to it, and there's also the "feed the kangaroos" bit.  Cobar the Western Grey in Sydney is still my favorite Kangaroo of all time (though, Mr. Jones the big Red gave her a run for her money), but I might check these guys out too.  Then maybe I'll just relax Friday or do something close like parasailing, and hit the Reef over the weekend... Either way, it's gonna be amazing... I might do a slight bit more tour research, cause it would be pretty funky to go out to the REAL  outer reef, by the drop off where the whale sharks and such hang... The one I'm looking hardest at is kinda-outer-reef but not on that side of it. 

We go with the class tomorrow to Green Island, where we'll here some conservation babble which noone will pay attention to because we're snorkelling in the Reef around it immediately after... Looking forward to that too!  Since the next few days will be really packed, I may only update once or twice more.  Certainly no more after Friday if I do the Sat/Sun dive trip, cause when I get back Sunday night it's gonna be "pack, sleep" for the flight early Monday.  I have to get up pretty early here to fly to Brisbane before heading on to LA.... anyhow, that's about it for now.  See y'all soon!