Shark Bay - Seaworld Gold Coast

Here is the Kid. And some sharks. He told me cool stuff which I immediately forgot. Like about eggs, and baby sharks and "look at that one's penis"

Sky climb - Seaworld

We left Brisvegas yesterday with the intention of travelling to Currumbin Wildlife Park. Unfortunately due to a vomit related incident (thanks Kid) the night before we were somewhat less prepared than we had planned to be and so as the conversation in the TARDIS mobile turned to sharks (as it does wtf?) we decided to hit Seaworld instead on the proviso that there were no movies or unreasonable queueing for rides

The Kid last went to seaworld as a weeny toddlery beastie so had no memory except of being terrified on the Bermuda Triangle, which was closed for maintenance

We had the loveliest day - I will post separate pics of the highlights as I still can't work out how to format the dang blog.

The absolute highlight was the new Castaway Bay SkyClimb which cost extra but both Taff and the Kid got all harnessed up and really had a blast - they caught the last climb of the day and were up there for AGES

You can see from the pics that Taff had to hold on pretty tight but the Kid ran around in the sky like it was his natural environment - when he couldn't reach the upper ropes he just pushed his harness along in front of him!

It was awesome - should be more of it

more teasers

We also went to Australia Zoo - saw the new Africa exhibit as well as the tigers, and Terri, Bindi and Bob Irwin perform

SO BUSY

We have had a fantastic few days but no time to blog or upload photos. Rest assured there is more news to come. In the meantime here is a taster - we stopped at Hervey Bay and went whale watching.

Timey wimey (when you need a real TARDIS)

last night the Kid said "I wish we could go whale watching" and I thought "What a good idea" So we had breakfast, got on the road, farewelled Rockhampton and cranked up Google to see how one arranged whale watching in Hervey Bay.

We phoned the lovely people at the Spirit of Hervey Bay and booked for three, planned minimal toilet breaks and went for it.

Then came the road works, shortly followed by the police car which screamed down the road right in front of us but in the opposite direction. We pulled over and watched as a large Queenslander (house) trundled up the road. It was wider than both lanes!

The boat was scheduled to leave at 1.30pm

We emailed ahead to say we would be pushing it to make it in time, then phoned at 1.26 and the skipper agreed to hold the catamaran for 10 minutes ...

At 1.39pm feeling sick with anxiety we called again to say we were 2 streets away. We were ushered in to a car park and boarded to a round of applause.

spelunking

Well those nineteenth century cave explorers did it hard

We are told they crawled and walked through metre deep guano with only a rope and candle to guide them

We followed in the footsteps of John Olsen yesterday and explored the Capricorn Caves

We arrived there about 3pm after stopping at Calen for fresh strawberries and Kolijo for the toilets

On the way we spotted a road kill variation - a dingo not a kangaroo (we had already seen heaps of those)

I started a small crochet project and Taff and the Kid engaged in a noisy enthusiastic game of road cricket. For those who don't know the rules this game is played using oncoming traffic to score runs. A white car is one, blue two, red six and any trailer, caravan, truck or ute is out. It can cause minor brainmelt, but is great fun. We also listened to some audiobooks as well as Sugarland and Neil Diamond. The caves are incredibly beautiful with tiny endangered ferns and long fig roots growing through the rock in some places. There was a formation which looked like a fossilised Ood To Be Continued.

Cats don't like packing

This is on the middle of our bed while we are both packing on either side

"Enough, already - begone!"