Seafood by Ethan

We have found 1 type of seafood and tonight we have also eaten something similar to it (although it doesn't taste as nice to me).

We found the first type of seafood on Booti Booti beach.  They are called Pippies.  We found them under little mounds of sand but we had to dig down quite deep to get them.  The Pippies dug down using their big yellow tongues but we were too fast for them!  Did you know if you touch a Pippies tongue it squirts water out in defense.

When we got them off the beach we put them in a bucket with sand and water and the next day we washed them out and put them in a pan of boiling water and ate them for dinner with the other seafood which was local oysters!

The oysters didn't taste as good I think.  If you look on the outside of Pippies they look quite different to mussels but inside they look the same but white instead of orange.

Dorrigo

We have just had the best weekend at Dorrigo folk and bluegrass festival high up in the mountains of northern New South Wales!  We've listened to some amazing and inspiring bands, some locally grown and some from USA and Canada.  The headliners were Chris Henry and the Hardcore Bluegrass from Nashville!!  Wow!! I've always loved mandolin but I've never heard mandolin like it, it was so foot tappingly brilliant!!  The whole festival kicked off with a hoe-down.  We tried our best with limited accessories to look as country as possible.... we had the best time and felt quite at home.  We spent a lot of time talking about how many of our friends and family would have just loved to be here too. 

Four of us bought festival t-shirts. Felt very Greenbelt!

View from Green Mountains

Lamington National Park

Enjoying the View at Kangaroo Point

Brisbane from Kangaroo Point

Joseph's Brisbane

Brisbane by Joseph

In Brisbane the City cat is a really good boat to travel on and if you're in the botanic gardens you'll see the bearded dragons. We've just been to a churro and chocolate dip cafe it was really delicious! Afterwards we went to Stanley street market and had a very salty potato cool which was 1 potato chopped like a spring on a stick and fried!

Brisbane is a really good city full of fun things to go to and lots to do!
Our bus is here
Joseph
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Ethan's Brisbane

Brisbane

Travelling down the Brisbane River on the city cat on the way to new farm park. We are going because of the fig trees you can play on! We just had lunch at the lagoon which was fun! It is a wiggly curved oblong shape with grass and sand around it. It had deep and shallow bits. We played piggy in the middle.

We just went under Story Bridge!

We went to QAG - Queensland Art Gallery this morning. I was particularly struck by how imaginative people's art is around here! There was a zig zaggy one in orange and green, the Japanese mountains a dark video installation from the twenties.

Next stop is ours!
Ethan




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Queensland Art Gallery

Glasshouse Mountains

We had a very steep walk up Beerburrum Mountain today in the heat of the day! We passed a couple of monitor lizards on the path sunning themselves! We are now heading for the big smoke of Brisbane!

Town of Bundaberg

Southern Stockyard

The Burnett River

As seen from Sharon Gorge near Bundaberg.

Parts of my day

We wake up really early partly because of our proximity to the children (about 4 metres away) and partly because of the sun streaming in through our bedroom window from a while before 6.  The bottom picture is taken from bed this morning.  It's always just too tempting to go and join the day in all it's sunny happiness so I try to go for a run.  The top photo is taken on my run yesterday at Blacks Beach; the children all came and played in the sand before breakfast.  We try to do a bit of homeschooling in the mornings.  The second picture is of the boys round the campfire last night trying to catch up with the old journals!  It was very mosquitoey and everything that wasn't covered was bitten!!  Fun having a fire, we played evolution in the dark after a barbie!

Rockhampton Botanical Gardens & Zoo

The Caves

The village here is called simply The Caves. The caves themselves were discovered by a farmer's children who were supposed to be fetching runaway horses and instead followed a group of Brush Turkeys into the entrance of the cave (very Narnia). The farmer came to inspect the caves the next day and as a result decided to buy the land from the government for £6!

Capricorn Campfire

Last night we were camping at Capricorn Caves and we had a campfire & BBQ. Nice!

Eungella rainforest

Yesterday we went to Eungella rainforest. We saw a huge monitor lizard and 2 cheeky kookaburras stealing people's sandwiches from their hands! I'm glad it didn't happen to us! We ate our picnic on a massive boulder by Araluen cascade surrounded by Blue Ulysses butterflies (photographing butterflies is beyond iPhone photography). We swam and the water was so cold it really pinched you! Even though the water really stung I managed to stay in the longest but I didn't manage to get under the falls.

Joseph

Blacks Beach nr Mackay

Mackay Botanical Gardens

Felix the Pet Bull

I Want a Pony!

Birthday Bubbles

Birthday!

Magnetic Island

Magnetic Island

A few days ago we went to "Maggie" Island 20 minutes off the mainland from Townsville where we had a really amazing time! We saw 3 koalas and a wedge tailed eagle the largest eagle in Australia. The first koala was large and hunched and the second was the cutest, it woke up and was just about to reach out for a eucalyptus leaf when it fell asleep again. The third koala was fat although not as fat as the first one, he looked furrier than the others. I wanted them to fall out of the tree into our arms so we could cuddle them! They mainly sleep and eat; they can sleep for 23 hours a day because of the drug in eucalyptus leaves.

Also on Maggie Island we went through a butterfly forest which was full of hundreds of butterflies many of which had intricate black patterns. In that forest we saw lots of noisy flying foxes - fruit bats!
Love Joseph

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This is one of the cutest koalas

From Ethan

We've been having a great time in Australia; we've seen so many interesting birds - even a mohecan pigeon! We've seen kangaroos, rock wallabies and all sorts of wildlife we've even seen a crocodile! We've been to a lot of beaches and it's about thirty degrees so we have to put sun screen and hats and swimmers with rash vests on every day!

The day ends at 6ish so we see the moon more and it's different its a smiley face! And it's sometimes orange. The stars are different too.
At the campsite we see lots of different campervans some are even house shape which look fun to live in. It's very fun living in a campervan because we children get to sleep in the top bit and we also get to have lots of barbies!

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