Australia - The Long Sad Experience Getting Home

 Our 14-hour Delta flight back to Los Angles had problems.  Therefore, we had problems.  A female passenger on the plane got sick and we were redirected to Hawaii so she could disembark and get treatment.  All 208 passengers were told to get off the plane and go through customs.  We had to get all our luggage and try to clear customs at 1:00 AM when the airport was almost deserted!  Then we were told we had to find our own flights to get back home!  What a nightmare.

Bill had never been to Hawaii before.  Now he never wants to go back.  

This sign in the Honolulu airport was interesting. The airport was old and outdated, and people there were not happy to see us.

It looked beautiful outside when the sun came up but we were stuck at the airport!

Why Delta could not drop the sick woman off and then continue on to L A is a question we never got answered.  Maybe it had to do with the flight crew hours worked? or another crew could not be found to take over.  Who knows?  Anyway, we called Delta headquarters and finally found a plane leaving later that morning for Detroit so we booked it.  Trouble is, we three had to sit in the cheap crowded seats at the back of the plane from Hawaii to Detroit.  Tight seating and the food was bad!

But we made it home to Grand Rapids about 9 hours later than we should have.  We were home in Frederic by 2 PM on Monday May 6 after a stop in Cadillac for supplies and lunch.  In all, we had flown on nine different aircraft and for the most part had a fun and interesting trip below the equator.  

PS:  For anyone so interested:  water going down a drain below the equator does flow in a counter-clockwise direction while ours up here goes clockwise down the drain.  Also, we could see stars in the sky down there that we will never see up here.  

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Sydney Part 2

 On our second, and last full day at Sydney, we hopped back on a bus that took us to the famous Australian Museum downtown.

Here are Francis and Karen at the museum entrance so you can guess who took this picture.

The museum was easy to find with these two giant fellows out front.

There were thousands of excellent displays like these two Pachyderms.

Here is a giant turtle with his outer shell removed.

After many years of wonder, we finally found out where the Lone Ranger and his horse, Silver, ended up after they died.

In the museum gift shop, Bill found these spotted rocks for sale.  He thought they were rather interesting.

On Sunday, May 5 we had to get up very early with our bags all packed to catch a ride to the airport for another $100 taxi fee.  We left Sydney for LA at 9 A.M. and ran into problems.  The last blog on this Australian trip will explain.

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Sydney Australia Part 1

 On Thursday May 2 we arrived in Sydney and checked into a 2-bed, 2-bath small apartment on the 13th floor of a high-rise building in the Chinatown section of this largest Australian city.  We grabbed some provisions at a close grocery store and hopped on another red bus the next morning for a tour of the city.

We enjoyed seeing more green plants growing on the side of this tall apartment building.  The air seemed clear and clean in Sydney and we think green plants like this were helping.

This entire building was covered with these strange dark metal screens

Here is the famous Sydney Opera House.  It was raining with a crowd in front so we did not stop to visit.

This is a post office sign down under.

This was a sign for a museum that was all about nautical business and history. Clever name, right?

When we stopped for lunch at our first Australian McDonald's, we took a picture of these two birds that were begging for french fries.

How would you like to live in this town, and write a city name this long every time you wrote your address?

This store only had vending machines with no human staff.

Lots of toys and such to be had if you knew how to pay and get the items out???

Just like Melbourne, Sydney was very clean with amazing architecture.  A bit crowded  but people were polite and we had many sights to see.

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Coles Bay Tasmania

 After the UnZoo visit we drove north to the Tasman Sea coastal  town of Coles Bay.

The road along the coast was full of beautiful scenery and occasionally we stopped to stretch our legs and take a picture or two.

The weather was cool and traffic was light as we drove along highway A-3.

Coles Bay was a small village with two small grocery stores and three restaurants.  It was also the gateway to the Freycinet National Park.  We ate supper one night in the Park's lodge.  We stayed in a fine three bedroom house with Foosball and ping pong tables.

We took a couple-mile walk around Coles Bay, and grabbed ice cream bars at the small grocery store/post office.  On Thursday, May 2 we drove back to Launceton to return our rental car, and caught a Virgin Airlines flight to Sydney on the mainland.  Francis was releaved to quit driving on the left (or wrong?) side of the road, but he had done a fine job of getting us around.  Tasmania had been an interesting and unique land to visit - for sure.

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The UnZoo

The next morning after visiting Port Arthur we drove about twenty miles back north to a very unique zoo.  It was raining when we arrived but we stuck around until the weather turned to a drizzle and toughed it out.  We were glad that we did.

You see, the UnZoo is unique because it has a few captive Tasmanian Devils.  Above is our guide who spent about an hour with us and answered all our questions.

Our guide had some stinky roadkill kangaroo meat in a  bucket, so guess who came out when he rang the dinner bell?  Note the chewed up and doctored tail.

Very quickly his "alpha" brother showed up and we got to see why the first one had a chewed up tail.

They fought a bit and the first one retreated, but came back for dinner where we watched him run away with the meat and hide.

After watching the Devils we were allowed into a huge kangaroo pen where the inhabitants came out for some easy feed and back scratches.  Above, Karen found a new friend for a while.

Not to be outdone, Bill and Francis showed off their feeding and scratching skills.

We found out how gentle kangaroos can be.  Look at this one sharing dinner with his favorite goose buddy.

On our way out of the UnZoo we passed this graveyard where five Tasmanian Devils had been laid to rest.  A disease is currently killing Tasmania Devils in the wild, but animals in this zoo are isolated and still healthy.  The UnZoo was really fun.

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Port Arthur Tasmania

 We left Hobart behind and headed southeast in Tasmania to Port Arthur.

Port Arthur is a national historic site that was established in 1830.  It is on an island where prisoners from Europe were sent for hard labor.  Above is our guide who took us around the site on a walking tour.  He reminded us of Crocodile Dundee.

Here are a few of the prison ruins.  Port Arthur is on an island with deep cold water and conditions were harsh for convicts.

Many of the walls and structures are still standing,  Note the watch tower where a guard would shoot any prisoner seen out after hours and/or trying to escape.

Above is the Port Arthur church built by convict labor, that every prisoner was required to attend on Sunday.

Many partial structures are in solid shape.  Note the yellow building up above where the warden lived with his family.

Here is a restored sitting room in the warden's house.  We were told that the warden's wife would cultivate her flower garden while the convicts watched as they performed  slave labor below.

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Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

 After the Female Factory we drove downtown to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.  If you ever get to Hobart don't miss it.

Because this area was full of prisoners sent over from England in the past, there were many displays on tools of the imprisonment trade.  Here are a cat-o-nine tails for whipping and some heavy leg irons.

Here is a kangaroo coat made by one prisoner to escape but he did not make it.

This is an actual man trap set and covered in a path for catch escaping convicts.  Ouch!

Australia has unique animals compared to the rest of the world.  These are types of kangaroos and wallaby.

More animals of Australia and Tasmania.

Here are a stuffed Echidna and Platypus.

Now to the most fascinating specimen, for Bill at least here above.  Here was movie clips of the last Tasmanian Tiger before it died in 1936.

This sign explains the details of the last of the species.

Notice how it resembles a kangaroo.  A carnivorous type of kangaroo.  There are no large predictors on Tasmania now.

Here is the actual creature today.  Stuffed of course.  The museum also had a large art gallery upstairs.

A great place to visit the next time you get to Hobart.

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An Old Womens' Prison

 After our Sunday brewery  tour we drove just down the street to another interesting tourist attraction in Hobart that we had seen from the bus the day before.

It is an old woman's prison that they called the Cascade Female Factory.  Above is one headquarters building that is still intact.  The prison ran in the early 1800's for about 40 years.  Prisoners were often sentenced to hard labor here.

There was an actual cookbook used in the kitchen.  We though this paragraph from the book was interesting.

Above Karen and Francis are looking at a large board with the names of children who were born and died here.  You see, the female prisoners were often loaned out into the town to clean houses, and do other work and came back pregnant.  Children were born here and many died and were buried here as well.

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The Largest Town in Tasmania

 From Queenstown we headed southeast to the large city of Hobart.  It has approximately 200,000 people and Tasmania has half a million total.  We checked into a beautiful 2-bedroom 2-bath apartment close to the downtown area.

On Saturday we rode around town on the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus to get our bearings, and to grab lunch downtown by the bay.  Here is a picture of part of the city from our bus window.

On Sunday morning we drove up to the Cascade Beverage Company for a 10 A.M. appointment for a guided tour.

It is an old brewery with a long history

We met in a room at the factory with about a dozen visitors from various locations around the globe who had also booked the tour.  Above are containers from yesteryear.

This  is a poster from the waiting room that we thought was interesting. You will see more about the real devils in a later post.

Here is our sweet young tour guide who led us around the grounds for an approximately two-hour guided tour.  We had fun and learned a lot about the beer business on Tasmania.

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