Carnarvon Gorge National Park

We woke up early the next morning and set off for a swim in the nearby Rock Pools. At 8am, it was already really warm and the swimming hole seemed like a great idea. That is, until, the girl at the campground kiosk told us the Rock Pools were filled with non-venomous snakes - that was all I needed to hear to not put more than a toe in the water! Jon had a grand old time splashing about and trying to drag me into the snake pits.

With no luck trying to coax me into the water, the trail we decided to take was a 14 km round trip bushwalk that weaved across the Gorge Floor with numerous creek crossings. It was a beautiful day to explore "Australia's Grand Canyon."



According to park literature, the rugged 16,000ha Carnarvon Gorge section is the most popular destination in Queensland’s central highlands. Remnant rainforest flourishes in the sheltered side-gorges while cabbage tree palms, ancient cycads, ferns, flowering shrubs and gum trees line the main gorge. Grassy open forest grows on the cliff tops. The park’s creeks attract a wide variety of animals including more than 173 species of birds (or which we saw two!)

Since this is drought country, the river was far from freely flowing, but it still made for a beautiful landscape for a bushwalk.

It was a really warm day and it was very buggy - it now made sense why Aussie blokes are often portrayed with corks hanging off their hats. We made do by shoving ferns in our cap brims. Not exactly a runway look, but it kept the gnats away.



The walk was "destination hiking" which works well to motivate Jon and I to keep going; there were four stops on our itinerary. The first being a "Moss Garden." The rain falls on the top of the porous cliff walls and trickles down like a really big Brita filter until it hits a hard rock layer of shale. The water permeates out of the cliff side and brilliant mosses have bloomed in the moist habitat. It was a little rainforest oasis in the rather dry surroundings and the cool breeze and shade made it a nice spot to stop and have some lunch.



Then we continued along the bottom of the Gorge losing count of how many times we crossed the semi -dried up creek, making our way to The Ampitheatre, which reminded me of the hiking in The Gunks (Near New Paltz, NY). You are climbing ladders and squeezing through small crevasses into deep gorge. Water eroded away a space into the rock to create a little room that the Aboriginals in the area used for shelter. The walls of The Ampitheatre are absolutely gorgeous; there are 1,000s of color bands that extend hundreds of feet into the sky. The walls make for good acoustics for doing the Ricola commercial, as you do.

The Cathedral Caves, a few kilometres down the trail, were formed by running water like The Ampitheatre. The cave is one of the largest rockshelters in Queensland and the magnitude is staggering.



As we continued on to the piece de resistance, the Art Gallery, Jon found a pointy palm frond and decided that he was Zorro. There was poking, then yelling and I ended up with a few welts on my bum. The drama subsided when we arrived at the Art Gallery, a 62km sandstone wall with ochre Aboriginal cave drawings. It's hard to imagine that these markings have stood the test of time and continue to be so vibrant.



There are examples of line drawings, as well as outlines of tools, hands & weapons that had paint blown around them that have survived the harsh terrain for hundreds of years.




The sun was setting and we were really keen to get back to camp to try and catch a glimpse of a platypus in the river alongside the campsite. No such luck; there were heaps of kids making loads of noise, so the shy platypus didn't make an appearance. A few kangaroos visited our dinner table while we made some kebabs. All dreams of having a few beers by the campfire were dashed; we couldn't keep our eyes open. As soon as my head hit the air mattress, I was out like a light.

See all of the photos from our trip on Webshots:



Carnavon Gorge National Park ~ Central QLD

Manifest Destiny

After looking at a map of Queensland, we realized just how little ground we have covered. Since it was shaping up to be a rainy weekend up and down the Coast, we decided to go west. The trusty Lonely Planet guide said that Carnavon Gorge National Park was worth the trip, so the tent was tossed in the Holden and we set off not really knowing what to expect.



We set off through the Great Dividing Range and got our first taste of exactly how big Australia is - it's fairly populated in the area we were driving through, still you could pass 100kms without passing through a town. After 8 hours of driving, we arrived in Roma (home of the Big Rig - what is is with Aussies and building big fiberglass objects?) thinking that we were a few kms away. We turned up Carnarvon Gorge Road and realized, we were dead wrong. Night has started to fall and the bugs were amazing; it was like driving through that old school Microsoft Star Wars screen saver.



Two hours, a few close encounters with road trains and many kanagroos dodged later, we arived on the final road to the campsite to another shock: It was another 35kms down a dirt road to the campsite. We didn't pay much attention to the stock crossing sign, until we were literally driving through a herd of cattle, only to arrive to once again pitch the tent in the headlights of the car.



It was nearing midnight and we were so tired. So, we turned in and hoped that the morning would bring some good bushwalking.

Upstream, Red Team! Red Team, Upstream!

Rutgers Home Opener 2007! It was a family affair to watch the Scarlet Knights beat Buffalo!



Rutgers 2007 Home Opener v. Buffalo!

I'm off to the place where oil is refined, I'm in a New Jersey State of Mind....

I was incredibly homesick, so I hopped a flight home for some much needed family time.



New Jersey with the Fam!

APEC Supervillians

The big question here in Australia is did the Chasers go too far? A do-it-yourself motorcade? Are your serious?

Now, I am not one that likes to talk politics. Being a blue child raised by red parents living in a foreign country has made things very confusing. I hemmed and hawed about posting this because I did not want to offend anyone, but came to the conclusion that funny is still funny.

So, without further adieu, I present to you Osama bin Laden on the streets of Sydney storm-trooping GWB's hotel.

APEC Conference: Australia

There is a lot of bad Australian television. The one redeeming factor is "The Chasers War On Everything."

Now as it is big news in Australia, if you do not read the Asia-Pacific pages of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, it may be news to you that the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) was meeting in Sydney this week.

However, with security tight across the streets of Sydney, the Chasers decided to have a little play. I still can't believe they got away with this!! In the States, they would have been jailed straight away!

Have a look - it's absolutely hysterical:

Glow Worms & Good Nights

Since a good portion of our spare bedroom is taken up by surfboards, bicycles and camping gear, you can only sit around and waste time on the Internet surrounded by all of these toys for a short time before you start to feel like a real waste of space.

Although it is winter here in the sunny land of Oz, Jon and I figured if we could handle a brisk, winter camp out. It's not that cold; recently my colleagues have been complaining about the temperature. The record low we achieved last week was 12 degrees; that's 54 degrees roughly. It's not THAT cold.



We loaded the gear into the car and set off for Springbrook National Park to see some glowworms. The park is about an hour south of Brisbane in the Gold Coast Hinterland and is part of group of national parks that make up a World Heritage listed rainforest.

As per usual, we arrive just on the cusp of darkness (I swear Jonathan must love to pitch the tent in the dark or racing the setting sun!) and as we are inflating the air mattress, it is decided that it is in fact cold when it is 12 degrees. Since we can't make a fire on national park property and we don't have one of those really ingenious off the ground fire pit things that every other campsite seems to have, it is unanimously decided that we will go have dinner a few kilometers down the road at one of the bed and breakfasts with a nice, warm restaurant with presumably yummy, warming red wine.



Paddymelons was a lovely little hideaway on the hillside and we snuggled in to have a glass of wine in front of the fireplace and enjoy some nibblies. Seated nearby was another young couple playing chess; after hearing a bit of their conversation, I whispered to Jon, "They talk like me!" I generally get excited when I hear the North American accent, even if it is only the automated voice on the train mispronouncing the next stop.

We struck up a conversation and had a lovely dinner together; it turned out that they were backpackers from Canada and their campervan had broken down. The nearest garage to have it fixed that would accept their roadside assistance program was a ways away and they were told it would take a week to get a tow truck up into the mountains to help them.

They joined on our trip to see the glowworms that live on the Natural Bridge at Springbrook. We thought it would be a relaxed little post-port nature walk. Never in a million years did we expect the entire parking area to be filled with luxury charter buses and hundreds of Asian tourists. It was an absolute mob scene.



As we walked down the trail, more people kept streaming up past us. Finally, we queued up to get a look inside the Natural Bridge. The "bridge" is a rock formation that a waterfall eroded a hole through to the creek below. It's quite pretty by itself; we actually returned the following day to get a look in the daylight. Jon really wanted to jump through the hole, but the idea was quickly quashed by moi.

The glowworms were the pretty amazing; I've never seen anything quite like it in my life. Little specks of green glowing blobs all over the cave walls - like an eerie, green starry night. They glowed, we watched and they glowed some more.

We dropped our backpacker friends off at their nonfunctional campervan and drove off to our campsite, snuggled away in our sleeping bags trying to to think about the fact that it was really cold outside.

Finally - around 1am when I climbed in the car and turned on the heat, I was shocked to see that it had dropped to 3 degrees. That's cold. Far too cold to be sleeping outside, however, Jonathan seemed unfazed by it all until he woke up to find me in the car with the heat on. I got a talking to about mechanics and how that's really bad for the the car, but I could feel my toes!