G'day mates, here we are with the koalas! Oh my goodness this koala encounter was so amazing! I've got lots more pictures, and I'll tell you more about it so soon, but it was incredible! I honestly could have let a koala climb up me, but then I would have been bleeding in several places, etc. so I side stepped like I was taught until the caretaker picked them up, but yeah, we were right in there with them, and they were a rowdy bunch. Sorry, "cheeky" is the term our guide used!
Well, in spite of how hard we worked each day, and how tired I was every night, I never managed to sleep in much. And so, in an effort to not wake everyone up, and to have something more to do, I'd head outside and listen to the kookaburras. Okay, that's also just awesome to do. The sunrise didn't look half bad either.
This little guy is only like an inch and a half long, and he was just living on my parents window. He was in this same 6 inch area the WHOLE time we were visiting.
Monday morning it was off to the koalas first thing... well, some people's first thing. ;) Anyway, we signed up for the 9:30 encounter, and it seems like the best time for sure. As we arrived they were doing supplemental feedings, and I think koalas are also usually the most active in the morning in terms of eating, etc. But with the supplement, they were active all over the place! Especially Denise here.
Not only was there eating, but hopping and moving and interacting!! Check out this little buddy and his big morning yawn! Good morning to you too! It was pretty awesome to get to see so much personality from the koalas after all of the other ones just being asleep in a tree and maybe turning their heads a little.
This guy was especially funny! If you scratched the right spot on her bum she'd raise her hand like you can see in the picture. Her hand is on it's way down here as she's not getting those sweet sweet scratches.
And look at this picture I got! Whoa! It looks so good, I still struggle to believe I took that!
The koalas were sad to see us go... or, probably the zoo keeper and her syringes of supplemental feeding. Either way, a very touching moment to see how much they loved us coming by. And then I also got to watch him waddle back over to his tree. Oh, and a further note about Denise, one our way out we stopped at the gift shop and one of the things we grabbed was adopting a koala for a year! We picked Denise, in part because she was so fun and feisty while we were there, and also in part because she has a little tiny baby! Too small to come out of her pouch, but we're hoping in the updates that we'll get some pictures.
There was a cool koala statue out front with a selfie stand, perfect for a group picture!
From the zoo, we headed over to see Ol' Bottlebutt! This baby here is the largest bloodwood tree in all of the southern hemisphere! And like you, all that means to me is that it's a big tree. They're in kind of a cool shape where the trunk gets super wide, hence the name bottlebutt. It was pretty cool to see, and it was a fun hike!
Speaking of fun hike, we were right there in the rainforest. This felt much more adventury than when we were in the Blue Mountains at Scenic World on the raised walkways. We had to drive on a dirt road for a while to get to the trailhead, and our road eventually became possibly impassible, so we had to turn around and take a different path. When I got out of the car to check the road, it felt very Jurassic Park, and I definitely could have been attacked by a raptor! Not quite the same feeling on the hike as I wasn't out alone, and I didn't just get out of a car to wait for a T-rex... Anyway, the rainforest was cool!
After our hike, we got burgers and headed to the beach. Monica got an Aussie style burger. I don't remember what all that meant, but it did have beets. It was pretty good until I got to the end and had a huge beet left, and not much else... (p.s. we shared burgers).
The beach was occasionally split up by these rocks, which were fun for a good climb. Grayson had some fun climbing on some of these smaller rocks. Monica and I went out there as well, and got hit by a wave! Oh, while at the beach, Grayson also wanted to play with his pick from the zoo giftshop, a balloon helicopter! It was pretty awesome, and we had a lot of fun with it.
The girls played their favorite game, or at least I think it is their favorite, jumping over waves.
Brooke also really likes to bury herself in sand. It kind of looks like a mermaid tail, and then she grows legs!
Nearby the beach, there was a landmark called "croissant rock" and I just had to check it out. Niki came with me, and after searching around for a bit, we realized that, in fact, this was it. Looks pretty tasty, eh? You probably thought I was in France for a second there.
When we got back, everyone was over at this other spot on the beach. There was this little river going through the beach here. It's actually from a bunch of flooding that happened here sometime in the last month, and it ran right through this spot on the beach, and it's still running a little bit. I wonder if this filling of the ocean is negating all of that lifting Australia out of the ocean we did last week.
A kangaroo finally came to visit! We did see one when we first arrived, but hadn't seen another one until this evening. Oh, I don't remember if I mentioned this, but the place where my parents live backs up to a nature preserve, so it's pretty common to see animals go by. Oh, actually, on Sunday morning when we were getting ready for church a kangaroo went hopping by! I totally forgot to mention that. It flew by really fast, so no way I had a chance to catch it. Anyway, back to this evening where a kangaroo came to visit, and it had a joey! Someone closed a garbage can and it got spooked for a little, but after about 30 seconds it decided the coast was clear and started scratching it's stomach to let the joey know to come back out and eat! It was amazing!
Winry had been sleeping out on the couch every night, and rolled off Monday evening.
Tuesday morning we were of course outside hoping for more animals. Grayson's out there looking with some awesome binoculars that we grabbed from the zoo giftshop!
The king of the forest even came to visit us! You can tell that he's the king because of his huge crown of grass caught up in his horns.
And this deer was standing on it's back legs to get a bite to eat from the tree.
We had to head back to Sydney on Tuesday as our flight was first thing in the morning to head home. So we got a picture all together before saying goodbye.
On our way out of town, we stopped at koala street for a picture. Apparently I was a little stinky this morning, because no one wanted to quite be next to me.
We stopped for gas, and the gas station had another one of these koala statues! Sweet.
And now my pictures get shuffled a little out of order due to the flight. Our flight left at 9:30 in the morning, and we landed at 6 am that same day, so my phone is trying it's best to correctly order things here. This picture is in LAX right before we boarded our plane and had to say bye to Niki! We're so glad she came on the trip with us and are grateful for all the support she provided! Her being there definitely helped the kids be calmer and have more fun. Oh, and while we were in the airport, Niki's favorite moment of the trip happened. Winry was being a little crazy and uncontrolled, so I got her in a seat and said I was going to sit on her, and sat down. I was holding myself up on the arm rests, but Niki said it was hilarious, and her favorite part of the trip, so I thought I better include the story.
Rolling back, this is our flight out of Sydney. Remember how I said I was going to miss the opera house? Well I got one more chance to see it on our way out. The plane took off, flew right up to it, and then turned to give me a great view! Bye harbor bridge and opera house! I hope this isn't my last time seeing you!!
On our flight to Austin I had to get a picture of these guys on the safety video as it was my last chance. Delta is doing a decades thing, and this is the 90's, and when they popped up it absolutely reminded me of my brother Spencer growing up.
We finally made it back to Austin, and the shuttle bus was taking forever to arrive. Grayson and I walked to the car, and were going to come back to pick everyone else up but the bus did eventually come. That said, we waited the first 10 minutes with everyone else and still walked to the car a few minutes faster than they got there. I'm not sure what's going on with the parking lot shuttles, but they're terrible right now. Oh, and Winry's tired. We got up for our flight in Sydney like... 20 hours ago at this point.
Our sweet potato was thriving while we were away! Monica is growing slips so that we can grow our own sweet potatoes. I think they're ready.
And timestamp mismatch, here's Grayson sleeping on Niki. Yeah, the flight was long enough that I took this picture at what was considered a later time than us going through LAX, waiting for and taking a flight to Austin (sidenote, when we landed in Austin I texted Niki, and she was already home, and her flight left LAX an hour after ours...), picking up our bags and driving home. That whole day was shorter than the one where we got on a flight over the ocean. Anyway, he looks cute, and Niki is the absolute hero for being a pillow for 13 hours.
We're still trying to get back on a proper sleep schedule. Grayson went to bed as soon as we got home, and then woke up at 1 in the morning, for the night. When I got up for work he was still up, but then around 8 he fell asleep on the couch until like noon. We're working on getting back to sleeping at night, but mostly people are just tired and not getting enough sleep at night right now.
And here's Jelly happy to have us back! I sure missed her while we were gone.
And we'll cap off the week with Grayson here helping Monica get some zucchini donuts ready. He really knows his stuff in the kitchen.
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