Sydney day 1

 Waiting for the Airplane to Sydney.  Can you tell they are a little excited?

 Upon arrival...we took a train to the City.  We then checked in to the hotel and made our way to the beach.  Our first day was the best beach weather.  Hot and sunny.   We booked a tour bus while we were there and it was the best thing we did.  It was a double decker bus and the top open.  Here are the girls on the top deck of the bus.

 They loved riding on the bus.  It was the best way to see the city in my opinion. They had two buses.. One to see the city and another to head out to Bondi beach which is the one we took the first day.

 One of the many statues around the city of  Sydney.  They were all dress this way.

 On the way to Bondi beach we had our first sighting of the Harbour bridge and the Sydney Opera house.  The peaks are popping up right in the middle of the picture. (Hard to see)

 Bondi Beach

 This is actually Cooper first real experience in the sand.  We took him for a dip in the ocean which he did not like.. he was happy to just play in the sand.

 The girls playing at the beach.  They both loved it and the weather was perfect.

 Next to the sandy beaches were all rock cliffs.. very cool looking.

 Enjoying our scenic bus ride back to the city.  Cooper also loved this part.  Can you tell?

 This is pretty much the face we got from Dottie the whole time.  In the distance was the Harbour Bridge and the opera house.  Kind of a hazy day and can't see it too well.
Some more rock cliffs.  The houses all went right to the very edge.. freaky if you ask me..
We made it back to the city and our hotel room.  We were all out by 8pm.

Back to my very first post.

The first picture I ever posted on my blog. Hmmm... so we totally thought that Cooper looked so much like Emma.  Looks to me like he is wearing a tinkerbell dress here.  That is Dottie...  I think he is a good mix of both of them.  Dottie would have been 11 months old in this picture.  Her hair went pretty blond in the months right after this picture. 

Big Boy Turned 1

 Not sure about this birthday hat thing.

 Happy Birthday Boy!

 For some reason Cooper did not like the candle on his cake.  So he yelled at it.

I think he had a good Birthday.  What do you think?

Tasmania Day 4

Day 4 started in Hobart Tasmanian.  We are headed back up to Launceston this day but this time we are driving up through the middle of the state.  We first head to Richmond to check out the oldest bridge in all of Australia.  Again we saw another sign.. but this one I am not totally sure what it is or what it is telling us to watch out for.. large rodents?  Probably Possums.  They are very interesting looking in Australia.

The Richmond bridge was completed in 1825 by convict labors.

It was very cool looking in a very pretty setting.  The bridge is still in use as one of the main roads in town.  And it has held up very well over the years.

Had to chase the ducks too.  We had a little bite for breakfast and then continued our journey up north.

As we made are way up north we came across snow.  We were headed into the mountains.  The views were gorgeous up here..
Very different than what we had seen before on the coast.  There were forest of barren trees.  They all looked dead.

We traveled on this road for a long while and by this time I was done with driving so I couldn't really find the beauty in it.  But this was a main road  it was just an unsealed main

While on this drive we took a detour to see Great Lake.  It was a very large lake and very pretty up in the mountains.

This area had some of the oldest pine forests in the world. Many of these species were extinct everywhere else but here.

Once we got to Launceston we went to the Platypus house.  We were going to to this the first day and didn't have time but we made time today.  We were told that the Platypus in Tasmania are the largest ones bigger than those on the mainland in Australia.  I think they had about 3-4 total to see. 

Hard to take a good picture of a platypus but here ya go.  These are better than the ones we had of seeing them in Victoria. Such an interesting animal.  Did you know they can be fatal?  They have large claw like things on their back legs that insert a poisonous venom when attacking.  They also lay eggs and feed their babies milk but it doesn't have any nurses to feed through so the milk comes out of glands that drip down the hair and into the babies mouth.

These are Echidnas.  They are in the same family as the platypus.  These are interesting looking little fellows.  They kind of look like a cross between a porcupine and an ant eater but are not really related to either.  Although they do eat ants.

Cataract Gorge, we wish we would have made it here sooner.  We had just missed going on the chair lift across because it closed.  It was a very pretty little area as well lots of birds singing.  Also peacocks were walking around but I am not sure if those were just placed in the park or if they really did live there.

learning to walk.. he had been in the car all day and needs to get out.

We finally made it to the airport and returned our car.  We had a fun trip but were glad to get back home which was kind of confusing for Dottie because every time I said are you ready to go home she thought we were going to America.  Finally she understood back to our home in Melbourne.  They found a "devil" in the airport waiting area.  They had a good time waiting for our airplane to get there I think our flight was the only one leaving at the time so not too many people.. it was a very small airport.

 

Tasmania Day 3

Starting Day three. We started out the Day in Triabunna, Tasmania and are headed towards Port Arthur. We get out the map and of course there is a shorter way if we take a dirt road...  Jordan was all over that.  So away we went.  It was beautiful to drive through.  At one point we came up over a hill and right in front of us was a heard of Tasmanian deer.  I looked it up and it is the Fallow deer.  This is about the best shot we got of them since they took off running when we came.

Also during the drive down to Port Arthur we saw the first of these signs.. many more were to follow.  They make them look really scary.. It's a Tasmanian Devil.  We are not sure if we ever did see one in the wild.  (remember the first night we saw lots of little critters in the dark and couldn't tell what they were) We did find out though that on Port Arthur is where they are keeping all the healthy Devils.  They are slowing getting infected with a facial cancer.  But they can control what animals can enter into Port Arthur.  Also down there is a Tassie Devil conservation but we did not go there. 

Stopped to take pictures of the bays.. the whole drive was very beautiful.

This is called Tessalated Pavement. It is a rare erosional feature formed in flat sedimentary rock formations lying on some ocean shores.  It was pretty cool to see.  We could walk right down to it.  Also this is looking out onto Pirates Bay.. No we did not see any pirates.

The walkway down to the Tessellated Pavement.  I found this little excerpt to explain the pavement.  It is called the tessellated pavement. The pavement appears tessellated (it's tiled) because the rocks forming it were fractured by earth movements. The fractures are in three sets, one set runs almost north, another east north east, and a third discontinuous set north north west. These last two sets produce the tiled appearance. The flatness of the pavement is due to initial erosion by waves carrying sand and gravel and nearer to the cliff, to chemical action by sea water. The rocks which absorb sea water during high tide dry out during low tide causing salt crystals to grow and disintegrate the rocks - a process which produces shallow basins'. The placard notes that the information has been provided by the Geology Department of the University of Tasmania.

Further own on the Tasman Peninsula we saw what they call the The Tasman Blowhole.  Also near the blowhole were these rocky clifts.. very cool.

The Tasman Blowhole is an unusual rock formation carved by the sea through the sheer rock face of the eastern coast of the Peninsula and creating a tunnel through which the force of the sea causes periodic ruptures of the water which can spurt to 10 metres high.

The Tasman Arch

This was called the Devil's Kitchen.  The Devil's Kitchen is an unusual rock formation carved by the sea through the sheer rock face of the eastern coast of the Peninsula.

We finally made it to Port Arthur.  Which is the site of an old penitentiary.  Here are the girls.. they each gave us a card that matched up with one of the inmates back in the day.  We were suppose to be them and find out their history.  The girls found out who they were both young boys.  Mostly there for stealing. 

A picture of the penitentiary that they are starting to rebuild from across the bay.

We were able to take a boat ride around the bay and see some more of the sites.. One of them was an island where they kept the young boys separated from the rest of the prisoners.  These young boys didn't have anywhere else to go and they were not educated nor did they have any skills.  They were called the drunken boys.

This however is a cute little boy.  Coop was a trooper through this whole trip.

This was a rebuilt church on the property for the prisoners.  It was very interesting.  They were filed in to these booths where you could only see their heads and each divider locked behind them as they filed in.

We each had a turn poking our heads up through .

Here the girls had a turn taking a walk out in the exercise yard.  Their father locked the door behind them...   It was funny until they realized it was actually locked then they freaked out a little.

This old church was built by the convicts.  They had the original bells in there too..


We ended the day driving to Hobart one of the main towns in Tasmania.  We stayed the night at a hotel in town.  While getting the girls ready for bed I saw something in Dottie's armpit.  Looking closer I realized it was a tick.  Probably picked up from the hike the day before.  Jordan and I tried to get it out ourselves but it was in a pretty tender spot and Dottie just screamed at us.  So off to the Emergency room Jordan and Dottie went.  (Our first ER experience with kids and of course it has to be in Tasmania of all places)  Anyway they got her right in but Dottie was screaming and fighting so much the Dr. had a hard time getting to the tick that was in her arm pit even with Jordan holding her.  So she got laughing gas.  The tick was removed and Dottie was a bit loopy after that.  Jordan said her Australian accent came on very strong to the point he had a hard time understanding her.  What a day..