Well, since the captain of this flight from Hamilton Island to Brisbane has very unkindly decided to turn inland and stop flying over coral and beautiful sandy islands, I’ve decided it’s time to write a blog post. That, and the fact that I’ve been doing an awful lot of travel recently but this poor blog has been left to sit lonely in cyberspace.

It’s been a very busy winter for me (and the rest of my family, although they are more likely to call it summer!). It started off with a wonderful surprise from James when he informed me that the food we were going to get in Brisbane’s Chinatown wasn’t nearly as good as the Chinese we’d be eating in a few weeks time. Where was that? I enquired, to which he replied that he’d bought us tickets for a weekend away in Sydney! A few weeks later, I had a flying trip over to Puerto Rico for my good friend Cristina’s wedding (and a few days of travel with Cristina’s fun PT friends to a bioluminescent bay and the rainforest, among other things), followed by a stopover in San Francisco to visit the Palo Alto Ephoxians. Those both deserve blog posts to themselves, but suffice it to say that I had a great time, especially getting to see good friends at the wedding. I love Australia, but it’s times like these that make me feel how far away from America it really is!

In early July, my “little” brother arrived just in time for crunch time for our WebRadar 2.0 release. In amongst all the Pizza Capers-filled late nights at work, I managed to meet him on arrival in Sydney and take him for a weekend trip up to Cairns. Despite the fact that when I asked Philip to summarise the Sydney trip, he said, “Opera House, Opera House, and more Opera House, with a bit of Harbour Bridge thrown in on the side,” I still think he had a great time! It was a good way to start off his first trip Down Under as well. We had an absolute blast together in Cairns, spending one day snorkeling/relaxing on the beach on Fitzroy Island and one day on an Ocean Spirit cruise out to Michaelmas Cay. And what a surprise I got when I ran into a friend on the Esplanade in Cairns, only to find out that her and her father were on the exact same cruise as us the next day! I think all four of us left that cruise very happy, although I felt very bad that Jen didn’t get to see the green turtle that Philip and I swum with for 10 minutes (this was definitely the highlight of our snorkeling trips and will get a post of its own as well!).

A week later, my parents arrived from Singapore, and my time off began. With my dad only in Australia for a week, we couldn’t venture too far, but we still made the most of our time! We spent a day on the Sunshine Coast with James’ parents before driving up to Hervey Bay for a whale watch. The crew warned us countless times that it was still early days in the whale watching season so we shouldn’t be too disappointed if we didn’t see anything, but we lucked out and got to see 4 or 5 whales. Unfortunately none of them were very playful, but the dolphins made up for that by swimming in front of the boat for quite some time.

The next day, we hopped on a ferry to Kingfisher Bay. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t so flash so we just spent most of the day relaxing before having what my mom described as “one of the best meals she could remember” at the Seabelle Restaurant. The next two days had varying weather—going between dark and stormy and perfect—but we made the best of them and had a wonderful time. We spent a day bumping around Fraser on a 4wd bus and even managed to squeeze in a 15-minute plane trip that took off from 75 Mile Beach (oh, and how fun it was trying to convince my mother to get on that tiny plane!). The next day we relaxed and did activities around the resort, including a canoe ride up a creek surrounded in mangroves and chasing herds of crabs around the beach at sunset. We punctuated the trip north with a seafood platter at Noosa Surf Club and an afternoon drive down the coastal road on the Sunshine Coast. Back in Brisbane, we managed to take in the Ron Mueck exhibition (see some of his amazingly lifelike sculptures here). I don’t know if my mother was more impressed by the sculptures or the fact that I got my dad into an art gallery! In the afternoon we did what all Aussie visitors have to do and cuddled koalas & fed kangaroos at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. All in all, it was a thoroughly memorable trip and a great introduction to Australia for my parents!

Unfortunately my dad had to leave after 1 week, but since I still had a bit of time off and my mom & brother were still here, we got on a plane soon after his and headed north again, this time to the Whitsundays. I was particularly excited about this because it was just as new an experience for me as it was for the rest of my family, and boy was it worth that excitement! We had such a great time on Daydream Island that I’m surprised we didn’t have to be pried away screaming when our ferry arrived to take us to the airport! Despite the fact that we were on a relatively small island, we were never wanting for activities, especially since you could simply swim from the beach to coral reefs—and snorkeling on those could keep me entertained for hours, or at least til I start getting a bit cold! There were quite a few highlights of the trip, but two come to mind immediately. The first was that we got my mom snorkeling! She’d never tried before and doesn’t really like putting her head under the water, but she eventually got in and was very excitedly pointing out the coral and fish all around her, so I’m pretty sure she had a good time. The second highlight was our sailing trip on the Camira catamaran, which took us through the Hook Passage and to Whitehaven Beach. We spent the day snorkeling, swimming/lounging at the beach, enjoying wonderful bbq’ed reef fish, and generally just taking in the astonishing scenery and trying not to get blown off the boat!

It’s been a few days (or a week and a half) since the I wrote the majority of this post, and things are a lot quieter here now. Mom & Philbert left last Sunday, and the house suddenly became very quiet. This weekend was the first in a long time that I haven’t been traveling. It was definitely nice to have some time to kick back and relax, but I wouldn’t trade all the fun and good family times we’ve had for anything.