Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort
Dolphins-cool. Long-winded instructions about how to hold a fish for a dolphin to take out of your hand at dinner time– decidedly uncool for toddlers and adults alike.4WD Quad driving – supercool! I was meant for speed. Japanese females that do not understand English are generally not meant for speed. Thank goodness we were immediately put in the advanced group and whisked away to the sand desert for some serious off-roading.
Villas opening up to the beach – cool. Islands with overpriced restaurants and a cheap take-away Place where you too can wait 75 minutes for fish and chips – uncool.
Noosa
As Jeff says, if you had scads of money and a huge boat to show off, this is your destination of choice! If you have kids and it is raining, this is NOT your destination of choice. At least the zoo is only a short drive away.
Australia Zoo – worth the drive and the entry fee.
Wyatt was trying very hard to have a conversation with a kangaroo and fully expected the kangaroo to respond – the conversation went something like “Kangaroo, this is your park, where is your playground? See this map kangaroo. This is your part. Do you know where the playground is? Kangaroo? Kangaroo?”. We of course were egging him on since everyone within earshot was highly amused.
Hervey Bay/Fraser Island (I spent the day with all 3 kids so not much worth noting.)
Things have changed since I went there, the tours don’t seem to cover the northern tip of the island where the cool champagne whirlpools are and the sharks and rays can be spotted from the Indian Heads cliff lookout. Minding 3 kids on your own in a penthouse apt. is not the easiest thing to do. However, the 15 minute walk up the stairs to your apt. does eat up a lot of time in your day, leaving less time to fill with exciting activities
Rockhampton
Jeff and Julia thought of this as a highlight because of the cool park and the buffet style dinner at Sizzler…(heartbreaking to the woman that spent weeks organising super scenic locations where said individuals could partake in stupendous tours only to be outdone by an all-you can-eat meal! with a self-serve sundae bar)
Airlie Beach (not Arlie beach)
I am sad to announce that our family is best suited to caravan parks. You heard me dad, not the luxury 5-star accommodations you taught me to enjoy regardless of my financial situation, but the “Do you not have enough money” type camping/caravan accommodations I enjoyed in my youth. Luckily for me, the Aussies do caravan parks in style. They have serviced “luxury condos” for people like me with kids like mine! Whitehaven Beach was beautifully scenic although the aerial view is much more compelling than the land view. Wyatt loved the bikes as Jeff said and he also enjoyed the near-drowning experience of going down the covered slide into the pool – repeatedly!
Magnetic Island
Lovely, a good day trip. Very low key, great beaches.
Wyatt was desperate to drive a purple Mini-Moke (or the topless one), but as we had the van, we hadn’t budgeted for a second vehicle just for him. (If I win Dad, can I get a Mini-Moke?)
The Koala Sanctuary was very cool. The lorrikeet feeding was awesome as we had NO idea what we were in for and it was totally unexpected that the birds would clench onto our scalps in the hopes of being fed (check out Julia’s face as she was their first victim). The kids were fans until they got too got scalped. These are not gentle birds, nor are they quiet. Deafening in fact.
They are everywhere in Horseshoe Bay and you learn very quickly not to feed them unless you enjoy a good after breakfast swarming and scalping! Luckily they seem to have good “elimination control” and despite their large population, none of us were dumped on. Then came the guided tour where we got to touch all the creepy animals. Highlights : Maddy staring down a croc saying “Snap Snap” and trying to give it a good grab or staring down the snake and hissing…maybe the rubber snake as a baby toy wasn’t such a good idea.
Mission Beach (not Missing beach), although with the rain, time at the beach was definitely missing.
No skydiving – which by the way was my sister’s only request for the trip – everyone that knows us assumed I was the one to con her into doing it... Having bungy-jumped and the like, I thought this part of my life was over but since she wanted a companion and I didn’t fear the activity I said I would go with her. Fate saw to it that we would die another day because the weather was too poor to skydive so we cancelled our booking. The Cassawong cottages were incredible and very rainforesty.
The stick bug in the pool was awe someonly because I managed to inadvertently avoid crushing it while reaching for a diving disc that Wyatt threw at me – that would have FREAKED ME OUT!!!
Anyways, once the weather cleared and we made some friends, we enjoyed our last morning in Mission beach on the the expansive beach and had a tribute-to-Simba morning throwing sticks for the resort dog Archie
(much like Simba in his eagerness to receive but NOT retrieve). Then we got back in the car and then made our way north for our final stop. Wyatt saw a black and white dog in the back of a yute and wanted to buy one like that and name it ABBA???
Port Douglas
To break up the trip we decided to stop at the lagoon in Cairns. Upon doing this I think everyone was wondering why we weren’t staying in Cairns…as the lagoon was quite the sight…beautiful 20-somethings as far as the eye could see, play fountains for the kids, a park close by, nice warm water, beautiful weather. But we had heard good things about Port Douglas so we continued on.
“Dougie” or “the Port” seemed cursed from the get-go. A GIANT spider on the van upon arriving. A crappy “resort” that was under construction, had no real tour desk, really had no services to speak of, ran out of food at lunch – HUH? and had a villa that seemed incredibly small after our other stays. I kept gashing myself on furniture, stubbing my toes, etc… The kids didn’t sleep well but we were too lazy and cheap to find alternate accommodations. We had a long day as we tried to explore the Daintree Discovery Centre – Wyatt’s shoe episode was pretty funny as people must have thought it was some amazing blue bird streaking down to the ground through the trees. The drive was not for the faint of stomach but the kids kept down their lunches and all was good. The next day Jeff and I enjoyed some AMAZING snorkelling and I did a refresher intro dive to remind myself why I got certified so very long ago. The coral was extremely colourful, the assortment of fish rivalled the Melbourne Aquarium and Reef HQ but the highlight was swimming with a GIGANTIC sea turtle (sorry - we didn't take any underwater cameras, preferring to live in the moment!). We were the only ones on the tour to speak of seeing the turtle so we think that we may have been the only ones to see it – lucky break. No sharks or rays but the turtle kept us both happy. Jeff and I enjoyed this day and were glad that it came at the end of the trip as it would have been hard to top.
Our last day saw us tired and ready to go home but Julia and I had some unfinished business. We were going skydiving. Jeff would take the kids to the Cairns lagoon while we attached ourselves to some strangers and asked them to push us out of an airplane – sounded good at the time. Julia was very nervous and I tried not to enjoy this too much. Before they would take my money they told me there was a good chance that I might dislocate my shoulder again, unless I kept my arms in during the free fall. So you will notice in the picks my arms are tight to my body during free fall to minimize my risk. Her tandem flyer Mike was a crazy Kiwi and my tandem diver Ronnie was my age and a tandem skydiver – need I say more? The two of them teased her mercilessly when they clued in to how nervous she was. Mike kept pretending he didn’t know how many straps there were supposed to be and he kept asking Ronnie for advice, etc… all the while Julia became more and more worried. When we were in the bus on the way to the airport, one of their colleagues was driving by on his scooter. They were desperate to hit him with an elastic, but the only ones they had were attached to our gear (their purpose was and is still unknown). Of course, Mike came over and took the elastics off of Julia’s gear…she looked panicked. He then explained that they were “Skydiving elastics” that could carry tonnes…She was so nervous she couldn’t tell when they were teasing her and as she tells it “I (Julia) thought I would cry the whole way but my sister(Mel) did because she was laughing at me the whole time”.
The experience was a lot less scary and a lot cooler than I expected and I am glad that Julia gave me an opportunity to relive my youth for a few short minutes. The pics are very cool and a wonderful momento.
Unfortunately our next and last flight of the day was not nearly as entertaining – 3 overtired and underfed squirmy toddlers and their exhausted parents did not make any friends on the flight home from Cairns.
The trip is done. Things to note:
1. As Jeff mentioned, 200 km on the coast is NOT equivalent to 200 km on the 401. The driving was slow and as a result we bit off a bit more than we could manage thinking that we could drive over 2000 km in 17 days with 3 kids being happy and parents feeling like they were on holidays.
2. Holidays with kids are NOT relaxing. They are simply a change of scenery and often involve more work than a normal day.
3. Kids do not need toys to play at the beach. A ziplock bag and some shells and rocks will suffice.
4. High chairs are an amazing invention and are well worth their weight in gold.
5. Kids are very photogenic but not necessarily very obedient when on holidays.
6. As my wise sister pointed out, the skydiving and the snorkelling should NOT be the moments in my life that I cherish, the highlights should be enjoying my beautiful family, good health and good fortune! Thanks Jule!
AH, THE MANY LESSONS I HAVE YET TO LEARN!!!!!!!!!
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