Thursday, May 31, 2012

 

Packing!

Only two sleeps to go, then we are off overseas! I am going to places with names that sound like Singy Paw and Do Buy. I will be flying on the biggest airliner in the world, the Airbus A380. I am getting really excited. The only way I can sleep is to remember that the time until we go is measured in sleeps. The Oldies have their suitcases packed and we are busy getting the paperwork sorted and into our backpacks with the other things we need in the aircraft cabin. My backpack is a lot smaller than the Oldies'. That's because I use their iPods and Kindles and Mum's iPad so I don't have to carry any of that big stuff. The biggest problem I have is carrying my money. For ages now I have been collecting all the gold coins that the Oldies leave around the place and have been storing them in my Cash Cow. The pile is too big for my pack, so tomorrow we are going to the bank and getting the pile turned into notes. Why do I have such a hoard? It's to buy Mum pretty things in the Duty Free shops. Back with lots of pictures in a few weeks.

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

 

Beach Bear at the Bay and Bargara

I love beaches. All of them are different. Down on the south coast near Canberra the beaches have big waves that come crashing onto the sand. That's because they are open to the big swells from the Tasman Sea. Queensland beaches are different. Once you get north of the Sunshine Coast, the swells are mostly blocked by Fraser Island and the Great Barrier Reef. Here are two beaches that Unka Ray and Aunty Libby took me to. The top one is at Hervey Bay. It is very calm because it is right in the area protected by Fraser Island. At the right time of year you can see whales swimming close to the beaches here. The bottom one is at Bargara, near Bundaberg. There are more waves here because it is further north and swells can reach it around the top of the island. The rock walls on the beach are called groynes and they are there to stop the sand being washed away. Isn't it great that at most beaches there are places just right for small bears to sit and watch the action. Dry enough and far enough out of the sand to keep Mum happy (although I would rather be down in the waves and the sand), and high enough to keep sensitive bear paws away from those dastardly crabs. The other great thing about beaches is that you often find those other great things, lighthouses, close by. Even on cloudy and miserable days, I love beaches.

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Tuesday, May 22, 2012

 

Unka Ray's Birds

Unka Ray and Aunty Libby live in a house that is in the middle of a patch of rain forest in Queensland. They have lots of critters living in the forest. One of them is a big carpet python called S-s-s-s-cyril. I hoped that he would visit them while I was there, but he obviously had better things to do for those few days. However, there are stacks of birds that live there. Here's some photos of the ones that are not camera-shy. The top one is a young Kookaburra, hoping for a handout of mince or cheese. Kookas are the largest kingfishers in the world. Normally they eat small reptiles and mammals, although sometimes you see them with fairly large lizards or snakes that they have killed and are trying to eat. The pretty guys in the bottom photo are Blue-faced Honey-eaters. They are also called Banana birds because they live in the same areas that bananas grow. These ones have Unka Ray trained. Every morning around breakfast time they come and sit on the veranda rail and whistle for honey or jam and Unka Ray or Aunty Libby have to feed them. If the humans are late, the birds fly off and sit in the trees until Ray whistles to let them know brekkie is served. I think they are pretty, but pesty. Actually, I wouldn't mind living in a rain forest as long as there was a beach nearby.

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

 

Hinkler's Aeroplanes

Here are three of the replica aircraft displayed in the Hinkler Museum at Bundaberg. The top left photo is the Avro Avian that Bert used to completely smash the record for flights between England and Australia in February 1928. Before his flight the fastest time between the two countries was 28 days. Bert did it in just over 15 days, and what's more he did it solo! That made him an instant hero. The big photo on the left is the Ibis. Bert designed and built this aeroplane in England after his 1928 record flight. It first flew in 1930. He hoped the type would sell well, but it was the start of the Great Depression and nobody wanted this cute amphibian. The third photo is a replica of Bert's De Havilland Puss Moth. In 1931 he used this 'plane to make the first solo crossing of the South Atlantic. It is also the aircraft in which he crashed in Italy on Jan 7, 1933, trying to set a new England-Australia record. The Hinkler Museum has replicas of all Bert Hinkler's aeroplanes and a detailed history of his life and achievements. You should visit if you have any interest in Australia's contribution to world aviation.

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Wednesday, May 09, 2012

 

Meet King Macca

Whenever we drive up the Pacific Highway to Queensland we pass this giant. He lives just north of Ballina. How big is he? Well, that's Scruffy, Blu and Milkshake sitting with me on the rocks near his feet. Work it out from that; he's big. He is called King Macca and that's his castle in the background. It is called Macadamia Castle, and it is the shop and display centre for the local macadamia nut farms. Macadamias are a native Australian bush nut, not Hawaiian like lots of people think. They were first planted in Hawaii in the 1920's but Australian aboriginals have been eating them for tens of thousands of years. You can try lots of different food containing macadamias in the castle (Dad liked the macadamia ice-cream; you could have guessed that) and buy all sorts of macca things. I would have liked to have my photo taken on King Macca's shoulder, but it is too high for Dad to reach and his armour is too slippery for small bears to climb. Wave to him as you drive north from Ballina.

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Monday, May 07, 2012

 

I Got Mail !

Guess what was in the mail today? A parcel addressed to ME. From Unka Ray and Aunty Libby! I could hardly wait to get it home from our post box and get it open. After a session with a sharp knife, cutting through lots of sticky tape, I got the box open. There was a card inside with a message for me, and a big packet of special cookies - ginger ANZAC biscuits. As far as I know you can only get these biccies from one place in Australia, the Ginger Factory at Yandina in Queensland. We visited there when we were staying with Unka Ray and Aunty Libby after Easter and tried some of the goodies available there. Dad liked the ginger gelato (no surprise there), Mum liked the ginger marmalade, and all of us really liked these biccies. Since we got back to Canberra Mum has dragged Dad and I all over the place looking for them. I can tell you that although some shops here sell the ginger marmalade none of them sells the biccies. Well, I figure that since my name was on the parcel and the card is written to me, the Oldies are going to have to be on their best behaviour if they want some of these special ANZACs. Do visit the Ginger Factory when you are travelling north from Brisbane. There is lots of good stuff there.

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Saturday, May 05, 2012

 

Saving the Trains

One day last week we went for a drive to Goulburn. It's not very far from Canberra and the Oldies wanted to get out of the house for a bit. Now, one of the things that you should see if you are ever in Goulburn is the railway museum. Goulburn used to be a big railway workshop and depot back in the days of steam. It had a huge roundhouse and dozens of engines used to be stored and serviced there. Once the diesels took over the workshops and roundhouse were no longer needed. Lots of the gear was sold and demolition of the roundhouse started. Fortunately, a group of railway workers and rail enthusiasts moved to stop the demolition. They saved half of the roundhouse and turned it into a railway museum and preservation site. There are lots of engines there being worked on. Some of them can even run again. One thing that I have never been able to do at other rail museums I have visited is to get underneath the engines and see the workings under there. Well, at Goulburn you can do that. Some of the engines are stored over the work pits and you can actually see and touch the machinery of these beautiful bits of our history. The engine in the photo is a Beyer Peacock S/C30 class tank engine, just in case you were wondering.

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Tuesday, May 01, 2012

 

Hinkler's Baby

While we were staying with Unka Ray and Aunty Libby they took us on a trip to Bundaberg to see the Hinkler Museum. This is a great museum. It tells the story of Bert Hinkler, a famous pioneer aviator who was born in Bundaberg in 1892. He served in the Royal Naval Air Service in World War 1, and after the war became the chief test pilot for A.V. Roe in Southampton, UK. The museum has replicas of all of his aircraft. My favourite is this one, the Avro Baby. Hinkler set two records with this aircraft; Croydon (London) to Turin (Italy) non-stop on 31 May 1920 and Sydney to Bundaberg non-stop on 11 April 1921. Both of these flights were spectacular at the time, both over 1,000 km non-stop in a single day. As you can see, there are not many instruments in the cockpit. Just compare that with modern aeroplanes. Actually, the thing that impressed me was that there is space behind the little windscreen just the right size for a small bear to sit comfortably. Hinkler could easily have carried one as a mascot.

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Hinkler's House

In a park at Bundaberg in Queensland there is a very special house. It is just about as important as Captain Cook's house in Melbourne. It is the house that Bert Hinkler built in 1925 at Southampton in England. Bert was one of the best pilots in the world at the time. He set records flying solo between England and Australia, and was first to fly solo across the South Atlantic. He was killed in a crash in Italy in 1933. In 1983 the citizens of Bundaberg decided that the right place for his house was back in the town he was born in. They dismantled the house, shipped it out to Australia and now you can see it when you visit Bundaberg and the Hinkler Museum. You can go all through the house and I decided to see if I could climb through the open second-storey window and slide down the glass roof of the conservatory. As usually happens, one of the Oldies stopped me. Dad grabbed me while I was getting across the window sill. Would you believe it? He dropped me, so I got to do the death-defying drop after all and Unka Ray caught me before I slammed into the concrete. It was great fun. Oh yes, and the house is pretty good too.

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