2006 Australia trip

At the beginning of my PhD process, I got to go to Australia for a conference. It was pre blog of course, but I decided to post some of my favorite pics here.

We started in Sydney

I loved the flying foxes!
an 'of course' picture
Dasa was with me and took this fun picture

We took a day trip to the blue mountains.

These are the Three sisters

Dasa claims to have seen the extremely elusive Lyrebird on this trip. All I know is something big and grey flew in front of us and scared the bejesus out of us, but lyrebird? hmmmmm

We then went north to the Norther Territory

crazy termite mound

Really cool view. I think this is in Kakadu national park, but I may be wrong. It's been a few years.

This is Kakadu, an amazing wetland system. With gigantic saltwater crocodiles though. Taking this picture may not have been the smartest thing I've ever done. Don't get close to the water!

Seriously pretty though. I don't know what this is (bad botanist, bad!), but I loved it.

This is a little one. To give you a reference, those plants are probably around knee high.

Sunsets and sunrises were absolutely amazing on this trip. And we saw most of them since Dasa lost her sleeping bag and we were sharing my tiny one, in a tent, with no sleeping pads. Yeah, we slept light. The flocks of parrots were more than you can imagine, beautiful, loud (very), and they filled the sky every time the sun neared the horizon.

This little wallaby got curious one morning and I managed to get this pic

Possibly my favorite part of this trip, Katherine Gorge.
Out in the middle of this dry flat land, everything drops away to this crystal pure river, boy was it lovely.

Dasa and I hiked in to this spot. We were told that the river was totally swimable since the salties (the big crocs) cant get past the rapids. So, we swam. The next morning, we hear a big noise down where we had been playing, and looked to see a very large crocodile! yikes! Later we were told that that is a harmless freshwater croc, but it sure freaked me out at the time.

The light there was spectacular. I'm not sure if this was sunrise or sunset, but...

and golden light...

This was my favorite tree, all creamy orange bark

Besides hiking, we also took one day to kayak the river, it was really pretty

After this lovely experience, we went on to Queensland and our conference. The conference was fun, but nothing too interesting to tell here. But the travels afterward?

We went with Eliska onto the bluff above Cairns.

This lake was starkly beautiful

Feeling lucky?

Isn't that a bizarre plant?

Kookaburra!

And a really big frog