18 - Australia

Another travel day - on the move to Cairns today.

Quantas is just doing a fabulous job with my meals....oh, my goodness, all you seem to do during the flights is eat!


For the first flight from Adelaide to Melbourne, he "vegetarian" option included 3 fruit offerings, a vegan chocolate muffin, a blueberry scone, beans, an omelette and roast veggies.  It was a good thing that I ordered this ahead of time - Duane's breakfast included a nice ham breakfast sandwich.

I snapped this photo from the "inflight entertainment console" on the seatback in front of me.  It gives you an idea of how close we were to the south polar ice!

I meant to mention the other day when we were at Kangaroo Island - that we were probably the farthest we will ever be from home -  google calculates it at 10402 miles!

Just a short layover in Melbourne and on to our next flight to Cairns.  (Pronounced cans, like cans of beans).

Again, Quantas did a great job with my "special lunch"!

It was black bean wraps in a bed of yummy tomato salsa and a smooth green sauce....not sure what it was but it was good!   And that brown "tart" you see was a fabulous vegan chocolate mouse in a baked coconut crust.  

We made it to Cairns and after just a little difficulty we found our rental car.   Checked in at the hotel and took a 20 minute walk to  be sure we know where to go first thing in the morning for our 7:30AM departure to the Reef Encounters liveaboard dive boat.

Lovely board walk along the shoreline.  Very active tourist area!  Neat pelicans - never seen any quite like these.

 They have  a very large public pool - right along the boardwalk.  Looks unsupervised and a neat place to hang out.

Getting late - nice sunset over the water.   May be a day or two before I get internet - don't think we'll have any access out on the Great Barrier Reef!!