My uncle John and his wife Anita took Andy and me out for a day tour of some of the spots that they really enjoy near Sydney. John is one of my many relatives here and I'm trying to remember his place in the family tree. Let's see. He is my grandmother's, brother's, son. I think that makes him a third cousin and not an uncle, but nevermind. They took us all over the place. We went south to Woolongong which was lovely. From there I lost track. They took us to some lovely beaches and we ate lunch overlooking one of them. There were green rolling hills reaching out to the sea and lots of flies. It was a beautiful spot. Anita brought a stylin picnic, table cloth included. We had to put the tablecloth on the table and then spray it with bug spray to keep away the flies which worked, kinda. We could see cows grazing on the hillside and the waves lapping against the rocks on the beach. We were waving away the flies as we ate chicken, salad and potato salad. All excellent! Thanks Anita.

After lunch we headed over to one of my favorite things in the whole world. We went to a blowhole! Yup, can't get enough of them. This place was friggin' cool. We walked down the path and came to a rock formation that had been carved out by the ocean. The blowholes were significantly smaller than the ones we saw in NZ and the terrain was different as well. But when the water rolled in...we got a magnificent display of water's ability to shoot out of a rock. It must have been spouting about 7 feet into the air, and I was "oohing and awing" because it was that impressive. Even the screaming children didn't bother me.

The next day we rented a car and headed north out of Sydney. We had to schlep our crap to the rental car place, which was a pain in the toucas, but we got a car and took off. I had to drive in Sydney traffic. It was pretty terrifying. Congested streets and being on the left hand side of the road. I think Andy was a little scared too, but I just couldn't judge the size of the car as well from the right hand seat. With his help, I drove us out of Sydney without killing anyone (always good) and we drove up to this small town called Wingham. Everything closed at 5pm and even the bars closed early. Seemed strange but the town was that small. We stayed at this hotel and ordered breakfast from them. They styled us! You should have seen the spread. Our bellies were very happy after that.

Well, after we stuffed ourselves with fresh orange juice and croissants, coffee, hot chocolate, bacon and eggs for Andy (I know I'm going on about food again, I can't help it! I just love food so much), we headed off to this little park. This was no ordinary park though. This park had Mega Bats in it! We must have seen about two or three hundred flying foxes and we got some great photos and movies of those guys. Did you know that they don't feed when it's completely dark? They use their regular senses to locate food and are the only variety of bat that don't use eco-location. Aside from that they're just plain cool. They were hanging in the canopy of the trees, but we could see them really well because the trees weren't very tall. They were all fuzzy, being mammals I guess they would be, but they came in different colors. Some were redheads and some had little grey faces. All had red hairy bodies though. They weren't sleeping like I expected, instead they were fanning themselves with their black wings. They were a little warm. They were flying around and going from tree to tree, I'm not sure why. We even saw a couple of them fighting but just once. They seemed pretty polite otherwise. They were making a lot of noise and I wonder what that was about. I bet they were telling dirty jokes and heckling each other. A few of them just ignored the children and went to sleep. They were obviously more mature. Andy and I both stepped in guano which looked like...well maybe I shouldn't say. I can tell you that it took several paper towels to get it off my shoe. Use your imagination for the rest.

We saw some critters other than the bats in this park, but not nearly as cool. (Andy will tell you all about the boring lizard.) You'll never believe this. We saw some wild turkeys. Ok, maybe that's not so unbelievable. They weren't cagey and allusive. They were very relaxed in fact. They went about their business and scratched big piles of leaves, I presume looking for juicy bugs to eat, and just puttered around. I don't think they looked twice at us. I couldn't get a very good picture though because the stupid thing wouldn't hold still. Looks just like a turkey. As we were heading back to the car, we saw another turkey. Looked just like the first one. It too was pecking and scratching, but this one did something that I have to tell you about. It crossed the road. Can you believe that? I think that's the fourth wild bird we've seen cross the road. Unbelievable.

After we left the flying foxes we headed up the coast to this kick-ass place called Crescent Head. It was a very small beach town which was perfect. We didn't have to talk to a bunch of people. We got a place that was a mile from the beach and 2 miles from town. The owner, David, had a couple of very nice dogs who loved to fetch. One of them was named Wheaton and she was fun. I think she was 1/2 lab and half something else. She had a frisbee which Andy tossed for her. They had a big time. Anyway, the town didn't have much to offer, but I didn't care about that. I was there for the beach and this beach was amazing. Unlike the beaches in Sydney which were a total madhouse, this beach was almost completely empty. We had the run of the place. It was a long white sand beach with soft sand, nice polite waves, a light breeze and of course it came with critters. I love them critters. I got to go for some long walks on the beach and Andy got to play with sea snails. There were bunches of them slithering over the beach. Strange. I guess I always thought they lived under water, but these guys dragged themselves along the beach, leaving strange tracks in the sand. We tormented quite a few of the snails and then we discovered something else. Andy noticed a small bump in the sand and just out of curiosity, he started digging. You know what it was? Of course you don't. What am I thinking? It was a clam. When he picked it up it sucked in its lips and squirted water at us. I think we irritated it, but it didn't have to be so rude.

After stomping around all day, we decided to hit the road again. This time I picked a town that was a hole, but was right near a state park that looked interesting. We got bitten by bugs all night, but we hit the state park and my day got better. We were on the waterfall highway and were able to see some pretty magnificent sights. We saw many beautiful waterfalls and then after some persuasion, I got Andy to go for a walk in the rainforest. I don't think he wanted to go for a hike, but there really wasn't a lot of hiking involved. It was a very pleasant and interesting walk. They let us walk right into the rainforest, unaccompanied. We were able to see some very ancient plant species and we even saw this critter called a Padmelon. It looks a little like a wallaby and I was going to get a picture of it, but the batteries in the camera died right then. (arrrg! stupid batteries) That was the only one we saw, but there were a lot of cool things in that forest that held our attention, some of them rather alarming. When we entered the forest, there was a sign that warned us about several varieties of plants and the one I most distrusted was the stinging tree. Yes, you heard me, a stinging tree. It's proper name is Dendrocnide excelsa. It has fine stinging hairs on its leaves and shoots and even a falling leaf can sting. The leaves are big too. Some of them were almost as big as my hand, plus these trees get huge. I mean these things were towering over us dropping their evil leaves. I think they were trying to get us, but fortunately, the gods were smiling on us and we were spared. We saw some very beautiful birds, including red parrots, and one bird with a yellow chest that hung out when Andy imitated its call. That was very cool.

Evil Plant

The most shocking thing we saw was this one plant. I don't know what it's name was, but we called it EVIL. It was a green stalky thing with spikes all over it. Spikes were on its stalk, stems, leaves and probably in places we weren't gonna look for. The spikes were really scary looking too. Each spike was over a 1/4" long and they were on both sides of every leaf. I had to take some pictures of it, carefully, because it was so freaky. I'm just glad I didn't fall into it or anything. Not only would it hurt like a "expletive", but it's probably poisonous too. I can't imagine how it fits into the whole food chain thingy, but I really hope it has a predator. I mean, this is the kind of plant movies are written about and I could see it taking over the planet. It was that nasty.