There's no place like Home

Greetings from Sydney!

I'm back home, and living my regular life again, in my wonderful House, with some newly arrived room-mates from Christmas break, and enjoying the sunshine again. Brisbane was a beautiful place, but it had its fair share of rain during our stay there. Nonetheless, Queensland is a place that is well deserving of rain fall, considering its normally a dry state, with low water supply during dry season.

Let's begin with the drive to Queensland, shall we? Our drive to Brisbane was a good 10 hours, and we missed seeing some of the more beautiful ocean scenic towns, thanks to arriving through the towns past sunset. Either way, the ride there was fantastic, courtesy of Mr. Dooley's amazing Car. It basically drove like a Cadillac, and had a Bose sound system, and all the gadgets to make any road trip pleasing for all. God has blessed us with this vacation, with style too. I totally didn't expect that either, but it was an amazing surprise when we began our trip. We arrived in Brisbane at 3:00am in the morning, and found our heads rested upon pillows in a comforting house thanks to an old neighbour of mine from Old Northern Rd who was willing to house us from his place. Again, another blessing in disguise, since this house at an entertainment unit larger than I've ever seen, and a few pinball machines, and a pool table. So for Diego, Myself, and another friend who drove another Pastor's car to Brisbane named PK, had some entertainment to pass time between adventures. In the long run, we really didn't have much time to sit around and play pinball and watch movies, we rather take the opportunity to visit the sunshine coast, the tree top walk, the Gold Coast, the Water Parks, Down Town Brisbane, the Rain Forest, and the Green Mountains. We almost took the opportunity to travel another 10 hours North to visit the Great Barrier Reef, but it was a fair distance away, and we decided to stay local in our adventures.

The first adventure took place at Sunshine Coast, where I learned how to body surf. The quick description of body surfing is to catch waves with your body, without a surf board. Basically, you swim with the direction the wave is coming into the tide, and you "superman dive" at the top of the wave back to the shore. It's quite the rush, and doesn't require expensive equipment to perform, but can be a little bit more dangerous, if the waves are less forgiving. Sunshine Coast was also the location I gained my new tan.

The next adventure was a combination of The Green Mountains in Lamington National Park, the tree top walk, and the Queensland Rain Forest. It took about an hours drive south west of Brisbane to get to Lamington National Park, and the roads climbing the mountains were winding as ever. I've never driven on such a wounded up road in my life, but it was fun to drive it. Once we got to the top, we found a few paths along the sides of the road, and hiked some 5km into Rain Forest, and found some beautiful waterfalls. The wonderful part of these adventures, is that at the end of this post, I have about 15 pictures of different places along the trip to share.

The tree top walk was a little disappointing, since it was only a 5 minute walk. The good part about the tree top walk on the other hand, was that we could climb via ladders at the middle of the walk ways, to higher deck levels to see better views from the tops of trees. One particular decking had another ladder to climb, giving you the highest vantage point to view the adjacent mountains and the valleys and clouds between them. So for a minor value in walking, we gained a major breath taking view.

At the same location, just outside the tree top walks path, there were some amazing birds that were beautiful in colors, and would land on you and eat seeds if you had any. Diego, PK, and myself all had pictures of each other with these amazing birds all over us, as we fed them bird feed. It was one of the big high-lites of the trip for me.

The next adventure was in the water parks, where we got to meet more of Jared's extended family and have fun in the sun and have a splash. There were heaps of water slides ranging from "fun" to "intense." Basically, if you've ever been to the West Edmonton Mall, and have gone to the in door water park, you've experienced the same thrills there in regards to the water parks near Brisbane. Again, great fun, and more people to meet and enjoy company with all over again. Jared's family are wonderful people, and were most hospitable to us. We were so honored to have met them.

Well that sums up most of our adventures in Queensland, and the Brisbane area, so now for the pictures to share. Know that the pictures do not do justice to the experience, but it’s the best I can do to share this with all of you.