Australia Wildlife

A few more eastern kangaroos. Note the distended pouch and the joey's legs sticking out of it:

What's this? A bit of tourist trash left behind in a park? But why is it all blue? And what's that grass structure next to it?

No, this place is a bower - a nesting and mating place for Satin Bowerbird. It creates and decorates this structures to entice females. There are many types of bowerbirds, and they all specialize in different colors. Satin Bowerbird does blue (and notice how all of its decorations are even the same blue hue!) The grass structure is called the avenue. It is created artificially and carefully groomed, and oriented in such a way that any female going through it would have its breath taken away by all the blue treasures on the other side.

Satin Bowerbird - the creator of all the splendidness above:

And some more wildlife shots. (Is it just me, or is that turtle smiling?)

Cairns and Great Barrier Reef

The ultimate Great Barrier Reef experience: looking a sea turtle in the eye:

The shells in this picture are the Giant Clams. The are the largest mollusks on Earth that can grow to more than a yard across. The ones you see here have been exposed by the low tide, but most of them live their 100-year lives fully underwater.

This is a small crown-of-thorns starfish. Its spikes are venomous, and it can grow to more than a foot in diameter. In large numbers, they are dangerous to the reef: they actually eat coral, faster than it can reproduce. 

At the Cairns airport:

Cairns beach:

And warnings about the Cairns wildlife:

A few more marsupials around Cairns and Port Douglas:

Night visitor to our house:

Fruit bats, also known as flying foxes:

Parting shot - just a picture of the reef blue:

Uluru

Uluru is deep in the heart of Australia's outback. Geologically, it is a rock that incongruously sticks out from the middle of the red desert, which makes it a unique sight for hundreds of miles around.

While only 350 meters (1150 feet) of it is visible above ground, it actually goes down to the depth of 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles). It's basically a land iceberg.

It is also a sacred place to the Aborigines.

The combination of low humidity and red sandstone and soil produces amazing contrasts.

This cave is called Kulpi Nyiinkaku - The Teaching Cave.  This is where grandfathers of teenage boys taught them how and where to hunt. The boys were separated in this cave for several years while they learned. The cave still contains rock art painted by the grandfathers.

Up close, you can see that the rock is a bit patchy, but that's just on the surface. It is a type of sandstone, rich in iron (which, as it rusts, gives Uluru and the rest of the outback its red color).

Look at this picture carefully - what do you see on the top of the ridge?

That's right, Uluru used to be climbable. There is one path that took tourists to the top of the rock. We came a few weeks before the climb was closed, to honor the sacredness of the place to its Aboriginal owners.

But while we were there, we did climb it a bit. In some places, the slope is so steep, and the path has been worn out to such smoothness, that the only way to get down safely was on your butt.

The view from about mid-way up:

Uluru is not the only outcropping in that place. Another set of rocks called Kata Tjuta is about 50 kilometers away.

Up close, you can see that these two outcroppings are made out of completely different materials. Uluru was made of solid sandstone. Kata Tjuta is made from composite rocks - basically compressed layers of sedimentary rocks. 

The layers give Kata Tjuta a completely different texture:

And yes, they have feral camels in Australia...

Driving the Outback in the outback...

Australia - Blue Mountains

Ah, this is why one comes to Australia:

We drove for a few hours through the Blue Mountains near Sydney to get to a place where the kangaroos are regular.

On the road through the Blue Mountains:

Blue Mountains views:

A place called Scenic World in the Blue Mountains claims to have the steepest railroad track in the world (with 52 degrees of incline):

It certainly felt like it on the way up!

Parting shot: