Camping on Straddie! **WARNING: Ridiculous amount of pictures...couldn't help myself!**

Well, I'm always one for a great camping trip...but wow-- camping on the beach just trumps it!  It was so much fun.  It was different than any camping trip we've ever done.  We took the ferry out to an island called Stradbroke and everyone here calls is "Straddie".  It's relatively small, but has enough people to necessitate a school, a grocery store and a handful of touristy shops and cafes.  It was a great weekend.

We had to drive our car right onto the ferry because we knew we would need 4 wheel drive to get on the beach for camping (required by the island).  We actually just drove right along the beach to pick our spot.  Driving along the beach on the sand was awesome.  It was kinda surreal.  The first night we camped at Amity Point.  It's a rocky shore line known for great fishing.  We put our tent right on the beach and woke up to some awesome views the next morning.  The girls found all kinds of strange caterpillars and creatures to explore.

The next day we spent checking out the island.  We headed out for Brown Lake.  This was an amazing fresh water lake.  It's called Brown Lake because the water is brown, but not dirty brown.  It's brown because the lake is surrounded by Malalueca trees (the mineral oil found in lots of moisturizers and natural healing oil lines).  The leaves on the trees are constantly falling into the lake and shedding the malaleuca oil.  You can actually see the oil on the surface of the lake.  People come to soak in the waters and get a moisturize for their hair and skin. When you scoop the water up it's crystal clear-- kinda like swimming in tea with a lot more health benefits!

We found some great trees to climb and jump off!

Our second night we decided to set up camp on a different beach a little more secluded and quiet.  It was called Main Beach (I love the names on the island...so creative.  Main Beach and Brown Lake.  Someone really put their thinking cap on for those 2 titles!)  Main Beach was gorgeous.  The waves were awesome.  We did some great boogie boarding and the kids ended up eating some delicious fried rice...well not really but I thought they might.  They dug and dug and dug til I thought we might've dug a passage to China!  Wait...now that we're on the other side of the world maybe that joke has changed?  Maybe people here dig holes to Finland?  Or Canada?  Shoot...that blows my fried rice joke all to bits!

At Main Beach, the tide comes in quite high every night so you can only drive until a certain hour than you are pretty much stuck on the beach til morning when the tide has receded.  So pitching a tent takes thought.  We ended up hiking up a sand dune and pitching our tent above the shore so we wouldn't get washed away!  Here's Oaks at the top of our dune.  Pre-tent set up!

Here's the kids in their efforts to reach...Finland!  They really wanted to see what would happen to their pits when the tide came in and sure enough the next morning...they were completely washed away.  No trace of a pit even though they were enormous!  The ocean is so big and undeterred.  It can totally overwhelm me if I sit and think about it.

Each night we had to hike up the dune to get to our camp.  Luckily we had some trusty vines to help us down and up the sand dune.

My Boys...2 peas in a pod!  Love these guys!

Our camp site was covered with these beautiful yellow flowers.  Beautiful flowers for beautiful girls!

During the day we drove up the beach and found a surfer's club.  It was awesome to watch the pros.

We ended up finding a new beach the third day.  It was called Cylinder Beach.  Very kid friendly  They even had a naturally made kiddie pool behind the beach.  A hole in the shore that had filled with ocean water from the tide.  It was perfect for Oaks while the others went boarding.

Holding our boards down!

Of course we had to take a little walk/hike around the peak so we could get a good view of the island and the shore line.  These trees are everywhere and just an Australian favorite of ours.  So weird and perfect for climbing!

While we were walking we saw some people looking out over the ocean and pointing.  We realized it was whales.  It was incredible.  It's whale watching season here as they are coming back to Aussie during our summer season and warm waters.  They were splashing their big tales, shooting their spouts.  We even saw several them jump completely out of the water.  It was awesome!  They are so massive.  What luck!

Princess of the camp site!

Pretty awesome, waking up to this view in the morning!

What a great camp spot!  We sure loved camping on the beach and all it entails.

Finishing off the night and watching the tide come in from the safety of our sand dune campsite! All my precious things lined up watching the waves!

All in all-- Straddie was awesome!  We loved it and it is definitely something we will do again while we're here.  When our weekend was up (this was our Labor Day here), we drove our car back onto the ferry and headed back to the mainland.  But now that we've had a taste...we'll be back for more Straddie!

River Fire...Best Firework show EVER!

In September every year, Brisbane celebrates its city festival. This year it wrapped up on the first weekend of the kids' Spring Break.  All month they have shows celebrating the diversity and excitement of Brisby.  They have all kinds of music, plays, operas, symphonies etc.  They also do markets, craft shows etc. and at the end of the month the festival ends with an ENORMOUS firework and laser light show on the Brisbane river that runs right through the middle of the city. The event is called Riverfire-- and rightfully so!

This show is seriously amazing.  I've never seen anything like it.  They shoot fireworks off the bridges that cross the river, off the buildings on the other side of the river and even off barges and small boats floating in the river.  

One of the coolest parts about the show is that all the lights (lasers and fireworks) are reflected off the water's surface so it practically doubles the effect.  They had HUGE fireworks and hundreds of them.  I wish our pix could do it even a 1/10 of the justice it deserves.

 We had to get there REALLY early to save ourselves a great seat and we had awesome seats.  We met our friends the Moons at Southbank downtown and just pretty much hung out from 11am til dark.  And by the time the show started it was wall to wall people.  Hundreds of thousands line the river to watch the show and we held our ground for front row seats baby!

Before the show while it was still light.  They had all kinds of cool things to see.  Every 30 minutes they had fighter jets fly by. They would zoom past and nearly cause everyone to go deaf.  They were so fast and so loud.  They would spin and turn and then fly back.  Parker thought they were awesome.  

They also had Apache helicopters come and practically land on the river surface.  They had their big guns blazing and they were almost staring the people on the bridge in the eyes.  It was cool to see them up so close.  The propellers were causing huge waves in the water.  It was really fun.

Southbank is so much fun.  They have the ferris wheel, and all kinds of shops to look at, so we killed a lot of time looking around and playing in shifts while others held our spots. Luckily we found some vendors selling glow sticks...what's a firework show without glow sticks???













When the sun went down, the "pushers and butters" came out.  Oh nothing bugs more than people who decide to show up at the last minute and push in and get the best seats.

It reminded me of the good old days of Black Friday with the sisters and mom.  "Uh-uh, buddy don't even think of squishing your way in."  I was wishing I had my sisters-- particularly J3-- to help me hold my ground. I know she would've had some choice words and inventive names to call such individuals!  In the end...we had the best seats and we let the people behind us fight it out.  

 Yah, I really can't even do this event justice.  I got some cool videos with the explosions and the music.  But the photos just can't capture it.  We thought it was interesting that they were all rocking out to songs like "Born in the USA" and other obviously American jams.  It's interesting, they work very hard to embrace the American culture.  They love it.  But that night...Australia was amazing and Brisbane Riverfire was exactly the place to be!  We love Brisby!!!!

The Kids have a 2 Week Holiday...

Wow, what a fabulous Spring Break we had!  Year round school has been a weird adjustment but I can see some pluses.  The kids go 10 weeks then get a break-- either 2 or 6 weeks.  This was a 2 week Spring Break and we crammed it as full as possible. It was so much fun, but I'll be honest by the time school started up again, I was breathing a sigh of relief. I have always loved Spring, but here in Brisby it just feels a little flipped.  It's October and we're celebrating "new life" and the beginnings of warmer (hot) weather.  So strange to mix Halloween (which is not really celebrated here) with the ideas of baby birds hatching and trees blossoming.  It makes me shake my head and scrunch my nose sometimes while I make the adjustment in my mind, but hey--Spring is great no matter where you are!  We kicked off the break with "Bottomless Slurpee Day"...that's right folks, I was in heaven!  I feel like having Slurpees here in Aussie (real 7-11 Slurpees) is a tender mercy from heaven!  We love having a

 7-11 here and very close by.  In fact, Park takes his bike and a $2 coin and $1 coin to get a slurpee every so often on his own.  So grown up!  Anyway, the 7-11 here literally hosted a Bottomless Slurpee day.  We paid our $3 for our cup and refilled it all day.  You had to bring your same cup in each time and they would give you a sticker for your fill.  We filled it 7 times...you know me-- I'm all about getting our monies worth!  And yah...we had some solid brain freezes to go along with it!  We love Slurpees!

We also visited Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.  Oaks and I had been but the other 2 hadn't.  It's just too awesome to really even write about.  Parker and Birdy had so much fun lounging with the roos, petting koalas and making the cockatoos talk.  This is just such a fun place.  We got a couple shots of the joeys climbing in and out of the mama's pouches. Fascinating!

Feeding the roos never gets old.  They were hungry and so friendly!

Check out the size of the those paws!  That's Park's hand in the mix.

 Oaklee just LOVES animals.  She just snuggles right in and chats em up a little...or a lot!

Pucker up little guy!

The joeys were so adorable.  Their fur is soft and the kids couldn't get enough of them.

These black cockatoos were pretty cool.

Of course there were lots of friendly water dragons.  We shared our pears with them!

 There are so many cool things to see at Lone Pine.  Very Aussie...we watched the tazmanian devil prance around his pen.  They look as mean as they really are!!!  All I can think of when I see these rascally guys is...The Fire Swamp-- "Wesley, what about the R.O.U.S's?"

"Rodents of Unusual Size?  I don't believe they exist."  Well as we all remember from Princess Bride, Buttercup was right...they do exist.  And they live here in Australia under their pseudonym "Tazmanian Devils"...don't they look just like them?
 

Mom, Bird and Oaks had a couple "girls' days" when Park went to a friend's house.  We biked to a little corner cafe and ate yummy fancy food.  We went to see a movie (Turbo) at the South Bank Cinemas (not theaters here...always cinemas).  Southbank is a really fun area in downtown Brisby.  It's a couple miles long and it's just shopping, cinemas, tons of food and water play places.

This is the Southbank man-made beach.  Isn't it cool how it's right down town?  They have literally made a beach here.  Sandy banks and all.  They water is only about waist deep so it's a great place for the girls to play and swim...while mom holds the sand down!  :)

These 2 kill me.  Sorry to bug, but they are so stinkin cute! Notice Birdy's new missing tooth!
 Another Spring Break event!

 So much going on...we had to catch a few naps too!  I mean it is supposed to be a "break" right?

There were a lot of other really fabulous things we did over spring break, like our camping trip to Stradbroke Island and our experience at the amazing Riverfire firework show at the Brisbane City Festival but they were so big and awesome that they deserve their own posts.  So I will have to post on those later this week.  In between loads of laundry and sweeping sand out of our car...an impossible task I'm coming to learn!  I guess it's just a beachy car and people here live with a little grit on the floor at all times!  If it means more beach time...we can live with it too!