Barbara Goes to Australia

Barbara Australia 2006

Jul 31, 2006 - 35 Photos

Rachel and I flew back from Australia on August 2. We split up in Los Angeles so she could go to Washington, D.C. and I returned to Austin. I had a wonderful time with Rachel and was amazed at how beautiful the area is. David took the photos from the digital camera and loaded them to the attached site. (I have no idea how to do that.) Since there are no captions, I will explain a few things. Rachel and I went snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef. There are several photos of hump-back whales that swam surprisingly close to the ship as we were headed out to the outer section of the reef. I assure you we never saw whales why snorkeling. There are some shots of Rachel swimming back to the boat (I got out before she did) and one of me in a wetsuit after coming aboard. (It is still winter there and although we were very far north, the water wasn’t warm enough for me without a wetsuit. Brave Rachel snorkeled without a wetsuit.)

There are also several shots of our day trip into Brisbane. The plants growing up an archway are bougainvilleas which. They are quite prevalent in landscapes around Brisbane. If you’ve ever grown them, you understand how sensitive they are to frost. Brisbane close to (but south of) the Tropic of Capricorn so has a very moderate climate in winter.

Rachel and I also visited Currumbin which is a wildlife refuge. The slides include several Kangaroos (including one with a full pouch), a Tasmanian Devil, Koalas and several other birds. The 18-foot crocodile was also at the wildlife refuge, with several barriers to keep it far away from people.

I think I sent all of you the photos from David’s trip. If I didn’t, please let me know and I will pass them on. I’m very glad David, Russell and I were all able to visit Rachel even though we had to split up the trips to accommodate John’s needs. It worked out well. BYU Law School’s placement office gets high marks from us for helping Rachel get the internship. The law firm where she interned has had a BYU 1st year intern for the last 10 American summers. If you missed out on Rachel’s blog, you can still read it at http://racheldownunder.blogspot.com/

A nice surprise on the trip back was Rachel handing me her IPOD shuffle with Jim’s BYU-H devotional talk loaded into it. I had read it but never heard it (and thus had missed out on Sharon’s introduction of Jim. It was nice to listen to while flying across the Pacific.