Hello, from the Land Down Under!

We just pulled out of Darwin, Australia a few days ago... again, this was my second time in Australia, though not nearly as nice as my time in Perth back in 2003... not that Darwin didn't seem like a nice town, but it's small (only around 100,000 people)... add to the fact that it's already a small town, but also that the Aussies treat New Year's in much the same way that we treat July 4th: we're talking *HUGE* party! The first day that we arrived at the Land Down Under, I had duty... which was probably for the best since EVERYONE on the ship as well as the Aussies themselves were doing nothing but drinking themselves into a stupor! The bars stayed open until 6AM!!! The downside to my being fortunate enough to miss all of that, however, is that the next day when I was allowed to leave the boat, practically NOTHING was open all day b/c everyone was at home sleeping and dealing with their hangovers! The next day was Sunday and the town opened somewhat but only for about 5 hours... and on Monday it was still a "National Holiday" and again, the town only stayed open for about 5 hours... kind of a bummer... the first and third days that I went out on the town I just went to the mall and saw a movie and did some very light shopping (especially the first day... everything was closed except K-Mart, "Big W's" (Walmart), McDonalds, Subway, and the theater.

The other factor that detracted from having a nice time was the weather... it was rainy (their "wet season"), EXTREMELY HOT (... "nah, mate, 'tis our kewl time of year it is... only in the high-90's on your scale... dont-ya feel the breeze???" -- breeze... what breeze??? High-90's??? Yeah, maybe not *TOO* bad, but it's 100% humidity!!!)... and oh yeah, while we were there it just so happens that it was in the middle of 3 weeks of heavy jelly-fish activity due to the surf... making it impossible to go diving because the jellies are in such concentrations, apparently it can be deadly... the only 3 weeks this happens in a YEAR, and it just so happens that's precisely when we were there!

So, no dive, no city life, no nothing really... yeah, not the greatest port visit... again, nothing against Darwin... just bad timing...

The second day, though, was pretty kewl... I went on a tour to a large, more wild type of zoo... it was basically large tracts of "natural-esque" landscape fenced in with animals roaming around wild... some of the areas you could enter and be very very close to the animals... in the case of the Roo's and Wallabees, you could even go right up and touch them! Though, the Roo's would come nowhere even close to us!

We also saw saw really neat bird flight demonstrations, and some really kewl fish and crocs. But definitely the highlight of the day was the Wallabees, as you will see below:



Brandon standing next to a Termite hill... wow, who knew that they were so BIG???


Brandon poses inside of a massive man-made rain-forest... this is actually a "room" enclosed in much the same way as a bird aviary, but on a much larger scale than the one you might have seen in your local zoo...


Brandon, petting a "Sleepy" older Wallabee... :)


Here Brandon has found a younger, spunkier, much more curious Wallabee... all he wanted to do was try and climb up on me and chew on my watch and ring...


Brandon, again with the curious Wallabee...

... and again...


A pic of the older "sleepy" Wallabee, doing what he probably does best...


"... WOOOOOW!!! I like your watch!!!"


"...mmmmmm.... thirrrrrsty...."