Iter Facere

Hamilton Island

Hamilton Island. We arrived here at noon, from Brisbane. Finally. It is a long trip from Philadelphia. Since we had a twelve hour layover in Los Angeles, Paul picked us up at the airport and drove us to his house. Unfortunately, we arrived an hour early, and couldn’t get ahold of Paul to let him know, so we had to wait. I didn’t bring my cell phone because I didn’t want to carry it around Australia, so I spent $5.00 in quarters trying to get Paul. Next time I won’t worry so much about a little extra weight. The trip from LAX to Brisbane was uneventful. Every seat in the plane was occupied, many by very excited college students on their way to a semester at University of Queensland. Jenny and I were in row 74 of 75, in the center. Jenny’s neighbor amply occupied his seat and constantly harassed the attendants. The entire flight is in the dark, since we left at 11:30 PM and arrived at 6:30 AM in Brisbane. Jenny slept most of the way. I woke up after sleeping for hours, and realized there was still another 5 to go. Back to sleep fortunately. In retrospect, the flight is not as bad as I had imagined.
We were entertained during our layover by the troubles of a couple on their way to Hayman Island. Their travel agent had booked them on a flight that departed on Monday, although they arrived today, Tuesday. The flight from LA hadn’t left them in the best of moods for dealing with the problem. They ended up on the same flight as us to Hamilton, where they caught a boat to their island to join the Shakespeare conference.
All of Hamilton Island is one large resort. It has a little street along the marina with shops and restaurants, and several different accommodations. We are in a “bungalow”, which is quite nice. It’s a little hut with a large room and a kitchenette. We were warned to keep the door closed to keep the cockatoos out. I thought it was a bit much, but as we wandered around we discovered they are the local pigeon. They’re big, about a foot long, white with a yellow crest. We met one in the Koala Garden, which kept saying “bye-bye” as we left it. Tonight we go back to the Koala Garden to see a nighttime tour which promises to show us baby koala bears. We walked through the garden and saw various odd Australian creatures, the most alarming being the no-see-um salt-water crocodile, eight feet long that was four feet away from us, but neither of us spotted it until we had walked past it twice.
We had lunch at the marina, marveling at the blue of the water. Very unlike New Jersey observed Jenny. We then arranged our scuba adventure. It will be Thursday, starting at 7:30 am in the pool for instruction and then to the boat for the hoped for trip to the Outer Reef. It might be too windy to go out there on Thursday. If so, we will dive on the reefs on some of the nearby islands. We also arranged for a trip on a glass-bottomed boat tomorrow to see the reef.
Then to the golf range for a bucket of balls apiece, then the shooting range to practice our marksmanship and then back to the room. We picked up the computer to go to the Internet kiosk only to discover it closed at 5:00...20 minutes ago. So now I’m typing this up while we wait for our night time koala hunt. Hopefully I can upload this in the morning. They open at 9:00.

Dinner was at the Toucan Tango Restaurant (get it?). A nice reisling and shiraz with my beef rib filet. Jenny had chicken. The waitress kept getting confused because the maitre'd had moved our table outside, throw off her table count.

posted by Jim @ 1:45 AM