Campervan Adventures, Penguins and Losing my Phone for 18 hours

After seeing so many campervans on the road, Carlos and I decided to rent one of our own for the last part of our trip through southern Victoria!

Driving on the left........took some getting used to but it became second nature.

Shifting with my left hand....not a problem.

But it was the turn signal that I never got.  When I went to signal, I would turn on the windshield wipers!  Also, how many times would I go to get in the camper and go to the wrong door. The Aussies should wire up cameras in parking lots and create a video of all us American/Europeans who walk around the car trying to figure out the door situation!

First stop, Philip Island.

Why?  Because of these little penguins!

On the southern coast of Philip Island is the home of one of Australia's largest penguin colony's.  Each night, just as it gets dark (to avoid their natural predators), the penguins come onshore at the same spot (these are habitual animals) and then work their way up to their nests.

We get to watch them come ashore and then follow them along a path to their nests.  It's totally cute.

Penguins head out to sea for weeks at a time so the number of penguins that actually arrive each night varies.  I think on our evening, we saw about 500.

I didn't know there were so many species of penguins.  The one's here at Philip Island are the smallest in the world.  The one's I always think of are the Emperor Penguins.

No pictures allowed of penguins as they get scared of the flashes, but here's a live penguin in it's nest/home!

As you leave, the center asks you to look underneath your car to make sure there aren't any stray penguins.

Right after this moment, I realized I didn't have my phone.  I searched all around for it.  In the van, back at the center and in the gift shop.  No where. My guess is that I put it down when I was using my regular camera and perhaps, someone had walked away with it. We drove away that evening and I resigned myself to living without a phone. In addition, I had turned off, or in some cases not even activated any of the mechanisms with which to find my phone.  The ringer was off.  I turned off cellular data and I had not activated "find my phone."  In addition, I had not backed up anything to the cloud.  All my contacts and most of my photos were gone. Also, my podcasts and the books I was reading were gone.  And I was scared that I didn't know how to get a hold of Onions because I never call him and I don't know his phone number.  (Luckily, I had his email saved in my email address book).  But, I realized how dependent I was on my phone.  For the next 18 hours until I found my phone (it was actually in the van dropped into that space between the seat and the middle console, I was aware of all the times I would have reached for my phone for to "distract" me.  And it was A LOT.  I went to sleep early and I sat there just staring off into space for minutes (not hours) at a time.  I was amazed to learn how much of my time is filled up by having my phone to my face. Once I found it, I vowed to be much more conscious of how I use the phone and to back things up.  But as I write this, six weeks later, little has changed. I have become that person I used to mock....and iPhone addict.

Melbourne

Back in the big city after a flight from Cairns.  Rocking public transportation with my Myki card!

In Melbourne, we were lucky to have dinner with the cousin of a friend of Carlos.  The Smith's of Melbourne.  Alas, Cousin Susie is taking the picture, but Dad Brendan and Tommy the wombat are pictured.

During our first full day, we spent the morning and afternoon with our new friends Adam and his mother Judy.  They stayed in the same building as us.

Immigration....an issue everywhere!

Where we spent the morning.....ACMI in Federation Square.

There was an awesome Dreamworks exhibition.

The exhibition told of the process of creating an animated feature film.  Here's the story boarding process.

Here we have MATH, trigonometry to be precise, in action.  Using sine curves, and changing the amplitude and the period, we can create ocean wave motion! Look carefully at the settings on the bottom.

We also had an opportunity to use an animation board and create our own short film. I made the sun rise and set.  More math.....translations and rotation matrices!

Wandering through the streets of Melbourne, we found the reading room in the national library!

Of course we took a load off for an hour and logged into wifi!

Last stop, before dark, watching graffiti artists on Hosier lane.

That evening.....Guardians of the Galaxy!

Cape Tribulation

Driving north from Cairns along the Captain James Cook Highway.

First stop was the Daintree Discovery Center. Looking at the rainforest again, I thought about how amazing it was that the natives who lived here could look into the flora and "read" it, knowing which produced edible fruits and which were dangerously poisonous.

The fan palm.....easy to recognize and my favorite.

Speaking of "reading" the rainforest, this plant right here....poisonous. I guess in a life and death situation, you would learn, but I'm pretty clueless.  Were I a native, I'd probably touch it and suffer.

The spiky leaves are the giveaway sign.

Strangler trees!  The seeds are deposited by birds at the TOP of the tree, and then the roots grow down the host tree, essentially strangling it.  The host tree eventually dies.

The northern part of Queensland is home to the endangered Southern Cassowary, a HUGE bird that is important because it disperses seeds around in its feces.  The cassowary eats many fruits with large seeds and then it moves along and passes those seeds to new places.  The cassowary feces is the only mechanism for certain plants to regenerate.  Plus, they are just cool looking. The center has cassowary on site but they didn't make an appearance.  Carlos and I were VERY disappointed.

All along the Cape Tribulation drive were warnings to watch out for cassowary. 

And then.....along the side of the road!  A CASSOWARY.  We saw one!

And then our destination.  Cape Tribulation.  Where the "rainforest meets the sea."  Two UNESCO world heritage sites, of such different natural phenomena, meeting at the same place.

Carlos (in the rainforest) taking a picture of me on the Great Barrier Reef (well kind of).

The reverse!

Next stop.....South America!

Happiness is the wind in one's hair!  And having seen a CASSOWARY.