Day 11



Jen's Account of the Day

We were up and at it early again, this time to the southwest of Brisbane to check out another mountain range. Breakfast was whatever we could find laying around the apartment (cheese, more cheese, some crackers and cookies). Our first stop was this resort on the top of a mountain that had some boardwalks and such. The road up there was really winding and progress was slow, so we didn’t spend a whole lot of time there. They did have a ladder so you could climb up one of the trees. The view was beautiful.

Instead of doing our originally planned hike, we checked out a large garden next to the tree walk. Some stuff was still in bloom, and there were some birds hanging around. We all split up and it took a while for everyone to regroup again. We looked for Ashley for some time, but apparently she’d gone back to the gift shop and hadn’t told anyone.

The menfolk surprised us with a lunch reservation at a nearby winery, which was why we were somewhat rushed heading back down the mountain. We saw a group of kangaroos hanging out in one of the cow pastures and finally got a picture of the little buggers in the wild. I think everyone was pretty queasy by the time we got there, but some bubbles (what Queenslanders call sparkling wine) and good food put us back in good spirits.

The wine made everyone pretty mellow, but we nonetheless headed over to the koala sanctuary, back in Brisbane. It was worth the trip. We got to see koalas and their babies in their pouches up close. They had an open pen where you could (dodge emus) feed and pet the kangaroos. We didn’t have any food, but some of the kangaroos got up pretty close to us. One mother with her somewhat oversized joey in her pocket came right up to me and started sniffing my feet and leg. I petted her a little bit, but I didn’t want to startle her since she had her baby with her. I suppose I shouldn’t have been so concerned. These were pretty domesticated kangaroos that seemed largely unconcerned with our presence.

By this point everyone, especially Matt was pretty exhausted and it was getting dark. We navigated back to our hotel without too much trouble for once and everyone promptly crashed. I barely stayed awake long enough to do laundry.



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Day 12