Along the way... places and faces.

                                                               A PICTURE POST
                                                             

Southport, Queensland

Homeschool group

During our drive to Sydney, we met up with a homeschooling group.

 

We joined in their activity. It's kind of hard to explain. It was like a jumping castle/floating island! The picture below explains.

There were lots of things to do on this floating island. There was a climbing wall, three trampolines, a swing, and mountains that you could climb to the top of.

       Here we are on top of one of the mountains. It was an up hill climb! Literally!

    WAIT A MINUTE! Is he giving me bunny ears?!?!?!

                                    Can someone out there please tell me what these are? Again they're a mix of two things! A bike and a train.

Wow imagine trying to fit this compass in your back pocket!

Do you see the white concrete and the dark concrete?
The white concrete marks Queensland, and the dark marks New South Wales!
It's on the border between the two states.
So technically, this picture was taken in NSW.  

 

Byron Bay, New South Wales

This is  Byron Bay's iconic lighthouse. It's still operational! 

As seen here.

 

As far east as we can go in Australia. We can't go any further east on the Australian mainland.

We visited an amazing place, Crystal Castle, near Byron Bay.

One of the worlds tallest amethyst crystals!

                                    Like the sign says.

                                                             A huge quartz crystal. Made up of so many points.

  Walking the labyrinth. "A labyrinth is a walking meditaton...... a spiritual tool for reconnecting with your inner voice. An exercise for the mind, body and spirit."
-Sig Laregren
 

An enormous statue of Buddha. Also known as Siddhārtha Gautama

 

A rose quartz water fountain.

Spinning balls are always so memorizing. 

A Stupa is a mound-like or semi-hemispherical structure, that is used by Buddhists as a place of meditation.

  Australian Beaches
I think we have some of the best beaches in the world!

 

The shipwreck of the SS Wollongbar. The Wollongbar was leaving Byron Bay on May 14 1921, when a gale hit the east coast. The wind and currents where so strong, that the ship ran aground and sank. 


As you see below, time has take its toll on the old ship.

SS Wollongbar. This is all that is left of it.



The Big Banana at Coffs Harbour. ( That rhymes!)

Now that's a Big Banana!

 

Sydney Art Gallery

There where many amazing displays!
But this one was definitely my fav.

I still don't understand how they did that!

 With my cousins Jack and Laura.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

and

Sydney Opera House

 Boarding the ferry.  

 Luna Park. That face always gives me the creeps.

  It was like a mini Disneyland!

                                         Hahaha! This picture never gets old! I think it suits my sister!

On the train heading to Melbourne. It was a 10.5 hour train ride! But it took 12 hours.

 

 

Thank you for reading my blog post!

On the road...

Hello it's me Jera again.

And in this blog post, I am going to be telling you about our trip down the Australian south-east coast.

 We're heading to Melbourne to visit my mum's family. But flying
 is kind of old so we're driving down in a campervan!

We loaded up the camper van, and headed for the Gold Coast.

                          Bye house! We will miss you.

                                                 We left Coolum in this.

It is a Britz campervan (motorhome).

It seats six, sleeps six, and has it's own little kitchen and bathroom!

See my next post for details about the places we visited along the way.

We drove up until Sydney.

When we had to give our beloved van back:(
But, maybe it was for the best because...

 as you can basically tell from the picture above,

WE TOOK THE TRAIN TO MELBOURNE!

We got up at 5am to get to the train station and leave by 7:33. It was a 10 1/2 hour journey but it took over an hour longer as we had to make a few unexpected stops along the way.
( Thanks a lot horses )

Going Down Under

Hello, it's me Jera, again. And, in this blog post I am going to tell you about our adventure as we headed to Australia. It all started when we left Hawai'i.
Thank you Rudy and Dora for inviting us. Rudy, my dad's friend, is reason we came to Hawai'i in the first place.
We woke up, finished packing, said our good byes and headed for Hilo International Airport, which is a 3 minute drive from his house. We checked in our bags at the check in counter and headed for our plane.

This is our plane it is a Hawaiian airlines Boeing 717.

When we boarded and went from this....



to this in five minutes

 

We then flew 210 miles from Hilo, Hawaii, to Honolulu, Oahu.

Here is Honolulu!

The crater is an old volcano called Diamond Head.

We stayed in Honolulu for 3 days, or so we thought...
On Wed, Feb, 2 we headed for Honolulu International Airport.

We went through check in fine. Security, a breeze. We boarded our plane on time too!

Here is our plane. It's a Jetstar airways Airbus A330.

 Five minutes before we where scheduled to leave, the PA came on. It said," Attention passengers, I am afraid that we can't go any where due to technical problems in the communication  unit, you are free to move around now and we will get back to you as soon as possible." About 1 hour later the PA came on again," Hello passengers, said the Captain, we are unable to fix the problem and we think it might just be some interference from the hills, so we are going to be taxing to each runway to see if we can get a better connection."

So we taxied out to each of the runways to see if we could get a better a connection. 

We couldn't!

Everyone disembarked from the plane and we were all bused to the Hilton Hotel for the night.

        

Here's the view from our balcony at the Hilton

The next day when we arrived at the airport. The plane had been fixed and we where ready to fly!

We the flew 5,071miles to Sydney, Aus. Then we had to get a connecting flight from Sydney to Brisbane. Here is the lovely sunset as we approached the airport.

 

Sorry for the lack of pictures in the post. They will come, as soon as I get Wi-Fi on my Ipad.

EDIT NOW COMPLETE

 

See you soon, Jera.