While the conference ended on Thursday, there were optional activities on Friday: a field trip into the rainforests and two classes. After Jonathan got everything started first thing in the morning, he returned to get the rest of us, and we headed north to a resort town called Palm Cove.
    We stayed on the main beachfront road, one side with shops, restaurants, and hotels, and the other with a great walkway and lovely beach.
    The waterfront was beautiful, so instead of words to describe it, we will let the pictures do the talking.

There was a special picture John wanted to take while we were on the beach. He was trying to duplicate one taken 13 years ago. Both pictures were taken of the same three ladies standing on a beach looking out over the South Pacific Ocean. See if you can tell which is which.

Saturday, the 18th, we flew to Sydney and are back at the kids’ house. Time to unpack, and in only a week, we’ll be packing again for our trip home.
    Have a great weekend!!

The conference wrapped up on Thursday. We would say it was an overall success. But before we leave the conference, we promised you all some more pictures of the Cairns Conference Centre (CCC). It was a fabulous facility, and their great staff went all-out in helping make our conference a hit.
    Here are just a few pictures of the venue:

On Wednesday evening, the Conference held Wines of the World. Delegates were invited to bring wines from their home countries and share. Thirty-seven brought wine, so there were plenty to sample from. Add to that, a great array of finger-foods, and it was a fun event.
    Attendees voted for the most surprising wine, the wine with the best vibe, and the best wine. Prizes were then awarded at the Awards Ceremony.
    The event was held on the top floor of the CCC, and the view out the windows was fantastic. Take a better look below.

We were told that Cairns has a great aquarium. We’ve always liked them, so John, Beverly, and Noelle went there on Wednesday. It was a little smaller than the Sydney one we took you to earlier, but what made this one different was that it also focused on animals that lived close to the water, like lizards and crocs. Here are a few pictures.

This one is called a pig-nosed turtle
I wonder why?

An unusual “fish” cleaning the tank

Never saw a croc lying on a tree like that,
but they’re cold-blooded, and it’s warm under the heat lamp

This one seemed to enjoy Beverly’s pretend chin-scratch. Then we found out he was still a teenager and was being hand-fed, so he was probably just looking for food. This is Australia’s largest fish, and it’s only half-grown.

This guy reminded us of the opening scene
from The Lion King

A lion-fish. Apparently, they’re very dangerous when they enter a new area of the ocean; they literally eat everything smaller than them.

We took a side-tour at the aquarium. There are many turtles throughout the tropics, including northeast Australia. Many turtles are found injured, either from disease or from injuries caused by boats, fishing lines, etc. To help with this, the aquarium has one of several turtle hospitals in the area.

We’d like to introduce you to one of the patients, Tommy.

Tommy came to the hospital with a cancer that is relatively common among turtles. It causes skin tumors and eventually kills them. If we understood correctly, Tommy was the first turtle to survive the treatment and surgery for it. They have used Tommy to help create a vaccine for this cancer, and it’s now being tested.
    The moment we walked in, Tommy was slapping the water to get our attention. We were not allowed to touch him, but as you can see below, we could get quite close. We couldn’t feed him, but we could toss lettuce in the water for him to eat. They didn’t want him to learn that humans = food. Personally, we think he was smart enough to have that one figured out.

A conference dinner is often a boring event. Everyone stuck at tables with people they don’t know and not-so-exciting food. Generally boring and not too exciting. Jonathan and his planning team decided their conference needed something different … and they found something very different.
    They found Rainforeststation Nature Park. (www.rainforest.com.au) Located in the mountains outside Cairns, this park showcases the rainforest, its animals, and its traditions.

Six buses took the conference attendees up to the park. The evening started with a dance performance from an Aboriginal group. It was interesting how their dance had some similarities with those of our Aboriginal groups in Canada.

Dinner followed in the animal park. Three booths had pizza, burgers, and “wok” food. There was an ice cream station for dessert. While the attendees ate and mingled, handlers walked through the park with animals for everyone to see, touch, and learn about. Here are two of them below. John got to pet both. Beverly, well, she would only look but not touch.

An albino python

A baby crocodile

This park has one of the world’s largest fleets of “duck” boats, amphibious trucks built during WW2. We were unable to take a picture of one as it was dark, so this pic is “borrowed” from a news article about the park.

John went for a ride on one. He said it was fun bouncing through the rainforest, up/down steep hills in the dark with only a few spotlights shining the way. At one point, they drove into a pond and transformed into a boat. Clear of the forest trees, the driver turned off all the lights, and it was dark. Very dark, except for all the stars! Away from any light pollution, John said that he has rarely ever seen that many stars.

    There were also pens scattered about with birds, Tasmanian devils, crocs, snakes, wallabies, and many more. We can’t show them all, but here are two.

These are Gouldian Finches; Mom, Dad, and 5 babies.
As it was now dark, they were bunching up to sleep.

And what is a mandatory animal in any Australian animal park? Of course, the wonderful koala. And what’s better than a koala? How about a mother koala and her baby!!

The handlers told us that the baby is a 3.5 month female named Jubilee.

One of the handlers walking the park had a 2-year-old male koala. Beverly did want to pet that one, but the line was too big. She managed a close look and declared he was incredibly cute.
    As this was an International conference, it was the first time in Australia for many attendees. This event provided them with a great Aussie experience and a unique conference dinner. Feedback was very positive.
    There’s still more to come from our time in Cairns. Come back soon.

On Saturday, while John & Jonathan were at the reef, Beverly and Noelle spent time in our pool.

A pre-conference event was held on Sunday, which Jonathan and Krista attended. While they were away, John, Beverly, and Noelle wandered the grounds of our complex with the camera. The complex is huge, with gardens, pools, ponds, waterfalls, fountains, and more. (Beverly has been crocheting … see that over-shirt Noelle is wearing?)

There are comments about how John never smiles in his pictures … well, sorry, that’s just the way he is. He likes taking pictures, not being in them.

And, first thing Monday morning, the conference began. Over a year of preparation finally comes to an end. John, Beverly, and Noelle all helped out with registration and showing the conference delegates around.

Who is that lovely lady at the registration desk??

Jonathan giving the opening welcome talk for the conference.

That’s all for now. Tomorrow we’re taking some time off from the registration desk to hear presentations from both Krista and Jonathan. We’ll try to post some more conference shots later this week. The conference center is really nice, and we’d like to show you a bit of it.

Today, John and Jonathan headed to the wharf and boarded this boat for a ride out to the Great Barrier Reef.

The boat took everyone to a “Pontoon,” a large, floating platform located out in the reef, where there were many reef-related activities for everyone … snorkeling, scuba, a glass bottom boat, and, of course, lunch.

John did snorkel, but found it challenging. His mask kept leaking! But in the short time he was in the water, he got some good pictures. Depending on the sunlight, the reef was either clear or cloudy.

There is one more activity not yet mentioned. Notice the helicopter coming in to land on that small platform. Notice the small boat ferrying people out to it. Yup, our package included a helicopter ride over the reef. In John’s opinion, this was the best part of the adventure.

Seeing the reef from the air really shows you its enormity. The pilot said the area of the reef compares to the total landmass of Japan.

Returning to land at the platform, John managed to get a great shot of the pontoon. You can see the boat beside the Pontoon. The mid-sized boat coming into the dock is a semi-submersible boat. The small one on the left side is a glass-bottomed boat. You can see the helicopter platform out on the far left.

Have a great day, everyone!

    Hello from Cairns. Yesterday, our trip here went well, and we arrived just after sunset. Everyone was hungry, so we went straight to an area by the waterfront called The Esplanade, an area full of restaurants, bars, and shops.

There were lots of things lighting up the night sky.

Below is a nice wading pool. The black beyond the pool, that’s the South Pacific Ocean. The next land is likely somewhere like Fiji.

A big thank you to our kids for finding us such a nice place to stay. When we arrived in the dark, we couldn’t see much, but in the morning, we went out to see the beautiful pool and gardens. The complex is very nice, but a bit dated as it was built 25 or so years ago and really hasn’t been updated. Regardless, a very nice place to call home for 10 days.

Take the above photo, move a bit to the right, and you can see how close we are to the pool. That’s our unit outlined in red.

Here’s a fun thing about Cairns. When we Canadians look at the city’s name, Cairns, we would pronounce it the way it’s spelled: car-n-z. And our Aussie friends? Nope. They pronounce it cans, the same as in the phrase: “there are ten cans of soup.” But then again, we do that too. The silent “k” in knife, the silent “l” in salmon, the silent “b” in climb, or Wednesday becoming wenz-day.
Everyone, have a great weekend. We’ll be back with another post either tomorrow or the next day.

    Hello everyone. Just a short post today. This week, our kids are crazy busy with last-minute preparations for the conference and our trip north to Cairns. We help wherever we can with odd jobs, errands, or simply making dinner.

One job was helping to make the lanyards for conference attendees. Here, we are putting a ribbon on the card. The ribbon is fed through a slot in the card, looped around, and “welded” to the ribbon on the other side. As this ribbon is primarily made of plastic, we can use this device, which is normally used to seal plastic bags.

This is what the lanyard looks like. We must brag a little. Our son, David, is the graphic designer who put it all together.

There was a bit of fun time squeezed in. Noelle and the two of us went to this mall to get some stuff. John was watching Noelle and Beverly walking down the mall, and just had to take a quick picture.

We were going to a store called Spotlight. Imagine: (a) the biggest sewing store you’ve ever seen, (b) an enormous Bed, Bath, & Beyond type of store, and (c) a large craft type store like Michaels. Now combine all three into one … and you have Spotlight. A very interesting store.

That’s all for today. Tomorrow we head back to the airport and fly north to Cairns. We’re really looking forward to our second visit to that part of Australia. That area is the start of the tropics and rainforests. Remember that July here is the middle of winter and the “coldest” time of the year. Yet, the average July daytime high in Cairns is 25°C. We’re looking forward to spending some time in the pool.

    First of all, an apology. It’s been a long time since our last post. The start of Jonathan’s conference is fast approaching, and we have been conscripted as volunteer laborers to help with prep. A busy time.

But today we took a break, got dressed in period costumes, and went to a medieval fair.

This event was certainly popular. People, people, people, and many of them
dressed up in costume … we estimated 60% were.

A highlight for us was the skill riding competition with the horses. Beverly especially likes Friesian horses, like this beautiful one to the right.

There was a bird demonstration. Beverly got chosen to have a black cockatoo visit with her.

There’s something becoming very popular called cosplay. The word is a combination of “costume” and “play”, with people dressing up and role-playing as characters, whether from movies, games, or books, they are mainly from the fantasy genre. Think video games, Lord of the Rings, wizards, elves, etc. Here are some that we met:

Have a great weekend!!