Post Thirteen - Beach Life

I did a little surfing when I lived in Florida but never really got up on the board. In Coff's Harbor, I took a surfing lesson and at the end of two hours, I was standing. I got the chance to surf at several other beaches in Australia and had a blast. There really is nothing like the feel of catching a wave. The water was the perfect temperature and the only thing you have to worry about is the intense sun and sharks (actually, the sun is probably more of a threat). Everywhere we went in New South Wales we found uncrowded, unspoiled beaches like this one (and NSW is the most populated state in Australia). -- Scott

These creatures made their home in almost every tidepool I inspected in on the east coast. They are bizarre, beautiful animals that look like something from another planet, or at least from another geologic time. In fact, they remind me of trilobites, which went extinct about 250 million years ago at the end of the Paleozoic. This little guy was probably about an inch long. -- Karen

We found this creature washed up on a beach. It's about a half-inch long and looked like a blue blob lying on the sand. Once we put it in water, however, it opened out into the alien looking thing you see here. Someone told us it was a nudibranch. Whatever it is, it sure was cool looking. -- Scott

This rainforest carpets a a mountainside opposite Mt. Warning, north of Byron Bay. Captain Cook named the peak Mt. Warning because to was the first sign that a treacherous cape was up ahead (which he aptly named Cape Danger). You might not be able to tell, but you are looking at acres of tree ferns, lovely plants that grow 10-15 feet tall and stretch their lush fronds out like a bright green umbrella. The sunlight came through the rainclouds at just the right time for Scott to snap this. -- Karen

My photos are all digital so they are easily manipulated on a computer. I use a program called Paint Shop Pro to crop, adjust the colors a bit, and compress my images for the web. Like Photoshop, this program has plenty of other features I haven't had a chance to get into yet. For example, both programs come with filters that make an image look like a painting, a kaleidoscope, an acid trip, etc. Generally I like to show my photos as is, but this picture of the center of a palm seemed perfect to be altered into something else. -- Scott

Scott and I found our perfect beach about an hour north of Byron Bay. Cabarita Beach is a long, beautiful, white sand beach with great boogie boarding waves (awesome) and pretty good surfing, too (so Scott tells me) -- and this isn't even it! You're looking at the beach to the south of our little paradise. At this point, I fully understood why our expat friends Jaybe and Shelly decided to go Ozzie. The camera doesn't lie.... -- Karen

We sought out this cave to see glow worms, but couldn't see them in the daylight (you need total darkness to see them). Fortunately, we saw some later in our trip. And the hike through this stretch of rainforest was worth it on its own. -- Karen

We came to Australia with few expectations. If anything we thought we'd find a country similar in culture and appearance to the United States. What we found was a unique continent with unique inhabitants. The weather is warm, the sand clean, the cities safe, the prices affordable and the entire country is wide open and uncrowded. We expected to be bored. On the contrary, we were intrigued perhaps more then any other country we visited. We will definitely be back - we barely scratched the surface in our month there. By the end of our trip, we understood why JB and his family moved back here. Who knows, maybe we'll end up here someday. -- Scott