Australia and New Zealand

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Love seeing those photos. Apppreciate you sharing them Stoplight. Australia and New Zealand is on our bucket list.
Enjoy.
 
Florence Falls, Litchfield National Park, Northwest Territory (south of Darwin)....beautiful park !!!


Stoplight...


Florence Falls - Litchfield National Park, Northern Territory.jpg
 
Katherine Gorge, in Nitmiluk National Park...(way !) south of Darwin...

Funny story : We live, and grew up, in Florida, with hurricanes...so we travel half way around the world to end up in what ??? A cyclone warning in Darwin !!! :eek:
It was a CAT 2, but passed west of us... Geez...


Stoplight...



Katherine Gorge.jpg
 
does the water in the toilet bowl really circle counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere? is it the same for hurricanes?
 
Burro,

I can verify that their cyclones (hurricanes) do indeed rotate the "wrong" way ! Weather Weenie can probably confirm that...

The toilets have been more difficult...they use this weird 2-button flush method ("light" and "heavy duty" ("doody" ???) , so water comes in from all directions, regardless of which button you push ! My research continues... :D


Stoplight...
 
Two opal "souvenirs" coming back with us, from Coober Pedy, "The Opal Mining Capital of the World" ! :eek:

Actually quite beautiful....like everything else, a picture doesn't do them justice :smile:


Stoplight...




Opal Souvenirs.jpg
 
WOO HOO !!! (or maybe BOO HOO !)

After ~ 30 hours of convoluted flights, from Sydney to LAX to Atlanta to Pensacola, we're home safely ! Managed to squeeze in a visit with the Wife's Niece, in LAX, during our 6 hour layover there...she fought LA traffic, and came to the airport, to meet us for breakfast...another neat (50-something ! :eek: ) "Kid" !!!

What a FAN-DAM-TASTIC trip ! :smile:

...will cull through our 10,000 photos and post some more, over the coming days. Right now, I'm SOOO messed up...the time/date change sure messes with the body, and the mind !!! :eek:

Burro...the samples I collected for you...the "waypoints" you wanted...made it safely back with us ! I got ya some good samples...don't look like much, but they're from 2 neat places...the "center of creation", per the indigenous Peoples ! I took geo-tagged pix of the places where I collected them, so you can verify, and know I'm not BS'ing you ! :D PM me, with how you want them delivered to the "Frozen Tundra".... :smile:

The WORST part of this whole trip is going to be going back through a month's worth of market changes, and updating my Quicken files !!! :eek:


Stoplight...
 
stoplight,

Welcome back. Yeah the flight from LAX to Sydney was tough but the flight home was brutal; Sydney-LAX-Chicago O'Hare-Cleveland.

Looking forward to seeing some of your pictures. Did you get to Hobbiton?
 
hey there stoplight, i will trade you one ounce of silver for those magic vortex center of creation rocks.
 
nasa1974 said:
stoplight,

Welcome back. Yeah the flight from LAX to Sydney was tough but the flight home was brutal; Sydney-LAX-Chicago O'Hare-Cleveland.

Looking forward to seeing some of your pictures. Did you get to Hobbiton?
Click to expand...

Thanks Nasa !

AGREE !!! The flight home seemed MUCH longer than the flight out, even though it was the same class, etc etc. We really liked the Virgin Australian folks on the flight...Delta folks were good, too, but more aloof... We're STILL trying to adapt to the time zone change, which also included the Daylight Savings Time shift...Geez !!! :eek:

We didn't do the Hobbiton tour in Wellington, but we did one on South Island, called "Journey to Middle Earth - Lord of the Rings High Country". It went through the Southern Alps...beautiful country !

The main stop was a place called Mt Sunday, where the scenes in the "City of Edoras" were filmed..."Riders of Rohan" , "Worm Tongue", etc As you know, all the sets were removed, and the land restored to it's original condition.

Here's what it looked like, in the movie :


Edoras in the Movie.jpg



...and here is what it looks like today !!!


Edoras (Mt Sunday) Today.jpg


Beautiful country !!! :D


Stoplight...
 
Soooo....elsewhere on the Board, I made a deal with Burro....a TSP Talk silver coin that he won, in the TSP Poker Club, for some rock samples from the sacred sites in the Southern Hemisphere...."waypoints" for him !

I received my coin today, and it's really cool !!! OTOH, I feel bad that I haven't mailed him the rock samples I collected... :embarrest: So I'll post a few images here, and the commentary, to hopefully keep him happy, while I put together his mailing... :eek:

Now that I'm home, I can tweak the pix a little...mostly just down-sizing, so they don't take up too much bandwidth !

So here's another pic I took of the Uluru sunrise. It was quite a dynamic place....the colors of this "Rock" changed continuously, both during the sunset and sunrise we saw...a beautiful, mysterious place !!! ...As long as you move away from all the dang tourists ! :smile:


Uluru Sunrise.jpg


This is the location of the first sample we brought back for Burro, from Uluru...it's from the parking lot for the Mutitjulu Water Hole...a fascinating place !!!


Uluru Location.jpg


Along the walk to the Water Hole, we saw cliff paintings, and heard the "creation stories" of how this place came to be...



Stoplight...
 
After we saw the Uluru sunrise, our tour took us out to Kata Tjuta, or "The Olgas".. Our Guide explained : "We know a lot more about the Aboriginal Peoples, their "dreamtime" stories, and Uluru...they tell us "white fellas" their children's stories about Uluru, :smile: but they tell us nothing about Kata Tjuta. However, they want us to SEE this place, so they allow tourists to visit !!! :eek: Europeans think this is the place that the "creation spirits" came out of a hole in the earth, and created all geology, and life forms, on earth. Here's the Wikipedia entry, under "Legends" :

"There are many Pitjantjatjara Dreamtime legends associated with this place and indeed everything in the vicinity including Uluru / Ayers Rock. A number of legends surround the great snake king Wanambi, who is said to live on the summit of Kata Tjuta / Mount Olga and only comes down during the dry season. The majority of mythology surrounding the site is not disclosed to outsiders, and in particular, women. As is the custom, should women become known to the "men's business" they are susceptible to violent attacks, even death. The Anangu Aborigines believe the great rocks of Kata Tjuta are homes to spirit energy from the 'Dreaming', and since 1995 the site is being used once again for religious ceremonies.[7] "


Kata Tjuta


Kata Tjuta.jpg


Polite warning sign !


Kata Tjuta Warning.jpg


...and the view from the side of the trail, leading up to Walpa Gorge :


Kata Tjuta Location.jpg


Fascinating !!!


Stoplight...
 
i grew up in a red rock desert, oh i miss those shadows cross the face of the rock from morning to night. it is never the same on any day. beautiful place. and the dream stories, they matter. the specific location of the waypoints don't matter, it is not an exact science, but if you are falling through the ether then all you need is a regional marker to orient, once close the giant origin vortex will pull you in, you can't hardly miss it. in fact, i hope the rocks came from a parking lot of processed gravel, and that some magic man or woman peed on them before. or anybody, we all have magic inside. life is good.

take your time, i grew up on reservations at some points and have a foster brother and a native ex wife. i operate on rez time. when it gets here it gets here, when it needs done it gets done. all good hollywood.
 
burrocrat said:
...

...in fact, i hope the rocks came from a parking lot of processed gravel, and that some magic man or woman peed on them before. or anybody, we all have magic inside. life is good.

...
Click to expand...

The sample did indeed come from the parking lot ! I almost peed on it myself...I HAD to go !!! I CAN do that, before I mail it to you, if you want !!! :D

Not processed gravel, brought in from someplace else, though...no need !!! It was "local material"...

The thing that made me pick it up here ? The Guide gathered us all around him (a bus-load of Aussies, Kiwis, Chinese, and a few US tourists, and used a stick to scratch lines in the dirt, to "explain" the stories, and what we were seeing on the rock faces above us...traces of the snake, etc etc ! It occurred to me : "This is EXACTLY how the stories are passed, from one generation to the next !!!" :eek: OMG....


Stoplight...
 
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