Our visit to the rain forest - O'Reilly's

Sorry this has taken so long. We are both full on in school and work mode at the moment. We took a drive last Sunday to the rain forests behind where we live. The park is called the Lamington National Park and we went to a place called O'Reilly's
Which was absolutely beautiful. These photos are in no particular order and for those who are a bit internet challenged you can click on then them and make them bigger.


These are the roads up to O'Reilly's. Its +- 30 km up the side of this huge mountain and it's pretty much a single road the whole way up with steep edges the entire way.




there are so many animals on the side of the road and plenty of these little mini Wallabies guys called Pademelons, they are very sweet and don't run away when they see foreigners with bald heads.









The main attraction I think are the birds, there are thousands of the little guys
all over the place. I'm not sure what the name of this parrot below is but never the less he's a parrot anyway and there are all different ones with amazingly bright colours. And they like to eat lots so we could relate on some kind of universal level.
Monika (as per usual) had a lovely bond with the young chaps and they couldn't leave her alone, another thing we have in common.


They land all over you. If you have seed on your head then they land there and eat till its done.


this is a special guy, he wouldn't leave us alone and loved having his photo taken up close.

Well the rest all speak for themselves so we hope you all enjoy. Please don't all be so far away a email never hurt anyone.

BBQ, Braai oder Grill

We are fitting right in with the locals at the moment. We bought a BBQ and have used it so much already I think the neighbours think we are crazy. Due to the fact that its gas it tastes a bit different to the Braai or Grill but after you've switched it on you can start cooking in 3 minutes, no waiting for coal.
For those who don't know Monika started work yesterday and says that the staff all seem really nice. I start on the 29th and cannot wait because I went round to the SAE in Byron Bay
the other day and I nearly had a heart attack when I saw the studios. Take a look for yourselves.

We are finally connected at home but our main email accounts are not working for some strange reason so please use our gmail accounts for now.
The weather has been mad. Its been about 30-38 degrees which is not so bad but with the humidity here you feel like you are dying. And at night it doesn't really cool down. Since we've been here I've only worn closed shoes once and only slept under the duvet once.

Hope to hear from you all soon...

Fishing Tweed Heads

Well as you can see Monika has a big smile on her face.... If you could see faces of the men on the boat that didn't catch a tuna.

So by now I'm sure you can tell that we went fishing, well Moni did any way. As most of my close friends and family know I get sea sick but love going out anyway. I took motion sickness tablets that actually seemed to work until my bladder got the better of me and I needed to use the onboard toilet. The fact that at some stages we were dealing with 4-6 meter swells because it was storming the days before should have told me not to go downstairs to use the toilet. I did anyway and then it started. Luckily it was not so bad this time so I could still sit and enjoy the views of all the towns along the coastline.
Monika is like a fish magnet, while the others were still baiting up she was pulling them out the water and caught more than anyone else on the boat. We've been eating fish ever since. The tuna was caught trawling and she is still bruised from the butt of the rod but she had a great time bringing the guy in.

The moment it happened.
The Skipper and his right hand man were loads of fun and both flirted with Moni from the time we left to when we got back. I think it was more for me though to keep me on my toes and my mind off vomiting.

We also caught a big ass shark. It was awesome to see, the problem I had was running from one side of the boat to the other trying to get a photo of the shark in the water. I didn't get the photo and after all the excitement the nausea kicked back in.

This is just the view of Tweed Heads from the boat on the way back in. Coolangatta is to the right of the photo but is basically the same town. Tweed heads is in New South Wales and Coolangatta is in Queensland. Its all very confusing because QLD is one hour behind NSW. So if you have an appointment you really have to make sure which side of town it is in and confirm which time zone's time you are using for the appointment or you'll be either late or early.

Saturday is the big day. We move into our place and we are both really looking forward to it. Please keep the comments coming its good to hear from all of you.

From Sydney to Tweed Heads

Our road to Sydney:

(I'm going to apologise in advance for any spelling mistakes)

We arrived in Sydney on the 13 Dec and we are still battling with jet lag. At first we couldn't sleep and now all we want to do is sleep. We spent the first few days looking for a car which was exhausting because of the jet lag and also the fact that Sydney is just so spread out.
Sydney is very beautiful but also very expensive so in a way we were happy to leave.

The car we got is big like everything else here. It is a Ford Falcon 4.0L V6. Luckily we got it with autogas which is a whole lot cheaper than the normal fuel.

This is a photo of me checking the water. Once we had the car we did what we do best and that was eat (we are still doing that though)

After leaving Sydney with our new can we made our way north to a area called Hunters Valley. Its a wine area kind of like Stellenbosch but the wine is not as nice.

The area does make up for the average wine though by its absolutely beautiful landscape. If you could cross the S.A landscape and a Texas ranch you'll have a pretty good idea.

The weather was crappy so sorry for the lack of a blue sky.

Coff's Harbour Pet Porpoise Pool:

The photos below are from this Porpoise pool place thing. It was loads of fun and we both got kissed by nature. Monika smelled a bit fishy afterwards and then got attacked by a Northern Aussie Black head Python. Only joking she chose to be hugged by both him and the man giving the show.

If any of you are in Coff"s Harbour you must make a plan to get to this place. The staff, animals and shows are really good.

Well, as you can see Monika is a better fisherman-woman than me.

She is the only one out of the 2 of us that has managed to catch something we could eat.

He was a little Bream within legal limit and was caught outside our flat in the Tweed River. We enjoyed it so much, the only problem is that we didn't have a braai to throw his ass on and had to fry him in a pan but he still tasted so dam good

Monika is also getting over her fear of removing the fish from the hook (well the small ones anyway) but I still have to kill the guys.

Our room with a view:

This is the view from our flat. This is the mouth of the Tweed River that's permanently open to the ocean.

It's actually awesome and because its open the dolphins come right in and swim outside the front door.

This river also goes +- 100km's in land and stays about this wide most of the way.

I'm sorry if the layout is all funny but I'm still learning this whole blogging thing. And spelling, ja the spelling....

We are still looking for our own place and as soon as we have one we'll get our own connection and stay more intouch. Please email, we still check every few days.

Internet????

Greetings to all from Sydney...

Just to let you know that we are not ignoring you, its just really difficult to find a place to plug my machine in. They have everything here but not too many internet cafes and when you do find one its in the city center. The problem with going to the city is that you have to know how the roads work because at most of the main traffic lights you cannot turn right or left so you end up driving around trying to get into the your street on the map.....very frustrating.

We've taken lots of photos and will post them when I can plug the machine in.

Until then, Andrew and Monika

Braai or Grill?

1 South African, 1 German and 2 French steaks... what a great combination!!! Especially the South African...

Today we went to France. As I said yesterday we are at Moni's parents house in Landau, Germany. Landau is in south/west Germany close to the French border. And today we went shopping for food.

We've been trying to save our figures for the beaches of Australia but with all the awesome food and wine from France it's a difficult thing to maintain. We bought 2 Entrecote steaks (as you can see) and we braaied them. Yes, braaied not grilled, grilled is something you do with pork. Anyway, we had a great time with the family and have eaten ourselves sick.

I can say that going over the border to France is a lot more fun than going over the border into Switzerland. On Wednesday we nearly got body cavity searched by the Swiss police, but thats a whole separate post on its own...

And We're Almost Off

Monika and I are sitting in Moni's parents house in Landau, south/west Germany trying to get the last few things done before we fly to Australia on Tuesday.
Stupid little things like foreign exchange and income tax can become really be frustrating.

We are new at this whole Blog thing so if there are any spelling mistakes its Monika's fault and I take no responsibility what so ever....

I hope that I can upload some photos and write interesting things in the weeks to come. If there is not enough space for photos on this site I'll post a link to my Flickr account so everyone can view more photos in their own time.

Enjoy