One of our trip highlights.....

So we are back from our big vacation to Australia....
what a cool place Cairns is!! If you are not familiar with the land down under, Cairns is on the northeast side of the continent in Queensland. It is tropical.... the booklet promised an average temperature of 70 degrees in the winter, and we were blessed with about 80 degree weather, but clouds everyday and rain about 30% of the time.... not what I pictured. In spite of the weather we had a fabulous time. Here you see me holding a real live koala. The photo was taken at the Cairns Tropical Zoo. We went there on our first day. We saw a spectacular bird show where the birds flew right over the heads of the audience... we saw many LARGE snakes in the reptile house... (luckily we saw NO snakes outside of the zoo, as on our arrival I read that almost all homes in Queensland are also homes to 1 or 2 pythons!!!!!) ... we saw lots of freshwater crocodiles and several saltwater crocs as well.... one of the crocs had eaten 15 cattle off a ranch before he was sent to the zoo, and another, who was 15 feet long, had eaten a man's dog as he was walking it through a park. The croc was so big it had to be kept in the local jail in a cell while they built a box large enough to hold it for transfer..... I also got to feed three funny kangaroos right out of my hand. One of them was a little pushy and would use it's little front hand to pull my arm over if he wanted more to eat! The last thing we did before leaving the zoo was go to the picture place to have my picture taken holding the cute little koala. It felt really soft and very similar to my relatives' poodle, Max! It had wicked sharp claws and held on tight to me during the photo shoot. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Will post more later......