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Australia / New Zealand 2023

Uluru , also known as Ayers Rock is a large sandstone formation in the center of Australia. It is in the southern part of the Northern Territory, southwest of Alice Springs.

The Route 2023.

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in Australia.

View of Centre City

The Melbourne central business district (also known colloquially a "The CBD") is the city center and main urban area of the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, centered on the Hoddle Grid, the oldest part of the city laid out in 1837, and includes its fringes. The CBD is artsy and fun. Took in a great play & Juliet and the walk around the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria was beautiful.
The St Kilda area pictured above and which we recommend the Stokehouse a beach fine dining restaurant. A fabulous dinner with just good views.

Kilda Beach is a beach located in St Kilda, Port Phillip, Victoria, Australia, south from the Melbourne city centre. It is Melbourne's most famous beach. The beach is a sandy beach about 700 metres long between St Kilda Marina and St Kilda Harbour along Jacka Boulevard and St Kilda Esplanade.

Uluru , also known as Ayers Rock is a large sandstone formation in the center of Australia. It is in the southern part of the Northern Territory, southwest of Alice Springs. Uluru is sacred to the Aboriginal people of the area. The area around the formation is home to an abundance of springs, waterholes, rock caves, and ancient paintings. Uluru is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Cairns

The city was founded in 1876 and named after Sir William Wellington Cairns, following the discovery of gold in the Hodgkinson river. Throughout the late 19th century, Cairns prospered from the settlement of Chinese immigrants who helped develop the region's agriculture. Cairns also served as a port for blackbirding ships, bringing slaves and indentured laborers to the sugar plantations of Innisfail. During World War II, the city became a staging ground for the Allied Forces in the Battle of the Coral Sea. By the late 20th century, the city had become a center of international tourism, and in the early 21st century has developed into a major metropolitan city.

Hartley's Crocodile Adventures is a wildlife sanctuary and ecotourism park located between Cairns and Port Douglas at Wangetti in Far North Queensland, Australia. It adjoins the world heritage listed Wet Tropics of Queensland rainforest through which visitors can take guided or self-guided walks.

Sydney

Sydney is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania.

Aboriginal Australians have inhabited the Greater Sydney region for at least 30,000 years, and Aboriginal engravings and cultural sites are common throughout Greater Sydney. The traditional custodians of the land on which modern Sydney stands are the clans of the Darug, Dharawal and Eora peoples.

Bondi Beach is a popular beach and the name of the surrounding suburb in Sydney,

The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive buildings and a masterpiece of 20th-century architecture.

New Zealand

A wharenui literally "large house" is a communal house of the Māori people of New Zealand, generally situated as the focal point of a marae. Wharenui are usually called meeting houses in New Zealand.

Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand. It is the world's southernmost capital of a sovereign state Wellington features a temperate maritime climate and is the world's windiest city by average wind speed.
Marlborough wine region The Marlborough wine region is by far New Zealand's largest, accounting for three quarters of the country's wine production, 70% of its vineyard area and 85% of its wine exports.

The Marlborough Sounds are an extensive network of sea-drowned valleys at the northern end of the South Island of New Zealand. The Marlborough Sounds were created by a combination of land subsidence and rising sea levels. According to Māori mythology, the sounds are the prows of the many sunken waka of Aoraki.

The Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre is an aviation museum located at the Omaka Air Field, 5 km from the center of Blenheim, New Zealand.

Omaka's first exhibition, 'Knights of the Sky', presents one of the world's largest collections of World War I aircraft and rare memorabilia, including a mix of static displays along with flyable planes. The collection (which is on long term loan to the museum) is managed by the 14-18 Aviation Heritage Trust, which is chaired by film director Sir Peter Jackson. As a result of Jackson’s interest the exhibition which was designed by Joe Bleakley was able to employ the talents of Wellington's finest set builders, painters and props specialists, in particular those of Wingnut Films and enhanced with lifelike mannequins by Weta Workshop. Despite its complexity the exhibition took less than 10 weeks to complete from design to opening.

The Sheep Dogs

Sheep farming is a significant industry in New Zealand. there are 39 million sheep in the country (a count of about 10 per human). The country has the highest density of sheep per unit area in the world. For 130 years, sheep farming was the country's most important agricultural industry, but it was overtaken by dairy farming in 1987. Sheep numbers peaked in New Zealand in 1982 to 70 million and then dropped to about 27.6 million. There are 16,000 sheep and beef farms in the country which has made the country the world's largest exporter of lambs, with 24 million finished lambs recorded every year.

The dogs were serious workers.

Hard-working sheep dog knows how to get the job done!

Milford Sound is a fiord in the southwest of New Zealand's South Island within Fiordland National Park, it is a Marine Reserve, and the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage site. It has been judged the world's top travel destination in an international survey and is acclaimed as New Zealand's most famous tourist destination. Rudyard Kipling had previously called it the eighth Wonder of the World.

The Ride home from the Milford Sound was spectacular.

The only way to experience our Canyons, see their beauty and feel their power, is to come on a journey with us, the world’s most exciting jet boat ride. A unique combination of beauty and power, it’s an experience like no other, blending pristine natural landscape with wall to wall canyon action from start to finish!

Proudly owned by Ngāi Tahu, the Māori people of this land, our connection to the Kimiākau (Shotover River) goes back centuries. As the home of our tīpuna (ancestors), this place is part of us. Only we have access to the spectacular Shotover Canyons and no one knows this area like we do!

Video Credit Jerry Margol

Auckland

Auckland is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about 1,440,300 While Europeans continue to make up the plurality of Auckland's population, the city became multicultural and cosmopolitan in the late-20th century, with Asians accounting for 31% of the city's population in 2018.

Auckland and surrounding areas. Glow worms' photos are Jerry's.

After the trip we took a side trip to see the glow worms.

On the left you see the calcium deposits in the cave.

Below Photo credit to Jerry for getting the stringy worms portraits

Ruakuri Cave is one of the longer caves in the Waitomo area of New Zealand. It was first discovered by local Māori between 400 and 500 years ago. The name Te Ruakuri, or "The Den of Dogs" One of the cave entrances was used by Māori as an urupa or burial site. As a sacred area it is no longer used for tourism; however, it is now accessed by a spiral drum entrance built some distance away from the tapu (sacred) site where tours now run since 2005. It is well known for its spiritual links to Māori and its unusual limestone formations and caverns. Major features of the Ruakuri Cave include Holdens Cavern (named after James Holden who first opened the cave to the public), The Drum Passage, The Pretties and The Ghost Passage. The cave was open to the public from 1904 until 1988, when it was closed due to a legal and financial dispute. It was reopened in 2005. Inside there is a dynamic natural environment, with glowworms, limestone formations, underground rivers, and hidden waterfalls.

Arachnocampa luminosa, commonly known as New Zealand glowworm or simply glowworm, is a species of fungus gnat endemic to New Zealand. The larval stage and the imago produce a blue-green bioluminescence. The species is known to dwell in caves and on sheltered banks in native bush where humidity is high. Its Māori name is titiwai, meaning "projected over water".

The first written record of the species dates from 1871 when it was collected from a gold mine in New Zealand's Thames region. At first it was thought to be related to the European glowworm beetle (Lampyris noctiluca) but, in 1886, a Christchurch teacher showed it was a larva of a gnat, not a beetle. The species was first formally described in 1891 with the species name Bolitiphila luminosa and was assigned to the family Mycetophilidae. In 1924, it was placed within a new genus of its own, Arachnocampa, because the wing venation of the adults and the behaviour of the larvae differed significantly from other Bolitophila fly species. It was given the genus name (meaning "spider-worm") on the basis of its building a silk nest and using silk threads to capture prey.

Fellow Travelers Candids

Created By
hugh robinson
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