Eclipse 2012 - Day 4 - Eclipse Day

I was so excited I could hardly sleep.  I was up from midnight researching weather and writing and thinking about what I would do if the weather was bad for the eclipse at sunrise.  I finally lay down at about 330am and the alarm went off at 430am and we packed food for the kids, the cameras, beach towels and headed down to Four Mile Beach at Port Douglas, which is directly east facing.

Of course, we weren't the only ones with that idea.

The beach was full of people but there was pleny of space for everyone.  The tide was coming in as well, so we kept ourselves way back from the water, as we watched the horizon for sunrise.

Stay away clouds!  Looking promising...

Sunrise and first contact - extremely hard to see in top left because of cloud distortion

Oh no no no, you are not going up into those clouds...

God damn it!  Get out of those clouds!

My children oblivious to me getting agitated at the sun behind the clouds

Approaching totality behind the clouds... CRAP!

Minutes before totality... get OUT from those clouds!

The beginning of totality occurred behind a cloud.  The sky darkened, the stars became visible and it got cold.  I whooped even though I was disappointed that I was going to miss the eclipse because of stupid CLOUDS, because the whole experience, with everyone screaming in excitement around you was pretty awesome.  But then, halfway through totality, lady luck shone on our side and the sun began to move out from behind the cloud... (I wish I could gif this)

Yay out from the clouds!

This is a picture of the corona and you can see the solar flares

Diamond ring effect as totality ends

And back behind the clouds again

 So exciting!  So lucky!  I was thrilled, and the kids even got to see the black sun.  I think they were fascinated by totality even though they didn't understand it - hubby was explaining it to E and she remembers that the sun was black and it looked like a moon.

After the thrill of that wore off, my tiredness caught up with me.  But I'm never too tired to take pictures of birds - here are pics of a bar-shouldered dove and a pied imperial pigeon that I saw on the way back home.

We headed out to Mossman Gorge to have a look - there are some walking trails and you can also swim in the water there - crocodile free!

Spectacled monarch in nest

Australian brush turkey walking nonchalantly past all the tourists

After that long walk and letting the kids play in the water up to their ankles, we went on a bird tour with Del Richards of Fine Feather tours which I admit I was a bit concerned because of the kids!  How were we going to keep them quiet?  What about walking?  I am not carrying the kids... sigh, if it was just me and hubby and Uncle S, then we could go on longer walks.  Anyway it turns out we just get driven everywhere in a 4WD and just hop in and hop out of the car.  Much easier!  Except the kids got cranky and restless and noisy during the trip, though were often pacified by drinks, cruskits, rice crackers and chocolate.

Here are some of the best shots of the birds we saw today on that tour.  It was pretty cool, we got to see a fair few birds, ones I never thought I would see!

 Bush stone-curlew and chesnut breasted mannekin

 Collared sparrowhawk (take my word for it!), double barred finch and red browed finch

 Double eyed fig parrot and forest kingfisher

 Greater bowerbird and his bower (nest)

 Peaceful dove and bar shouldered dove, and red winged parrots

 

 Silvereye and yellow spotted honeyeater

 Spangled drongo

Other birds we saw that I didn't get pictures of included Australasian Grebe, Royal Spoonbill (boy was I excited to see that flying past us!), Pacific Black Ducks, Blue billed ducks, Little black cormorants, Figbird (hubby saw that, I didn't), Black Kite, Whistling Kite, Magpie Goose and Brown honeyeater.

Del took us to see platypus!  My favourite animal!  I was thrilled to see them, and it was hard work keeping the kids quiet, and we got to see them a few times before the kids were too noisy and scared them off - it was actually in someone's backyard lagoon which fed into the streams!  I would love to have platypus in my backyard!  We saw some agile wallabies as well (pictured) and a red-legged pademelon (wallaby).

We were buggered after that.  Hot, sweaty, sticky, covered in dried sunscreen and insect repellant - I was looking forward to getting home and having a nice hot shower.  We had mexican for dinner and I put the kids to bed and crashed... until midnight.  Now I'm up again!  Tomorrow we will be doing the cable car and steam train ride (a very kid friendly day, unlike today!).

Eclipse 2012 - Day 3 - The Daintree

The Daintree Forest is the largest block of tropical rainforest in Australia, and is one of the few places in the world where reef meets rainforest.  But it's also the oldest intact lowland tropical rainforest in the world (110-200 million years old).

After breakfast we headed out in the rain (which cleared to sunny not long after) north towards Mossman.  We decided to give the Mossman Gorge a miss - will need to come back and do that later - and headed up towards Cape Tribulation, stopping along the way to book a boat ride on the Daintree river.  It turned out to be an awesome stop because I saw my first Yellow Bellied Suneater!

I was totally blown away and excited!  You can only see these in north Qld and they're pretty common but not to someone who lives down south.  Here are a few more birds I managed to snap over the day:

 Eastern Great Egret and Cattle Egret

 Metallic starling nests and a Juvenile Metallic Starling

 Orange footed scrub hen and White breasted Woodswallows

 An osprey - gosh this was a hard picture to get!  Hubby got close and scared it away

Took a few pictures at Cape Tribulation of the beach (Osprey and Orange footed scrub hen) and then we made our way slowly back.

We had to take a car ferry back and forth across the Daintree river to get there - that's where I snapped a female Sunbird as well as the woodswallows above.

We caught the last river cruise of the day hoping we'd see more birds, but I wasn't very lucky in that department.  However, we saw lots of saltwater crocodiles!  We saw young ones who were just over a month old as well as some 1 year old juveniles and we also saw the mother, named Elizabeth.  My shots of her were all blurry, but here are pics of the young crocodiles.

And saw nests of more metallic starlings, but here are pics of a mangrove honeyeater nest and a sunbird nest.

One of the other river boats checking out the Daintree river

 We were getting pretty tired so we went straight to Dinner at Zinc in Port Douglas.  The entrees were good but the mains were not as good, though they look very appetising.  The portions are huge!

Beef Carpaccio

Pork Belly Confit

Cajun dusted Atlantic Salmon

Pan-seared honey and seeded mustard coated Pork Loin Chop

Mandarin-glazed twice cooked duck leg

Everyone turned in for an early night because we have a very early start tomorrow.  Weather forecasts were initially dismal but Google weather is saying sunny at 6am so fingers crossed for fantastic weather for the eclipse tomorrow!  I'm too excited to sleep!

Eclipse 2012 - Day 2 - The Great Barrier Reef

Boy it gets bright early here!  This is what happens when you have no daylight savings...

I went out to see what was making those bird calls this morning and spotted 2 birds which aren't that common to see in my part of Australia - noisy friarbird and a spotted catbird.

That was pretty cool.  Then we set off to the Marina Mirage for our Quicksilver tour to the Great Barrier Reef.

Quicksilver runs trips to the outer reef (they have their own platform there for activities) and has won multiple awards in Queensland and Australian tourism - also it has large comfortable boats, which means that we'd have a smoother ride to the reef /fingers crossed.

Image courtesy of Quicksilver cruises

The kids were excited to see the boat.  Unfortunately, it was a slightly choppy sea, so we had lots of people getting seasick (including Uncle S, and I felt a bit queasy too - reminder to self, don't try to read when feeling seasick), and one of the engines was not working so the trip to the outer reef took 30 minutes longer than scheduled.

Once we got there, the hard part is choosing what to do!  You can snorkel, scuba dive, do a helmet dive (which is like those old fashioned divers where you wear a fishbowl on your head and they fill it with air), or go on the glass bottomed boat.  We took the kids on the glass bottomed boat and they really enjoyed that.

There is also an underwater viewing area on the platform.

And you can take a helicopter ride around the reef as well for a bird's eye view.  I was tempted!

Hubby went snorkelling and managed to convince E to go with him.  She only got as far as getting her feet wet though!   One of the things I thought was interesting was that they encouraged everyone to wear lycra suits to minimise sunscreen use - I guess sunscreen would pollute the water, so that was a fabulous idea.

Lunch was a buffet on the boat and then we headed back to Port Douglas, where we experienced MORE choppy seas, but less seasickness (maybe we were used to it by then).

We came home and had some Thai takeaway and then went to look at the Port Douglas markets which were on every night until the eclipse (normally they are on Sunday).  There are heaps of handicrafts stalls at the normal markets, but these all day ones seem to have mostly food and a few local stalls, as well as some rides and some live entertainment.

Tomorrow, the Daintree!

Eclipse 2012 - Day 1 - Arrival

It's finally here!  The eclipse holiday I have been planning for 2 years is finally here.  It didn't seem real at first because I was still in work mode on Saturday, packing our stuff at last minute.  We told the kids they were going to be flying a plane and J was very excited by that - he loves the airport.  E seemed less than thrilled.  They were quite good on the plane, and because they were attached to hubby's tickets they were sitting with him whilst I sat down the back, far far away.  I went up to check on them but that only made J distressed because suddenly he could see me, so hubby told me to go away.

Watching the arrival video for Cairns on the plane got me really excited.  The Esplanade in Cairns looked really good with play areas for kids!  And Green Island, the cable car ride over the rainforest... I was thinking of all the birding opportunites I could have as well.  Now I REALLY felt like I was on holiday!

Lining up for our rental car, I just had to laugh at my poor luck in standing in the queue that was the slowest, whilst both queues on either side of me served 3 people each before I got to the front!  The guy at the car rental said it's been a really busy week, with 50,000- 60,000 extra visitors pouring into the area for the Eclipse.  I wonder where NASA will be this year.  Poor kids were starving and restless, but we got into our car and the kids didn't fight over the baby seats, and off we went to check out the Esplanade which had great lagoons for kids to play (pic from Cairns Esplanade website).

It was also Remembrance Day.  At 11am we were on the plane so we didn't get to stop for 1 minute silence, but on the Esplanade there was a memorial with freshly laid wreaths so I observed my minute of silence there.

I was hoping the kids would get some chance to play but after lunch we had to go check into our hotel (which wasn't in Cairns, it was in Port Douglas).  Here's a picture of the eclipse path.  Everything within the path outlined will see totality, but the closer you are to the centre line, the longer the eclipse will be.

Trying to scope out which beach will be best for us to see the Eclipse.  There are a number of beaches between Port Douglas and Cairns - which of these will have a car spot for us to park?  And which is going to be be packed?  I mean we can always see it from the beach here in Port Douglas but it will be exciting to be around other people who will be whooping and squealing at totality.

Queensland has no daylight savings so it's an hour earlier here than it is back home.  I hope we can get up in time!  On Monday we're heading out to the Great Barrier Reef - it will be so exciting!

Cannes Lion Award for The Guardian's "Three Little Pigs"

This awesome ad for the Guardian Newspaper won a Cannes Lion award and it's not hard to see why! It's intelligent, and shows how everyone who reads the Guardian gets involved and goes from topic to topic, turning a simple crime into a good hard look at the society failures from the GFC. Brilliant!

Plagued by nosebleeds

My son, when he has a cold is plagued by nosebleeds.  He often has nosebleeds but I thought he was getting a little better.  However, this latest upper respiratory tract has caused him to have torrential nosebleeds, even whilst sleeping.  I am concerned because he gets it when he's sleeping - he wakes up choking because blood is pouring down the back of his nose and then he's crying and coughing.  He could drown in his blood if he was dead asleep.

I work with a lot of Ear Nose and Throat surgeons, and one I am closest to, advised first that we just wait it out.  However, I am worried with the continuing nosebleeds and blood loss that he could get anaemic or even die in his sleep.  However, the treatment of these nosebleeds is most likely nasal cautery.  There are risks with this, such as septal perforation, which are not without their own consequences.  And even after the first cautery, it seems to be bilateral, these nosebleeds.  I would have to get both sides cauterised, and that seems like high risk for septal perforation to me.

My poor son. He wakes up crying and saying he wants to sleep whilst I'm trying to press his nose and keep him from dripping blood onto the carpet.  It's heartbreaking to hear him say "Mama, sleep?" because he's so tired and he doesn't want to be going through the nose compressions, face wiping, clothes changes and sprays of otrivin to his nose and just go back and get a good night's rest.

My poor little tyke.  Mummy will think of a solution soon.

Kakapo - featured on "Last Chance to See"

When I visited New Zealand with my husband 11 years ago, I was really impressed by the bird life there.  So many flightless birds!  Some were very rare, and I was excited to see the Takahe and hear the story of how this bird was found when it was thought to be extinct.

However, there was one rare bird which we didn't get to see - and that's because they are only found on one island in an intense breeding program - the Kakapo.

The Kakapo was featured on an episode of the BBC program "Last Chance to See" and there was one bit in particular which was fantastic to see and that was a male Kakapo named Sirroco who tried to mate with zoologist Mark Carwadine's head!  Since then, this particular kakapo has got his own facebook page, a twitter account and tours New Zealand like the celebrity that he is.  Here is the footage from youtube:


There are less than 150 kakapo remaining, and one of the interesting things about these birds is that their breeding depends an the amount of rimu fruit.  The magical number of fruiting trees required to trigger breeding is 11% - one year they had over 30% which meant there was a huge boost in the kakapo population!

One day I hope to be able to see a kakapo.  Perhaps, I can encourage one of the kids to be a conservationist and participate in the kakapo conservation program and send me pictures of these fantastic rare and amazing birds.

You can read more about kakapo here at Kakapo recovery.