Same deal with Australia and my good camera. There are several more for Australia since they had cuddly (and not so cuddly) animals to photograph along with some iconic spots in Sydney.

I finally went through and went through the photos on my good camera from our time in New Zealand. All the other photos were from my phone. My phone has a really good camera, but my professional camera can do some wonders as well. I have already told you about our trip, so here are the New Zealand photos from my good camera!

On March 6, 2022, our lives were forever changed with a phone call telling us our oldest son, Joe, and his wife, had been in a severe car accident in blizzard conditions in rural Colorado on I-70. Michelle was being transported to a local rural hospital with injuries. Joe didn’t make it. That was THE pivotal moment in my life. Afterwards, I would begin to think of my life as BEFORE the accident and AFTER. I had gone through a cancer diagnosis a few years prior to this and I had kind of done the same…before cancer and after. However, this changed us in ways I never could understand unless I had gone through it myself. Grief is not something that ever goes away. It is with you forever.

I mentally can’t handle going through how horrible it has been. How much guilt I have…not with Joe’s death, but how I am the shell of the person I once was. No one in Montana knows the bubbly person I used to be. That person died with Joe. Do I smile and laugh? Of course. But I can look at photos of myself grinning from ear to ear before the accident and see radiant joy. Pictures since then…you can see that the smile doesn’t quite meet my eyes. There is a sadness there that will never quite be gone. I feel awful for our remaining kids – as I just am exhausted with grief, and I want so badly to be a part of their lives but I know things have changed since their brother died. I am riding a fine line of trying not to be a helicopter parent to two adult kids and making sure they know how proud I am of them and how much I love them. My fear for their safety when they are travelling is pegged in the red zone…but they are adults and I have to try and step back and realize that without getting eyerolls. When you know the immense pain of losing a child, the idea of losing another is crippling. I have been told by my other grieving moms that this is normal…but it doesn’t help the feeling go away, knowing it is normal.

We went to Kansas City for the anniversary of Joe’s death. (I hate the word anniversary as it invokes something happy – put have yet to come up with a better word….commemoration maybe) We sent out texts and Facebook messages to his friends…the people we felt Joe considered family. We did this two years ago and had about 30 people. This year there were about 15 of us. None of his Army guys came as they are getting ready to deploy…God speed and my prayers are with you all! None of the fire department guys came. That was a hard one to swallow, but his guys were on shift that day and as would go in spring in the Midwest, we were under a tornado watch then warning. The folks closest to Joe were there and that was such a blessing. We met his best friend’s son, who has Joseph as his middle name. I got to hold this little man knowing that my Joe would have been over the moon to hear about, meet, and spoil rotten. I got to hug my daughter-in-law, after 10 months of not seeing her. Best of all, we got to talk about Joe freely. We swapped stories and laughed. I have told a few people that this day was a lot like walking out onto a frozen pond where someone has fallen through and you want to save them. You crawl out on your belly, distributing your weight as evenly as possible to make sure you don’t fall through as well. Having all of those people there allowed us to share our grief. It wasn’t like a huge boulder on our shoulders, but we all distributed the grief and we each had a little lighter load. It was really good.

I try to be very honest about my feelings. I have stage IV cancer and I am pretty much done beating around the bush and being polite about things. I was really disappointed in a lot of people that were close to me that did not reach out to me on this day. Several people did…and many weren’t the people I would consider family or tight friends. My child died. It is a loss that cannot even be fathomable to most people, and for that, I am immensely thankful. I wouldn’t want anyone to go through this pain. However, there are days that are really hard. The commemoration of his death is one of the biggies. If by chance you are thinking, “Cyndi, it has been 4 years. You need to get over it, ” you can unfriend me in all ways because you just don’t get it – and again, I am so happy you don’t. Most of our family members did not reach out or acknowledge the day, and that not only disappoints me, but really saddens me. Each year, it is another life lesson on who I consider a part of my tribe, and that number is small. How long will I grieve for my son? For as long as I love him…which is forever. If this was Lily or Tim, would it be the same? Absolutely. I am missing a piece of my soul that I will never get back until I die. So if you know someone who has lost a child….or a close family member, please just keep this in mind.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to write about this hard day, but this morning, Rich and I were called to a motor vehicle accident of a teenage boy who lost control of his car in snowy weather. Everyone was fine. The visual when the mom arrived and hugged her son close, both of them crying, was a lot to take in. Joe was in a bad car accident when he was about 17 and I was that mom. I totally got it. But then 10 years later, I was that mom who was brought to her knees by the loss of that same son. This woman this morning, went to shake my hand and thank me. I held her hand fiercely as her son sniffled in the passenger seat, visibly shaken and her eyes filled with tears. She told me that they were all just scared. I squeezed her hand and I told her I understood, that I had been there. I wanted to hug them both tight and say, “This is a second chance – please don’t waste it!” But of course I did not. I gave her and her son a smile and I said, “I am so glad he is alright,” and directed traffic on the highway so they could be on their way. The whole time I was out there on that call, I was wearing Joe’s structure gloves, They make me feel that much closer to him.

The pictures from March 6th… We stopped at Loess Hills Bird Sanctuary. We had met up with Joe and Michelle there once about the same time of year….when there were 700,000 snow geese stopping over. I remember that Joe found a snake (only Joe would find a snake), and he also finally warmed up to Tallinn, our dog, because his dogs weren’t with us. My Tallinn can be a real jerk around other dogs…nipping at their heels and ears and herding them…you know, the stuff that he is BRED to do. Joe didn’t like my dog because he was a pain in the tush around his dogs, but this was the first time Joe spent time with Tallinn as the only dog there. It meant the world to me when he told me that he could now see why I liked this dog so much. As we were driving to the restaurant, the storm clouds were gathering (again, spring in the Midwest) and there was a ray of light shining through. That has always been a sign in this mama’s heart, that her son is saying hello from heaven. Then Joe’s memorial shirt, worn by his parents and his sister, Lily…and the sign for our area in the restaurant.

Our last stop was in Cairns (pronounced CANS). We flew from Sydney to Cairns on Feb 17th. Cairns is on the northeast part of the country, and because we went way north, it was a lot hotter and more humid there. Cairns the town is not really large (at least not after being in Sydney). Their population is approximately 178,000 people. When we arrived and unpacked, we went to take a walk along the esplanade and they were having Chinese New Year dances and celebrations. Unfortunately, thunderstorms cut it all short. There was this adorable dog dressed up in a Chinese Lion dancer outfit though, that was adorable. We also quickly realized that there are the largest bats in the world that live there and nest in the trees….the flying foxes that we also had on Okinawa. These are huge, furry bats but they only eat bugs and berries. They can be the size of a house cat and have a huge wingspan. My brother-in-law marveled at them and their sheer size, whereas Rich and I were almost at home with them…like seeing an old friend again.

Our first full day in Cairns was spent on a large sailboat for 10 hours. Cairns is known as being a launching point for the Great Barrier Reef, and that was our destination that day. We were on a sailboat but it also had an engine. We motored out for 2 hours, towards Green Island. Rich and his brother scuba dived and Rich’s sister-in-law and I snorkeled. The water was very warm. They had us wear long sleeved and long panted wet suits to protect us from the jelly fish. We didn’t see any, which I was thankful for. We did see a few sea turtles from the boat and some coral and sea life in the water. However, the undertow was strong and the waves were pretty choppy so a lot of sediment was stirred up. You had to work hard to get anywhere in the current that day and the colors were not vibrant with so much sand being blown around in the water. We got off the sailboat and went to Green Island and spent some time on the beach there. We were pretty good about applying and reapplying sunscreen the whole day. There was no real way to get out of the sun. However, I happened to miss my middle toe on my right foot. It is now pretty itchy, so should start peeling soon. It may not have been the views we wanted, but it is a bucket list item that is checked off. We couldn’t wait an extra day because the guys can’t fly so quickly after scuba diving.

The next day, our last full day in Australia, we went to Kuranda. We walked to a nearby hotel for a bus pick up and then was dropped off at the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway. We got in a gondola and rode up the mountain, through the jungle. There were a couple of stops along the way up to see Barron Gorge National Park and Barron Falls. It was like we had been dropped into the jungle somewhere. At the last stop, we were in Kuranda. Kuranda is a mountain village known as the “Village in the Rainforest.” There were eclectic shops and eateries and a bird sanctuary, butterfly garden and koala garden. We chose the koala garden. On our way down the mountain, we rode the Kuranda scenic railway. Here are our last photos from my phone of that day…

I can’t tell express well enough how much fun we had on this trip to New Zealand and Australia. We managed to see and do A LOT during the 24 days we were there. If you ever get the choice to go….do it!

One of the really cool things we did while in Sydney, was to climb the Sydney Bridge. We started at about 6:30 pm and it took about 3 hours. We were all geared up in parachute outfits and harnesses as we were hooked onto the bridge the whole time. We climbed up to the top and then watched the sunset while on the bridge. We walked across the top of it and back down in the dark. We were not allowed to have anything loose on us…to include phones. They had cameras along the way to take our photos. We saw a rainbow over the Sydney Opera House just as we started out, which was pretty cool. Here are the photos from this once in a lifetime trip.

We had a blast in Sydney. We got off our cruise ship on February 15th…my 55th birthday – spending it in my 55th country. We took an uber to the hotel in the center of the city, right on the edge of Thaitown and China Town. We dropped our bags and met our super-awesome guide and driver for an all day trip to the Blue Mountains. Melanie (Mel) was our guide and she is a Bondi Beach girl. She was a riot and we had a blast spending the day with her. We went into the mountains and had a lovely day. Our first stop was at Calmsley Hill City Farm where we got VIP passes to go in and pet their koala, Jonah. We had fun walking around the farm.

Here are the views from the Blue Mountains. We went to several locations: Wentworth Falls, the Three Sisters sandstones structures, the Megalong Valley (where we saw kangaroos in the wild), and breathtaking views across Grose Valley and Magalong Valley.

Here are some photos from walking around town near where we were staying. With only a day or two from Chinese New Year, there were a lot of decorations up.

The next day we spent the day on the Hop On Hop Off bus, traveling around the city of Sydney and Bondi Beach. We had a really good time seeing the fish market (the third largest in the world) and then spending time at the Rocks, looking at the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Bridge (also called the coat hanger). We then went to Bondi Beach and spent time on the beach and around that area.

We finally made it to mainland Australia! We docked on the largest wooden pier in the southern hemisphere. It was built in 1854. There is a large population of Chinese in Melbourne and one of the largest Greek populations outside of Greece. There are over 100 countries represented in Melbourne, which is known as a melting pot. Melbourne is known for their food and coffee culture. The population is 5 million people – the whole country of New Zealand. Melbourne is likely to overtake Sydney in population soon. During the war days, the main drag was a runway for planes. Melbourne is known as the sporting capital. They had the Australian open tennis tournament there a week or two prior. Their tennis center holds 14,000 people. They have a football/cricket stadium that holds 100,000 people. Marble Park football stadium (soccer) holds 50,000 people. In March, they turn the roads into a speedway and race through the city. The Yarra River flows through Melbourne and there are lots of rowing clubs and sculls on along the Yarra River. . The Yarra valley is known for their wineries. There are over 80 wineries in the area. In 1910, the train station was built in Melbourne and is still in use today. From 1901 to 1927, Melbourne was the capital of Australia. The current capital is Canberra, a city between Melbourne and Sydney. Vegemite (I did try some) is not real good. The spray on kind on crackers was not bad. The paste…ugh. Vegemite was made after 1922 when they stopped importing marmite from UK. Vegemite is made from brewer’s yeast…the scum they scrape off the top. Evidently it is good thinly spread on toast. Meat pies, sausages, fish & chips, and pamajamas (schnitzel) are popular foods. Thai food is also very popular in Melbourne.

Again, we are not big city folks, and Melbourne is a big city. We headed up into into the Dandenong ranges – a cool temperature rain forest. Lots of Melbourner’s go there for day trips to relax. We went to Sherbrook Forest and was able to see the largest, tallest trees at 90-100 meters tall – a mountain ash. They used to be used for masts for ships because they grow so strong and straight. There were also a lot of fern trees. They only grow a cm a year, so these tall trees were old. There were a lot of birds flying around that were very vocal and colorful. Some of the birds can actually mimic mobile phone noises and other birds. There were crimson rosellas, kookaburras, cockatoos, Cara wings, wedge-tailed eagles….over 800 varieties of birds. Our guide, Chris, stated you should never start feeding cockatoos. If you stop, they will ruin your windows…eating the sills. Never start feeding them.

We stopped and had scones with cream and jam before leaving on a ride of the Puffin Billy Railway – Australia’s oldest operating steam railway and only surviving narrow gauge locomotive. We actually got to sit along the edge of the train with our legs hanging out. It was pretty cool!

Our next stop was in Northern Tasmania in the port of Burnie. We were docked in a working port again with one of the biggest pile of woodchips I have ever seen…and I live in a lumber area. The woodchips are loaded on ships and sent to Indonesia. Indonesia sends it back as paper. They bussed us to the city where the mayor of the town jumped on each of the cruise ship busses and welcome us to her town. It was really kinda nice! 2/3 of the population of Tasmania lives in the northern part of the state. A lot of produce is grown here: cherries, carrots, potatoes, and poppies. In order to not have people stealing poppy plants, the poppy fields are mixed with another type of poppy that will make you very sick. All poppy fields are watched on closed circuit video now as well. Hay is exported north to Australia for feed. Blue berries are grown in pots in hothouses with raspberries between the blue berry plants to attract bees. Tasmania is very green until the 1st week of January and then turns yellow within a week. We took a bus up into the hills to Wings Reserve – the Wing family has been farming for 8 generations. They started a wildlife reserve and enjoyed saving animals. I was able to hold Warren, the 8-month-old Tasmanian devil. He was a sweety, but I did get a little nervous when his mouth wondered close to my arm holding him. My sister-in-law got to hold Stevie, the wombat baby. Then there was Penny, the baby Wallaby that was cute as a button as well. What an experience! We wondered around the Wings Animal Preserve for a couple of hours before heading back to Burnie and walking the beach for a bit.

Hobart was our first steps on Australian soil. Tasmania is an island south east of Australia, but is a state of Australia – one of six states. I think we all decided that this was our favorite stop of the entire trip. We really got around and made a lot of stops, so that is saying a lot. We had two stops in Tasmania – one in the south and one in the north. This was the southern stop. We had a long day guided tour on this stop and it did not disappoint! Our guide, Marbles (yes, that is what he goes by), was a wealth of information. First off, a lot of Aussies call Hobart, “Slow bart”. There is no hurry to be anywhere. At the docks near where we disembarked, there were old apple sheds and wool sheds. That used to be the two big exports from this area. From the 1800’s to 1950, Tasmania was known as the “Apple Isle.” It is now known as the holiday isle and is a place where Australians, New Zealanders, Europeans, and Americans like to come to visit. In 1803 on Nov 26th, Tasmania was colonized by the British to establish a penal colony. It wasn’t named Tasmania until 1856. The River Durwin (278 km up the middle of Tasmania) and Mt. Wellington control the weather within Tasmania. Everyone in Tasmania has a water or mountain view or both. On 5 Jan 1875, a big ship hit two pylons on the bridge in Hobart and knocked the bridge down. It was 9 p.m. on a Sunday and it killed 16 people. Citizens lived on the eastern side of the river. All the shops and schools were on the western side. People had to drive 50 km out of the way to get around the river. It was devasting for the area. Bob Bifford ran a ferry service for $0.20 a ride one way per person to help out. He had large garbage cans he would just have them put their 20 cent piece into. Smart man that he was, he got a liquor license and allowed people to drink on the ferry. The ferry ride was 12 minutes long. The record number of beers consumed on a ferry ride was 10 10 oz bottles of beer. Bob was a high school dropout but he was resourceful. He already had a garage full of trashcans full of 20 cent coins. He decided to charge 80 cents per beer. People would give him a dollar and he would hand them back a 20 cent coin to help get rid of them. Tasmanians are known as being loyal and resilient and he was a prime example of this. He now develops electric boats…expensive catamarans. His first all electric catamaran he sold to Argentina for $30 million.

In 1642, Abel Tasmin discovered Tasmania. in 1798, Australia and Tasmania was circumnavigated. The first white settlement was placed in swampland, but quickly moved to Hobart. In 1836, Carles Darwin came to Tasmania and declared it to be “the Noah’s ark of the world.” There are zinc works in the area that are worth billions to the Tasmanian economy. A lot of the dairy products go to China but also to the Cadbury chocolate factory in Hobart.

Our first stop was at Bonorong Reserve. Bonorong has 400 volunteers statewide who save animals injured or abandoned. Bonorong is an Aboriginal word for sanctuary. There were kangaroos hopping around everywhere for you to feed and to scratch their chest (they love that because they can’t do it on their own). The back foot of the kangaroo has a long nail that looks like it could disembowel you if they tried hard enough. Wombats with their steel plates in their behinds behind their fur to protect them from predators. Tasmanian devils that look like cute overgrown rodents. They have the strongest jaw strength per pound of any animal in the world. They lost over 70% of the Tasmanian devils in the last 10 years due to a contagious deadly facial tumor disease. They isolated healthy Tasmanian devils to try to build up the population again. Tasmanian devils are marsupials and give birth to 40 young at a time – all about the size of a grain of rice. They only have 4 teats though, so only the four strongest young, able to latch on, are able to survive and grow. The rest are eaten by mom. Tasmanian devils are not predators. They are scavengers. They are the Dyson deluxe of the Tasmanian animal world. They have a great sense of smell and are nocturnal. They eat …. the bones, the teeth, the fur, everything. Many think of the Kookaburra bird when they think of Australia, but they are not native to Australia. They are meat eaters and will eat baby koalas. The three most deadly snakes in the world are found in Australia. In Tasmania, there is also an ant that can be deadly. This was not comforting. There is also the echidna, which looks like a porcupine/anteater cross with a pouch.

Tasmania is known for having the cleanest air in the world. Prevailing winds come from the west and the nearest land mass to the west of Tasmania is 17,800 km away in Chile. It does also have the highest incidence of melanoma due to the sunny conditions. There is a papermill in Hobart that produces 12 million tons of paper (Boyer). The Boyer paper mill have plantations of of pine trees. They have a special kind of tree with branches and leaves that have increased oil to make magazine paper. The logs are then sent away as timber. New Norfolk is a town nearby that used to house the mental institution. They call the town the “New Norfolk Nutters”. It is also known as Australia’s tidiest town. There is a pub there called the Bush Inn and it is the oldest pub in Australia. The River Durwin is freshwater starting at the bridge near the port. It is fed by Lake Sinclair, and is the deepest river in the southern hemisphere. It is 18 m across but 186 m deep. It feeds the River Durwin for 250 km and there are many dm systems for irrigation along the way. The water is so clear and clean, you can drink it. Apples and sheep are the primary agricultural products. If Tasmania was a country, it would be the 25th richest country in the world per capita. the DBP is $50,000 per person. In the 1980’s the liberal government put dams on the river system, allowing for hydroelectric power and it stopped flooding. River Durwin has 30 dams and even though the river looks like it flows at a leisurely pace, it flows at 92 cm/sec. Tasmania has some of the cleanest energy in the world. Zinc and aluminum plants stay here due to the abundance of electricity needed to make their products. There are also salmon ponds with the oldest known hatchery in the southern hemisphere. In the 1850’s, trout and salmon eggs were transported from Europe to Tasmania in bee hive combs to establish hatcheries. Seafood is #6 on the GDP. In the 1970’s farm salmon in pens became popular and now are sold to over 22 countries. The area around Hobart, Tasmania is also the hops capital of the world. They have cold winter nights and good irrigation, which is perfect for growing hops. They were brought here from Germany and just flourished. One crop I was really surprised about was poppy plants. Tasmania supplies 50% of the world’s legalized opioids. The only other place that produces more is Afghanistan and much of that is illegal.

Our next stop was at Bushy Park and Russell Falls. Mount Field National Park is one of Tasmania’s oldest national parks. It is a cool temperate rain forest – one of the only in the world. We hiked into the national park and were only given an hour to explore. We felt we could have spent even longer exploring the area. Berries and cherries are grown in this region. There is a golf ball sized cherry that the Chinese like to serve during Chinese New Year. It grows perfectly in this region. They are sold for a dollar a piece. Japan likes a specific strawberry that is red on top and white on the bottom. They grow well here due to the colder nights, which make berries sweeter.

Marbles talked extensively about “the sins of our fathers” in our day with him. The Tasmanian tiger once roamed Tasmania as a native animal for over 6 million years. in 1803 white men arrived in Tasmania and within 150 years, the Tasmanian tiger was extinct. The white people also killed off the indigenous people. The last full blooded Aboriginal person died in 1936. Some died through conflict, but the main killer was the diseases that the white men brought with them that they had no way to fight off. Their immune system was very poor. The white people brought the common cold, measles and the chicken pox. They killed off 75% of the indigenous people through disease – the remaining 25% through conflict. The “Sins of the Father” is a concept drilled into kids at an early age. Australians are big into conservation. Tasmanians are easy going people. They tend to turn down prosperity and big companies in order to save natural Tasmania. Tasmania is considered the “battery of Australia” due to all its electricity. There is almost 15 hours of sunlight a day, so solar cells on houses are common. They sell the extra electricity to the state. Even though it is cooler in this area, solar power doesn’t get affected by heat but only by sunlight, which is in great abundance. Bushfires are the biggest threat – especially with the northern winds. In Australia, when you turn 67, you go on age pension. It used to be 65, but they moved the age up a few years ago.

The next place we stopped was really fun: Curringa Family Farms. Tim is the man in charge right now of the working sheep farm and hundreds of acres of other crops. He is the 6th generation on this farm. His son Jacques, is now working the farm as well as the 7th generation. We watched a sheep shearing demonstration and a sheep herding demonstration with their Smithfield/border collie mix dogs. Some of their crops are: pyrethrin (crops that are used to make insecticides) onions, poppies, carrots, cabbages. They have 100 hives that come yearly from a professional pollenating service. They breed vegetables and then sell the seeds. They handpick 1 million seeds for their onions and export them globally. Tim’s wife, Jane, opened farm stay cottages on the farm in 1984 and has won a lot of awards. They shear their sheep in Dec and they are able to do the whole herd in 3 days, with 4 shearers working all day. Each shearer is about to shear 200 sheep each day…so 800 total a day. Most of their sheep are not grown for wool but for meat. They still need to be sheared and the wool gets used as stuffing in pillows and coats. They are in an area called fire storm alley. The area is very fire prone and is a high risk area. If you want to read more about this farm, the website is Curringafarm.com. Tim greeted us on the bus and talked to us about his farm and what he does. He manned the huge grill and made steaks for all of us, which were great. We had a really nice time spending time on his farm.