So today our New Year's Day wine tour was cancelled, but not before we got up (only 5 hours of sleep) and spent 45 mintues waiting for a bus that never showed. So we decided to walk around, took a bus down to Circular Quay (pronounced "key") and hop a ferry back to Darling Harbour. We thought it would be a good day to visit Otzi, the oldest mummy found, as the Maritime Museum had a display on artifacts found. They did a nice job of it, replicating the...

So we are up early and hop a bus down to the Opera House for our backstage tour with Adam, a trombone player. He is actually very knowledgable and gave us many interesting facts and stories about the place. The tour was only 8 people, and we had a marvelous breakfast at the end. We learned that plans are in the works with the original architect to fix existing problems with staging and moving things as well as expansion. Considering that the designer, name escape...

Today we were up at 4 a.m. for the Uluru sunrise with tea and biscuits. Not a great location as we were a little late getting started, but the colors were very cool. It was spoiled somewhat by some stupid tourists that ignore bounding ropes and hop them to take pictures. I mean if there had been a difference between where they were seated and the area they crossed into I could maybe see a point, but all they had to do was move their picture-taker back a few steps...

Today we arrive in Uluru, check into our Budget room, of one full bed and two twin bunks. The first thing I noticed here was it was a very dry heat compared to Cairns. The second thing is when we got to the hotel, there was an aroma in the air that smelled like heated euculyptus. It was really neat. We managed to book a couple of tours in addition to our Sounds of Silence Dinner tonight. We met Rhonda from Perth at the Tour Desk. She and her nephew Lyndon were ...

So today we are up early again for a trip up to the Kuranda Rainforest. I have to say again I am stunned by the mountain ranges surrounding Cairns. They are beautiful. We elected to take the cable car up and the train back. Have uploaded our tourist photo from the Skyrail car. After getting over the height thing and every time we went over a cable tower the car jolted, I was ok. The veiws were spectacular. We stopped at Barron's Gorge to view the falls, which we...