On January 25th, 2009 we boarded a plane for Australia. In part this was to achieve Jonathan's childhood dream of seeing all of the cool wildlife there--especially the mysterious monotremes. In part it was just to get away from working life in Qatar and rest and recuperate in nice Summer weather. Since Australia is in the Earth's Southern hemisphere, January is the middle of Summer there!

We saw and experienced too much to describe in a single update. So we're splitting up our Australian adventure into 3 updates, to be completed over the next several weeks.

• Aussie Adventure (Part 1 of 3): For the first leg of our journey, we did a driving tour of Australia's East coast. We started out in Sydney, and drove up along the coast all the way to Brisbane, finishing at Hervey Bay.
  
• Aussie Adventure (Part 2 of 3): For the second leg, we boarded a small propeller airplane and went to Lady Elliott Island--located on the Southernmost tip of the Great Barrier Reef.
  
• Aussie Adventure (Part 3 of 3): For the third and last leg of our trip, we drove back down to Sydney.