Yesterday we said goodbye to Sydney. It sure felt like we left a lot of untied loose ends... there was still a lot we wanted to do! Fantastic city. But now we're on to Act II, in which we downshift to lower-key scenery and fewer plot twists. Yesterday morning we kangaroo-jumped 1,000 km up the coast to Brisbane (pronounced Briz-bin), then motored over to the beach for a 3-day getaway at a place called Sanctuary Cove. Here's the plan: a few days of tropical resort pampering.

This is nicely timed... we wedged this in between the non-stop action of Sydney and what promises to be a series of Indiana Jones adventures on the Great Barrier Reef starting later this week. So let the laziness begin!

We came due north straight up the coast, roughly the equivalent of North Carolina to New York (or, since we're upside-down and moving toward the tropics, I should say from New York to North Carolina). This white strip of sand was our view from the right side of the airplane, pretty much the whole way.