January 3, 2005 - Sanctuary Cove, Queensland

Here's Wendy at GB's restaurant at Sanctuary Cove harbour in front of the yacht club. For some reason, even though we flew due north, we crossed a time zone and gained an hour. Really confusing. All I know is, it means we were here in time for lunch. And now we're 15 hours ahead of New York instead of 16. Don't try to figure it out, it will make your head hurt (to which I can attest).

Here's the view of me on the porch of our bungalow. No reason for you to check back for new pictures for a couple of days, 'cause I ain't movin'.

Here's the view from the porch of our bungalow.

Here's our club house. The whole Brisbane area looks and feels a lot like Florida.

This is our beach at Sanctuary Cove. How about that? This might be a good time to give a friendly shout-out to the good folks at Hyatt: nice job with the whole Hyatt Points thing, guys! And also a quick thanks to my buddy Satan: I hope your half of the bargain works out as well for you!

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.