Now in Tropical Rainforest

Spent our last day in Perth looking around.  Don and Neil toured the mint which has an interesting history including an old prospectors camp where they have replica gold nuggets on display. The nuggest Neil and I are holding was found in Western Australia in 1930 by a 16 yr old boy who just happened to kick upon this rock one day.  At the mint we we saw them fire up the forge and pour a gold brick.  Irene and Rose went shopping so while we saw how they make money they were spending it!!

On Friday  we spent the whole day flying across Australia from Perth to Cairns.  So we are now back on the east side of Australia  north of Brisbane which is in the State of Queensland. We have now been in four of the five states of Australia.  We will not get to Tasmania, the fifth state.   We are now in the tropical rainforest.   You have probably heard about the flooding in Queensland on TV but so far it is not close to where we are at.  Cairns gets about 80 inches  of rain a year.  Not suprising it is so green - see the picture from our hotel balcony.

Today/Saturday we looked around Cairns and planned a sunset cruise up the Trinity inlet. Rose and Irene had to  go shopping for cruising clothes - see their picture in front of the cruise boat.  The boat is used to up the river to find crocodiles and we did see one - hope the picture comes through. 

 The river meanders among the mangroves which are a protected species of trees in many parts of the world in that their root system allow them to grow in salt water so they become the diveder between land and sea and  build up dense underbrush areas necessary for many kinds of animal and plant life.