Hugh & Justine’s Excellent Adventure

Ok, this could be a long one - grab a coffee or beverage of choice, settle in, and prepare to see some very cute animal and bird photos and maybe learn some interesting facts too! Last blog I mentioned that we were heading in a direction we hadn't previously traveled...

Well, it's been a bit of a quiet month so I don't have many photo/video experiences to share with you. However, I keep a list of random interesting facts on my phone with the plan to insert them into blogs whenever I'm short on something to report. The list is always...

It's a rare grey, rainy day here in Yeppoon, so a good time to sit down and catch you up on life Down Under! June 1st saw the beginning of winter in the southern hemisphere. This year we seem to have skipped autumn and gone straight from summer to winter. Our daytime...

Wow, 2 years since we arrived in the Land of Oz! It's a strange feeling because in some ways we feel like we've been here forever (e.g., we have terrific friends), in some ways it feels like we've just arrived (e.g., we still look around in wonder and awe at the...

Well, it's been a month since my last blog entry and there are so many different things to tell you - I can't think of a unifying theme for the title! So I just went with "goanna" because there are lots of critters in this post. I think my last blog covered the first...

When I come across neat facts, I make notes of them on my phone. When they correspond with photos I've taken, they get into the blog pretty quickly. But when they don't, they sit as notes waiting for a day when I don't have many photos. Well today some that have been...

Before I jump back into things Australian, I realised I forgot to tell you a few things about New Zealand that were interesting, so let me wrap up that story first. The south island gets 4-7 metres (yes, METRES) of rain each year! No wonder it's so lush everywhere....

I meant to get the NZ Part 2 post up a week ago, but work has been a little crazy lately so am just getting around to it now - and of course, there are more Aussie stories to add in at this point too! Let's start with some of the fun plants and animals in NZ. My...

OK so who correctly guessed that we were off to New Zealand? Liz guessed Tasmania, and given the chilly temperature forecast I posted last blog, it could very well have been. But we were on the other side of the Tasman Sea, in the Land of the Long White Cloud...

Hard to believe it's January 2025! It was 2 years ago at this time that the immigration lawyers in Australia were guiding me through the work visa application process - and strongly advising me to not quit my job in Canada or sell my house until the visa was...

...Rainy for a Week It is unusual that we have many grey days in a row here, but we did have a week where it rained most days. One night we got 80mm in a few hours - which is nothing compared to what some areas a few hours north of us were getting. In Canada, 80mm...

In Australia, it's now the "silly season", as in the lead-up to Christmas with lots of frivolity and parties. "Silly season" seems to originate in the UK referring to a time in the summer when there's not much news going on. In Australia, with summer starting on...