Our long journey home started on Saturday morning from Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia.
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| Heron Island |
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| Heron over Heron Island |
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| Heron Island Boardwalk & Gantry |
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| Heron Island Lodging |
Those of you that have been following along with our adventures thus far will remember that the trip to Heron Island from Gladstone wasn't the best experience. To ensure that we didn't have a repeat of Wednesday (and to try something we've never done) we booked a sea plane to take us from Heron Island to Gladstone Airport.
We grabbed a light breakfast then took a final lap around the island. While we were walking we heard the arrival of our chariot landing quite literally right infront of our Reef Suite (talk about door to door service).
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| 6 Person Seaplane |
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| Our Seaplane |
Upon return to our suite one of the resort porters was there ready to take our luggage to the seaplane. We made a quick stop by the Marine Center to retreive Jen's forgotten sunglasses and then headed to our floating chariot. Turns out we were the only two passengers on this specific plane. Another sea plane left about 15 minutes before ours with 5 passengers that had similar thoughts about getting back on the "vomit comet". We were buckled, loaded and before we knew it we were taxi-ing on the water above the Great Barrier Reef (!!!!!!). Just before taking off we saw a sea turtle swimming next to the plane (such a cool experience). Our flight gave us amazing views of the island and the reef. About 10 minutes into our flight (half way to Gladstone) we saw 5 whales in the water below us. Shortly there after we landed smoothly at the Gladstone Airport - only to be greeted by our fellow resort guests that were on the first plane off the island. While not only saving us time the quick 25 minute flight was such a neat experience it also gave us and opportunity to get back to Sydney a few hours earlier than planned.
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| Taking off from Heron Island |
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| Reef Selfie! |
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| Heron Reef |
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| Whales! |
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| Gladstone from Seat 2B |
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| Gladstone, Australia |
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| Sydney Olympic Torch |
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| New Zealand All Blacks vs Qantas Wallabies |
Watching the All Blacks vs. the Wallabies was a pretty neat experience. Our knowledge of rugby was limited - thank goodness Jen read snippits from "Rugby of Dummies" prior to the game. :-) The outcome of the game was not ideal for the Wallaby fans, as the All Blacks dominated the game winning 42 to 8. The trip back to the hotel was surprisingly quick due to well executed utilization of the subway system.