Jason and Gwen Barnes' Honeymoon to Australia
Day 1

July 7, 2004 Wednesday

1:30 pm We say good bye to the dogs as the AZ stagecoach picks us up to take us to the airport. 3:30 Fly to LAX. 6pm Mom & Dad (Bart) pick us up from LAX internatioinal terminal for dinner. We go to "The Proud Bird" on Aviation Lane for a really nice dinner and a look at their airplane collection. "We" includes Grandma & Grandpa & Inki. 11:30 pm. We board the flight for Brisbane. Everyone on the flight had their own entertainment center. they had about 12 channels on a 2 hour 30 minute loop with repeating movies or "TV". A cool MAP channel gave live updates of our location via GPS, as well as current outside temperature, local time at departure and arrival cities.

July 9, 2004 Friday

Brisbane Airport: I was going to buy some breakfast food from a fast food place. I hadn't bought anything in Australia yet. I walked over there with a twenty in haand and had this feeling like if I showed it to them they would just laugh, like it wasn't real money. But they took it. People here seem to respect it, and that's the whole point of money, right?

1:30 pm Arrive in Darwin at last! It is gorgeous! The terminal is only 1 story -- arrivals and departures on the same floor. Jason calls the car rental place ("Australian 4WD hire" don't rent from them whatever you do!) and they come pick us up at the airport. Riding in the car on the wrong (left) side of the road was really freaky! My heart would stop each time I saw an oncoming car as my reflexes begged my brain to avoid a crash. But my rational brain knew (though it didn't believe) we were correct, so it prevailed.

We got in the car and drove it off, repeating the mantra, "Stay on the left; stay on the left." Just out of Darwin we went to Crocodylus Park. They had a museum about crocodiles and lots of stuff to buy made out of crocodile skin. Out back they had a huge pen with a couple dozen large crocodiles in it. They also had a dozen breeding pens, each with (presumably) a male and female inside. In another section there were four pens, each with a progressively smaller baaby crocs in it. They were teeming with hundreds of ~1m long babies. They also had a lion, a tiger, and a dingo, and a couple kinds of monkeys, and an ostrich and emus.

	Large -- Medium Jason upon arrival at the Crocodylus Park.
	Large -- Medium An Aussie kid learns early not to fear these big uglies.
	Large -- Medium
	Large -- Medium I however, am not so fearless.
	Large -- Medium
	Large -- Medium These kids are basically insane.
	Large -- Medium
	Large -- Medium Gwen: its what's for dinner!
	Large -- Medium
	Large -- Medium A Wallaby.
	Large -- Medium A dingo. They look just like Genubi.
	Large -- Medium An Emu.

Then we drove to batchelor. The Butterfly Farm had cheap rooms, but was low on privacy. This being our honeymoon we stayed at the more hotel-like, twice as expensive, Batchelor Resort & Caravillage.