I loved the Outback. It was great to see. I’m glad to be back at the coast though. Australian coasts are so nice. This explains why 90% of the population live around the edges of the country.
Matt found a fairly inexpensive place to stay (EcoVillages – the
y’re all over Australia, but almost always booked). It’s less than a 5 minute walk to the beach. The ocean is as warm as bath water. It’s beautiful and could easily have been taken out of a travel magazine, it’s breathtakingly picturesque.
We loved being in the ocean and stayed for several hours just enjoying being around water and the gorgeous surroundings.
On our way we stopped at a banana plantation. It was interesting to see how bananas get to the store.
This is where they start out – on banana trees.
This is the flower, bulb (not sure what it would be called) that the bananas grow on. If you looked up this stem you’d see bananas starting to develop as they come down the long stem.
Notice in the first picture – the yellow things on the right side of the picture. These are bags covering the bananas that are ready to pick.
Once they’re picked they get loaded on a truck and taken to this building where this fellow takes them out of the bags and put on this conveyer belt where they go through the banana wash.
From here they get cut into small bundles like we pick up in the store, washed again and then put into boxes. It’s all done by hand at least at this plantation.
This is one stack of bananas from one tree. There were hundreds of trees at this plantation. How do they keep track of which ones are ready to be picked?
The best part for us was how cheap we could buy bananas. We have been paying between $2.50 and $3.98 a kg (about 2 lbs.). These were so good and fresh obviously.
The other thing we saw that was interesting is this really, really strange looking bird. As we drove into Mission Beach we saw these signs.
A little ways down the road the traffic stopped we couldn’t tell why at first and then out of the bushes pops this bird.
This is a picture I took, but here’s a better one from the internet. 
From what I read, they are a flightless bird related to the emu and ostrich. They eat fruit, nuts, insects and eggs of other birds. They live in the rainforests of Australia and New Guinea.
We’re off for a day of exploring and then back to the beach!
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