1 Northlander October 2012 - North Country Region

A Visit To The South Seas, Sydney,Queensland & TasmaniaPhotographs & Story by Tania CoffinSydney, Australia. On the way in we stayed at Manly Beach so we had to take the ferry into downtown Sydney.The Manly ferry gives the best views of the Opera House and Bridge! You can climb to the top of the bridge as mydad and son did. W.R. Brice photo.Another Australian Travelogue….Unlike our editor and other Tasmanian member of NCR, DavidChurcher, I hadn’t been back to Australia for 12 years. So, whenmy parents decided that it was time for my children, aged 14and 11, to visit the other half of the family, I happily agreed. Ofcourse in my family, these trips take planning. We started morethan a year in advance. An Air New Zealand air fare specialfinalized our plans. It was cheaper to get to Australia via theCook Islands than it was to go straight over. OK, why not, we’dnever been there before and, as a geologist, I was happy to visitan island with a fringe reef!Travel across the Pacific Ocean from the East Coast is not for thefaint-hearted these days. Due to limited available connections,we left Keene at 2:33am for a 6am flight out of Logan to LAX,collect all our checked bags and then a 14 hour layover at LAXbefore our 11:55pm flight to Rarotonga, the capital of the CookIslands. Then there was the luggage…..the 7kg(15lb) limit forhand luggage had me repacking our carryon luggage multipletimes until we made the weight! Air New Zealand did weighour carryon bags three times before we got on the plane, sothey were serious.Here are some highlights: My dad and children took most ofthe photos as I did all of the driving on the trip.The Cook Islands are an independent nation, comprised of 15small volcanic islands and atolls. The population is less than20,000 people. The Cook Islanders are Maori, the Maori peoplein New Zealand originated in the Cook Islands. As the CookIslands were formerly a protectorate of New Zealand, they useNew Zealand dollars and everyone speaks English and CookIslands Maori. Rarotonga, the capital island, is a volcanic islandin the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. The volcano has beenextinct for 2 million years and so it has begun to erode awayand to sink beneath the surface allowing the coral to grow intoa fringe reef along the original shoreline.“Raro” is only 50km around with only one road circling theisland. The bus service has two routes – “clockwise” and“anticlockwise.” The two main towns are Avarua, the capital,and Muri. This is NOT a location for spirited driving -- the speedlimit is 50km/hour- about 31mph!42 Northlander October 2012