Tish's grand day off...

...well all most, it actually was a bit of a catalogue of errors!
The car played up a bit, we tried to change the address of our car insurance to find out that despite the fact that we were paying the insurance it was not in our name and so we had been uninsured, the area we wanted to go to was closed due to a rock slide....need I go on!
Anyway the day was not a total loss and we went for a short walk through the Botanic Garden which look great and is another of the places we will return to.
Despite taking the camera we did not take any people / places shots which was a bit daft.
The butterflies in the Gardens were stunning. The highlight for me was an all too brief view of a Cairns Birdswing butterfly:

the blurry bit in the middle should look like this

(Picture from Flkr)

Tish did better than I did and got this little beauty from the Rainforest Boardwalk

This has the snappy name of Green-Banded Line-Blue Butterfly.

After we picked the children up from school we went for a swim on the beach - the water inside the stinger net was a balmy 27 degrees - luvvly!

One of the biggest features in Aus are the sounds which are obviously impossible to take a photo of some thought I would see if I can upload links to two sound files...

Firstly Bush Stone-Curlew - the background sound at night in both Cairns and Darwin, this bird often ccalls right outside Xanthe's bedroom window

 http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/nature/bushStoneCurlew.mp3

NB you may have to click "open" for it to play


Secondly the Laughing Kookaburra
http://www.xeno-canto.org/33173

Click on the brown triangle pointing to the right


Click on the links and sit back and enjoy