I figured out an easy, painful way to catch up on uploading photos:

1. Dring heaps of cheap beer (given the choice of $4 per glass or $8 per jug/pitcher, it was an easy call)
2. Drink heaps of cheap wine ($5 for “good” Australian chardonnay)
3. Get on the internet late at night and begin uploading photos
4. Get really tired while uploading photos and go to bed
5. Wake up next morning, realizing that the now ironically-named memory card was forgotten and left in the computer in the internet room
6. Go to computer and see that the card is gone/missing/stolen
7. Spend next two days crying inside hoping someone turns in the card; they don’t
8. Voila – all your photos are now uploaded!

So, what images now exist only in my head?

• Video of me hand feeding a kangaroo that had a small joey in its pouch
• Video of a koala yawning at me as I stare at it from about 6 inches away
• Scuba, snorkelling and sleeping out under the stars on a sailboat in the Great Barrier Reef off Cairns
• Rumbling through the jungle to Cooktown on the four wheel drive-only Bloomfield Track, tackling steep, dirt roads and plowing through crocodile-infested water crossings
• Water, bay and reef views from the top of Mt. Cook in isolated Cooktown, the end of the last real road on the East coast of Queensland
• Enjoying morning tea with some Aussie locals, including a caffeine and sugar-addicted lorikeet, who drinks it out of a spoon on the picnic table amongst us
• Hitchhiking to a famous roadhouse, The Lions Den, and holding a hand-written sign to hopefully get someone to stop (they did, after an hour, in a beat-up old VW van – it was perfect)
• Drinking with backpackers and Aussie locals in The Lions Den and regaling them with my tails of hitchhiking there

Wow, writing it all down has started my internal tears again