ANZAC Day

Today is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand. Originally it marked the anniversary of troops landing at Gallipoli to fight the Ottoman Empire in World War I, but now it's a national holiday to honour the men and women who have served in the armed forces of Australia and New Zealand. Because it marks the anniversary of the start of the fighting in Gallipoli, the service at the war memorial was held at 5:30am to coincide with when the battle commenced.

Later in the day, there was a parade along the esplanade in Cairns.

Just like in Canada and other Commonwealth nations, Australia does observe Remembrance Day on November 11, but ANZAC Day is a much bigger deal.

Completely unrelated to ANZAC Day, this Norwegian tall ship is in Cairns for a port visit.

The name of the ship is Sorlandet and it's a floating high school and it's in the middle of a round the world journey. That's a pretty cool way to get through high school.

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Weekend

As much fun as I had when I went back to Port Moresby to see Lori, I still like it better when she comes to visit me in Cairns. She took an extra day this weekend and we had a really nice time. Went for a couple of nice walks and we came across these Cockatoos. I've seen them before in the park, but I've never been able to get this close.

We ate at our favourite restaurant on Saturday night and later we ended up at the casino and somehow we won another $400. We took out about $600 a couple of weeks ago. I think my mom must be looking down on us. She had the best luck at casinos and bingo.

On Sunday we stopped in to a pub to listen to some live music. One of the guys brought his 8 year old son along. He didn't add much to the group musically, but he knew all the words to the songs they sang. He said his 2 biggest musical influences are Jimi Hendrix and Michael Jackson.

Lori flies back to Port Moresby early tomorrow morning but she will be back again Friday evening. Looking forward to it.

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Bats

I had a great week with Lori in Port Moresby. I flew back to Cairns this morning. Now that I've figured out how to properly post a video, I thought I should show you what I get to see from our balcony every evening. How many bats we see depends on the wind direction. Tonight was a pretty heavy night.

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Back in Port Moresby

Lori has been coming up to Cairns quite a bit lately. She was just there for 12 days, so I decided to come visit her for a change. I flew into Port Moresby last Friday and the first thing I noticed from the air was everything is green again. It's been raining here and the winds have died down so the vegetation is lush and there isn't any dust or smoke in the air.

I have a few errands to take care of while I'm here, just things that are hard for Lori to do while she's here by herself, but other than that it will be a quiet week. We were invited to a friends for supper last night and we had a lot of fun. Armand lives on the hill over looking the harbour and has the best view of the sunset. I brought my camera but, the weather did not cooperate.

The food and company were great though.

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