After 14 months in Australia, my mom has finally arrived after one hell of a trip. All went well, she slept most of the way, but taking off at 9pm local time, flying three flights for 25 hours and landing 6am local time must be rough. We were lucky to have a super early flight and landing late at night. But flying in so early in the morning, we had to keep her awake until it was time to go to bed to make sure she wasn’t suffering from too much jetlag.
I do believe we did a good job of keeping her awake. Breakfast at Alkemist, 6 koalas and hundreds (probably, I lost count) of kangaroos at Coombabah and dinner at Fricken Chicken in Broadbeach. It would have been on the beach if it hadn’t started pouring along with some distant thunder out at sea.
Part of being a millennial in the 20’s involves being into birdwatching. Moving to Australia just pushed that newfound interest higher up the list quicker.
Coombabah is a great place to spot birds and this Eastern Reef Egret was the first wildlife we saw when we entered the area.
During her first day here, mom ticked off so many boxes regarding birds: white egrets, pelican, black cockatoos, lorikeets, sulphur-crested cockatoos, corellas, forest kingfisher, and lastly, after hearing several laughing at us; a kookaburra.
Then obviously the “normal ones”, such as magpies, crows, plovers, and obviously the bin chickens (white ibis).
Please click on these pictures to see the tiniest of kangaroos. The left one was the smallest joey I’ve ever seen outside of a pouch. It wasn’t jumping, it was skipping and it looked so adorable.
In total, I managed to spot 5 koalas. Without any help. I’m getting pretty good at this 😊
Number 4 and 5 were even in the same tree. That is not very common.
To be completely honest, number 3 was pretty obvious as it was inside a “koala trap”. Not entirely sure why it was there, perhaps to vaccinate it or something?
I really can’t believe my mom is finally here. She has travelled halfway across the world to hang out with us for almost eight weeks. Not nearly enough time to see and do as much as we would like, but we will do our best. She will most likely be tired of us at the end of this trip, and will most likely need another vacation after all of the adventures we have planned.
Bemm 
Lovely pictures, and nice to hear that your mum arrived safely after such a long journey.
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