Travel Log #11 Australia

i have bad news, my cousin Alla passed away at 66 from cancer, i made some statistical analysis of our Baker family, the generation of our parents have good genes for a long life, out of 10brothers and sisters 6 are gonem mostly in their 80th and 90th,

out of 25 first blood cousins 6 are already gone in their 40th, 50th and 60th--25%, looks like we do not have good genes for longevity, conclusions- live, love, lough, do good things, spend money, enjoy every moment of life while we can,[my father told this till the end]

i am in Australia, in Sydney i have my wonderful friend Rina and her family, we all know each other since our 20th from Riga and Leningrad ,they drove me around showing old and modern,harbour, beaches and parks, olympic village where we saw a memorial plague for 11 Israeli athletes murdered in Munchen, we had a tour of their famous Opera built in 1973 and now the same 87 year old architect from Denmark doing many changes and improvements,

i visited Rina's brother's and son's families, went to a party of Russian Jewish Engineers Society in the restaurant,as everythere our emigration is very successful, people are talented, educated, hard working, clever, have good children and grandchildren,

i visited my australian friends, wonderful family-wife, husband and 2 sons- all3 men are very tall--6 + +, [ i met them 5 years ago on 2 week tour of 7 national parks from LA to Calgary, i was very impressed that 2 teenagers boys behaved very nice, no problems , no bickering, they wrote travel diary, enjoyed being with parents],

we kept in touch by emailing, post cards and phone calls and met again, went to a jewish museum which is very good, showing the history of australian jewish community, i red the records of jewish convicts:
crime--stollen lace or loaf of bread or few shillings
conviction-life sentence,

the museum has very impressive memorial for 1,5 millions jewish children perished in holocast--dripping water--tears of these children.

Than i flew to Cairns for scuba diving in Great Barrier Reef-one of the best in the world, what makes these reef special and well preserved-location, they are 2 hours of sailing from the shore, tour is organized very well, 2 hours of driving, than 2 hours of boat riding and we are on the outer reef- as far as possible,

i had 3 dives in 3 different locations in one day with the personal guide, underwater scenery is fantastic- mountains and gardens of different, multicoloured, multishaped corals -blue, purple, green, brown [ no pink, in Red Sea in Israel is a lot of pink corals], swimming with fish- 2000 different species with "designer" skin-spots, lines, circles, gigantic clams, all living organisms are interconnected.

I also took a tour to an ancient wet tropical rainforest ,the only one in Australia, it is here for millions of years when this island was part of a continent.

i am experiencing and learning so much about nature, water, forest, ecology, biodiversity, animals, plants and local aboriginal people,

here is only 2 seasons, not 4, dry and wet,now is wet , means -hot-36C, very very humid-90%, rain comes and goes,