After the 15 hour flight we are zombies but continue our travel now north to Cairns in the Australian tropics.  We arrive during the Cairns Festival and will try to join in, if we can stay awake.  It is 3 p.m. and we are still in the air.  In San Francisco it is 10 p.m. and my body seems to think something is amiss.  Oh well.  The question is, can we stay up tonight and wake early in the morning?  Perhaps, but we will still be zombies.

On the plane I study the several hundred birds we might see in Papua New Guinea.  Impossible to learn them all, but the more I learn the more we will see and identify.  But, there are so many honeyeaters, and they all look alike.

Our flight was entirely nocturnal but dawn arrived as we approached Sydney.  Lights were the first sign of land.  The plane had to circle once to comply with the take off and landing curfew and we saw a bit of the land through the clouds but did not catch a view of the harbor with its famous bridge and opera house.  Oh well, we will come back to Sydney next month and see a show in the one and perhaps walk across the other.  So touristy.

Despite the exhaustion we are exhilarated to visit this continent for the first time.  Now if we can just get used to it.