Wright pictures from Lord Howe Island and Royal Botanic Garden Cranbourne

These are a few of the pictures we took on a trip to Australia in November, 2012. We spent the first week on Lord Howe Island, then visited Melbourne for a couple of days, where our botanist friends Malcolm and Jane Calder kindly took us to the Royal Botanic Garden Cranbourne, which, though still under development, is a mighty impressive garden of Australian flora.

It seemed hard to divide the Lord Howe pictures into batches—scenery, hikes, boat rides, etc.—so we've put them all in one bunch, more or less in chronological order. Of course these are only a fraction of the shots we took, but they'll perhaps convey some sense of where we were and what we did. The island, about 6 miles long, has lots of trails, so that's where we spent most of our time. The hike up to Goat House Cave was by far the most strenuous. It didn't help that the rain on the previous days had made all of the rocks, roots and ropes extremely slippery. We felt that we'd had a real workout. I wish I could have taken pictures of the reef animals and fish from the glass bottom boat, but the reflections off the glass defeated me. Ball's Pyramid is about 20 miles from the island, so that was another enjoyable boat ride. Those pictures start on page 2 of the thumbnails.

We took dozens of pictures at Cranbourne, but are including only a few of them here. It's an amazing place and well worth a visit if you have an interest in Australian plants.

In addition to these shots, we've included a few panoramas.

And here are some movies, as well. (The .AVI versions may load faster, but are smaller on screen.)

From Kim's Lookout gives a good view of the whole island. (.AVI)
Mts. Lidgbird and Gower shows the view from our front lawn, including the airstrip. (.AVI)
Birds is here just for the sound. (.AVI)

We hope you enjoy seeing these pictures.

Charley and Leslie

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Navigation is fairly easy. Click on any small picture to get it larger, then click on the forward and back arrows to go through the lot. There's a sort of "home" icon next to the arrows to get back to the thumbnails, and from there you can click near the top to get back to this page.

If you have an interest in seeing pictures from our past adventures, simply go up a directory and scroll down to find links.