Just Another Sausage Sizzle

Everything that happens here seems to call for a sausage sizzle. Case in point is the standup meeting coming up tomorrow morning at work. It's the last one of the year for the commander and some of the personnel will be rotating into a new assignment beginning next year so they've got some serious "farewelling" to do. Apparently "farewelling" (and just about any occasion you could conjure up) calls for a sausage sizzle. Aussies love sausage sizzles. You can't go shopping on a Saturday without finding at least one sausage sizzle going on out front of a store. We went to a farmer's market Saturday and it was no surprise at all to find they were having a sausage sizzle.

I'm not a fan of sausage so it's hard to really dig this phenomenon, but sometimes they also offer egg and bacon in addition to the sausage and that's when I'm all in. Eric always gets the sausage and they tell us the way we say sausage is a tip-off that we're not Aussies. We aren't quite sure what it is although we think we might say it with a bit more "aw" while they say it with more of an "ah" sound.

It is funny to watch people's faces when we start talking. We were at the brand new Bunnings (like Home Depot) on Monday checking out all their stuff and as the store had just opened, the workers were extremely eager to help people. One bloke asked if he could help us and we said "we're looking for a bird feeder". As the first couple of words came out of my mouth his eyebrows shot up to be quickly followed by the customary furrowing as he tried desperately to translate US English to Aussie English. His response was, "Did you want a bird bath?" I'm not sure how he thought feeder sounded like bath, but I don't even try to figure it out anymore.

I do know it would have helped tremendously if I'd said "bird feeda". Aussie English rules seem to dictate that anything that ends in 'er' be pronounced as though there were no 'r' at the end. What's even more interesting is that words that end in 'a' such as Australia or America are pronounced "Austrialier" and "Americer". There does seem to be a conservation of the letter 'r' - what's taken away is just added elsewhere, but there is a pair of words where it leaves me completely confused as to what they're talking about and that's the Myna and the Minor birds. My pronunciation is exactly the opposite of theirs so which bird is which I couldn't tell you.

There is one instance where they actually sprinkle seemingly far too many 'r' sounds into one word and it is my very favorite word to hear them say. The word is drawing and since we often refer to drawings of parts at work I get to hear them say it in that awesome way they do that sounds like "drarwring".

We've been enjoying the birds here a lot lately. Sea eagles out front of the house just hanging on a breeze inspecting the water for a prospective dinner. Kookaburras do their "laughing" every evening around the time it gets dark just like clockwork.

We had a couple rainbow lorikeets come for dinner earlier this week. It was a little wet that day and suddenly I see one on the railing looking pointedly at Eric who was working on the computer. The lorikeet kept moving down the rail trying to get his attention. It was so deliberate it was almost comical. Once Eric (the maitre'd) acknowledged his presence, the lorikeet took his place at the table (the door). At this point their waitress (me) ran and got a few sultanas (Aussie raisins) and served the lorikeet and his spouse tiny chunks of the sultanas. They loved them in spite of the fact they had to keep scraping their beaks on the deck to get the sultanas off the side of their beaks.

I can just imagine the conversation Laurie and Keith (my names for them) had before they got to our place.
Laurie: "I don't feel like fixing dinner tonight. It's wet and I'm tired."
Keith: "Okay. You know, I think there's a restaurant not far from here that might be open. I'll check."
Laurie: "Just make sure it's a place with a nice view of the water."
Keith: "All right. I'll just see what the maitre'd has available. Now if I could just get his attention..."

Sorry to be so silly, but I do enjoy wondering what goes on inside their little heads sometimes.

This afternoon was the Boeing Christmas party. It was at the Newcastle Paceway. Yes, it's "Paceway" and not raceway. I have never been to harness racing for horses. It was quite the affair especially when you consider what Boeing does for Christmas parties back home (as in nothing). Eric and I really enjoyed watching the horses "pacing" which is what we would call trotting. They had the most beautiful cadence in their step and went so fast you'd have thought they must be galloping. We didn't bet on any of the races; just watching the race was entertaining enough.

Our last weekend before coming home is just around the corner. Time goes so fast we'll be jumping on that plane before I know it. I don't look forward to 24 hours of traveling, but the carrot on the end of the stick is getting to see family and friends. For that, I'll gladly put myself through those paces! Love to all and see you soon!

Ticks and Turkeys

In the last few weeks, Eric has definitely had the more interesting of experiences. He got to crew for one of the sailboats that races on Wednesdays and Saturdays. It was a lot of work, but he had a great time. He also realized the bay is a lot bigger when you're in the middle of it than when you're on the shore. They did well in spite of the penalty turn they had to do for cutting someone off (not Eric's fault).

One of the other things Eric got to discover was he had picked up a tick on his neck from walking through the woods. He was successful at removing the whole thing without my help (I was at work). We also discovered that Australia has some really bad ticks (what a surprise!). You have to worry about Lyme disease with ticks all over the world, but Australia has a paralysis tick. It can kill animals; not so much humans, but being a little paralyzed has to fall in the category of "bad news".

The worst part of the whole thing for me was that Eric emailed me at work that morning to relate his little episode. After quickly realizing I'd shared a night's sleep with a tick, I spent the entire rest of day imagining I had a tick somewhere on my person. I'm sure people at work were wondering why I looked so disheveled, but they did not know I was busy trying to keep everyone safe by checking my hair a thousand times for invading creatures!

While I'm on the icky little critters subject, Eric has been helping with a construction project at the church and what an eye-opener that's been. They pulled a panel off and found two large snake skins. Leaves you wondering where the former owner is these days. They also found cicadas so large they should be required to have a pilot's license before they take off. There were lots of spiders and when they uncovered one in particular, an Aussie helper said "Probably ought not to mess with that, it won’t kill you, but it might get you close to death."

Mess with a spider? As if! As it turns out, young Aussies seem to think this is a perfectly ordinary and sporting thing to do. Remember Charlotte? Well, a relative of Charlotte got into the church and one nice (and nutty) young man herded it onto the palm of his hand (what?!) and calmly walked it out of the church.

We had the couple we met at the Newcastle church over for a substitute Thanksgiving dinner last Saturday. Getting ready for this was a lot harder than Thanksgiving back home. We found out that completely plucking the turkey is optional here and those quills don't give up easily. In the scheme of things we were just thankful there were turkeys to buy even if it was something like $3 a pound - yikes! We also discovered that in spite of their love of pumpkin, they don't sell it in a can. Eric tried to explain to a clerk that he was looking for this so he could make a pumpkin pie, and their response? "Why would you want to do that? That sounds gross!" Eric ended up baking and pureeing the pumpkin himself. There's no Crisco equivalent so we had to use butter for the crust. Eric also had to make the french-fried onions you put on top of the green bean casserole from scratch - no such thing here.

On the plus side, Ren and Glynis genuinely enjoyed the meal. Ren and Glynis had never had turkey before; we can hardly fathom that in our home environment. Ren had never had pumpkin pie before and said he really liked it. Glynis had tried it once before so she was an easy convert to our American ways.

Speaking of things new to Aussies, Eric made oatmeal cookies and took some with him to the construction project to share with the other guys. It was mostly young men from the church and we were dumbfounded to find out they'd never had oatmeal cookies before! It seems like such an unremarkable (but always enjoyable) thing in our world, but they loved them and were threatening to break into our place to get more!

The main thing of interest I've done in the last few weeks is play in the championship of the soccer league at work. Because it's at lunch and it's a military environment, you quite often have teammates unable to get there due to meetings they can't get out of or being on deployment. Such was the case on Monday for the semi-final where the other team couldn't even field a full team of 6. This meant we easily moved on to the final, but what goes around comes around, and for Wednesday's final we found ourselves with just enough to play.

It was a really hot day and we were feeling quite out of gas by halftime. Our halftime strategy adjustment was to limit our runs forward and see if we could hang on and get to penalty kicks because no one had anything left. We got to full-time successfully without being scored on, but lost on a crazy shot in the first overtime period. Bummer! I was very proud of our team even though we lost because the other team was all men while we were split evenly between men and women and I think I was the oldest one out there (certainly by the way I played, but I think even by age!). The biggest downside of the final is the next league doesn't start until February which gives me ample time to get completely out of shape again. Ugh!

We arrive back home on December 14th for 2 1/2 weeks. I don't care that I'm going to freeze my arse off - I can't wait to see everyone. I just have to get through 2+ more weeks of work. The countdown starts soon!

Guess What? It's Poisonous

Eric made it back safely from the States on Friday which left us the weekend to spend together bludging. Bludging is my latest Aussie word, but technically we weren't really bludging. Bludging is basically hanging out with a connotation of being a sponge. We were hanging out, but we weren't sponging.

I gave Eric the option of doing whatever he wanted to do for the weekend and number one on his list was going goanna hunting. As is so often the case in life, the weather was non-cooperative on Saturday so we watched a few movies and did our grocery shopping instead. The good news is Sunday was nice so that afternoon we headed out to the site of my previously way-cool and successful goanna hunt - Tomaree Head.

We tramped along heading toward the spot where I spotted my big'un a few weeks ago. Just past that point I spotted a SNAKE! Since it's Australia, it seemed prudent to assume it might be poisonous. I snapped a bunch of pictures all the while making sure we gave it a really, really, really wide berth.

After watching the snake do its snaky things for a while, we moved on down the path. It wasn't long after that we spotted a goanna! It was not a big'un; it was around 3 feet long and just plain cute. I didn't think I'd ever say that about a lizard, but goas (as Aussies call them) just seem to start growing on ya. We saw another one about the same size later on, but alas, we did not see my big guy or his brother. This goa was in a tree which was a bit disturbing because this means I need to be watching the ground and above me all at once.

We next did the short walk to Zenith Beach and saw another snake. Since some of my coworkers have not seen any snakes in the wild in the year they've been here, it seemed a bit crazy to see two in one day.

When we got home we looked up the snake, and, yep, it's poisonous. It's an Australian red-bellied black snake. The description for its bite, "seek immediate medical attention", was just a bit sobering, but our strategy of treating everything here as poisonous seems to be a good one.

We'll be keeping with that strategy on our next hunting adventure.

Goanna Kind of Day

I went goanna hunting today. I had heard there were goannas out on Tomaree Head so I decided a hike was in order because it was a gorgeous and quite warm day. The hike up to the top of Tomaree Head is a lot of up, up, up, so I was rather gassed by the time I got to the top. Worse yet I did not see a single goanna. I enjoyed the view for a while and snapped off some pictures. At this point I was feeling a bit put-out because I had a beet-red face, was doing my best imitation of a porcine sweat, and was a complete goanna hunting failure.

Trying to keep a positive attitude, I decided I'd at least try to get some bird shots. I'm on the way back down and spot this little bird uphill a bit who is just chattering away. While I'm diddling around getting the camera ready, I suddenly realize there's some movement behind him by the rock. A goanna!!! I could just see him through the brush. I was stoked, but a little disappointed that I didn't really get a good shot of him before he moved out of sight.

I learned goannas on the move are not quiet so I filed that little tidbit away. I got back down from the summit path and decided to take the path to the World War II gun emplacements. I got all the way to the end of the path without seeing any more goannas. Dang! I'm heading back and suddenly I hear something in the uphill brush. I'm looking everywhere for movement and suddenly I see it - my second goanna and even from a distance I could tell he was a big'un! I took a few pictures and realized he was heading down in my direction. I don't know how long I waited, but he just kept coming my way. I kept getting better and better shots and he eventually ended up on the path with me! I followed behind him for a while and marveled at everything. He was around 6 feet long and had the coolest skin and markings. And his tongue and claws - they were something else! I loved the way he walked; each step caused him to twist his body giving him this cool ungainly gait.

I realized he was doing his rounds looking for food. He checked a drain gate, went by a couple picnic tables, and then into an old World War II doorless small building before he headed back up the hill. I got a lot of cool shots that I uploaded here: Tomaree Head Goanna Album.

I headed back down the path and before I knew it I saw a different goanna near the path. Where were these guys when I was going up and needed some encouragement? This one wasn't quite as big, but he was still at least 5 feet from nose to tail. I got a bunch more shots before he headed off into the brush.

I saw two more goannas off in the distance on the way back. The big one was following the little one which made me think maybe it's mating season. They were too far off to be immortalized in my camera because of the obscuring brush, but I figure not every goanna has modeling aspirations anyway.

A goanna is an Australian lace monitor lizard. They can get up to almost 7 feet long which I find hard to comprehend. The ones I saw seemed plenty big so I can't imagine one even bigger. I understand from reading about them that they climb trees. Guess those claws are for more than just looks.

Goannas - check that one off the list of things to see and do.

Salamander Bay

Eric and I have the great privilege of living in Salamander Bay. Salamander Bay is a town of nearly forty-two hundred folks and is a nice quiet town comprised of many retired types, holiday seekers, and those of us somewhere in between. My favorite part of where we live is the Salamander Bay Shops just across the street from our place. We can run (literally) to the store and be back home with our purchase in under 5 minutes! It's convenience you can't beat unless you're looking for good produce. The little market has lots of good stuff, but the produce there isn't going to win any awards.

In one day Eric visited the butcher and the baker. Sadly, they don't have a candlestick maker or he'd have managed the complete set! We've eaten at the Farman family cafe and it truly is a family-run business. The only place I've visited more than I'd like to is the chemist, but then having to get medicines isn't exactly a great shopping conquest goal.

The most curious shop to me is the drive-thru bottle shop. Of all the things one might be in a hurry to purchase, I can't imagine alcohol to be at the top of the list. But I don't drink, so what do I know?

I catch my morning carpool from the bench in front of the News Agency. I enjoy (as much as one can enjoy anything just before 6:00 AM) the rustlings of the bakery starting the day and people stopping by for some brekkie on their way to work or making a desperate run in their P.J.s for some bread for breakfast.

We have just learned that Salamander Bay is a finalist for the New South Wales Tidy Town award. It's a great place to live and tidy, too!

Soccer By the Runway

Well, I finally found some soccer! It's quite a bit different than I'm used to, but I am just thrilled to be playing again. Maybe I should rephrase that - I am just thrilled to be attempting to play again. I thought I was prepared for how bad I was going to be after not playing for 3 months, being completely out of shape from lack of exercise, and recovering from bronchitis, but it was so much worse. It is especially depressing when you imagined you'd be bad, but it was more like REAL bad (just imagine an uncoordinated turtle and you're pretty close). Sigh.

Let's not talk about that sad subject anymore. How was it so different you ask? First off, it's 6-a-side and the games are at lunchtime on the base. The field is much smaller than normal which I greatly appreciate at this point of my out-of-shapeness. So are the goals, but then I rarely remember to shoot anyway so the size of the goal is mostly immaterial to me. The fields are terrible - they're bumpy and have scraggly grass at best (my ankle let me know later how much it didn't like it). Since the fields are right next to the runway, you occasionally have to plug your ears when the fighter jets take off (they are indescribably loud), but I can't blame that for my patheticness (oh wait, I wasn't going to talk about that anymore). They don't play offsides so there are often people up front sharking (that's their word for what we call cherry-picking).

Those who have played with me know that playing at lunch is really not good for my self-image since after I got back to the office my coworkers took one look at my beet-red face and wondered if I was okay. I think they play 15 or 20 minute halves, but it went by so fast I couldn't really tell. It still took me almost an hour after I was back at my desk to stop sweating - so much for cleaning up afterward. It was even longer before my face flare-up subsided.

The most important part was we tied 0-0 so I could at least console myself that I didn't hurt the team---much.

Differences Aplenty

I chatted recently with one of my Aussie coworkers about my spider encounter. As you can imagine, he had much more impressive stories to tell. I will admit I was wowed as much by his "no worries" attitude as I was by the story. I know I would be incapable of that same nonchalance. Matt bought some property south of Newcastle and the previous owner was a hoarder. I guess Matt's property has lots of areas to clean up and he is getting to it as he has time. One day he was running the chain saw to clean up some logs and realized at some point that his thigh was swelling. Since Aussies are experts on spiders, he decided that since he didn't feel the bite it must have been a white-tail spider.

Eric and I recently picked up a free card with pictures and descriptions of some of Australia's spiders on it. It has a handy magnet on the back so we have it on our refrigerator so we can learn what to watch for and to be horrified daily at some of these creatures. The card has three categories: (1) Dangerous and Deadly; (2) Venomous - Poisonous - Painful Bite; and (3) The Low Risk Spiders. Even one of the "Low Risk" dudes has a description of "mildly toxic". Excuse me, how is that "low risk"?

Just so you know, my Huntsman Spider (who has been named Charlotte by Isabelle) was in the "Low Risk" category. On the other hand, Matt's spider was in the "Dangerous and Deadly" group. Matt described how his thigh where the spider must have attacked was raised by 3-4 centimeters. I was just beginning to picture this inch and a half high or so of swelling when he went on to say how later his skin there was kind of dying off and peeling and pretty much being altogether gross. What blew me away was this whole thing did not cause him to go scurrying off to the doctor at a speed-limit ignoring pace. If I surmised I had been bitten by a white-tail spider I would read the description on the card, and I quote, "May cause horrific ulceration to skin of sensitive people" and make a beeline (or should it be spiderline?) to the doctor. Well now I'm back to that shivering that I thought I was getting over since Charlotte has been notably absent.

I guess Matt has lots of spiders at his place so it's just business as usual. It suddenly occurred to me that he has a young boy and how in the world can the poor kid play in the yard? Matt explained that you just have to teach them to check their toys before they start playing with them, call for Dad right away if you see one and don't get near it, and always shake out your shoes. I don't really have any toys to inspect and there's no one to rescue me at the moment, but you can be sure I'm shaking out my shoes if I leave them outside. Actually, I'm beating the crap out of those things before I put them on because if there's a clingy spider in there, I want to whack it into unconsciousness so it'll come out of my shoe when I move onto shaking it. Silly overkill you say? Not to me!

Not So Empty House

As I was walking up the steps tonight to our place after getting home from work, I was thinking about how it was going to be empty like last night. I was completely unprepared to see who/what was waiting for me on the stairs. A SPIDER!!! I got past it safely, but I had the worst case of the shivers imaginable. Suddenly every nook and cranny might hold one of these monsters and you can bet I was on high alert.

After I recovered my equilibrium, I decided I just had to get a picture of this thing. This required that I come back down the stairs which meant I had to go by it one more time. I made it, but had to go through another shivery thing before I could take the picture. Now this is one of those moments when having a camera lens that doesn't require you to get too terribly close is mighty handy. As you can imagine I put the biggest lens I have on the camera and then zoomed all the way in. Even that was giving me the creeps.

I snapped off a few pictures and then realized I had to get past the spider yet again to get back into the house. I did the third set of the shivers after getting by it and shivered all over again when I started looking at the pictures. Man, I do not like spiders!!!

I spent some time trying to figure out what kind of spider it was besides a really big and hairy one. It looks like it is probably a Huntsman spider which is fairly benign as far as Australian spiders go (like any spider could possibly be benign!).

I have been having a great time seeing all the Australian wildlife - up until now. We saw a wild koala before Eric left. Now that's cool. Spiders, on the other hand, not so much.

Now you'll have to excuse me as I go turn the house upside down making sure he doesn't have any friends inside!

Lightning Ridge Part Two

When they mine for opals, they basically pull the entire layer out where the opals are found, roll it around with water in a cement mixer for a few days, and eventually have a look through it. What's left after they look through everything is called the tailings.

At the Walk In Mine they let people look through the tailings for "treasure". We figured the experience could not be complete without spending some time fossicking so we took the few tools and spray bottles we'd got earlier in the day, and got to it.

It's not easy to find opal material or so we found out. I think we'd looked for an hour with zero success before I finally spotted something. I think the jury is out on whether or not this was a good thing or not because we all became invigorated to keep on searching. Not a problem except that at some point during the first hour it had started lightly raining. At first the sprinkles were nothing more than a very minor annoyance, but somewhere along the way, the tailings dirt started to cling to our shoes, tools, and the bottoms of the spray bottles.

We found more opal specks, but eventually started finding that we were getting awfully wet and quite muddy. The wet finally won out and we opal-miner-wanna-be types had to throw in the towel (heaven knows we'd have been wiping, not throwing, if only we'd had a towel).

We had the great privilege of being there for their overnight rainstorm. It was darn wet that next morning as we took off for home.

I figured the trip home was going to be my opportunity to see some emus and take some great photographs of them. With this goal in mind, off we went, and it wasn't long before I was demanding we stop. What we didn't know was how soft things were from the rain and that going on to the shoulder of the road or a driveway isn't a good idea after all that rain. We were suddenly very thankful we have an all-wheel drive vehicle because we were slip-slidin' away. Yikes!

We finally got turned around to get back to the emus, but we found out that non-zoo emus are extremely skittish. Nearly every picture I got was of their backside. All we had to do was slow the engine down and they started leaving. We did get to see an emu family with about three or four young-ins. I didn't manage to get a picture of that because they were even more skittish than skittish (ultra-skittish?), but man it was way cute!

The rest of the drive back was pretty uneventful except for Eric realizing at one point there was a turtle in the middle of the road. He missed it, but we were aghast to realize it was only halfway across. Hope he hurried. Um, turtle, guess that's a no. Well maybe it was his lucky day and everyone who passed by later missed him, too.

Eric left today for a month back home. I guess that means the major sightseeing is on hold for a bit. In the meantime I'll have to see if I can stay out of trouble until he gets back.

Lightning Ridge Part One

Australia celebrates Labour Day on October 4th and I also got Friday, October 1st, off due to my work schedule. With a nice long weekend coming up, we decided to head to Lightning Ridge with one of my coworkers, Marc. We took off early Friday morning because it's an all-day drive.

We swung down south towards Newcastle and then headed west towards Maitland. We'd been to Maitland before when we were shopping for furniture and through it once when we went on the winery/brewery/chocolate factory trip. It wasn't long after we got out of Maitland that we started to hit territory that was new to us. We soon went by some seriously huge coal mining areas. They sure have a lot of coal here.

We stopped in Denman to get a better map, moved on through Merriwa, and decided to stop for lunch in Dunedoo. We ate at an old cafe that had a sign above the counter that said, "We serve good food, not fast food." They were true to their word and, thankfully, it wasn't that slow.

Back on the road, we worked our way through Mendooran and at Gilgandra we made the turn toward the north. The towns were getting smaller and smaller and farther and farther from one to the next with nothing much in between. We had seen a fair number of kangaroos although it was sad to see the inordinately large number of kangaroo carcasses by the road. We also discovered a cloud of locusts doesn't look or sound so good on the windshield - what a splat!

Somewhere between Gilgandra and Coonamble I saw my first wild emu! We saw a few more here and there as we passed through Walgett and finally arrived at Lightning Ridge. That was way cool!

The Lightning Ridge Motel will never be compared to even a Motel 6, but it's about the best the town had to offer. We found ourselves laughing at what we found. Eric said the bed looked like an old swayback horse. It had two serious divots that said just a few too many people had slept here, yeah, like a few thousand too many.

We had dinner and then checked out the social scene - the motel bar seemed to be the gathering place for many of the townspeople. We joined in their raffle although we wondered what we'd do if we won since the winners got either a meat tray or vegetable and fruit tray. We didn't win which was just as well, but it was entertaining. For the record, the meat trays all went before any of the vegetable trays were picked which bore out the sentiment expressed by one winning Aussie bloke who said, "I don't want no ?&$# veggie tray".

The next morning we hit a local cafe for breakfast and pumped the locals for information. We enjoyed talking to them and as it turned out, one of them ended up being our tour guide at the Chambers of the Black Hand Mine tour. He was a character who had enjoyed some success in his many years of opal mining. He said he and his mining partner were called the Holic brothers - he was the workaholic and his partner was the alcoholic! Cute!

We learned that the opals are found about 30-60 feet down at the bottom of what used to be an inland sea. The opals are found in two ways - seams and "nobbies". Nobbies are lump-shaped opals with a rocky covering. They find both white and the more rare black opals in Lightning Ridge. The Chambers of the Black Hand Mine is no longer actively mined and is now full of sculptures in the sandstone that have been done over the last 13 years by the owner. It's pretty darn amazing.

We next hit the Bevan Cactus Garden. Oh my gosh! I was in hog heaven! What an incredible display of thousands of cacti in sizes I could scarcely believe. I chatted with the owner who was a nice lady. She and her husband had done it together for years, but he died several years ago so the gardens are now his memorial. It was impossible to miss the great pride she had (and rightfully so) in what they had accomplished.

That was what impressed me the most about Lightning Ridge. The people there were so proud of their town and incredibly friendly. We had more than one person hint to us that it was a great place to move or retire to someday. We went to the Walk In Mine armed with the inside knowledge that we should ask for "Alex" to be our tour guide. In fact, Alex was the 11 year old son of the owner who has grown up in the world of opal mining and knows his stuff. Alex also desires to buy a Hummer someday and to keep him on the way to that dream, we paid a dollar each for the special tour.

After the tour we decided to try some of our own fossicking in the tailings from the mine. More on that tomorrow.

How'd That Get On the List?

Got to check out the Aussie health care system today. Apparently medical clinic waiting rooms are the same all over the world and I should know - I had plenty of time to sample it! I will say it was a rather interesting experience, but I'm certain I could have happily left that item off our "list of things to see and do". Oh well, if you gotta, ya gotta.

I was definitely feeling like crap this last weekend, but thought it had subsided into just a bit of a cold by Monday. Every morning I'd go into work thinking I was getting over it, but I think I was totally deluding myself. Eric's delusion detector must have been in high gear because he had been telling me for days I should go to the doctor, but hey, I was getting better so why would I do that?

I woke up this morning and the gig was up. I called a nearby medical center and managed to get an appointment. I thought it was odd they didn't ask me to get there early what with me being a new patient and all. Oh well.

I arrived a little early anyway and found out why they don't need you to come early. The "new patient information" card was one-sided and about 4x6 and consisted of my name, address, phone numbers, birth-date, a couple of lines about Aussie health-care stuff, next of kin, next of kin phone number, and next of kin birth-date. What?! Why in the world do they care what his birth-date is? If I collapse in the doctor's office and it happens to be Eric's birthday, will they first wish him "Happy Birthday"?!! Maybe I'm being obtuse, but I just don't get it.

On the bright side, I had an hour to ponder this while I waited to be called. Since I couldn't solve it, I was relieved when the Dr. called my name (yes, the Dr.). I guess they don't have nurses in medical clinics like we do. The Dr. asked me several questions, checked my ears, throat, and chest, asked a couple more questions, and then printed off a prescription. I was out of there before I realized I hadn't had any of my "vitals" taken; apparently they aren't so "vital" here.

Verdict? Ear infection and bronchitis. Isn't that exciting, my first infection in Australia - NOT! Since we aren't part of the Australian health-care system, we paid our bill in cash - a whole $70 AUD. Cheapest Dr. visit I've had in years!

With prescription in hand we trotted off to the chemist's to get it filled. This is where it got really weird. I hand the lady the prescription and she says,
"Have you had a prescription filled here before?", I say,
"No.", and then she says,
"Well then I'll need your Medicare card". To which I replied,
"I don't have a Medicare card. I'll just pay cash".
This causes her to get a little belligerent and she said,
"You have to have a Medicare card to enter the prescription in."
At this point I'm doing a surreptitious look around for Rod Serling because I'm just positive I've found the chemist Twilight Zone. She proceeds to give my prescription to another lady and gives me a bit of an evil eye while she explains my deplorableness to her.

The good news is the other lady didn't think this was one of the seven deadly sins and, amazingly, entered the prescription in without a Medicare card (will miracles never cease!). I paid my $13.85 AUD and we went on our merry way. There was one more oddity, though. The prescription was for 5 days of antibiotics. The Dr. said that he allowed one refill so if I was still feeling a bit under the weather I could get another 5 days of pills. I get to decide for myself - what power!

Doctor visit - cross that experience off the list - PLEASE!

Land Mullets and Bottlebrush Trees

Land Mullet
Bottlebrush Tree
We took a short walk today in a small reserve near our place. Eric had been there earlier in the week and had spotted a couple land mullets. This meant we really weren't walking so much as putting on our stealth moves in hopes of getting a shot of these creatures. Land Mullets are native to Australia and can get up to 50 centimeters in length (about 20 inches). We found two and they couldn't have been very far from 50 centimeters in length because they were big dudes. We got a few shots of them which was impressive considering their shyness (maybe it was our great stealthiness - ri-ight!).

In addition to interesting animals, Australia also has some of its very own cool plants. One growing right next door to us is the bottlebrush tree. They're blooming now and they are spectacular!

Today was very nice - the warmest day since we arrived. We celebrated by wading on the beach and soaking in some sun on our deck. We just did short stints outside - the sun down here is pretty penetrating. That and we just had to catch some Aussie Rules Football on the telly - what a crazy game! I think the best way you could describe it is organized mayhem!

I'm starting to think Foxtel (their cable TV company) must operate similarly. We still don't have cable and I'm beginning to think we never will. On the bright side, the last of the furniture finally came in so we are sitting pretty (sorry, I just had to say it!).

We're going back to Bay Life Church tomorrow after meeting several people at their "Life Group" on Tuesday. Now we just have to try to remember their names.

Hope you have a great weekend.

Shrieking Echidnas

We checked out a Celtic festival this weekend. I don't think I've ever seen so many kilts in one place before and all with their family tartan. We watched some caber tossing and enjoyed the sheaf throwing competition. We didn't enjoy the tug of war quite as much, but that might have been due to the plumber's crack display (get a belt, please!).

On our way back to the house I spotted an echidna! This is one of Australia's "spare parts" animals. The best way to describe an echidna is a porcupine with something like an anteater nose and mouth. For the record, echidnas do not shriek, but apparently I do when I see them! Poor Eric, who was driving at the time, couldn't decide if he should slam on the brakes or take some unknown evasive action since the echidna was not on the road or in his visual line. At least he passed his shriek-o-cardiogram so we know his heart is good (in more ways than one!).

We had box seats to the rugby game Saturday morning and we didn't even have to leave the house! There were a bunch of young men staying in the holiday house next door and they decided to have an impromptu game on the beach. We enjoyed it, but have concluded we need to have an Aussie watch a game with us and explain some of the finer points because sometimes things just don't make sense.

We tried a new church Sunday morning and happened to meet another couple who were also there for the first time and we had a great time chatting. As it turns out, they are from California and moved here a month before us. We found it entertaining that we happened to meet on the other side of the world. Everyone at the church thought we came together - same accent and all you know.

Hope you all have a great week. My goal for the week is to stifle my shriek if I see a cool animal. I'm sure Eric will appreciate it!

Budgie Smugglers

Every Friday morning at work we have a stand-up meeting for the entire team. The meeting is run by the commanding officer and he imparts a lot of information along with some great humor (er humour). Unfortunately it's great Aussie humor; I walk away feeling like a dullard because I either didn't hear it or I didn't get it. Today was one of those days where I didn't get it.

Today the commanding officer of the commanding officer was here (I'd give you their ranks, but it kind of goes over my head before I can grasp what they said). Anyway, they had this fake little bird and were saying this one gal may have been having some problems with budgie smugglers. I knew a budgie was a bird, but why was that so funny and why was that gal turning so red? Hmmm. She said she happened to see the commanding officer of the commanding officer last week on holiday in Fiji, but I didn't quite see the connection. Oh well, chalk it up to another thing that makes me feel like a witless wonder.

After the meeting, one of my coworkers, Jim, asked me and a couple others if we understood what was so funny and we said no, we didn't. Jim has been here the longest so he's had more time to get tuned into things so he was kind enough to explain to us that a budgie smuggler is a man's speedo swimming suit! Um, I didn't have to think too hard about how they came up with that one - Aussie slang is something else! Suddenly, the gal seeing the not-so-young commanding officer of the commander officer in Fiji was seeming awfully relevant to budgie smugglers! I'll say no more.

This weekend the base is holding an Air Show and they expect to have 30 to 40 thousand people in attendance. Eric and I debated on whether or not we were going to go, but knowing how most Aussie systems work we came to the conclusion that if we went we'd have to spend an awful lot more time there than we'd like because we wouldn't be able to get out of there! I was fortunate enough to see most all of the planes from out the window at work today. There was a Constellation out there which just about made Eric decide he wanted to go.

Today I became more convinced I didn't want to go to the air show because I got to see some of the practice maneuvers they were doing. The best was the F-111 which will soon be retired from the Aussie fleet. I also saw some cool formation flying. I definitely appreciated the show without fighting the crowds, but the downside is it sure made it hard to concentrate on work!

Heaven knows it'll be hard to concentrate on the beach now that I know those speedos are actually budgie smugglers!

Pelicans Everywhere

There are lots of pelicans here, but today we found the mother lode! We happened by a fish cleaning station where a man was cleaning his fish and the pelicans were there in force for the event. The man was the maestro and they were the orchestra because all he had to do was wave some fish parts around and every one of those pelicans moved in perfect synchronization to track that prospective meal!

After being entertained by that show, we had to get back because it was time to take A.J. to the airport. It seems like the month he was here went super-fast. Sadly we had to say goodbye so he could get back in time for classes this fall. In keeping with our pelican theme, he flew out on an Aeropelican turboprop airplane and Eric and I stopped by at the end of the runway to watch his plane take off.

In just a few weeks, Eric will be returning to the States for a month. I'm starting to think we're in a phase of constant, constant change. Just what is everyday and normal anymore? I have no idea. As they say, change is good. If that's true, we're most excellent!

It would also be excellent if we had more visitors in the pipe. While my assignment was initially set for two years, there is no guarantee on our time here as it's dictated by the changing tides of business decisions. So, please don't wait to set those wheels in motion - get that passport now and start planning! You won't regret it - Eric and I will make sure of that!

To the Top

A.J.
Since it was A.J.'s last weekend here before he heads back home on Tuesday, we splurged a bit and did some ATVing on the Stockton dunes. What a kick! Our tour was through a Worimi aboriginal group so we got to zip around on restricted areas of Stockton beach. Our guides gave us lots of good training as we went along and we got to do some serious zipping up to the top and down some pretty seriously tall dunes. I was the only one of us who thought to check my speedometer when we were going flat out and we got up to 47 miles per hour!!! It was way cool and we were sorry when it was over. Eric thought it was so cool he was thinking he'd like to buy one of those quad bikes, but there's that issue of money. Dang! Of course maybe the next visitors will be interested in going so he can get another ATV fix!

Yesterday we went out to the Barrington Tops area which is a few hours away with gravel roads and streams to ford no less! We didn't exactly have our trip very well planned so we didn't manage the big hike, but we did a shorter hike to the Hidden Treasure Mine which has an abandoned gold mine and goes through a "dry rainforest" area. I'm not so sure how a dry rainforest makes any sense, but that's what the sign said it was so I'm sticking with it. There were some interesting plants there, but mostly it seemed like a regular Australian forest with a few seriously huge trees.

We noticed lots of signs about fire danger and reporting fires which wasn't surprising considering how dry it is here. What really didn't add up was the half dozen fires we saw that were obviously intentional. It appears to be standard practice in the spring to burn off fields and even some forested areas which was rather puzzling because it does seem like you'd be tempting fate with it getting out of hand.

Today we found out we live on a 'nudie' beach. Whoa! Okay, so they were all six years old or less, but it was still strange. For a while there we were afraid the next time we looked out our window we might see the parents in the same state. Fortunately for us, it was restricted to the kids. Whew! All beaches in Australia are essentially public so I'm sure we'll have more visitors as time goes on. Fine by me just so long as they're sporting their 'swimmers' as they call them.

We're getting settled into the place more, but are still missing some of the furniture we've ordered. After the "3 weeks" passed by since our order, Eric decided to stop in and check on the order status. Their reply? "It'll be here before you even know it." Huh? Like we said, "3 weeks" means they have no idea!

We just bought the tickets to come home at Christmas-time. I'm not looking forward to the Seattle weather, but I can't wait to see everyone. I guess we'll be back "before you even know it"!

Fishing Around

Eric and A.J. went fishing the other day from the pier at the end of Wanda Beach (dare I say our beach?). They had fished other times without success from some other spots and were getting a little discouraged until A.J. saw someone catching a fish at the pier. So, the next chance they had to cast a line in the water you know where they went!

Now I only have their word that this is a true story because there are no pictures to prove it, but I've decided to believe it because they haven't been fishing enough to get good at telling a fisherman's tall tale. Their claim is that A.J. first caught a small leatherjacket. I couldn't find a picture of one that didn't have copyright restrictions so I'm just including a link to a picture of it on the New South Wales fishing site (leatherjacket picture). Even their fish are strange!

Fresh from that success, um, well, actually it is saltwater, they tried again. A.J. then caught a ray, an electric ray to be exact. It was pretty good size and when A.J. tried to pull it out of the water, the line snapped. This turned out to be a really good thing because if you read the information on the electric ray you find out they can shock you unless you pick them up just right! "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!" is what comes to mind.

For my part I was at work while all this was transpiring. The sum total of my adventures at work was fishing around for the right words to describe software regulation compliance processes. Man, do I know how to have fun!

We're going to spend the weekend in Sydney doing some sightseeing with A.J. so the fishing will have to wait for a few days. I do know I'll be "angling" for some Starbucks visits!

Aussie Helpers

We have been amazed by how most Aussies are seemingly eager to help us navigate our way through their systems. I guess that's why when someone isn't too helpful, it stands out like a sore thumb. Since people aren't falling over themselves to help us in the States, it can't be because we're so wonderful. I have to believe it's because the Aussies truly like Americans. Either that or our brand of pathetic in trying to figure out their world is just too much for them. Hmmm, I'd lay even odds on which one of those it might be.

We went to the Video store last week to rent some Aussie movies (more on that later) and the clerk violated their no-googling rule to see if one of their video games would work in our Playstation3 (the answer was no). They were very patient as we fiddled around getting the correct change and I'm sure if we had just dumped it out on the counter, they'd have been happy to do it for us. Okay, maybe it is our patheticness, but the help is very much appreciated.

One of my coworkers suggested a couple Aussie movies which I had never heard of before. The movies are "The Dish" and "The Castle". We were told "The Dish" was the story of Australia's role in the 1969 moonwalk. If you were guessing what kind of movie that would be, wouldn't you guess Drama? That's what we thought, but we could not find it for anything. Then Eric just happened across it in the Comedy section. Huh? We ended up finding "The Castle" there, too.

We watched "The Dish" first and thoroughly enjoyed it and what a view into the Australian psyche (albeit from 15 years ago). Neither Eric nor I knew that Neil Armstrong's first moonwalk video feed was received here in Australia. The movie had some comic relief, but I still think it was more drama than comedy in spite of their copious attempts to poke fun at themselves.

I'm not even sure what to say about "The Castle". The best way I could describe it is awkwardly funny. It definitely fit the Comedy moniker, but there was still a serious storyline going on about a family being forced out of their home. Good prevailed and all that, but it was strange (as in kooky), strange, strange from beginning to end.

We've started to notice an increase in wildlife activity. I guess they're gearing up for spring. More of their unusual birds are zipping about and making noises. They have so many different kinds of birds here, I can't even remember them all so I can look them up when I get back to the house. Some of them are so brilliantly colored it's amazing. I'm especially fond of the Lorikeets and their mostly bright green coloring. Pretty snazzy!

Wish our rugs would stay as colorful. We're finding the quality of their rugs to be rather suspect. In spite of washing the rugs in cold, the color still runs off them. I had to hang one up on the clothesline to dry and it was pretty faded once dry. I haven't used a clothesline in years, but it's what they do here and my guess is it's because the dryers don't work very well. All I know is it's another datapoint in the conversion to Aussieness. When I start going barefoot into the stores I'll know the process is complete!

I can't remember the last time I saw people barefoot in stores. It's pretty common here although I don't remember noticing it in Sydney. I'll check it out again this weekend since we're going to spend the weekend in Sydney sightseeing and getting me a Starbucks fix!!! Sad to say, that is the number one thing on my list of things to see and do! It's been 42 days since I've had Starbucks (not that I'm counting or anything) and surprisingly, the earth has not stopped orbiting the sun. We are planning to get an espresso machine because the coffee I've been having before I leave for work is just not cutting it. If Starbucks is relegated to a sightseeing event, then an espresso machine is my next best hope to find something that gets me to work in a conscious state.

I'll leave you with my Aussie phrase of the day - "come home with a wet sail" which means you've stormed to victory.

Thar She Blows!

We went whale watching today. Oh my gosh! The full set of pictures with all the amazing things the whales did are here: Whale picture album.

It was a magical experience because the whales were very curious about us, so much so that they came right to us and one even spyhopped to get a good look at us (see lower picture). They decided we were okay enough to really do some showing off and oh my goodness did they ever put on a show! In addition to the spyhop, they surfaced and swam around the boat, made amazing noises, did lots of tail wagging and smacking, waved fins at us, and one even rolled over onto his back and showed us both fins! The captain of the boat said it was fairly unusual for them to do that. He said it happened maybe one out of sixty times. All I know is we were extremely privileged to see such an awesome display from one of God's amazing creations.

Moving Shopping Marathon

We finally moved into our place on the 14th which was the signal to go into overdrive for the shopping marathon. We pretty much camped out in our new place from Saturday to Wednesday on borrowed air mattresses because there was nothing and I pretty much mean nada, zilch, zip in the way of furniture or appliances in the apartment. We "moved" in as in carried our suitcases to the 3rd bedroom and then took off to buy the appliances and get towels and sheets and $500 Aussie of other stuff (it's all a blur at this point).

The appliances arrived Tuesday the 17th. The delivery "subbies" (their word for subcontractors) were an interesting pair. Apparently I changed my name at some point because everything was darlin' this and darlin' that. Unfortunately, they were telling darlin' something that she did not want to hear and that was they weren't so sure they were going to get darlin's refrigerator up the stairwell. This is the point where you realize you are nearing true desperation because Eric and I were saying things like "so long as it works once you get it in there and you try not to scratch the front, we don't care how many dings it ends up with". We did care, but not if it meant we were going to be without a refrigerator for another day!

In the end they got it in there without any dings, but it definitely wasn't easy and darlin' endeared herself to them forever by giving them a big fat tip for their trouble. Since Aussies don't normally do any tipping, I'm sure they walked away thinking it was their lucky day. We were feeling pretty lucky ourselves and raced off to the Woolworths grocery store to de-Mother Hubbard our kitchen and refrigerator.

On Wednesday the mattress and couches arrived. A real bed! We also got to graduate from lawn chairs to a couch and recliners to watch the 5 channels on the TV perched on a box. We graduated to a bigger box a few days later when we bought the pots and pans set, but it still seems way too close to the floor. We have ordered a TV table along with a dining set, coffee table and a couple end tables, but they have given us the dreaded "3 weeks" for a delivery timeframe. In fact, what we have discovered from talking to others is "3 weeks" really means they have absolutely no idea when it will be available for delivery. Great, just what we wanted to hear!

Another one of their quirks is the stores keep next to no inventory. The refrigerator, dryer, couches, and bedroom set were all "floor models". I guess I should count my lucky stars, though, because I'm sure the alternative would be delivery in "3 weeks".

We got our home phone on Wednesday. It's not like we have anyone to call and especially not at 50 cents minimum for a local call, but we were excited anyway because that started the ticker for the internet. Aussies are very into processes and especially into following their processes to the letter even when they are woefully inefficient. The phone had to be connected on one order. This would cause another order to be created to check the line for DSL compatibility. If the phone line quality was sufficient, that generated a third order to ship us the DSL modem. Eight days after the phone went in we felt "processed" out, but we finally had that modem in our hands and even better, the magic of the internet at home.

This is why I have been so kind about not boring you with the gory details of our lives for the last two weeks. Things like the torturous shopping that I would have whined about incessantly since I'm not one who likes shopping. I'm sure I would have talked about the dichotomy of cheaply made stuff at outrageous prices and how it made it nearly impossible for Eric and I to pull the trigger on many purchases. Or the dolphins swimming by our house. You know, boring stuff like that! Guess I'll just have to save the wildlife for later.

Cheers!

The Former Good Speller with an Accent

I used to consider myself pretty good at spelling and even won a spelling bee or two in my ancient history. However, this has all changed at work as my work computer is set to Australian English rules. I now get that disconcerting red squiggly line in Word documents that shouts at me "Ha! You've messed up! I know the right answer, but won't provide it unless you right click the mouse over me or run spell check". Okay, so maybe that's a bit of a paraphrase, but that's what it feels like. I have been put in my place with enough words now that I've lost count of my ineptitude. I thought I was getting the hang of it (anything ending in 'or' like color now ends in 'our', an 'ize' ending is 'ise', and the 'er' ending is quite often 're' as in 'centre'), but I discovered there are some other one-offs that keep catching me. The word today was installment. Apparently in Australia it only has one 'l'. Then there was totaled. In Australia it has two 'l's. Huh? How do I ever remember which words have an extra 'l' and which ones have one taken away? I already have to remember to stay on the left side of the road - what more do they want from me?!

One of the more fascinating things about being in Australia is they like to hear our accent. I thought it was just me who enjoyed listening to them talk, but they have told us on several occasions that they like hearing us talk. Weird! Eric and I are hearing their accent enough now that it's beginning to sound normal except for a few who must come from somewhere that has a much stronger Australian accent. We may be understanding the words now, but we are sometimes a little slow on the uptake with some of their everyday phrases or choice of words. It does make for some "interesting" conversation.

We move into our place on Saturday. I think it will take us about 10 minutes to move in give or take a minute. With no furniture, unpacking will consist of moving the suitcases somewhere and leaving them open on the floor. Voila! Done in a snap. The furniture will start arriving on Wednesday so we'll be roughing it until then. Guess we'll be doing our own version of Ethan's term for it - urban camping. We'll have all the comforts of camping with the exception of having electricity and bathrooms (oops, proper word here is toilets or restroom).

As I keep saying, we'd love to have visitors, but be advised we might need some time to make it just a bit more livable!

In English Please!

The number of things in Australia with completely different names is sometimes amazing. We all speak English, right? Apparently we don't. We find ourselves trying to define things for them until they spit out their word for that item or we have to ask for their definition of some word we see on a menu. Examples:
- Tomato sauce with sugar is catsup, right? No, that's tomato sauce. Makes one wonder what tomato sauce without sugar is, hmmm.
- Green peppers are capsicum (oh yeah, I was just about to say that!).
- Flat white is coffee with milk.
- Long black is black coffee.
- Short black is black coffee without all the water as in a concentrated shot of espresso (ordered this thinking I was getting a small cup of coffee and barely suppressed my giggles when I saw just how "small" it was).
- Serviettes are napkins
- Beetroot are beets (sometimes it's an easy guess).

They do like their beetroot here. I had a beetroot salad the other night. It featured three kinds of beetroot (purple, orange, and one called a target beetroot) and aside from the goat cheese and hazelnuts, not much else. It was actually quite good and must have looked inviting, too, because Eric was suddenly offering to share some of his food (no ulterior motive there!). My bite of his kingfish was tasty and I think he would have accepted as much of my beetroot salad as I was willing to share which wasn't much!

Another thing Australians are quite fond of is pumpkin. Pumpkin soup, pumpkin in their stew, pumpkin alone, and strangely, not a pumpkin pie to be found. We had a very nice time eating dinner at the home of a couple from the church on Monday. Ren and Glynis were excellent hosts and fixed a nice home-cooked Australian dinner for us. We had a roasted chicken with potatoes, pumpkin (of course), onions, sweet potatoes, stuffing, peas, and green beans. For dessert Glynis fixed a traditional Australian dish called Pavlova. It has a creamy inside, a slightly crisp meringue outside, and fruit on top. It was delicious. We can't wait to get our place so we can have them over and fix them some of our fare.

The next thing on our plate, ahem, is to shop for appliances. We've got to get a refrigerator, washer, dryer, and TV. As soon as we accomplish that we have to start populating a completely empty kitchen. I can just see our shopping cart (I mean trolley) at "Big W" now. Filled to overflowing with toaster, mixer, plates, bowls, glasses, utensils, pots and pans, can opener, knives, measuring cups and spoons, mixing spoons, and, are you kidding me?! I can't even list it all. If there's room I guess we'll get some food, too. Okay, two trolleys might be better.

A.J. will be arriving the 16th. I managed to navigate the Boeing Australia system to get his Boeing-provided airline ticket (I love my company!) bought. I can't wait for him to get here.

Eric walked out to Nobby's Head today. It has the lighthouse into the Newcastle harbor. The view out there was "cool bananas" as he could see all of Stockton Beach (it's 20 miles long) and then further on he could see the headlands into the Port Stephens bay where we will be living. It was a bit more of a walk than he thought so he was a little tuckered out afterward.

We've heard that dolphins swim by our home-to-be in the morning. We can't wait to see this for ourselves. The whales having been heading up the coast and we saw one when we were here last month, but we haven't had a chance to spend any time looking since we got here permanently.

The weather has been much better since the storm. It has been quite sunny with temperatures as low as 5 (that's 41 in Fahrenheit) in the morning and in the high teens (60s) in the afternoon. That one day aside, so far I love their winter weather!

Guess I'd best wrap this up before it turns into a book. Take care and know that we miss you all!

Westerlies

We've had many misunderstandings since we've arrived. Some have to do with people not understanding our accent (what's up with that?!) and some are us making some really bad assumptions. Case in point, work luncheon last week. I thought I'd order an "Open Works Burger and Fries" thinking "Works" meant cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, and a pickle or something along those lines. Oh it was so not that. There was at least a burger there, but "Works" actually meant a few thick slabs of their bacon, a semi-flat poached egg, and a nice big slice of beetroot to go with the tomato and lettuce. As if that wasn't enough, it was absolutely huge! And they gave me enough fries to build a replica of parliament or clog my veins from here to eternity. Some day I'll know how to avoid these embarrassments over here, but until then I guess I am great entertainment for them.

Another thing we didn't quite understand is what they meant when they said the "westerlies" come in August. We thought they were some nice breezes that blew in from the west, but found out it was another case of Aussie under-statement. The wind was howling through the windows and a month's worth of rain back home was going sideways. It was so nasty that none of the fighter jets took off today from the base. It is our sincere hope that this is not how all of August will be weather-wise.

We are very excited to sign the lease on the place tomorrow and we will be taking possession August 14th which will be a super-happy day since we're pretty tired of the hotel. It's getting so bad the hotel people are saying things like, "Are you still here?" and they don't even need the car tag to know which car to bring anymore. We amuse ourselves now by longingly listing the things we can't wait to fix once we have a kitchen (not sure how we're going to do this with a completely empty kitchen, but dreams don't have to be logical, do they?).

Last weekend we shopped until we dropped for furniture. We put money down on a couch and two recliners, found the mattress we're going to get, hunted endlessly for the right dining table without success, and found the perfect bedroom set - that is until we saw its price tag. Dang! Oh well, just have to keep looking.

We got to Skype Amber, Steven, and A.J. properly with video on Sunday. It was nice to see their faces (and Zuzu, too!) and chat with them. It definitely helps keep the "missing them" part from getting too bad.

We are definitely starting to miss everybody. Please come visit!

On the Beach

We saw the place on the beach this afternoon and are putting in an application for it. Unless absolute disaster strikes, we'll get to rent this place and move in after August 14th. The full set of pictures available are here:
2/1 Randall Drive, Salamander Bay

The next step is to start shopping for appliances, furniture, and kitchenware. It makes me tired just thinking about it!

"10" is the New "50"

Eric and I are finding that much of what we're occupying our minds with is conversions. If it's 10 degrees Celsius outside, what is that exactly in Fahrenheit? After finally reconstructing the formula on a napkin, we came up with 50 and then amused ourselves with finding the point where Fahrenheit and Celsius cross (-40 for those keeping score). What can I say, it's how engineers entertain themselves! Now we know for certain that their winters really are nicer than the winters back home because that's the morning temperature. Of course, there are also the conversions between miles/kilometers, gallons/liters, and pounds/kilograms, but I'll spare you those details. Needless to say, we're getting some mental exercise.

We are also getting our fair share of entertainment in the driving department. The usage of the "international turn signal" (i.e., the wipers) is slowly decreasing. It now only seems to be happening at moments of extra stress or just when you relax because you think you've got it well in hand. We took delivery of the Toyota RAV4 that we are leasing for the next couple years Friday afternoon so we did a tag-team drive up to the Newcastle airport to return the rental - without mobile phones (non-US speak for cell phones), but it was no worries, mate.

We found a great church to worship at this morning and felt very welcomed. It probably helps that it was easy to figure out we were new what with our accent and all. It is so comforting to know that there are fellow believers here and that they, too, serve a risen Savior (well, actually Saviour). We were so at home there that we found ourselves contemplating whether or not we could make this our home church even though it will most likely be at least 50 minutes from where we end up living (umm, 45 if I'm driving!). Guess we'll just have to wait and see where the good Lord leads us.

I saw some kangaroos yesterday (Eric was focusing on the road - good man!). We haven't seen any koalas. I keep checking the eucalyptus trees for them, but no luck so far.

We were shown another possible rental apartment yesterday. It wasn't what we were hoping for. There's another place coming available in a couple weeks or so and we are applying for it sight unseen. I'm really hoping we get it as we were able to see the unit above it so we know it won't be a dive. The apartment is on the beach and there were some pelicans out there to greet us - pretty cool!

The Stuff of Life

It's hard to believe that we have compressed the essentials of our lives into 8 suitcases. Umm, compressed being rather literal I'm afraid - those suckers are stuffed! It was a very interesting experience contemplating the stuff of our lives. I feel like this is the beginning of our "minimalist" phase or at least comparative minimalism. Now the trick is to keep from beginning another period of accumulation. Not sure how we'll accomplish that since it is looking like we will have to get an unfurnished place.

On top of the nutso packing, we had to say goodbye to the family which was rather hard and Zuzu, our dog, didn't even wait for us to leave to start moping. She knows when those suitcases come out it's bad news and there were so many I think she figured she might as well get an early start on being depressed.

I'm sure the enormity of this change will hit me soon, but at the moment I'm so tired I can hardly think (apparently going to bed at 6:00 AM will do that to you).

Stay tuned for the blubbering when I start missing everybody...

Bushed Already

We haven't even left and we're already tuckered out. At least it was for a very good reason - Amber and Steven's wedding (so far Mom only has a picture from rehearsal). It's hard to believe our daughter is married now. Where did the years go? If the speed of the passing of time for Amber's 22 years is any indication, we'd best not blink for the next few in Australia or it'll be over before we know it.

I should be packing with a vengeance for this move, but we still have relatives in town, and, frankly, I'm rather zapped from the wedding. Tomorrow I will just have to start, zapped or not, because our departure date of July 21st (which, by the way, is our 31st anniversary!) is practically here.