First Australia Vacation Day 4

One of the first things we realized the day before was that we weren't prepared for it to be cold. Our hope was that the coldness of the previous day was an aberration and it would be warm and lovely for our sightseeing. Well, it wasn't. It got down to 10 Celsius in the late afternoon (50 Fahrenheit) and since we were used to the lovely summer up north, that seemed especially cold. Our little hiking forays to check out all the cool places were brisk walks - literally. It was quite windy and we found the weather to be either threatening rain or or having a little sun break in between the threats.

We saw some fabulous coastal formations and cliffs. As you can see, it's pretty special scenery. We especially enjoyed the Grotto and the Loch Ard shipwreck area. The ocean has long since erased the remnants of the Loch Ard wreck, but the story remains. The whole stretch we drove was dubbed the "shipwreck coast" because so many ships have met their end along there.

One of the highlights was the Twelve Apostles formations. Unfortunately they've lost a few apostles over the years, so it's now a bit misnamed, but the ones left are doing their best to look especially good.

We also went to the Tree Top Walk which was cool, but in our opinion was quite overpriced ($22 AUD each). I saw a new bird there - the Eastern Yellow Robin - and managed to immortalize it in the camera.

We next headed to Cape Otway where we would be spending the night at the lighthouse manager's accommodations. As we drove down the road to the lighthouse, we had heard there were koalas so we were keeping an eye out for koala bums (and the rest of their bodies, too!). It wasn't long before we saw one, then another, and we just kept seeing them. We stopped and got lots of pictures of these cute (sort of) little furry guys. After forever scanning the trees near our house for koalas with no success, we felt like we'd hit the jackpot. We also spied our first fox in Australia.

Staying at the lighthouse was an interesting experience. It truly was a step back in time as there was no cell phone coverage, internet, television, or telephones. We were - gasp! - cut off from the world. I think if I were to live there for any length of time I'd need an awful lot of books. But for a one night stint, it can and does keep its charm.

I posted the full set of scenic coastline, tree top walk, koala, fox, and lighthouse pictures here (Pictures). As you can see by one of them, the wind blew my hair into a frightful 'do.

First Australia Vacation Day 3

One of the things we all seek in a vacation is the chance to "get away from it all". Well, we got away from it all - including the internet. All it took was a few days of no internet and suddenly I've nothing to say. Sadly this is mostly because I can't recall half of what happened, but this is where pictures are a leaky mind's best friend.

Based on the evidence presented by the camera, we first saw a gannet colony. It might have been a lot more interesting if we could have actually gotten close enough to the colony to tell we were looking at gannets and not just some moving birds of some sort in the distance, but the environmentalists must have deemed our visage so repulsive to gannets that they'd no longer be able to reproduce if they took a gander at us (oops, I think I'm mixing my 'birdaphors').

Apparently the only thing gannets can look upon with equanimity are Maremma dogs. They have two of these dogs and the two dogs take turns guarding the gannet colony. The dogs are trained to make a fox wish it'd never even thought about a gannet dinner. All I know is I felt kind of sorry for the dog that was there because he sure seemed to want some human contact.

We moved on down the road and after checking out a reproduction of an old boat, we turned off into an area called the Tower Hill Reserve. It's a monstrous crater from long ago volcanic activity and is a lush environment. We found a shingleback lizard, emus, koalas, and one kangaroo that scared the dickens out of me and vice versa. It was a completely different world.

We hopped back onto the Great Ocean Road and made our way to Warrnambool. Warrnambool has a lovely viewing area on one beach to look at whales, but since it's not the season for the whales to be around we contented ourselves with admiring someone's beach artwork. Pretty cool, eh?

We moved on thinking we'd spend the night in Peterborough. That plan fizzled when we saw the motels there - they just didn't look like what we were hoping to find. We moved on to the next town and found a place to drop our carcasses for the night in Port Campbell.

The next stretch of road holds the big attractions of the Great Ocean Road so we looked forward to seeing even better stuff after a good sleep.

First Australia Vacation Day 2

We enjoyed our "free" breakfast this morning and then headed for some real coffee or at least it was espresso. I got a kick out of ordering an iced mocha with extra ice only to discover their iced mochas don't normally come with ice. Once again, another bad assumption in a country where I've found things just aren't always as logical as I might wish.

The weather today was rainy and very overcast to the point of being foggy in sections. We decided that based on that, we might as well do the inland drive to the other end of the Great Ocean Road today because it wasn't going to be conducive to short hikes and sightseeing.

We skirted Melbourne, and then stopped for lunch in Geelong. The lunch was excellent and we wandered around the Geelong waterfront for a bit and then hopped back into the car. From there we headed pretty much due west and saw cows, sheep, cows and sheep, and sheep and cows. It was kilometers and kilometers of pastureland. What was puzzling was the pastures were semi-separated by lines of trees that had been obviously planted a large number of years ago. I'm only guessing that the trees were meant to separate the properties as there didn't seem to be rhyme or reason to much of their placement.

I was profoundly disappointed that in all those hours of driving we did not see a single kangaroo except for a few who had found their close encounter with a vehicle to be their last unfortunate moment. We did finally see a mob of them in the evening near Cape Bridgewater, but I was surprised that was the only time we saw them since I see them at least half the time on the way to work and here we were in absolutely prime grazing land.

We ended our day in Portland of all places. I guess people long ago did not have much in the way of imagination as they seemed wont to use the same names for many places. At least we'd passed through some places with much more interesting names like Warrnambool and Bolwarra. You just don't find those towns all over the world now, do you?

We found a place to stay for the night and then took off for Cape Bridgewater which was supposed to have a seal colony. To my great disappointment we didn't find the seals. We thought we saw some penguins at one point, but it turned out to be some well-fed cormorants. Drat!

We drove around the port in Portland and it looks like Portland ships out a lot of grain and who knows what else. One of the ships appears to have been a fish processing ship as there must have been 8 stories of lighted levels.

Tomorrow we start the Great Ocean Road and with any luck the weather will be an improvement on what we had today.

First Australia Vacation Day 1

We finally decided to take the plunge and take a week to do some touring of this huge continent called Australia. Since we hadn't seen much of anything except what was within a few hour's drive from our place, there were lots and lots of options. We finally decided on the Great Ocean Road. This is reached by essentially driving south until you hit the ocean at the bottom of the continent. The Great Ocean Road then runs west to almost Adelaide.

Eric commented that it was odd that the climate gets cooler as you go south - just another thing that's backwards to our lifetime of experiences. There is never any shortage of things backwards to us here, that's for sure.

We took off a bit late this morning, but Eric had planned for a not-too-strenuous day of driving. It was all pretty normal to start with as we've done the drive to Sydney several times now, but it did take on new meaning as I've been reading a series called the Australians which is a fictionalized account of the settlement of Australia, but has kept to factual history as much as possible. It was fun to head through a few of the suburbs of Sydney now knowing about the story of their most humble beginnings.

It wasn't too long after we departed Sydney that we hit new territory. Eric and I commented that the land was starting to seem very normal to us. It turned very hilly which surprised us, but eventually started to flatten out again and then we started to see sheep and more sheep.

I was surprised we didn't see much in the way of wildlife. The only thing we saw was what might have been a fox and some lizards crossing the road. The areas we drove through seemed like they would have been prime kangaroo land as it was pasture after pasture, but we saw very, very few of them. Maybe tomorrow we'll see more critters.

We put in for the evening in Albury. As seems to be so common in smaller towns, walking into the hotel room is a step back in time - like 20 years maybe. It's clean, but the bed has seen better days. We joked that the checkout time was 10:00 because they didn't want people sleeping in too much as they're trying to make the mattresses last forever.

The room came with free breakfast and we were told the breakfast was already in our room. With great curiosity we took a peek in the fridge to discover a little thing of orange juice, a little thing of milk, and four slices of bread with butter packets. I found myself thinking that was pretty funny, but then we discovered there was some Vegemite and packets of jam. Uh, dibs on the jam! We next discovered there was a packet of Weetbix and a single serve cereal box so the breakfast options were definitely improved, but that was as far as it went.

Tomorrow we hit Melbourne. We'll launch from there to the Great Ocean Road and eventually loop back to Melbourne before we head back home. There is a Costco in Melbourne and we find ourselves looking forward to seeing what an Australian Costco sells. I'm especially looking forward to seeing if there are huge jars of Vegemite.

I hope everyone back home is not freezing too much. I must admit I'm certainly enjoying the glorious summer here. You can too, just hop on that plane and get your arse over here. I can never have too many excuses to take more vacation!

More Things Not to See and Do

Yesterday we went with friends to check out Barrington Tops. We tried to do Barrington Tops when A.J. was visiting, but according to Eric, A.J. and I did not correctly navigate us to the real Barrington Tops. Strangely enough, A.J. and I thought that a brown sign that said "Barrington Tops National Park" with an arrow that pointed left meant we should go that way. So, yesterday, Eric was determined to get to the "real" Barrington Tops and that meant not following those signs. Instead, we would go to one of the "i" stores the Aussies have sprinkled everywhere to get the needed information and maps.

We stopped at the Gloucester "i" store and encountered Lorraine. She was a kick. She gave us all sorts of good information, stories, and maps. My favorite was the story of the group of Chinese tourists who ran across a sizable lace monitor (goanna) and they all started pointing and yelling "clocodile". The goanna thought maybe he just might like Chinese food so they had to leave before the "clocodile" got them.

Armed with information and maps, we first fortified ourselves with a chicken, curry, or mushroom pie at the local bakery except Eric who had a sandwich (weirdo), and then sallied forth into the hills. We drove a while on fairly level roads, but as we started to climb the road suddenly turned into gravel and dusty gravel at that. As the elevation increased we noticed a welcome drop in temperature. It was over 100 degrees when we started, but at 1500 meters elevation it was more like 80 - much better. We got out for the first walk at Honeysuckle something-or-other. It was a 30 minute return walk (round-trip) so off we went. It was a little damp and Ron was setting a brisk pace. We were back in just under 15 minutes and a bit disappointed that it wasn't all that interesting. Little did we know.

We hopped back into the car and took off for the next point of interest which was Thunderbolt Lookout. The lookout was a 300 meter walk. We got out of the car to go and I just happened to look down because I felt something on my leg. I wigged out because there was a creature there and got it off as quickly as I could not caring one whit about identifying it first. The quick look I got made me think it might have been an inch worm - that was until I looked at my leg again. There nestled next to my sock was a black thing which I was horrified to realize was a leech! I got that off as fast as I could and it bled a bit because it was in the process of attaching itself for some lunch. Eeek!

We realized I must have picked it up on the first walk and as you can imagine our entire foursome immediately commenced with our best Chubby Checker imitation - doing the twist in earnest to complete a thorough inspection for leeches. Finding no more, we next debated whether or not we wanted to do the hike since we now knew it to be true that leeches can just drop from leaves when a potential meal passes by. Attempting to show some Aussie spirit, we decided to do the short hike. The lookout was nice and showed a great expanse of heavily forested area below.

The view was somewhat diminished in my eyes since I had the misfortune of brushing against a stinging nettle plant; bushwalking was definitely starting to lose its allure for me. I was starting to feel like the weak animal of the herd - you know, the one the lions have for dinner. But Eric unwittingly came to my rescue by noticing there was a black thing on his sock. Another leech! He yanked it off only to realize it had been a bit more attached than mine was - you know, like mine was at the hors d'oeuvres and his had started the main course. He had more blood on his sock than I did which was disconcerting because the best prewash spray they have here we have dubbed "Spray 'n Wish" as in that blood may be there to stay.

After we all did the twist one more time, we checked out some marshes and then moved onto an area where they did an experiment years ago with planting firs. The firs did very well and were now quite dense. We took a quick walk through the firs and the meadow behind them, but Eric also brushed against some stinging nettles. We both had a little tingly/throbby sensation at the point of contact the rest of the evening - nasty things they are.

We went through the dingo gate and just like that we were on the other side of Barrington Tops. I think we expected it to be a bit more scenic (and less leechy) than it turned out to be, but it was on our list of things to see and do, so we can cross it off the list. Heaven knows the leeches and stinging nettles have been completely blacked out on that list because we really don't want to do that again.

Happy Australia Day!

Australia Day, January 26th, is the day Australians commemorate the First Fleet's 1788 arrival in Sydney Cove. As the ships held many convicts and were coming to start a colony, it isn't exactly equivalent to our July 4th celebration, but close enough. Eric and I originally planned to spend Australia Day with friends, Ron and Pam, in Sydney but my health misadventures made that a bad idea. In the end we decided Eric should proceed with the original plan and I would spend the afternoon at a coworker's celebration.

Eric left before 6:30 AM and spent the entire day exploring some of the "real" Sydney using Ron's store of information from growing up there. Even though they opted not to stay for the fireworks show, they'll be getting back real late. I look forward to the next time we get to go to Sydney so Eric can show me all the cool places he now has in his hip pocket.

I spent the afternoon doing another version of the real Aussie experience. I got to eat handmade meat pies made by Aussies who clearly had some experience in this. I found out Aussies all go for a swim on Australia Day. There were Australian flags everywhere, it was hot, and there was plenty of alcohol. Percy the pelican was hanging around and got a little excited at one point because he thought he was going to get a bit of the good eats, too, but his day did not get made. There was, of course, a sausage sizzle - what else would Aussies eat on their day?

Eric's Dad's surgery went very well so thanks for your prayers. I'm slowly improving and have greatly improved mobility. I am now dealing with a lot of soreness and weakness, but I can move much better so I am counting my blessings.

For Better or For Worse

I had a grand vision when we got back from Seattle of spoiling Eric until he was completely recovered and we could get back to the "for better" part of our arrangement. Little did I know that January 2011 was going to be quite different than I planned. I think I accomplished about a day and a half of treating him right and then the wheel fell off completely. Instead of being pampered he ended up doing the pampering as I suffered through three days of fever that plastered me to any available horizontal surface. I was still awfully weak for several days after that so aside from asking him often how his chest was feeling, he wasn't getting much of the "better" part of our arrangement (so sorry dear!). I'm happy to report that in spite of my lack of ministrations he managed to make his way back to very nearly normal and was even able to go shoot some hoops a few days ago without much aggravation and he shot really well to boot! Yay!

We were both feeling pretty decent by the weekend of the 15th so it became shopping day because we definitely needed some things and it was time to get a barbecue of our own. We were standing in a store waiting in the queue to check out and the lady in front of us starts acting a little odd. She's talking to seemingly no one in particular and a surreptitious check of her ears found no bluetooth apparatus. It soon became apparent that she is talking to her purse or little backpack thingy and saying soothing words to it. Well now that's interesting. Next thing I know she looks at us sheepishly and says she's not crazy, she has two dogs in there. We're both thinking to ourselves, "Lady, claiming there are two dogs in that little thing is not helping your case any." Then she opens up the thing and sure enough, there are two dogs in there. Okay, I guess recognizing crazy people isn't our gift or at least not if it involves two tiny dogs in a backpack in a store.

We next went barbecue shopping. We became the proud owners of the "Down Under" brand or at least the box that contained one. Eric spent a few hours assembling the thing and decided it should start with a different instruction #1 that says, "Go get a nice, big, cold beer because you're going to be here a good long while and you're going to need it." He was successful and had that beer a bit later even though the instructions didn't call for it.

I had a hectic week of the 17th at work. I knew things were going to heat up in 2011 and it sure didn't wait long. I'm trying to get a big upgrade going and as we keep finding more "uh ohs", I decided it was like peeling back the layers of an onion - it just makes you cry more. I guess the good news is the days will go fast because the deadline for completion is far too soon.

Now it's back to the worse part. Friday morning I woke up awfully stiff and sore, but didn't think too much of it because once I got going it was okay. Saturday I woke up in the middle of the night with pain and stiffness in nearly every joint I possess and they were starting to swell. What?! It was really, really hard to walk, I had no strength in my hands, and I couldn't begin to make a fist. Thankfully, the walking part improved somewhat after a shower.

The Lord is pretty amazing about looking out for us in our troubles and when Eric called a medical center that was open on Saturday mornings they were able to take us right away (wow!). Even better - the doctor was awesome! He set up some tests to figure out what was going on and said the fever a couple weeks earlier was quite likely the trigger for this episode.

Soon after we got back from the doctors, the Skype phone rang. It was Eric's brother, Dave, calling to let us know Eric's Dad, Bill, is going to have major surgery on Tuesday. Poor Eric was completely torn with the feeling that he needed to be in two places at once. He really wanted to go back to Indiana for his Dad's surgery, but clearly I was needing him here. In the end, he decided to pray for his Dad from here (two hemisphere prayer coverage is good) and stay here and make sure I was okay.

After we tried to digest that news and since I was walking okay at this point, Eric and I decided to go to Newcastle with Ron and Pam to see the ministry they're involved with, YWAM. YWAM stands for Youth With A Mission and is a great organization with many similarities to Young Life in the states. I think the difference that stood out the most to me is that the schools here in Australia really embrace YWAM and actually invite them to come into their schools.

We next took off for Tahlee which is a huge site that YWAM has on the other side of the water from our house. We could get there in 20 minutes or so by boat, but by car it takes quite a bit longer. Sadly the long drive completely did my joints in and the best I could muster was the Tim Conway old man shuffle from the Carol Burnett show. Frustrating for sure, but I still think it was worth it because it was a fascinating place.

There were some wallabies peacefully eating grass by one of the driveways. At least they were until we went by. They hopped off to a safer distance and kept their eye on us. We stopped at the stand of bamboo they have and those bamboo are huge! We learned they have a 3-4 meter python (yes, like 10 feet+!) that lives in those bamboo and my less than bright husband decided to wander around the bamboo looking for it. I had to wonder if he was contemplating having to take care of me and thought being a python meal would mean he could get out of some of the "worse" part of the deal.

The good news (actually it's really bad news, but good for Eric since he was not in danger of being eaten) is we found out from Georgeena (sp?) who lives there that the python had gotten into the chicken coop the night before and eaten the three chickens! I guess some of the other residents carried the python off to the woods so he could sleep off the triple chicken combo meal for several days.

I was properly horrified by the outcome of the poor chickens and also that Australians pick up pythons and carry them places - ever! Right after that Georgeena told us that early that day a big goanna had gotten into another pen and killed a couple ducks. Georgeena had to go in and get the goanna out of there to save the other three! That seems equally crazy - just what is in that Vegemite anyway?! Georgeena said she hadn't yet mustered up the courage to go back in and clean up the mess in the pen. Well, of course not, she clearly had to use it all up on battling the goanna.

We saw more cool stuff and then dropped Ron and Pam off at their place and headed home. It was at this point that I realized I was in big trouble. I had to crawl up the stairs and, dang, it was painful. I got inside and dropped onto the bed feeling as though I had just run a marathon. Not good. Eric did a fabulous job of taking care of me although I couldn't tell if it was so much work he'd rather have been a python dinner or not.

Sunday was worse. The swelling was worse, the pain was worse, the stiffness was worse, and now my neck decided to join in on the stiffness action. I am so thankful for everyone's prayers as Monday morning held the first hope in this strange odyssey - the swelling was slightly less because my knuckles were showing signs of appearing again.

I was able to make it to the tests although I think Eric would have rolled me there if necessary. The body scan was interesting and based on Eric's research I think I'm still technically radioactive. The best part of the scan was I'm laying there with nothing but the ceiling and four fluorescent lights to contemplate and the next thing I know is I see the silhouette of a lizard on the other side of the light cover! I watched him until one of the panels of the machine obscured him from my vision. The lizard was gone by the time I could look again which was a bit disconcerting, but it was the last test so I just beat a hasty (actually, really slow) retreat.

The body scan films would be sent by post later so we paid the bill ($800+), and took the x-rays with us to take to the doctor. He took one look at the knee one and said "that's awful". So, while he doesn't have all of the test results back yet, I think that and a couple of the blood tests convinced him that starting with a real good arthritis drug was in order because that was one cause for sure even if it might not be the current cause. I already took the first pill and I'm actually hopeful I'll get to sleep more than 20 minutes at a stretch tonight and if I'm really lucky, the pain alarm will not go off.

Sorry to be so blabby about the health stuff - you'd think I was getting old or something (please, no comments from the peanut gallery!). I am so thankful to have a wonderful husband who doesn't run from the "worse" part (except where maybe pythons are involved) and for all your prayers. Please keep Bill's surgery and recovery in your prayers. Love you all.