I don't know where the last month has gone, but I have been soaking up a lot of Aussie everyday words and phrases. While a number of people at work have been feeling crook (sick), I've just been tired. I also haven't wagged (skipped) work or church. Granted with Eric having been gone more than three weeks now I am dangerously close to cracking the sads (being unhappy or upset). So what have I done?
Sadly, the one thing I vividly remember is my cockie (cockroach) experience a couple weeks ago. What we have learned is this is an ideal climate for them and Aussies here will tell you they're just a fact of life - you know like killer spiders. On the surface I could understand this concept, but the reality was much different.
I turned on the light in the kitchen that night only to discover a monster cockie in a bowl on the counter. In that moment when my heart lurched I contemplated the possibility of peaceful coexistence with this behemoth (behecockie?), but in the next instant the vision of sharing my pantry with him made me realize it was so not possible. Thenceforth every thought left my mind except killing it. I found and brandished my weapon of choice (a shoe), and the chase was on. He retreated to the side of the counter by the dining table so I had to go around only to discover some other little bug on the floor. Since I was armed, the little one was dispatched post haste. Back to my first quarry. He was smart and was staying by the corners. I took a few unsuccessful whacks at him and he was off to the other side again. Back to the kitchen. He and I worked our way to the toaster oven with a few unsuccessful whacks. As I tried to move the toaster oven to get at him again, another monster roach came out of that! Oh the horror!!!
Now I’m chasing two and they’ve gone in different directions. I finally got the first one and based on his size, I'm sure you can imagine what a sickening display that was. Ugh!!! Since the job was not done I couldn’t allow myself to think about having to clean that mess up. The second monster was by the mixer and he was equally disgusting – bleah!!! After cleaning up the messes, it was awfully hard to contemplate sleep what with the memory of the carcasses, the knowledge that I was a triple murderer, and that there were probably gobs more of these monster roaches waiting in the wings to ruin my life.
It was definitely a troubled sleep that night and I have been checking the kitchen carefully ever since and haven't seen hide nor hair (and they were big enough to have that stuff if cockies could) of a single cockroach. Guess the other ones can just feel their imminent doom so they're laying low. Aussies would give this a shrug and a no worries, but personally, I'm thinking pest control is my next step. I just hope they don't laugh at me too hard - they probably only think pest control should be used for the poisonous things.
Our other creepy crawly story has to do with our mailbox. For some time we were noticing that our mail was rather chewed up and there were dregs in the bottom of the box. Hmmm. Eric finally discovered the culprit one day - a snail. Mystery solved and we've started calling him our poor man's paper shredder.
I never finished our vacation blogs - lucky you. I think part of it was I didn't want to admit that the highlight of day 5 was our visit to Costco in Melbourne. How pathetic is that? When the beautiful coastal scenery is overshadowed by seeing and buying real paper towels, you know you haven't really completed the adjustment to living in the land of Oz. Buy, hey, it was a real treat to buy something more towel-like as opposed to paper-like.
We also appreciated greatly that the inside of that store was so Costco you could almost imagine yourself back in the states. That is until we passed by the big jars of Vegemite and noticed the "import" tags on many of the products. We bought lots of stuff and were thrilled to find so many comforts of home to take with us.
Speaking of the states, Eric has been gone 3 1/2 weeks now. With a week and a half to go it feels like it will never end. I spent almost two of those weeks with a broken TV antenna. There is not much worth watching here, but a dozen channels are definitely better than none as sometimes it's nice to hear someone else talking (and no I haven't started talking to myself - I meant someone talking at all!). I have been very fortunate in that members of our church family here have invited me to dinner every week so I'm not too lonely.
Remember the budgie smugglers? I had an Aussie acquaintance who thought that the equivalent American slang was "banana hammock". I had to say I'd never heard of that one and truth be told, I thought it sounded more Aussie as they tend to be quite a bit more "visual" in their slang.
I don't think I can sink any lower so I'll stop now.
Miss you all.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, March 7, 2011
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.
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 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.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
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.
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.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
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!
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!
Sunday, February 6, 2011
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
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.
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.
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