Fun With Kayaks

From almost the first moment we moved into our place here in Salamander Bay, Eric and I said "we should buy some kayaks". These kind of statements are so often more likely to be wishful thinking than to ever be put into any sort of motion that might actually turn those wishes into reality. And so it was for months and months.

Upon Eric's return from his last sojourn back to Seattle, all this changed. With our incredible sense of timing, we decided it was time to finally act on our wishful thinking. Our finely honed sense of timing might be just a hair off as we're heading into winter and that probably isn't exactly high season for kayaking.

Unfazed by this realization, I began stalking my prey on eBay. I found out it takes a lot of time and effort to catch a kayak. Eventually I bagged one, but they didn't deliver, so we had to drive to Sydney to get it. Once we got it home, we tried the kayak out briefly sticking very close to the beach as we hadn't procured a life jacket yet.

At work the next day I was discussing life jackets with a coworker and the Aussie on the other side of the cube popped up (also called prairie dogging in cubicle land) and gave me a very important tip. He said, "don't get yummy yellow - it's a favorite of sharks". I very briefly stared him down to ascertain the veracity of his claim and decided he was pulling my leg. Unfortunately, having seen the movie Jaws as a kid, there is a small part of me that believes him no matter the ludicrousness of the statement; it's the same small part that had a hard time even getting into a swimming pool after seeing the movie. It was really scary - no wait, really, really scary.

Anyway, what should I discover when I got home? Eric had gone out and purchased a nice yellow life jacket. Great! Now the thing will be forever a yummy yellow life jacket.

Since the kayak was a single, I had a job to do - bid and buy another one. I slaved away at eBay once again and was finally successful and got the second one at an even better price. We had to drive to a different place near Sydney to pick it up and discovered we got a bargain - he had never sold one for so low a price. We also found out that had we bought it during the summer it would have cost us twice as much. Wow, maybe our timing wasn't as bad as we thought.

Now we needed a second life jacket. I was determined to get a life jacket in any color other than yummy yellow this time. Of course, what did we find? The store only had yummy yellow life jackets! It's a shark conspiracy I'm tellin' ya!

It might be heading into winter, but it was in the 70s last weekend and beauteous out there. We took the kayaks out for a nice long trip. We went around the head to the next bay and then came back and headed in the other direction to the pier. We concluded our happy little trip with the unfortunate realization that kayaking can also make you feel a bit seasick when it's a bit wavy out there. Guess we'll be investing in some patches before our next foray.

Kayaking off our beach - cross that off the list and add it back in because that's one we'll definitely be doing again!

Everybody Rug Up

It has been a little hard to come up with stuff to talk about because most of life here is starting to seem pretty darn normal. Well, as normal as being in a constantly confused state could possibly be. I can't for the life of me get spring/fall and winter/summer straightened out. Without fail when I'm trying to refer to the July-August time-frame I'll say "this summer". I am at least now following that statement directly with "I mean winter", but I just cannot seem to make the mental switch.

The news this morning told everyone to "rug up" because it's unseasonably cold. That means put on your jumper (sweater) and coat. I have the worst time when people (especially men) talk about putting on their jumpers. Unbidden comes this image of them putting on the dresses I had to wear to school as a kid. Not a pretty sight even if it is just in my head!

Another thing that's a little strange is this cold snap being referred to as an "Antarctic Blast". It does make sense since Antarctica is the continent directly south of here, but it's still an "Arctic Blast" to me.

It was cold and ridiculously windy for my soccer game yesterday. We tied a team 0-0 that was much, much better than us so we were claiming it a moral victory if nothing else. I had the most dubious distinction of laying one of their best players out flat. I don't have the great kicking ability of many people and I have absolutely no experience in this area, but I have it on good authority from my better half that this situation requires only hitting the "right spot". At any rate, I was mortified as my team was having quite the time making sure I couldn't forget what happened both at the field and later again at work. There's a definite downside to playing soccer with your coworkers, that's for sure.

We're making plans now to come back to Seattle for a few weeks starting in mid-July (please don't ask me if that's winter or summer - I don't know!) with a stop in Indiana somewhere in the middle of it. I sure hope it'll be warmer than here (no guarantee for Seattle, but I'm thinking our chances are pretty good for Indiana). We will have lived here for a whole year by then - where in the world has the time gone? I sure hope we get to see all our dear friends and family because we sure do miss you all.

Learning Aussie English

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.

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!