R and R

We traveled to Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road. A stunning drive filled with strategically placed lookouts.


And arrived just in time for Christmas and have been enjoying the much needed rest from the road. We are staying at my awesome friends' awesome apartment while they are on holiday. This means some quiet nights in and some city sightseeing during the day mostly. We are here for just over two weeks so we have plenty of time to take it easy and still soak up the Melbourne culture.

Christmas day saw the end of David's beard experiment and a brief appearance of the 'Christmas Mo'. For Christmas we slept in late, lazed around and watched A Christmas Story, then made a delicious dinner of prawns, butternut squash, salad, roasted veggies. We topped it off with an Italian cake and a viewing of The Breakfast Club. I guess that qualifies as a Christmas movie here.

The only holiday food I am really craving is a pumpkin pie, but they don't do pumpkin pie here. So I am on a mission to make a pumpkin pie from a real pumpkin. If you have done this and have tips let me know.

We have also gone to a cricket match. The Boxing Day Test match is a big annual event in Melbourne. We went on day two (David again on day five, yes FIVE) it was better than I expected but after 5 hours (yes 5 HOURS) I bailed, just in time to miss the streaker. Oh well.


So far our favorite place seems to be the bar two blocks away that serves a wide variety of beers and $5 pizzas. Maybe we will have tried all their pizzas by the time we leave!

As I have been spending a lot of time with the television I can tell you that watching TV here is living reliving Jr. High summer vacation, with a back to back of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie in the AM and a back to back of Flinstones and the Jetsons in the PM. Who know these shows were still alive and well somewhere in the world. Makes me wonder where I can catch up on Mork and Mindy and Laverne and Shirley.

We will be ringing in the new year 19 hours before our friends on the West Coast but we will be thinking about you as we raise a glass of champagne.

Happy New Year everyone!

4,000 kilometers in 3 weeks

Ok, so I have neglected the blog for the past few weeks so I have a lot of catching up to do. Since I last posted we have covered a lot of ground. We had a long drive through the outback in the blazing heat to see dinosaur bones, magnificent rock formations, underground churches, opal mines, and much more.

While seeing all these great sites we also rode camels, hand fed wallabies, bottle fed kangaroos, and camped underground!

Additionally we had a small bump in our road. We arrived at our second work exchange, the kangaroo orphanage tired, ready for a break from camping and looking forward to taking care of the adorable roos. However, we left after only one day due to unforeseen circumstances. To be honest, we couldn't handle the massive amounts of smoking that was happening in the house. I worked very hard to quit and didn't feel the need to wake up feeling as though I had just smoked a pack of cigarettes! Sorry roos!

This landed us a bit early at our next work exchange, the winery! It is our last night here and we have had a nice time getting to know the Lacey family. David has been spending his evenings playing basketball with Nick, age 11 and learning cricket from Andrew (the dad), while I have been helping cook dinners with Ally (age 14) and Jennifer (the mom). We have also bonded with Chloe the cocker spaniel, Molly the sheep, and Charlotte the cat.

It has been a nice stop and we are about to embark on "The Great Ocean Road" and spend a few weeks relaxing in Melbourne.

Happy Holidays!

Odds and Sods

Ok, so it's taken me a month to blog, but internet time has been scarce and I'd rather spend it trying to figure out the rules to cricket.

First off, I can confirm that everything here is backward: shower drains, windshield wipers, sentence structures, light switches, etc.

And for those who were interested, the answer is "yes, they do eat kangaroos in Australia." Most grocery stores carry some sort of 'roo steaks, sausages, or mince. I haven't tried it yet, but I promise to report back. I also need to start sampling more of the candy/snacks available here. Our road snacks have almost entirely consisted of peanuts and Australian licorice.

Btw, a belated "Happy Thanksgiving!" to everyone. I don't think I've ever appreciated the barrier to the Christmas season that Thanksgiving provides until now. Seriously, department stores in Sydney were in full-Santa mode in early November.

Our actual Thanksgiving was fantastic. We missed our family and friends back home, but wound up celebrating in the outback with turkey sandwiches. We basically camped on the side of a remote highway with some Irish folks, but it kinda seemed perfect.

With the exceptions of a) me running us out of gas, b) Karena almost being eaten by a dingo, and c) me losing my wedding band, everything has been going great.

As you may or may not have noticed in photos, I've taken this trip as an opportunity to attempt to grow a beard. It has not gone well. I'm a month into the experiment and I've got a decent Barry Sanders neck-beard going, but he rest is a truly poor effort. It's reminiscent of the scruff that Henry Rollins tried to grow at some point during Black Flag. I'm pretty sure this must've been how Scottie Pippen felt when he shaved his head and realized it looked like Gar Heard's.

In other news, I've never come close to classifying myself as a Rod Stewart fan, but I may have to reassess that. Aussie radio plays him incessantly and luckily it's mostly his mid-80's stuff. Young Turks, Infatuation, Love Touch, The First Cut is the Deepest, Tonight I'm Yours, Baby Jane, Some Guys Have All the Luck. Turns out, all that stuff is pretty awesome.

Also, if any band comes on the radio that I haven't heard in awhile and I'm only vaguely familiar with, I start to become convinced that they're Australian, like, "are The Church from here? I think they are." Karena usually just shrugs and goes back to her crossword. Much to her annoyance, this has happened over and over. Meatloaf? Canned Heat? Split Enz?

One other thing I've noticed is that Aussie restaurant owners love a good pun. For example:

Thai Riffic

Thai Me Up

Thai By Night

abraKEBABra

The Nosh Pit

My favorite was a special from a restaurant in a region known for their lamb... "Shank God It's Friday".

Unfortunately, the most popular Mexican restaurant here is named Montezuma's.

-David

Update from the Coast

Well a bit of a change of schedule, we spent a few more days on the coast than I thought when I last posted. We have had a very busy and amazing week. It may have been the best week yet!

We departed our delightful work exchange hosts and headed a few hours north to Noosa where we took in the beach and the easy going beach town atmosphere and a rustic campground just outside of town.
Trees just grow out of trees here. I was pretty sure there weren't crocs in that lake.

The next day we landed in Hervey Bay, gateway to Fraser Island. Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world and there are no paved roads, all sand, therefore the only way to get around is in a 4WD vehicle. Being that we have no experience driving 4WD and our car (now named Russ) doesn't have it we opted for the One Day Safari tour. Our guide, Richard or Richo, was chalk full of interested facts about the flora and fauna, a bountiful fount of historical knowledge, and completed the package with corny jokes. We saw beautiful white sandy beaches (no swimming in here if the sharks don't get you the rip tide will), a very old shipwreck, a perch lake, and a dingo pup eating seafood!

This dingo only at seafood, not babies.
This is a "perch lake", fresh water formed by rain on the island.

Then we decided to check out the towns of 1770 and Agnes Water, that's right, the town is called 1770; after the year that Captain Cook landed there. We lazed on the beach and cooled off in the sea but had to watch out for the deadly stonefish! In the evening we took a tour of the town which took us out to see the sunset. The best part was that we did it on these "scooterroos"!


Then we headed to the Platypus Bush Camp in hopes of spotting the elusive platypus at their advertised platypus viewing pond. We waited and waited, saw a lot of turtles, but we have yet to see a platypus.
Can you spot the turtle?

From there we headed to Airlie Beach to catch a tour of the Whitsunday Islands. This was the best tour so far. We snorkled in the great barrier reef and viewed the reef from a glass bottom boat, lounged on Whitehaven Beach, and relaxed poolside sipping pina coladas at Daydream Island Resort.




Which brings us up to date. We are in Townsville stocking up for a 5 day road trip into the outback to Alice Springs and Uluru.

A month into the trip and here is the breakdown:

Gains:
Tans
Blue Station Wagon (Russ)
A Beard (sorta)
German Pen Pals

Losses:
One Pair of Sunglasses
One Wedding Band
A Pub Quiz

Kangaroos, Koalas, and Dingoes, Oh My!

It has taken me two weeks to post again, I am sorry but I have a really good excuse.

We hit the Aussie trail almost two weeks ago in our trusty Holden Commodore, aka Finn, (unless you can come up with a better name) and headed North. Along the way we saw some amazing views, crazy animals, rainforests, waterfalls, and more. In between driving we mostly hiked and poked around small towns before arriving at our first work exchange. Here are the highlights:

I wish I could say we saw this cute little guy in the wild, but we didn't we went to a wildlife sanctuary.

This adorable guy is a Tasmanian Devil, also at the wildlife sanctuary.
David communes with kangaroos now.

Rainforest walk in Dorringo National Park.

Dangar Waterfall

A kookaburra being very loud next to our tent.
Crowdy Head beach, that is me there in the distance.

A gorgeous lookout that I can't remember the name of.

You may be saying, "hey, from the title of this blog I expected a dingo photo." Well, there is no dingo photo, that is because I saw said dingo at night and there was way to much screaming and retreating into the car for any photos to be taken. Needless to say I think we both scared each other half to death.

We are headed out on the road again and this time we are going West, into the Outback. I expected internet access to be even more limited so I will check in when I can!

Suddenly Sydney

We have had 4 productive and fun days in Sydney. We have done some touring and prepping for the big road trip.


We took in some great views of the Opera House.














And Harbour Bridge










We went to the Museum of Contemporary Art.


And have spent quality time with our Sydney friends and amazing hosts, Sarah and Mike (not pictured).



We also relaxed on the beach and hung out with some very tame wildlife.


But perhaps most importantly we have purchased our car for the big road trip.
We met some interesting used car salesman and ended up buying this beaut from Pablo, who gave us some good lines about wanting to help out American travelers. It is a Holden Commodore which is an Australian made station wagon and has room for us to put a mattress in the back for impromptu camping.

We are heading out on Monday, that will be Sunday for those of you back home. Wish us luck!

For Reals

This is it! We are packed and ready. We had to make some tough choices in the packing department, my favorite pants are staying behind and David said good bye to his sports coats to make room for camping gear and t-shirts.

We head to the airport in a few hours, right after a nice home cooked meal of chicken and dumplings (my favorite) to send us off.

Next post will be from the southern hemisphere!