It's Raining...finally

Well the title speaks for itself - it has finally cooled down and we woke up to rain yesterday. It's not "sideways, driving, wet-to-the bone Victoria rain", but at least it's a little rain. I know, I know...there's no sympathy from the BC crowd who have started growing mushrooms between the toes and are sprouting gills, but trust me, extraordinary unrelenting heat and unrelenting rain are pretty close together on the continuum of miserable weather.

We had a nice Easter weekend. We even got a visit from the Easter Bilby - see http://www.easterbilby.com.au/. The bilby is a rabbit-sized endangered marsupial that has been adopted as part of the Easter tradition and many chocolates are in the shape of a bilby. Anyways, the girls were thrilled to find out that the Easter Bilby and Easter Bunny had both found their way to our house here and delivered a treasure of hidden chocolates.

We took a trip out to the Barossa Valley on Saturday with some friends. They took us to the Whispering Wall, which is a dam that has such incredible acoustics that if you whisper against the concrete on one side, your words can be heard perfectly on the other side...140m away! It was pretty neat. In this picture, you can barely see Dug and the girls on the other side talking to friends standing just underneath me.

Then on to the wineries!! We went to McGuigans, then carried on to one of our favourites - Torbrek (Malcolm - thanks for the introduction to this one). Absolutely fantastic!! It was hard to wipe the smile from Dug's face as we got to taste some of the best wine ever.

We continued our weekend with a trip into the Adelaide Hills - a beautiful countryside full of winding roads and charming little towns. Speaking of winding roads...we have come to the conclusion that this part of the world is host to some of the most dangerous and rudest drivers we have ever come across. I'm sure that many Australians are excellent, safe drivers, but you can be sure that 1 in 4 tailgate incessantly, speed, refuse to allow anyone in front and are generally nasty behind the wheel. My apologies to any Aussies who belong in the category of good drivers. But you have to admit that you take your life in your hands, especially on the country roads which are barely wide enough for 2 cars, no divider and have speed limits of 80km/hr! Dug is an excellent driver and he was visibly rattled by the flagrant display of machismo and arrogance by people thinking that they belong on a Formula 1 race course.

We carried on to another wildlife park and I have to again be negative about his experience. At many of the wildlife parks, visitors can purchase food for the animals - this is typically pellets that look very similar to rabbit food. At this place, visitors had the choice of peanuts or COOKIES!! Or if you didn't want to purchase food, I was told at the front desk that we could feed the animals whatever we wanted, with the exception of the otters - they were on a diet because they were getting too fat. I was shocked and absolutely appalled to see people feeding these poor animals cookies and Cheetos and whatever crappy junk food they had with them. It was heartbreaking to see people throwing cookies and potato chips at sad looking monkeys and droopy eyed dingos - it was kind of like charging admission to a dump so that people can watch once-majestic bears eat garbage. Anyways, we won't be going back there...

Our Easter weekend finished off on a high note at a brewery, for a fantastic plate of antipasto/ploughmans lunch and a cold beer. They sell their beer in 2l jugs with handles, that you can bring back for cheap refills. Brilliant!! You can't imagine how happy Dug was leaving the brewery with a belly full of meat and cheese and a jug of beer in hand!

Hot, hot, hot.

Well, first of all, I'm sure that many of you have heard about Adelaide's record heatwave. If you haven't, we're in the middle of record hot weather - day 9 of high 30's. This breaks the previous 8-day record set in 1934 and according to the forecast, we are in for the same temperatures until early next week. Apparently, March is supposed to have an average temperature of 26 degrees...we would enjoy some of that right now. We are getting used to the hot days, but it's the hot nights (with less than stellar AC in the house) that is tough. Too bad we couldn't refit our water cooler to run ice cold beer instead!!

Anyways, back to our adventures...we went to Belair National Park last weekend for a quick run outside before it got too hot. What a beautiful place. While the kids were playing on a big playground with a fort and underground tunnels, I was bird-watching. We looked up to see 3 kookaburras sitting in the tree, not the least bit concerned for my presence. I couldn't snap pictures fast enough. I then moved around the tree a little and to my amazement, saw 2 tawny frogmouths sitting on another branch. You probably haven't heard about them - they are nocturnal owl-like birds that look like branches when they sit in the tree. Needless to say, I did not manage to get a picture of these, but the park warden said that we were very lucky to have seen them as they are quite a rare site. We then walked around a small lake nearby. The bird life continued to amaze us - we could have watched for hours...if it wasn't so hot.

For any of you who are interested in birds, I have uploaded a bird photo album (pics that I have copied from other websites) onto the blog that chronicles the birds that we have seen to date in the wild. I'll keep this updated as we see more.

Till next time.

Continuing our travels

We took a little day trip to Glenelg, which really is a southern suburb of Adelaide only about 30 minutes drive from us. What a spectacular place - just beautiful. It' right on the beach...a little resort town full of neat restaurants and shops. It's a busy place with lots going on - buskers, camel rides on the beach(??), an amusement park for the kids.

The highlight of Glenelg though was the Rodney Fox Shark Museum - filled with pictures and memorabilia of his 40-year relationship with great whites. If you don't know who he is, the short story is that he's the once abalone diver who was attacked by a great white (I'm sure you've seen the famous pictures of his wound) who now dedicates his life to protecting them. He has been featured in National Geographic is is known all over the world - read about him at http://www.rodneyfox.com.au/. Just in case you're interested, go to that site and see some of the pictures in the Gallery that were taken during his Port Lincoln shark diving expeditions (I mentioned these in the last posting). Anyways, back to Glenelg...we arrive at the front desk to pay our admission to the museum and I am asked by a very nice lady (who realized that we were foreigners) what brought us there. I told that I knew the story of Rodney Fox and had seen many of his documentaries and admired his work. She said something like..."well you can tell him yourself" and he steps out from behind the counter. Turns out she is is wife and we had a lovely chat - it was a real honor to meet him.

On to the next adventure - we had our first encounter with an Australian beastie of the creepy crawlie sort. I was up late by myself and was just locking the doors. All the lights were out, except for the TV and as I walked through the kitchen (in my bare feet), I caught something out of the corner of my eye on the floor. I thought is was a lizard, realized it wasn't and thought that maybe it was a small snake. At that point, I had the good sense to back up and turn on a light. Turns out the bugs here are BIG, really freakin' BIG. It was a fine specimen of the Giant Australian Centipede and before you click on this link, keep in mind that this thing was about 5" long and the body (not including the legs) as thick as my index finger http://images.zacharoo.com/animals/centipede/centipede.html. Anyways, me being me, I captured it under a plastic container for the night so that I could show everyone else my find in the morning. Dug was not nearly as enthusiastic about it as the girls were, but the girls and I had a Free Willy moment and let it go in the garden. I have also learned a very valuable lesson - to shut the doors before it gets dark and wear slippers.

Southwest Australia - the Odyssey

Well we have just returned from our first roadtrip. We decided to explore a little town called Port Lincoln - a town that is famous for tuna and great white sharks. They actually do offshore tours at this place where people pay money to get thrown in a shark cage for an up close and personal experience.
We visited Lincoln National Park, which surprised us by being so remote while only a few kilometres outside of town. Much of the park was inaccessible due to poor roads which was a bit shocking considering the state of the good roads. At one point, we were greeted by a sign that read "road ends in 500m", then "road ends in 250m". Needless to say, we were more than a little curious to find out why the road ended - was there a reason why it needed to end and if so what would it be? Well, as we came over a very small rise, we indeed came to the end of the road - literally and figuratively. We found ourselves upon the end of Australia and the start of the open Southern Ocean - with rugged rocks and crashing waves rivalling the roughest of BC's coastline. It was spectacular and the picture doesn't even come close to doing the scenery justice.

We then carried on to the other side of the park and found a secluded beach - we were the only ones on it. The girls were in their glory looking for shells.

The day we left ,we stopped at a wildlife park to feed some beasties. I must add in here that 5 weeks into this trip, we have yet to see a kangaroo outside of a park...except of course prone by the side of the road. The birds were amazing, flocking all around us and landing on our heads and in our laps, under our feet. Elise's experience with the magpie goose a few weeks back made her keep her distance from the birds - I don't blame her because they nipped when the food didn't come fast enough. Unfortunately, my camera batteries ran out before I could snap any more pictures and I missed capturing one of the funniest sights yet...a big wombat fast asleep on its back with its stubby little piggy legs straight up in the air. I thought is was dead until it scratched it's little wombat parts with its stubby piggy foot.

Til next time...

A quick update

Well it’s about time that I got around to updating this site with what has been happening since we arrived. It’s hard to believe that we have been here for a month already!

So where to start…the girls have started school and are loving it. Sophie is in a grade 2/3 split and has settled in to an English class no problem. She even got a perfect score on her second spelling test. “Bravo”…or shall I saw “well done” instead. Sophie has made lots of friends and is really enjoying taking recorder lessons. She starts gymnastics next week.

Elise is fully engrained in Kindy now – she goes to school Monday and Wednesday mornings and Tuesday and Thursday from 9 – 3. They serve snacks and hot lunches from the kitchen within the Kindy. When I asked Elise what she had for lunch last Thursday, she replied with “I had 3 cheese and soy sauce sandwiches”. Very puzzled, I asked the lady in the kitchen the next day, she cleared it up for us – they were cheese and vegemite!!

I have fully embraced gardening the Aussie way. This means trying to keep plants alive with no rain and very strict watering restrictions…like watering once a week. What this means is that we have to conserve all gray water from dishes, laundry and baths to then carry it bucket by bucket to the garden. I am starting to get a nice green lawn and I have bought tones of flowers and pots to add some colour to the yard. Just to keep them alive, I have to water twice a day when it’s really hot. But the good news is that I have lots of gazanias, hibiscus, oleanders, vincas (like impatiens), mandevillas and even a frangipani (plumeria).

The people that we have met here are fantastic. They are so warm and kind and have embraced “the foreigners” and all of our strange customs and words like we are family. They all want to share their homes, their dinner tables and fantastic bottles of wine. The incredible people more than make up for the unbelievable take your breath away 39 degree heat.

Well, have to sign off for now.

We made it!

Well, we have arrived and settled in. It was a long trip to get here, but the girls were troopers. For anyone looking to make your way to Australia, Singapore Airlines is definitely the way to fly - now if only they had flights from Victoria to PG!!

Singapore was a great place to stop over before the next leg of our journey...it's very beautiful and clean, but very humid. We spent the day at the zoo and the girls got to see animals that they have never seen in person before. The highlight was walking through the "biodome" and coming literally face-to-face with huge fruit bats and a troop of lemurs.

We arrived in Adelaide the next day to find it hot and dry...looking very similar to Kamloops in the middle of summer...of course with the exception of the gum trees and exotic birds. It took us a few days to unpack and get settled and then venture out to try to find our way around the city.

We visited a wildlife park on the weekend and the kids got to feed some Australian beasties - kangaroos, wallabies, potaroos (big pointy nosed rat-like marsupials) and emus. Take a look at http://livingtravel.com/australia/southaustralia/ClelandNationalPark/cleland_1.htm to see some pictures of strange animals that we got to see up close. So close in fact that Elise got chased and bitten by a very large Magpie Goose. The kangaroos were lovely, they were lounging all over the park, sometimes not even getting up to take food and accept a scratch. it was quite the day for all of us, experiencing face-to-face (literally) encounters with big red kangaroos and emus.

The girls have now had a week of school and are loving it. Elise has settled right into "Kindy" without a bit of concern and both girls have already made some friends. Dug is enjoying work and even got out for a sail this week. We have met some wonderful people who have made us feel very welcome.

Well, I'm off...Elise is asking for another "meat and mayomase" sandwich.

How far away is Australia?

I'm sure that you have all heard that we are leaving the cold and rainy shores of Victoria on Jan 19th for sun, sand and Vegemite in Adelaide. It's just for a year and I'm sure it will fly by, but now that it's so close, I think we are all a little nervous.

We are frantically trying to box up and store our personal belongings, purge what we can and pack all of our summer clothes into our luggage. I am only supposed to be taking 5 pairs of shoes, but I have managed to stow away a few more - I made extra room by taking out some of Dug's sailing gear. By the time he notices, we'll be there already.

The girls are very excited, but now have realized the enormity of leaving all of their friends and family. They are most excited to see the Australian wildlife - especially kangaroos and the elusive duck billed platypus.

I have been trying to work myself up to the 27 hr plane trip to get there. It's 11 hrs to Seoul, then another 8 to Singapore and a final leg of 8 hrs to Adelaide. We do get a 24 hr stopover in Singapore to stretch our legs and shake some of the jetlag, but I think it will take an entire year to get over the flight and prepare myself for the return home!

While we are going to miss our friends and families tremendously, it's going to be a huge adventure for all of us and a great opportunity to discover a part of the world that we may not have otherwise ever seen.