Things I am Missing About OZ

Me again.

I wanted to write this in a separate post from the whole car shopping thing. As I've been slowly readjusting to my regular life (or as regular as it is right now, anyway), I've been musing over the things which I'm missing from OZ... as well as the things I'm NOT missing. Oh, and what things I'm glad to have back in my life. Etc. etc. So in no particular order...

Things I'm Missing From OZ...

• Parrots. Even the noisy ones. Which is pretty much all of them.
• Boost Juice. It's just not the same here.
• Ginger beer. Can't find it in the grocery stores!
• Tim Tams. Of course.
• The incredible blue of the Aussie sky.
• The red, red, RED sand.
• Lizards.
• Australian commercials.
• Sushi rolls.
• The crazy architecture, both new and old, that is in Melbourne.
• The awesome scenery that is everywhere!
  
• All of my friends, new and old! :-(
  

Things I'm NOT Missing From OZ...

• The price of food. I went to Tim Hortons and bought a tea and a donut and paid $2.13. That would NEVER happen in OZ!
• The winter weather in Melbourne. My parents house is insulated. What a concept!
• The flies. Although the mozzies here are pretty bad, since the spring was so late.
• Fried eggs on hamburgers. 'Nuff said.
• Metlink and V-Line. Oh, yeah.
  
• Car turn signals on the right steering wheel stem. (I've only managed to turn the windshield wipers on in my Mom's car three times since I've returned. :-) Hee hee!)
  

Things I'm Enjoying About Being Home...

• Friends and family I haven't seen in a long time!
• Tim Horton's. It's frankly embarrassing how many times I've been to Timmy's since I got back.
• Central heating. Yes, it's still on here - the weather's been cold!
• Plant leaves in more than one shape.
• The cottage, the lake, and the loons.
• Getting ready for summer camp!
• Buying my new car!
• Telling many, many, many, many, many stories that begin with "In Australia..."
  

Things I'm NOT Enjoying About Being Home...

• The bed in my parents' house is way too hard. But this has been a problem for years. Really, I need a new back.
• The disastrous mess that is my room here, as I unpack/repack for summer. Gah.
• Not having my own desk.
• The idea that I will actually have to go back to *work* in the fall!
• Gas prices... which aren't as bad as in OZ, but are still much worse than when I left.

I know I've left stuff off these lists, so feel free to comment if you want!

Car Shopping

So... I've spent the last two days car shopping, as I begin the long and complicated process of putting my life back together to some semblance of normal. After much hemming and hawing, I've decided to lease a Honda Fit. Now that I've made a decision, I'm so excited! Dad and I are heading to the dealership first thing in the morning to settle the paperwork and all that stuff. Hooray!

And yes, I did end up getting a standard car. My friend Jane (who I haven't seen in the past three years, for all that her parents literally live two doors down the street from mine - our paths just haven't crossed!) came with me today to do a second test drive in a standard model. Yesterday I drove an automatic and didn't like it at all. But Jane drives standard, so she came with me and helped me drive the car to a quiet neighborhood, where I could experiment with the gear shifting. The car handles so much better as a manual gear shift.

So yeah. That's one big decision out of the way. And as soon as I know when I can take delivery of the car, I'll know when I'm heading to Toronto to begin househunting.

Home at last - at least for now!

I'm sitting in the den in my parents house in Ottawa, pretty much in exactly the same spot that I was in way back in September when I wrote the first entry for this blog. It feels kinda strange to be home after so long! Well, sort of home. I mean, I'm still officially "homeless" for now... I won't have my own place in Toronto for at least another month, if not more, and even then I won't really be living in Toronto until September because of summer camp. But yeah, for now, I'm home. Strange, but still good!

My travels across the country went well. On my very last day on Gabriola Island, Dave, Aylan and I went out to Drumbeg, a park at the far end of the island, and enjoyed a picnic lunch. Aylan is definitely related to me. She spent most of her time either picking flowers and grasses to give to me, or turning over rocks and exclaiming "eeew!" at the crabs and other critters underneath. We went on a quest to find an anemone a(I'm pretty sure she has no idea what an anemone is) but didn't find any in the rock pools. But all too soon the afternoon came to an end and we had to head back to the house so I could grab my stuff and Dave could take me to the ferry.

I'm pretty sure Aylan didn't quite understand that I wasn't living with them now. She wasn't too happy that I was leaving, but to give her credit, she's not quite three yet and she was very tired. Apparently she's been asking for me over the past few days, which I take it means I fulfilled my job as an auntie well. :-)

Dave drove me back to Nanaimo and dropped me off at the Duke Point ferry terminal and said goodbye. Once I made it on board, my job was to find Bill Hawke, my dad's friend who earlier in the week had driven me from the Vancouver Airport to the Tsawassen ferry terminal on the mainlaind side. He'd spent the week also on Vancouver Island with his wife Gail and a bunch of family friends, and we'd coordinated our return trips to the mainland to coincide so that I could hitch a ride back with him. Well we must've missed each other a number of times as we wandered around on the ferry (these boats are HUGE and can hold hundreds of people!), so I eventually gave up on looking and bought myself dinner from the onboard cafeteria instead. Of course that's when Gail finally did find me! Figures.

Bill and Gail and their friends had driven onto the ferry with their big camper van, but I had been a walk on passenger. This meant I also had to walk off on the far side and collect my checked baggage before I could rejoin the crew in the camper for the next part of the ride. Once we were all together, we headed for Bill and Gail's condo in South Vancouver. I hadn't realized that all of Bill and Gail's friends were also staying with them at the condo, so it was pretty full! There were five other guests in the camper van besides me, so we were jokingly calling it "Bill's bus". Ha ha!

It took a bit of coordinating once we got to the condo to get everyone's gear inside and set up in the various spare rooms. Since I was a last minute addition, and I was only staying overnight, I slept on the couch. (And a very comfy couch it was, too!). Bill was kind enough to get up with me at 4:45 in the morning (yuck) to take me to the airport. I actually bought a ticket for this leg of the journey - I wanted to make sure that my friends who were kind enough to pick me up in Toronto didn't miss any more of their long weekend than absolutely necessary.

Jen was right. That last flight from Vancouver to Toronto was waaaaay longer than the flight from Sydney to Vancouver! I guess it was because I was really finally at the end of the journey. It seemed to me that the last couple of hours took simply forever. But of course eventually I was back on the ground and collecting my stuff from the baggage carousel (which also seemed to take forever) and searching for my friends. Cat met me just outside the security zone and greeted me with a big hug! Then she called for Andy, our chauffeur for the weekend, who was waiting near the airport, and she picked us up. By 3pm on Saturday we were on our way to the cottage at last!

We got a wee bit too involved with yakking in the car and completely missed the exit off the 401 for Bowmanville, where I usually turn north to head towards the cottage. Ah well! We turned north at Norwood instead and took the back route. We got there in time for dinner with my folks, which was of course great. And it's funny - although it was cooler at the cottage than it has been in Melbourne recently, I swear I didn't feel the cold in the way I had when I was Down Under! Maybe my body was just happy to be home. :-)

Cat, Andy and I spent the rest of the weekend at the cottage, bumming around, eating various unhealthy items like swedish berries and skittles, burning things in the bonfire pit, and helping Dad put in the docks. This is the first year that we've had the new dock system, so it was a bit of an experimental procedure to get them in the water without getting wet. The individual dock segments are made of aluminum so they aren't all that heavy, but it was still a challenge to remain dry. We ended up floating the deep-end sections on the end of our paddle boat, with Cat steering the boat, while Dad and Uncle Ron and I attached stuff near the shore. In the end Cat did get a little wet but we got the silly thing in place!

My grandma owns the cottage next door to ours, and she and her sister (my great-aunt Marcelle) and my Uncle Ron and Aunt Kenna and my parents and my friends and I all got together for a great big gigantic feast on Sunday night, which was great. Well, except for the weather... it was possibly a high of 5C and raining and windy! So much for enjoying Victoria Day fireworks. We'll just have to save the pyrotechnics for Canada Day, I guess.

Today I said goodbye to Andy and Cat as they headed back to Toronto, and I drove with my parents to Ottawa. There's a new Tim Horton's open in Havelock now, and the lineup was out the door! (I have been to Timmy's four times in the past four days... well if that isn't a sign that I'm definitely home, I don't know what is!) We got home about 6pm and after unloading the car went straight out to dinner. I was originally supposed to go out to dinner with my best friend Vicky, but due to an unfortunate game of phone tag we missed each other until I was already out with my folks! Vicky and I did manage to meet up for desert, though. I've missed her SO MUCH these past eight months - it was GREAT to see her again.

So, all my faithful blog readers, we are nearing the end of my writings. I do have one more entry I want to make - but I'll do it tomorrow. Once again it appears to be way past my bedtime, and I'm pooped!

Last full day on Gabriola

Yep, tomorrow I pack my bags - again - and head eastwards once more. I'll be catching the evening ferry along with Bill Hawke and his assorted family members, and staying overnight with him, before flying to Toronto on Saturday. So I tried my best to make the most of today.

The weather was much better today than it has been for the last two, so we spent as much of the day outside as possible. Carly, Aylan and I went to the gardening centre and bought some plants and pots. We went back to the house and picked up Rowyn, fresh from her afternoon nap, and headed to the local coffee shop/gift shop for a browse. When we returned to the house a second time, Aylan helped her mom to do some planting, and of course in the process got filthy dirty. I was helping Aylan to refill her watering can at the tap. At one point she moved the can at the wrong moment and I sprayed her with water. (The horror!) She was NOT happy about being in wet clothes. But since it was nice and warm, Carly said it was ok for her to take off her pants and socks and walk around in her shirt only. Well, that lasted all of about 5 seconds before she'd shed all the rest of her clothes too and was happily splashing around in the muddy puddle she was making with her watering can. Gotta love almost-three-year-old logic: it's not OK to have wet jeans, but it is apparently OK to have wet muddy skin from chin to feet. And yes, I got some cute pics. Which I'll share at the cottage on the weekend. :-)

Carly's off at a "Moms' Night Out" dinner and Dave's just putting the kids to bed. Aylan once again pretty much fell asleep at the table tonight, but Rowyn isn't apparently all that interested in sleeping. Hopefully she'll go down soon. Dave's got a Wii and we're gonna play some video games tonight, once we get some 'adult' time. I can't believe it's already time for me to head onwards - this week has gone so fast!

Not sure when I will next get a chance to blog... I won't have email tomorrow or all weekend long, since I'll be at the cottage. Hopefully I'll put in one or two more entries next week once I get back to Ottawa before closing down this blog for good. I'm sad that this is coming to an end!

Snotty Noses and other Fun

So today I've played hide and seek, been jumped on and poked and tickled, put together about 15 jigsaw puzzles, read a ton of books, soothed a bonked head, pushed kids on the swing, etc. etc. etc. I don't know who's more worn out - Aylan and Rowyn or me! The truth is I'm playing more with Aylan than with Rowyn... the little one was a big grumpy bear today (she's not feeling well) and was far more happy being with mom or dad than with me. No worries. Both girls are now in bed... Aylan practically fell asleep in her dinner.

Dave's been working on my computer all day and it is much happier. Most importantly, the fan isn't so loud anymore, which is GREAT. Thanks Dave! (I think it's funny that my computer gets its yearly servicing every time I come across the country to visit my bro.)

And I am apparently still jet-lagged... I couldn't fall asleep last night for the life of me, and then I was up wide awake at 5am this morning. I must admit I caved and had a nap yesterday afternoon, which was likely part of the problem. No nap for me today. Hopefully I can get a 'normal' night's sleep tonight!

I Am The Chosen One

Yep. Life is good.

Aylan has apparently decided that I am The Chosen One, which means she wants me to help her with everything. I have to sit beside her at meals. I helped her brush her teeth and visit the potty. We did puzzles together and read books together and watched Sesame Street together this afternoon. She wanted me to be with her in the bath and put her to bed too. Pretty cool!

Rowyn is also a total cutie. She is a pretty laid back baby, although she was a little cranky today and the thought is that more teeth are on their way in. The important thing is I can actually hold her! When Aylan was little she didn't want anyone but Carly (mom) to hold her. Today Dave had to take Aylan to and from preschool, which left me home alone with Rowyn for two 20-minute periods. We played and giggled and cooed and laughed and it was great.

I gotta remember to take out the camera tomorrow or I'm going to get shot by my mom on the weekend! :-)

Back in the Great White North

Hooray! I finally made it back to Canada!

I must admit I went to the Sydney airport yesterday feeling more than a little nervous/sick to my stomach. I was pretty much convinced that I wasn't going to get on the plane. There were some 30-odd folks on the standby list with me, and pretty much all of them were ahead of me in the seniority rankings. As I watched the crowd of standby hopefuls grow and grow outside the ticketing counter, I was already mentally preparing myself to go and buy tickets through Honolulu with Jet Star and West Jet. Fortunately I never had to!

The plane was scheduled to leave at 10:10am, and they didn't start handing out the standby boarding passes until 9:30. As more and more folks were called to get their passes and head for the plane, I was completely convinced I wasn't getting on. But this time at least my luck was with me. I got the very last boarding pass for the plane! I had stopped looking at my watch by this point because I knew it was so close to the time the plane was taking off. When they called my name for the boarding pass I swear I felt like I won the lottery! I thanked the counter staff profusely, dumped them with my checked bags, and hoofed it to security. Once through the screening I practically ran all the way to the plane, through the maze of construction that is Sydney airport. I was one of the last people to board the plane. PHEW!

The flight certainly had its challenges. There was something wrong with the in-flight entertainment system, so unfortunately my interactive touch screen (and those of about 90% of the other passengers) didn't work. So I spent the 14 hour flight with a blank screen and no music either. When it got dark I discovered that my reading light also didn't work. Gah. Thank goodness I had my flashlight! Also, the guy in the seat in front of me was more than a little rude. I was in the very last row of seats in the plane, and the storage bins over my seat were full of airplane equipment, so I went to put my bags in the bin in front. The guy in that row was downright rude to me, basically telling me to go find somewhere else to put my stuff because he didn't want my bags over his head. BLAH. They'd already made the announcements for everyone to take their seats and fasten their belts at this point. Fortunate one of the flight attendants came to my rescue and took my wheely suitcase to be cabin checked. In the end it wound up in a bin in Business class... so at least my luggage made it back to Canada in style!

When we arrived in Vancouver I had no problems going through customs (and I didn't even have to explain about the funky hat I bought - yay!), and Bill Hawke picked me up to drive me to the ferry. We stopped at (you guessed it!) Tim Hortons for a much needed caffeine break before arriving at the ferry terminal. I did a quick switcheroo with some of my luggage items so I only had to bring my big red pack with me. Bill's gonna store the rest of my luggage this week and I'll get it back just before I fly to Toronto on Saturday.

The ferry ride was actually harder in many ways than the plane ride. By the time I got on the ferry my body felt like it was about 4am, and I got no sleep on the plane. I was more than a little groggy by the time my brother Dave and my niece Aylan picked me up on the Nanaimo side. But after a spot of lunch and a good big mug of tea, all was well.

Aylan has grown so much since I last saw her! She's now almost 3 years old and very independant. She's talking up a storm, although I don't always understand what she's trying to say. Dave is very good at translating "toddler" for me. Aylan loves to have stories read to hear and I swear I read about 30 picture books to her this afternoon, including the four that I bought her as a present. Her younger sister, Rowyn, is a cutie patootie... and not at all fussy about who holds her, unlike how Aylan was at her age (8 months). Dave and I pushed Aylan and Rowyn in the swings in the backyard for over an hour and neither girl tired of the fun. I think I was more worn out than they were!

The girls are in bed now and Carly's had to go off on a short business call, so I've caught a few free minutes to update my blog. All is well here and it feels so good to be back in Canada. Although it'll be interesting to see how my body decides to deal with the jet lag in the next few days...

I'll keep this blog going for the next week, so that my Aussie friends can hear about my adventures with my nieces here in BC, and then I'll likely sign off for good. The thing is, I've gotten rather used to blogging now. Who knows -maybe I'll start another blog once this one is done! But is my so-called normal life really exciting enough to post online for all the world to see?

Happy Mother's Day!

So I had originally hoped to celebrate Mother's Day in BC with my sister-in-law, Carly, my brother Dave, and their kids. We were going to do a video chat with my mom back in Ottawa, I'd play with my nieces, and all would be grand. Of course I'm still in OZ so that plan didn't quite work out. :-)

Instead, I called both my mom and my grandma today and wished them a happy Aussie Mothers Day, since at the time of my calls it was still Saturday back home. I did like surprising them with the calls... I bought an international phone card and thought that I had about 100 minutes of talk time, but when I punched in the codes, it turned out I had over 1000 minutes. Cool! Too bad I won't be in OZ long enough to take full advantage of this card. (I hope.)

Bill and Ruth and I went to Ruth's parents' house for lunch today. Ruth's mom Nancy made a fabulous baked meal (we would call it a roast) and we all ate a little too much. Ruth and I also went out and did a little shopping today, and I walked out of the mall with a whole new (and spiffy, if I do say so myself!) teacher outfit. Cool!

I feel like I'm back to the same old routine again. I spent the afternoon packing my bags. Again. Checking my email. Again. Double checking my flight information and backup plans. Again. :-) Tomorrow I'm heading to the airport - again - so I can try to catch the Air Canada flight to Vancouver - again. Please wish me luck. I really do kinda want to be home now. If I don't make tomorrow's standby flight I'll be forking out the big bucks to buy some tickets home.

So although I've already said this, here's hoping that the next time I write in this blog, I'm doing so from the Great White North!

GESS Day

Today I joined Carroll and a whole bunch of girls and Guiders from all over Sutherland Shire and down the southern coast for a day of science and engineering activities at Wollongong University, called Guides in Engineering and Science Saturday (GESS). It was funny - I'd met (or re-met, for the girls from Ruth and Carroll's unit) a number of these girls at the Bindaree Regatta last weekend and told them that I was flying home to Canada. So they were pretty surprised to see me again! I got to explain the joys of standby travel over and over and over. :-)

My job for the day was basically to ride herd, and help ensure that the girls were where they were supposed to be. I shadowed one of the groups as they circulated through the activities, and snapped some great pictures. Basically Guiding (i.e. Carroll) was responsible for doing all the admin for the day, and the university's profs and grad students put together the activities.

The girls got to try out four different activities. First my group played around with electricity and magnetism. The Van Der Graaf generator was a big hit - there's no Science Centre here for the girls to go to, so I don't think they'd ever seen one before. I got some great pictures of kids with their hair standing on end! Then we trooped over to another building and made solar-powered fans, which the girls loved. In the afternoon, we attended a session on wind turbines (which wasn't the greatest, to put it mildly, but the girls survived), and then we ended the afternoon with the Great Egg Drop. As a science teacher I learned a few new tricks to take back to my class. So all in all a pretty good day!

Ruth and I ended up back at Carroll's for tea after the girls had all gone home, and while the two of them were searching for something on the computer (Ruth's got a big assignment for her PhD courses due this week), I amused myself by watching the antics of the kookaburras who seem to like Carroll's backyard. They really are big birds! They eat snakes and worms and other slimy things, and this great big kookaburra spent a lot of time surveying the backyard from a perch on the clothesline - much to the dismay of the other backyard birds, who didn't seem to want it there.

When Ruth and I got home, Bill had already cooked us dinner, which was great! I ate too much. Way too much. Then we had dessert. I ate too much dessert. Groan. I've spent most of the evening with a very full and somewhat unhappy belly. Ah well. Life's rough. :-)

Tomorrow is Mother's Day and I was hoping to at least be in the same COUNTRY as my Mom, so that when I called her, the time difference wouldn't be so crazy. Of course that's not the case, so Mom's gonna have to put up with me calling her whenever I can. I am looking forward to my second attempt at flying home on Monday...

Taronga Zoo

I didn't do much yesterday. I slept in, getting up just in time to wave goodbye to Ruth as she headed off to work. I spent most of the day at the computer, checking and double checking my flight options in case I don't make the standby flight on Monday. I also actually did a bit of work on my website - although the changes won't be visible until I can reconnect my own computer to the internet. The wireless network at Ruth's house isn't working and so I've had to do all my email etc. on her Mac, which is driving me a little crazy. Mostly 'cause the mouse only has one button. :-) (Don't worry Ruth, I love your computer, it's just so different from mine!)

Today was a different story though. I figured that since I've got this time to kill here in Sydney I might as well make the most of it, so I headed back downtown today and went to Taronga Zoo. The Zoo is built on a cliff on the north side of Sydney Harbour, so to reach it I had to take a boat cruise across the water and then a bus up to the top. Normally there's a cable car to ride to the top of the zoo, but it wasn't working today. The zoo was pretty cool... because it's up on the cliffside, the views over the harbour are great. I followed the meandering paths through the zoo, spending way more time than was strictly necessary at the reptiles and bird enclosures.

Taronga Zoo is pretty old, and one of the things I thought was neat was that throughout the zoo were plaques and photos showing what the place looked like up to 100 years ago. Of course the animal enclosures have undergone significant renovations since then, and the displays are now all quite modern and well done. They've just in the last year or so opened a new exhibit on the Southern Oceans, which had sea lions, seals, and of course little penguins on display. The seal exhibit was so new that the animals were still learning their parts in the seal show! It was really cute - the trainers would give the seals their cues, and sometimes they did the required behaviour, and sometimes they didn't. But it was still fun and interesting to watch the training in progress for a change.

When I headed back out to the suburbs, I got off at the train station nearest Ruth's school and met her there. The teachers at her school have a fun Friday after-school tradition - they have a bit of a happy hour in their staffroom! So I found Ruth in the staff room enjoying a soda, chatting with her colleagues. I joined them - lemon lime and bitters is slowly growing on me - and then we headed off to Ruth's daughter's house for afternoon tea. So in the end we didn't get home until well after 7pm and decided that we were far too knackered to actually cook dinner. Instead Ruth ordered some Chinese take-out. I tried to pay for it, I truly did - even going so far as to chase Bill out the door with a $50 in my hand, and tucking it into his shirt pocket when he got in the car, but no luck. When he returned from picking up our dinner, Bill gave me back my change - $50. (Sigh. How am I ever going to thank these two for taking care of me?)

Thanks for your suggestions and support

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who's sent me emails/facebook messages/blog comments in the last 24 hours - your support means a lot to me! I've spent the last 24 hours mulling over my options for getting home. I must admit I didn't sleep well last night... maybe I'm more stressed about this than I thought I was.

In any case, this morning I headed to downtown Sydney to check out the travel deals available from the YHA. The guy there was pretty helpful and found me a couple of different possible routes back to Ottawa, all options for under $2000. That's definitely better than what I'd found yesterday through Travelocity! The I poked my head into Flight Centre and they found me an even better deal. Also, Jen suggested that I put myself on a Jet Star flight to Honolulu and then look at whatever cheap flights I can find out of there. Hmmm... there are lots of possibilities!

I guess the long and the short of it is that I really don't want to spend an extra $1500-odd if I can manage it. So currently my plan is to try for the standby flight on Monday, and if I don't get on, I'll likely buy a real ticket all the way home. In the meantime, I still have some major research to do, to ensure I don't get dinged for the luggage I have, whatever way I decide to head home. If I fly Air Canada I'm fine - but I don't know what the baggage restrictions are for the other possible airlines I might fly.

Craziness!

So, after I'd dealt with all that stuff, I decided some more touring was in order. I was already all the way downtown, so I hopped back on the train and headed for Circular Quay, which I swear has the BEST view of any train station I've ever been through. I mean, really... as the train enters the station, it emerges from a tunnel and the passengers are treated to a fantastic view of Sydney Harbour, with the Bridge on one side and the Opera House on the other. Not bad at all! Unfortunately, when I went to pass my ticket through the gate to exit the station, the damned machine ate my ticket! Turns out I'd purchased the wrong ticket in the morning... I thought I'd bought a city hopper, which would have allowed me to bop all over downtown before heading back out to the suburbs. Not so much. I had to fork out an extra $4.40 to get a ticket back home at the end of the day. Gah.

I spent the rest of the day exploring The Rocks, the oldest part of Sydney that's just under the southern side of the Harbour Bridge. There's all sorts of fun little shops and cafes there, and the buildings are really old and beautiful. I also spent a couple of hours at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was excellent. I arrived just in time to participate in a free guided tour, so I joined in, hoping to gain some better understanding of art. (I swear I really don't *get* art... but I do like looking at it.) There were some pretty cool art installations. They had an exhibition of this one artist's work - she likes to fuse aspects of the natural world with the manufactured world, which results in all sorts of odd sculptures, photos and prints. Like bird nests made of shredded dollar bills. Or strange half-creatures made of beads and PVC piping.

I was pretty pooped by the time I'd caught the train back out to Ruth's school, where she'd agreed to wait for me so I could catch a ride back to her house. Ruth wasn't feeling all that well and had a pretty hideous headache by the time we made it home, so I made dinner. I think I made enough pasta to feed me, Ruth and Bill for a week. :-)

"Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" is on tonight, and since this is the first Wednesday in a while that I've been able to actually *watch* TV, I'm going to sign off for now and go enjoy. I can't wait for the new Indiana Jones movie to come out!

More later...

Looking for some advice!

Well as I know you know by now, I didn't make it on the plane this morning and I am still here in Sydney. BLAH. Looks like getting home is going to be a good deal more complicated than I'd originally hoped.

I was told by Air Canada reservations that there is a HUGE lineup of people trying to fly out of here on standby, and because my priority code is the lowest on the list, this means that I will keep going to the bottom of the pile. There were so many people booked to try for standby flights over the next few days that I was advised to not even try for another standby flight until Monday (May 12). So I am currently booked on Monday's flight to Vancouver.

Here's the trick though. I need to be out of the country by May 15th at the latest because that's when my health insurance runs out. I can call and extend it, but even so, I *HAVE* to be home absolutely no later than May 20th, since I will need a few days to deal with the jet lag and get myself ready for the whitewater canoeing course I'm on May 23-25.

My concern is that if I don't make the standby flight on Monday and the standby situation doesn't get any better, I might have to bite the bullet and buy a ticket home.

I've spent the past several hours digging through the travel websites, trying to find good deals. I can fly from here to Vancouver for about $1500 on either the 9th or the 11th. All other dates the price goes up to $1828. So if I don't book myself a real ticket right now, then Dave, I'm sorry but I can't come out your way.

I could theoretically try flying back to Ottawa from Vancouver via standby, if I make it out to see Dave and Carly and the kids. There are also some good deals with both WestJet and Air Canada where I could fly to Ottawa around the 20th for about $300.

I can fly from here to Ottawa for anywhere between $2031 and $2250 depending on the day.

So I need some advice. I don't know what to do next:

• Do I wait 'till Monday and try to be on that flight?
• If I don't get on that flight, do I keep trying and hope for the best? Or do I buy a ticket home, hoping the prices haven't gone up?
• Do I buy a ticket home now? If so, should I stop in BC or just come straight home?

I'd welcome your ideas and suggestions! Thanks everyone!

Still in Sydney

So yeah... I didn't get on the flight this morning. There were only a few seats available and a whole ton of people in front of me on the standby list. As I was standing there at the Air Canada check-in counter, waiting to find out what was going on, I was eavesdropping on two other girls about my age who were also trying to catch the flight. Sounded like they'd been stuck in Sydney for several days already, unable to fly out. When I finally got up to the counter to talk to the folks there, the news wasn't good. Looks like I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of flying outta here until at LEAST next Monday! Gah!

So after some teary phone calls to my parents and my brother to let them know I'm not quite on my way home yet, and a blubbery call to Bill to ask him to come and get me from the airport, here I am back at Bill and Ruth's house, trying to figure out what to do next.

I will keep you updated. Looks like the adventure isn't quite as over as I thought it was...

My last day in OZ

Yep, my path continues to come full circle. I spent my last day in OZ in Ruth's grade 3 classroom, doing an engineering design challenge with her kids. It was lots of fun! I did a simplified version of the tower challenge that I do every year with my grade 7's. In the morning I had the kids build triangles and squares out of straws and we investigated the properties of these shapes, and decided that triangles were stronger for building with. Then we all tromped over to the hall (the school's indoor assembly area) to build the towers. Some of the designs the kids came up with were pretty innovative! After lunch I pulled out a fan and we tried blowing the towers over to see what would happen. All in all it was great fun and I know the students had a good day.

Tonight I have a big job to do - repacking my bags... again! Seems to matter how I try, everything kinda explodes out of my bags whenever I have to actually LIVE out of them for more than a day. I'm blaming the current clothing explosion on yesterday's regatta - I had to dig all the way to the bottom of my big suitcase to find my bathing suit. So I'll be spending the next hour or so cursing all the crap I've accumulated these past eight months as I try to get everything to fit back in my bags.

It's so strange that I'm leaving tomorrow! I'm going to be a complete wreck in the morning when I have to say goodbye to Bill and Ruth. Then, hopefully my luck with standby flights will continue and I will be winging my way towards BC. I'll be spending the next week with my brother Dave and his family. I'm looking forward to FINALLY meeting my newest niece, Rowyn, who was born last September just before I flew away! So while the end of this OZ trip is sad in its own way, I have much happiness to look forward to, and for that I am thankful.

Hopefully the next time you hear from me I will be back in the Great White North again!

Saying Goodbye, and the Bindaree Regatta

Yep, I was right, 5:30 this morning came way too soon! I woke up sad, knowing that today I really did have to say goodbye to Jen and start my homeward trek. She's a sneaky girl. When I headed downstairs to use the bathroom and brush my teeth, I discovered that she'd written "Safe journey home" on the bathroom mirror in gel gems! Well, that got me all teary and I remained in the bathroom a little longer than was strictly necessary to do my business. When I went back upstairs I rewarded Jen with a punch in the arm. She and I truly have developed our own method of communication over the last eight months. :-)

The taxi came to pick us up at 6, and we were at the airport before 6:30 - mostly because our driver was a complete psycho speed demon! So after I'd gotten myself all checked in and we'd made it through security (here in OZ, non-travelers can go through the security screening at the domestic terminals and accompany you to the gate, which is great), we wandered through the terminal, looking for something to eat for breakfast. My stomach was not at all happy - I think because I was more than a little upset about having to leave. In the end Jen convinced me to take some slices of banana bread with me on the airplane, to eat a little later on.

I think that was about the point that I burst into tears and completely bawled my eyes out on Jen's shoulder. She took it well, all things considered. :-) I guess it just finally hit me that I really am heading home, and that this awesome adventure is over, and I have to go back to my so-called normal life. Sigh.

I finally managed to pull myself together and we made it to the gate. Then it was my turn to surprise Jen. Earlier this week I'd burned CD's with all our pictures from the year, and I also made a music CD of all the songs which have become our unofficial soundtrack for the year. I gave these to Jen, along with - of all things - a rubber chicken. She and I have been joking for a while now that of all the things we didn't bring with us from Canada, we really regret not bringing our rubber chickens! Ha ha! Yet more proof that the two of us are completely psychotic. So enjoy the chicken, Jen - and like my card said, use it well.

Then all too soon it was time to get on the plane and fly away. The flight to Sydney was fine, and I even splurged and bought myself a hot chocolate from the cart. (gasp) Bill picked me up at the airport and brought me back home to dump my stuff and get changed, and then he whisked me off to Bindaree, the Sutherland Shire Guides' water activities centre, where I met up with Ruth and her Guides and a whole ton of other Guide units from around the region, for the Bindaree Blitz Regatta! Well, if I was looking for something to distract me from the fact that I'd just left one of my best friends back in Melbourne and that I'm heading homewards, this was it!

The Bindaree Regatta is basically a smaller version of the HUGE Boree Regatta, which happens each October. Unfortunately Jen and I had missed attending that one, due to our busy schedules. So I was glad I got to participate in this smaller event, at least! There were about 150 girls at today's event, aged anywhere from 6 to 17 years of age. In the morning the younger girls (Gumnuts and Brownies, essentially) did the water events and the older girls did land events, and in the afternoon they switched around. I ended up working with the water activities leaders, as they were a little short-handed.

I arrived about 45 minutes late (due to my flight and getting changed and having to dig through all my stuff to find my bathing suit and all), so I wasn't all that sure what exactly was going on. But they needed more Guiders to help organize the girls and canoes and kayaks etc. at the start of each race, so I ended up helping there. The young girls' races basically had the girls paddling straight out from the beach, around a buoy, and back to the beach. This was complicated a bit by the strong current on the river (like all the rivers around Sydney, the one we were on is tidal and the tide was heading out in the morning), and the fact that many of the girls hadn't ever been in a boat before. There were two leaders out in kayaks on the river to help the girls and coach them along, and two more leaders in a powered zodiac (it's called a rubber ducky here, ha ha!) in case a rescue was needed. It was all great fun. I also got to participate in one of the races, where the youngest girls were racing each other in the canoes. Each boat had a girl in the front and a leader in the back. Ruth was really hoping I'd win that race so her unit could gain some points in the competition, but unfortunately I got wedged between two other boats and ended up in third place. Ah well!

Once the morning races were over I had just enough time to grab myself a sausage for lunch and wolf it down, and then head back over to the beach for the afternoon's older-girl races. I was asked if I would be willing to take over as one of the safety boats on the river, so of course I said yes! So I spent the afternoon paddling around in a kayak, helping the few boats which were having problems paddling, cheering everyone on, and generally having a blast. One of the afternoon races I thought was particularly cool. They sat one girl in the middle of each canoe, and then the bow and stern paddlers in the boat were blindfolded. The paddlers had to rely completely on their sighted passenger to give them directions to paddle around the course. It was so cool! What a great cooperative activity! I want to try this at Woolsey this summer.

Got back to Ruth's this evening and enjoyed a nice hot shower to get rid of the salt and the river smell. Carroll came over and joined us for dinner, and now the two of them are relaxing in the living room, eating chocolate and watching TV. It's about time I went and joined them. More tomorrow!

My last two days in Melbourne

Yesterday didn't quite work out as we had originally planned. :-)

Jen called me about 8am to tell me that she'd managed to leave the bank book for paying rent on her desk at home - so I arranged to meet her at her school at 4pm so she could get to the bank before it closed and pay rent.

Then I went to make the reservation with the restaurant we're going to to celebrate my leaving tonight - and had no credit left on my phone. The restaurant's website will only take reservations 48hrs in advance. So suddenly I had to head down to the Docklands and talk to them in person.

Jen had also asked me to try and pick up a present for one of her co-workers, who is having a housewarming party this weekend. Due to the stupidly slow trams, by the time I'd made it out to the Docklands, there was no time left for me to go shopping for Jen.

I met up with Vicky Marrack at the National Gallery of Victoria for lunch and a wander through the gallery, which was very nice. We saw a few really cool artworks. My favourite was the fibre-optic glowing ladder that stretched from floor to ceiling in this darkened room. As you approached the ladder, you realized that there were mirrors set in the floor and ceiling - so if you looked down or up, the ladder appeared to go on forever. Very cool.

I made it out to Jen's school on time, and we got the rent paid, enjoyed a Boost juice (I'm really gonna miss those), and found a present for her co-worker. However the rest of our plans for the evening were foiled. We wanted to go and see the Spiderwick Chronicles. However it's no longer playing in the evenings here - go figure. So instead we ended up at our favourite Chinese massage parlour, where we enjoyed neck and back massages. Then we picked up some popcorn, pizza, and two movies from Blockbuster and went home to veg out on the couches.

Let me put this bluntly. We purchased cheap second hand movies from Blockbuster because it was so much easier than trying to rent anything. (Long story). One of the movies we bought was "Balls of Fury". Jen thought it might be a good pick because she really enjoyed "Dodgeball". I've not seen Dodgeball, but I can tell you that Balls of Fury was TERRIBLE. Our stream of bad movies continues.

Jen redeemed herself, though, by also purchasing "10 Things I Hate About You", which I also hadn't seen. It was pretty funny, and Jen and Jen and I enjoyed it from the comfort of our big bedroom, all snuggled up under our doonas.

Today we all slept in (well, I was up at 7:30 as usual, but it still somehow feels like sleeping in when you do it on a weekend!). Jen and I spent the morning chatting with folks back home via the webcams, and before we knew it the entire morning had been frittered away. We had originally planned to go and check out Scienceworks, Melbourne's science centre, but by the time we got ourselves moving we didn't have enough time to get out there and back again (it's not near downtown at all) before we needed to meet up with everyone for dinner. Instead, the two Jens and I meandered once more through the Victoria Market, searching for souvenirs.

The trams were crazy busy so we ended up walking from the market all the way down Swanston St. to Flinders, poking our heads into all the cheesy tourist stores along the way. We were quasi-looking for a "good" (and I use that term lightly) Australiana t-shirt for me, but I couldn't find one I wanted. Jen has threatened to buy me one of her choosing and mail it to me in Canada, so I have no choice but to wear it. Ha ha! I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

We headed out towards the Docklands to meet up with the rest of the Canadian teachers living in my house, my housemates Renzo and Jasmine, my former housemate Russell, and Vicky and Alyesha, to enjoy a goodbye dinner. We ate at the Yum Cha Dragon, a very pretty-looking Chinese restaurant. The food was ok but the service was terrible; I don't know that I'd choose to eat there again. (Not that I'm likely to have the opportunity!) However I just really enjoyed being able to sit and chat with all my friends here, old and new, and have a chance to say goodbye.

After dinner, most of us (save for Jasmine and Russell, who had prior engagements elsewhere) walked over to the Telstra Dome and watched a footy game. We watched the St. Kilda Saints play the Richmond Tigers. We were cheering for the Saints - with no better basis than that their team colours are very Canadian - white, red and black. I kept joking that I might as well be cheering for the Ottawa Senators! Jen had bought me a "Saints" scarf yesterday, and pretty much everyone else in our group also had one, so we fit right in with the Saints-cheering part of the crowd. Richmond was definitely the favored team in the match, but in the end the Saints won in a nail-biting couple of minutes. It was a great game.

Jen and I have decided that watching Australian footy is somewhat akin to watching a large group of grown men play hot potato. Alyesha tried her best to explain some of the rules to us, and we got the gist of the game, but really, it kinda looks like anything goes. The ball can be thrown, kicked, or dribbled in any direction. Players can be tackled, grabbed, and thrown to the ground. Points can be scored by kicking or running the ball between the appropriate goal posts. Single points can also be scored by missing the main goal posts but passing the ball in between the posts on either side of the main ones. Telstra Dome is about the same size as Rogers Centre, and holds about 50,000 people. There were over 40,000 people at this game, and this was one of several games of footy being played throughout the city over this weekend. The Aussies truly are crazy about their sports, but it made for a great, fun evening.

So here I am, back at Balmer Street for one last evening before flying to Sydney early tomorrow morning. My bags are packed, the taxi's booked, and everything's ready for me to go. Sigh. I'm so looking forward to going home. I so don't want to leave. I'm going to miss Jen terribly, even though I know I'm going to see her again in less than four months. It's been quite the ride, and I'm so glad I came.

OK, I'd better go to bed. 5:30's gonna come awfully soon...

My Bags are Packed... Again

This feels a little strange... I'm all packed and ready to head for home, and there are still four days left before I fly away from Australia for good. We had to do a little house rearrangement today - Jen Challenger moved out of her room and in to my half of the room I've been sharing with Jen since October. Of course this meant that I had to give up my space, and pack my bags. So now we officially have a "Jen squared" room. Ha ha! My stuff is all piled on "my" Jen's side of the room and things are now a little squishy, so I'm sitting out in the common room with my laptop to write this. I no longer have my own desk, either. :-) But that's OK, 'cause I'll be heading for home soon, and I'm so ready to go!

Last night I went to my last Aussie trampolining class. My goal for the evening was to land a full airplane, a relatively simple trick that's eluded me for almost two years. I just can't quite twist the right way to be able to nail it. I almost got there last night though - I landed one or two but not consistently. I am hoping that when I get back to my club in Canada, with trampolines that are level with the ground, I'll be a little less scared of the height I'm bouncing and be able to land the stupid trick. Mark decreed that we should celebrate my leaving, so Jen bought a lamington cake on her way to meet up with me at the trampolining club. She, Mark, Pete, Jake and I all shared the cake at the end of the evening. MMM. Cake.

This morning I woke up very, very sore from last night's bouncing. I didn't really want to face the prospect of rolling over in bed, and put that moment off for as long as I humanly could. The hot shower that Jen made me take helped, though. My back really doesn't like all the twisting I do when I'm trampolining.

What with me being so stiff and all, it took me longer than I thought it would to finish my packing, and I didn't get to leave the house until almost 2pm. After all the nit-pickyness of packing (remembering I've only got one of my big bags with me here right now, the other's already up in Sydney, so getting all my remaining stuff to fit in my red pack was a bit of a challenge), I really needed some fresh air. I headed downtown and back to the Melbourne Museum. I first visited it back in February with Jen's mom, and we ran out of time to go through all the galleries. Today I explored the deep sea exhibit, went back for a closer look at the bug exhibit (go figure), and wandered through a display on how the mind works. I went back to the Virtual Room and watched a few more of their cool 3D movies, although they were having problems with the lighting and the overhead lights kept flickering on, which was annoying.

After I'd finished exploring in the museum, I wandered over to Lygon Street to meet up with Jen and Tarra for dinner. I'm having my big goodbye bash on Saturday but unfortunately Tarra can't come, so we celebrated tonight instead. We ate yummy pasta and bruschetta at one restaurant, then wandered across the street to enjoy Tim Tam cake. MMMMM. More cake. :-)

So yeah. I'm ready to come home, and I have a little bit of time to kill before my flights. Or I guess a better way to put it would be that I have a few more days in which to enjoy my time here to the max. And I'm planning on it!

The Beginning of the End of the Trip

It's probably worth noting that I had a phone interview last night with a principal of one of the other schools I've applied to work at in the fall. Wow are my interview skills rusty! I'm pretty sure I completely buggered the interview, as I sure spent a lot of time saying "um" and "ah" and "could you repeat that please?". Ah well. At least I got an interview. If I didn't get the job, well, I didn't get the job and I'll be back at Charlton in the fall. On the other hand, there was another job posting today that I was eligible for, so I applied to it too. All is not lost yet. It feels strange to not have any idea where I'll be teaching in the fall, but on the other hand I know I've got a job to go back to, and that's all that's really important.

Today really did feel like the beginning of the end... of my travels here in OZ. I enjoyed a bit of a sleep-in after all of yesterday's running around, and spent most of the rest of the day puttering away here in my room, packing stuff, tossing stuff, and tidying stuff. I have to move out of my half of the room on Thursday so that Jen Challenger can move in. I have surprisingly little left to pack - and may even have room in my pack to bring home some Tim Tams! Keep your fingers crossed, everyone. (I swear I've eaten more bloody cookies this year than is strictly a good thing, but hey, they're Tim Tams and not available anywhere but here.)

Everything seems to be coming full circle. The weather is back to the same cold, miserable, rain/mist/drizzle/occasional patches of sun that we had when I first arrived in September. The leaves are changing colour and dropping off the trees. I am once again surrounded by bags and suitcases as I begin to pack up my life. There's a couple of goodbye parties planned for me later on this week. I'm almost out of credit on my cell phone, which I won't be recharging since I can't bring it back to Canada. Tomorrow I will go and close my Australian bank account and wire my extra money back home again.

Ironically, I find myself in almost exactly the same emotional state as I was in just before I began this trip! I'm so excited to go home. I can't wait to share all my stories and photos and gifts with my family and friends. I also don't want to leave. I'm afraid I will go home and find that everything and everyone has changed and somehow left me behind. I don't want this trip to end, there's so much more for me to see and do here. I don't want to leave behind all my new Aussie friends. I'm eager to just get GOING already, but at the same time I want to drag this week out and enjoy it for all it's worth.

So - while today I played the hermit and scarcely stirred from the house, tomorrow I'm off to run a whole bunch of errands all over town, and there's my last trampolining class tomorrow night, and shopping to do, and lots more, so I'd better go to bed. Here's hoping I actually sleep tonight! Last night was not good - my brain has started its annoying "wow do I have a lot of things to think about" routine and it would just not SHUT UP and let me be. Here's hoping tonight is better...

ANZAC Day and a trip to the Grampians

It's been a busy few days!

Friday was ANZAC Day, and Jen and I were up at 4:30 in the morning so we could make our way downtown to the Shrine of Remembrance to attend the Dawn Ceremony. This ceremony begins every ANZAC Day, as a way for Australians and New Zealanders to remember the battle of Gallipoli during World War I, where both Australia and New Zealand found their identities as a nation.

We caught a tram towards the downtown about quarter past five, and I was impressed at how full it was already, as we live pretty far from the city centre. As we headed towards downtown more and more people piled on the tram with us, until there was absolutely no room to move whatsoever. Once we passed Flinders Station and were close to the shrine, we could see hundreds - if not thousands - of other people all heading the same way on foot. Remember that this was all well before dawn and the city was pitch black.

When we reached the Shrine, it was really eerie. We piled off the tram with everyone else and walked up the hill towards the Shrine. All around us were hundreds of other people walking with us - and everyone was completely silent. The Shrine is set in the middle of a large parkland and there were no lights on anywhere, so we were all walking up the hill in complete darkness. As we approached, Jen and I could hear a voice over a loudspeaker. Turned out that the organizers of the ceremony had a someone reading a history of ANZAC Day over the speaker system while the crowds assembled.

The dawn ceremony began at 6am and was actually very short, lasting only about half an hour. A single light shone out from the top of the Shrine while we sang Australia Fair (the national anthem) and God Save The Queen. "In Flanders Fields" was read (which brought a tear to my eye, being Canadian and all). A young Australian soldier spoke about what it means to be an ANZAC today. A lone piper played the bagpipes from the observation deck near the top of the Shrine. At the end of the ceremony, the Governor of Victoria entered the Shrine to lay a wreath at the stone in the centre. Then the Shrine was opened to everyone so that anyone who wanted to could lay a poppy there. The line was huge though and we had a long drive to do later in the day, so Jen and I headed home at this point.

I am so glad we went down for the service though.

Once we'd made it back home, we both actually went back to bed for a couple of hours - and I surprised myself by actually sleeping! But we were up again around 10am to get ready for our weekend trip to the Grampians, along with our other Canadian teacher housemates and a few other folks from Leading Out, the company that helped Jen find employment here in OZ.

In total there were eight of us heading to the Grampians for the weekend. We drove out in a convoy of two cars. It took us longer than we'd expected to get there, but that's likely because we stopped at a winery along the way. Not such an exciting stop for us non drinkers, but everyone else looked like they were having a lot of fun. :-) (We didn't really mind - it was nice to get out and stretch our legs!).

The Grampians are a chain of big hills/small mountains found in inland western Victoria. The hills are high enough that the clouds were brushing their tops as we approached. The hills themselves are forested, but the land all around is mostly farmland now. As we passed the fields, we saw HUGE mobs of kangaroos - we're talking hundreds of kangaroos in each mob! Some of the girls we were traveling with had never seen 'roos before, so of course we had to pull over and snap some photos. It was almost dark by the time we made it to the Emu Holiday Park, where we would be staying for the weekend.

Since there were so many of us on this trip, we decided to rent some cabins instead of staying in a hostel. What a great choice that turned out to be! The cabins slept six people each, so we were able to spread out and enjoy some space. Each of the cabins had a wood stove inside and a fire pit outside, as well as a small BBQ on the porch. We wasted no time moving ourselves in and claiming beds. Vicky and Alyesha were in charge of dinner on Friday night, so Jen and I amused ourselves by making a fire in the fire place, and all of us just kinda sat around, nibbling on Alyesha's tasty beetroot dip and crackers, and enjoying various drinks. There was also lots of wildlife at the holiday park - we had kangaroos come right up to the cabin, and also a possum who ate the grapes and pear slices we put out. Cool! Apparently the local kookaburras will eat out of your hand too, but we had no luck there.

You could sure tell we were all teachers though - even though it was a holiday weekend, we were all in bed well before midnight! The cold likely had something to do with it. I think on the Friday night it went down to below 10C. BRRRR! We pretty much all hung out together in the one cabin, although four of us (including me) were actually sleeping in the other cabin. So of course, our cabin's fire didn't get lit until we went back to go to bed! I don't think the fire we did light actually warmed us up at all. Let me tell you, was I glad that there was an electric blanket on my bed!

Saturday morning dawned cloudy and grey, with the promise of rain to come. We gathered for breakfast around 8 and were out the door and on our way by 9. Our goal for the morning was to hike to the top of The Pinnacle, one of the big peaks in the Grampians range. What a hike! Definitely one of the more difficult hikes I've done this year, as it was basically 2.5kms straight up the side of the mountain. I must be getting into better shape. I was the slowest hiker in our group (not a surprise there) but I made it to the top and wasn't nearly as tired as some of the girls who'd power-walked their way up. On our way we passed through the Grand Canyon (cool narrow crevasse) and at one point had to clamber up a steep, narrow gorge where I swear it looked like we weren't going to fit! The views at the top were spectacular though.

We got off the Pinnacles hike just in time for the rain to begin in earnest, so we drove just down the rode to the small village of Halls Gap, which is the touristy center of the Grampians. With the rain bucketing down, we browsed through the shops and enjoyed hot drinks at one of the restaurants. (I think the waitresses at the restaurant were a little annoyed that we didn't order more than drinks, but ah well! We'd already eaten our lunches on the trail.) We also checked out Brambuk, the local Aboriginal cultural centre. Jen and I watched a 10 minute presentation in the Dreamtime Theatre about the creation story of Gariwerd, or the Grampians. It was really well done and we walked away with a copy of the story on paper so we can tell it to our students.

The rain let up as we drove back through the hills for two shorter hikes. Our first stop was the Balconies lookout, where we enjoyed a spectacular panorama of the hills and of course the jutting cliff faces that are called balconies. Jen and I enjoyed yelling at a couple of stupid, stupid tourists who had completely ignored the "do not enter" signs and were posing right on top of the jutting rocks - completely unaware of their instability and the thousand or so foot drop to the forest below. GADS! We unashamedly turned our "teacher voices" on and made them come back to the path. It was funny - as we were getting the tourists to come back, another guy passed us and said, "You know, it's their own lives they're risking out there, you don't need to interfere," to which we responded, "Yeah, but we're the first aiders who would have to go and get them if they fell off." The response - "Oh." Hee hee!

(Can't turn off the teacher now matter how we try!)

The last hike of the day was down a cliff face to get to the bottom of the MacKenzie Falls. It was about a 200m descent, I think - and not so bad going down but a lot harder coming up! We were hoping that since it had rained so nicely earlier in the afternoon, the falls would be roaring, but no such luck. Don't get me wrong, they were very pretty, but not as spectacular as some of the other waterfalls I've seen this year. We paused for the mandatory group shot and then huffed and puffed our way back to the top of the cliff and the cars.

Since Jen and I were in charge of most of the planning for this weekend trip, we were also in charge of dinner - so when we got back to our cabins, I took the meat and headed to our cabin to BBQ it, and Jen roasted the veggies and potatoes at the first cabin. We all feasted on sausages, lamb chops, roast veggies and baked potatoes, and of course the required tim tams and other yummy Aussie goodies. Vicky and Alyesha had brought the game "Canada-opoly" with them, so we spent the rest of the evening playing. One by one, folks folded and sold their properties and headed off to bed, so that at the end of the game there were only four of us playing and somehow I managed to win the game! Not sure I've ever won at Monopoly before. Ha ha!

Sunday morning, after packing up and checking out of the cabins, we headed off to find some of the Aboriginal rock art sites in the Grampians park. The two sites we were searching for ended up being way down a long, challenging dirt road, and so for the first time I was glad that the rental car we had for the weekend had all-wheel drive! We found one of the art sites, but somehow missed a turn as we were searching for the second one and ended up about 25kms away from where we needed to be. So instead of retracing our steps (that was 25kms down a crazy dirt road that we shouldn't have been on in the first place with a rental car!), we turned for home.

We made one random, random stop on the way back to Melbourne - at a castle! When we were passing through Ballarat on the way out on Friday, we'd noticed a castle sitting up on a hillside just outside that town. So we made a point of stopping to check it out on the way back. Turns out that yes, it's a whole medieval-style castle, set up in much the same way as the Renaissance Fair used to be, with halls and dungeons and towers to explore, jousting and magic shows, and much more. We certainly didn't have time to explore the place properly (we were already running late), so we took a pass and headed for home. Hopefully Jen and some of the other folks who were on the trip will get a chance to go back out there in the next few months though - it looked really cool!

So suffice it to say that we were all rather tired when we got home last night. I took some of my housemates grocery shopping in the car, since it's not often that we have wheels to take advantage of in the city. Then I curled up on the couch to watch the finale of "So You Think You Can Dance" (sadly, I somehow got addicted to that show, ha ha!) and went off to bed.

I can't believe I'm now officially down to a week left in OZ. I have so much to get done! Yikes!

A Radio Interview and a Photo Contest

Check 'em out!!

Once I managed to get my poor computer re-connected to the internet today (seems that in my absence this past week, someone hacked into our house network and was using up all our bandwidth, so Rob, one of my housemates, had to do some finagling with the router to make it all secure again, and that meant I couldn't log on without his assistance, but that's another story...)... I spent some time uploading more stuff for everyone to enjoy. (Wasn't that the longest run-on sentence ever??)

Two items of note.

#1 - Back in March when Janet (Jen's mom) and I were in Mount Isa, we were interviewed on the local Aboriginal radio station. I finally figured out how to upload the interview in a way so you can hear it. Try not to laugh too hard. Click on this link to download the interview onto your computer, then you can play it and enjoy.

#2 - When I was in Broken Hill this week, I was very taken with the artwork of Pro Hart, who is recognized as having pioneered the outback art movement in Broken Hill. His work includes a number of large metal sculptures, and I took lots of photos. So take a look at his work and send me your comments! Best sculpture title/explanation/story wins a prize.

OK, off to bed. Jen and I are getting up at 4:30am (gasp) so we can make it downtown in time for the ANZAC Dawn Ceremony. Goodnight!

No Sleep on the Train for Me

Well I think I can safely say that I am GLAD that my days of having to sleep in the day-nighter seats of the trains here are officially OVER. The trip from Broken Hill to Sydney wasn't all that bad, really - the train was much less crowded than the ones I'd ridden on the way to Broken Hill, and I ended up with a four-seater all to myself! I enjoyed stretching out in relative luxury until it came time to try and go to sleep. I'd already discovered on my trip on the Ghan that propping my feet up on the seats opposite to where I'm sitting doesn't work - my knees go to sleep. So I spent some time trying to figure out how I could (a) sleep lying down on the seats, (b) stretch my legs out so my blasted knees wouldn't be bent all night, and (c) support my knees so they wouldn't go to sleep.

In the end I laid my small suitcase down between the two sets of seats, put my backpack down on top of the suitcase, and a towel down on top of the backpack. This brought the whole precarious pile almost level with the seats, so I could bridge the gap between them and actually support my knees in the process. This worked fairly well, except that the train spent about four hours going over some seriously wonky tracks just after lights-out, and it was absolutely impossible to sleep for all the shaking and shuddering we were doing. Once we reached some smoother tracks, though, I think I actually did manage to catch a few zzz's.

The train pulled into Sydney this morning right on time, and Ruth met me at the big YHA across from the train station. I stashed my luggage for the day (note: the Sydney YHA has a great luggage store room!) and we headed off to do some exploring. Unfortunately it was absolutely POURING rain and we spent quite a bit of time dashing between the raindrops! We went to the Guide Shop, just a few blocks from the train station, to purchase some badges and books. Then we headed across town to the Sydney Museum. I visited the Museum on my own last September at the start of the trip, but they've just opened up a new exhibit on dinosaurs, and of course I needed to see that. :-)

The museum was jam-packed full of small kids and their families - I had managed to forget that it's still school holidays here (hence why Ruth could join me in the first place, she is a teacher after all!) and of course any exhibit on dinosaurs draws children like flies to honey. There was some pretty neat stuff though. They'd done an excellent job making life-size replicas of a number of dinosaur species, including many of the theropod dinosaurs that scientists are now pretty sure sported feathers. There was also a good explanation on the modern view of how birds are really just highly-evolved cousins of T-rex, which was cool.

What with one thing and another, Ruth and I didn't leave the museum until almost 4pm, and then we had to hoof it back across the downtown to pick up my luggage and then catch a train out to the suburbs. The train was crowded and I ended up standing almost the whole way, so it sure felt nice to curl up on the couch once we got here to Ruth's!

I've spent the evening uploading pictures to facebook, so if you'd like to see what I was up to whilst in Broken Hill, check my pages there.

The next few days will be very busy... tomorrow I fly back to Melbourne and have half a day to get all ready for our big trip out to the Grampians this weekend. So if you don't hear from me again until Sunday or Monday, that'd be why!

More Broken Hill Exploration

So... it's been an interesting couple of days...

Since I ended up renting that blasted expensive car for two days, I figured I'd better make the most of it and spent yesterday driving all over the town. Even though I paid a ridiculous amount for the car, in the end I think it was (almost) worth it, as there were a number of sights I wanted to see that I wouldn't have been able to get to at all without wheels. I started off my exploration by driving all the way out to the airport to visit the Royal Flying Doctor base there. Whilst I'd had an introduction to the RFDS when I was up in Mount Isa (their original base was in Cloncurry, just a few hours from Mount Isa), I hadn't been able to see the planes. Here in Broken Hill, the tour included an excellent film about the history of the RFDS and a tour of the hangar where the planes are maintained. The planes are pretty cool. Once the RFDS purchases an aircraft, it undergoes a major refitting to turn it into a high tech mobile intensive care unit. The planes also have their underbodies strengthened and their wheels reinforced, which allows them to take off and land on short, dirt airstrips out in the bush. Pretty impressive!

Next I drove up to the top of the HUGE mullock pile that dominates the skyline in Broken Hill, to the Visitors Centre and Miners Memorial. Once again, I was sure glad I had the car! Whilst on the map it didn't look like all that far if I'd had to walk it, the drive to the top of this artificial hill was deceptively long and with no path for pedestrians. I would have been taking my life in my hands if I'd tried to walk up that thing with cars whizzing by. The view from the top was pretty good, though. I'd hoped to dine in the "Broken Earth" restaurant which is in the Visitors Centre at the top, but once I glanced at the menu it was clear that the place was waaaay out of my budget. :-) However, in the gift shop I found the PERFECT present for my Grandma. She'll have to wait 'till Christmas to get it though! Heehee...

The Miners Memorial was erected to honour all the men who have died in the mining operations at Broken Hill, since the mine was first opened in the mid 1800's. In total there are more than 800 names on the memorial, and beside each name is listed how old the miner was and the method of their death. It was pretty gruesome - deaths by asphyxiation, mechanical failure, by falling, by crushing, by silicosis, and many more. Like at the War Memorial in Canberra there were slots beside each name where loved ones could leave flowers, and there were silk roses placed beside many names. It was very touching - and a good reminder of how dangerous mining is - even in the modern day with all our safety precautions. One of the most recent deaths (from just a couple of years ago) was listed as caused by "remotely operated machinery".

I decided to take advantage of the car once more and did a big circular lap all around the outskirts of Broken Hill, to visit all the art galleries that are not an easy walk from the downtown core. So I spent the next couple of hours dipping in and out of various shops, some in actual storefronts, and many in converted houses set in residential streets. The variety of art available here is pretty good. I kept hoping I'd find an original piece that I could afford to bring home, but unfortunately no such luck. I ended up purchasing postcards from as many of the art galleries as I could, so I have a memento of the different artists I met here.

Probably by far the most famous of all of Broken Hill's artists is Pro Hart, who basically started the Broken Hill art movement. I really liked his gallery and his body of work. Of course, since he's so famous, there's no way I could afford even a print! Pro worked in the mines for 20 years and he brought his experiences of working underground into his work. I'm not trained enough in the terminology to really express what it is that I like about his work, but his art is colourful, engaging, and poignant - even to me. He also produced a number of sculptures, many of which are exhibited in a sculpture garden across from his gallery, as well as a hugely famous ant sculpture that stands in a park in downtown Broken Hill. I took photos of as many sculptures as I could, and when I get back to Melbourne in a couple of days, I'll post 'em so you can see them yourself.

My last stop for the day was the Living Desert, an area of desert parkland about 6kms outside of Broken Hill that has been turned into a cultural heritage walk. The first part of the trails through the Living Desert deal with the area's native fauna, with all sorts of different desert plants labeled. The second part of the walk encompasses a number of sites of Aboriginal significance. Unfortunately I arrived there too late in the day to see this part! The cultural walks are surrounded by predator (dingo?)-proof electric fencing, and the gates are locked at 4:30pm. Ah well!

The reason why I'd left the walks to the end of the afternoon was because what I really went out there to see was Broken Hill's famous Sculpture Symposium. Actually, the reason why I became intrigued with Broken Hill in the first place was because of a postcard of one of the sculptures that I found on the wall of my friend Nikki's house in Canberra! The Sculpture Symposium was a community project back in 1993, which aimed to bring together artists from all over the world to produce sculptures that would celebrate the Living Desert. The results are pretty darn spectacular! The 12 huge sandstone sculptures are situated on top of a hill with stunning views of the surrounding desert. Since I was approaching from the cultural walks, I had to hike about 1.5kms up the hill to get to the sculptures. (You can also access the sculptures by driving up a different road and parking right there, but I figured that since either way you had to pay $10 per car to get to see them, I might as well get some hiking in too.) The views as I puffed my way up the hill (regretting having left my knee braces back at the hostel, ha ha!) were fantastic.

I made it up to where the sculptures are about 45minutes before sunset, so I managed to snap some pretty cool photos of the sun lighting up the stones and silhouetting them from behind. The postcard views I'd seen of this site made me think that the sculptures were strung out in a line like ancient standing stones, but that's not actually the case. There was a winding path that took me through them. Of course I wasn't the only one there - and after a while I got a little tired of trying to stay out of other peoples' photos, so once I'd taken all the pictures I wanted to take, I headed back down the hill towards the car.

Partway down I found a bench that was facing the sunset, and there I stopped. I was far enough away from the crowd at the sculptures that I felt like I was on my own again, and still high enough on the hillside to get a pretty spectacular view over the desert. So that's how I spent my last evening in the Outback - sitting on a park bench, watching the sun go down, snapping a bazillion sunset photos (yes, Jen, you'd have gone mental on me, hee hee!), and just plain enjoying the quiet. Once the sun had dropped all the way below the horizon I walked the rest of the way back down to the car.

When I was driving out of the reserve, I went SLOOOOWLY (once again, there I was, driving at dusk, when the 'roos are out!)... and was rewarded by spotting several euros (a large, dark grey species of kangaroo) grazing by the roadside. And when I reached the main highway and headed back towards town... WOW! The moon was rising HUGE and full and golden, over the tops of the hills. Totally magical.

Today I checked out of the hostel, put my bags in storage, and have spent the rest of the day so far wandering through the downtown core, sticking my head into shops and yet more galleries, and basically bumming around. I'm ready to get on the train NOW, but of course it doesn't leave until 6pm tonight! Ah well. If needs be, I'll find myself a shady park bench, pull out my trusty book, and enjoy some more fresh air before I get bottled onto the train one last time.

I'll be at Ruth's house in Sydney tomorrow night, and then back in Melbourne on Thursday. I woke up this morning with the realization that I fly home in two weeks time. Yikes! I want to make the most of this last little bit of my Aussie adventures....

Bopping Around Broken Hill

God my feet are sore. And my wallet is too. But more on that later...

I've been in Broken Hill now for two days, and have covered a lot of ground. Yesterday I hoofed it around town on foot, with the goal of checking out as many of the town's art galleries as I could possibly reach. This didn't seem like a bad plan first thing in the morning, but the galleries aren't all strung along the main street and I know I walked at least 10-15kms as I explored. Fortunately it wasn't too hot out, and the flies weren't too bad (yes, Dad, I forgot the fly net you bought me back in Melbourne. Gah.). Broken Hill reminds me in many ways of Mount Isa, since they're both mining towns and they both have a huge mining operation looming over the cities. However Broken Hill shows off its wealth in ways that Mount Isa just doesn't. The architecture of the buildings here is superb. The parks are well groomed and tidy, even if there isn't much grass (not a lot of water here!). And there are art galleries everywhere!

Unfortunately, the Curse of the Closed Shop, which plagued Jen and I when we were exploring Coober Pedy, continued here. Only about half of the galleries I visited were actually open! When I started to get frustrated and re-read my travel brochures to check opening times, I found that some of the galleries that were closed were actually supposed to be open, they just weren't. Bah. Well at least I've got a good grasp of the town's geography now!

I did spend some time in the Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery, which is housed in an old hardware store from the turn of the last century. It's not a big gallery but it has some beautiful artworks, and their current temporary exhibition was on food. So they had all these different artworks representing various artists' interpretation of our relationship with what we eat. Some of the pieces were beautiful, and some were just... well... disturbing. Like the painting of the guy sitting alone at a table with a huge pile of steaming... something... for dinner. Or the five "death masks" of slaughtered pigs. Yummy.

My feet were so sore by the time I got out of the art gallery that all I wanted to do was stumble down Argent St. (the main drag) towards the hostel and find a little cafe where I could sit and have a cuppa. No such luck for me. It was only about 2:30pm, and it turns out that pretty much all of Broken Hill's downtown closes at 1pm on Saturday afternoons! Yikes! I finally manged to find a small takeaway place which was selling cold drinks, so I bought a coke, staggered back to the hostel, and took a nap.

When I woke up it was almost 6, and already dark outside. I didn't want to explore too much further, since my feet were killing me, so I wandered back down the street two blocks to the "Demo Club", one of the many clubs in town. I ate there on Friday night and the food was great, so I went back again. The club scene here in OZ reminds me a bit of Dave and Buster's in Toronto - in a typical club you have a bar, a restaurant, a games room, a pokie (slot machine) room, and much more. But the food was yummy and there were lots of people around, so this was definitely the place to be. I ordered a burger, and when it arrived, wow, what a burger! Here are all the toppings: lettuce, tomato, sauteed onions, BBQ sauce, pineapple, beetroot, shredded carrot, and a fried egg! A little strange (for the Canadian tastes, that is, this is quite normal here in OZ), but very good.

Today I realized I was going to have to rent a car, if I wanted to get out to Silverton and other places on the far side of Broken Hill. The only rental agency that's open on the weekends appeared to be Thrifty (I'd talked to the guy last night), so that's where I ended up. He had only one car left to rent, and it's a big 6-L Mitsubishi something-or-other. Don't ask me how much it's costing me to rent the blasted thing for two days. You don't want to know. The car has absolutely no headroom (and for me to say that, that's saying something; I don't even know if Dad would fit into the drivers seat!), but actually has a pretty smooth ride.

Today's adventures started with me driving out to the Daydream Historic Mine, about 20kms outside of Broken Hill - and a good chunk of that on unsealed road. I had to pass through two cattle gates that I had to shut behind the car, which was interesting. I began to feel like I was driving into the middle of nowhere, but then I finally made it out to the mine. The Daydream Mine was actually the first silver mine to operate in the Broken Hill area, before the big "Line of Lode" was found here. (No, I can't remember the dates). The mine was all cut by hand and all the ore was removed by hand - no mechanization here!

Let me tell you, of all the mine tours I've been on this year, this was the hardest one. The pathway we took down into the mine was extremely difficult to clamber down - and we had both hands free and a handrail! The miners would have entered the mine through the same shaft, carrying a lit candle in one hand and a pick axe in the other. YIKES. Wait 'till you see the pictures. The conditions in the mines were horrific, and many men didn't live past their mid-30's because of typhoid, silicosis of the lung or cirrhosis of the liver (from all the alcohol that was consumed to deal with the harsh conditions). Most miners also smoked opium as a way of dealing with the pain from their jobs. Boys as young as 8 were employed in the mine to haul carts and to gather ore after the blasting. Most of them would have been orphans and they could typically only work underground for a couple of years before their eyesight was so bad they had to be shifted to work above ground. At one point on the tour, our guide had us extinguish our headlamps and he lit a candle, to show us the low light conditions the miners would have worked in. No way I'd want to be doing that!

My next stop was the ghost town of Silverton, which is about 25kms outside of Broken Hill and just down the road from the Daydream Mine. I can only describe this place as a "bustling ghost town" - most of the buildings were moved to Broken Hill when that town boomed, and so there are only a few buildings left. Among them is the Silverton Hotel, which is probably one of the most-filmed pubs in all of Australia. It's best known from the Mad Max films and also A Town Like Alice. Outside the pub they have a replica of Mel Gibson's car from the Mad Max movies, so of course I had to get a picture with it. (I know I've seen the Mad Max films, but it's all blurry... I'm gonna have to add them to my list of movies to revisit in the coming year!). There are also several more art galleries in the old buildings, which I explored but didn't find all that inspiring.

My last stop of the day was out to the Mundi Mundi plains lookout, another 5kms down the road from Silverton. The plains were also used in the Mad Max films. All I can really say is... wow... those are some big, flat, desolate plains. I'm not sure the photos will do them justice.

I had one more stop before heading here to the library, and that was at White's Mineral Art and Living Mining Museum. What a find! They've got all these excellent displays on the history of mining in Broken Hill over the past 125 years. But what really makes the place fascinating is the artwork. The artist who owns the place has taken crushed powders of the different ores extracted from the mine and used them to make these elaborate, beautiful "sand paintings" that illustrate aspects of the town's history. They were exquisite.

Anyhow - I've gotta go - the library's closing in 5 minutes and I need to sign off. More to report on Tuesday, when I'm next back here!

I'm in Broken Hill

Me again! (Then again, who else would it be, ha ha!)

Just a quick note to let you know I made it safely to Broken Hill yesterday about 5pm... two days on the train, even with an overnight in Adelaide in a real bed, was pretty rough. I met some interesting characters on the train though, including a guy who makes Aussie tessellations for a living. Strange but true. When I have more than three minutes I'll take a look at his website and pass it on to you (of course this also means I need to find his website address again, ha ha!).

The sun was going down when I got here last night so I didn't do a lot of exploring. But the hostel is nice and clean and has an aquarium in the foyer, so it got into my good books right away. I'm in a twin share room and so far (fingers crossed) I'm not sharing it with anyone. And I've got my own TV! So considering this will be the last hostel I stay in while I'm here in OZ, I think I've lucked out.

So far all I've managed to do today is visit the tourist info centre and pick up some groceries, and now I'm sitting here in the library doing a quick catch up. There's free internet access here so once I've done some exploring, I'll come back and tell you all about it. Cheers!

Trip to Traralgon

I'm in a bit of a better frame of mind this morning, after last night's rant. I've spent the morning doing laundry and beginning the not-so-fun process of packing up. When I head to Broken Hill tomorrow I'm taking one of my two big bags with me, and I'll leave it in Sydney at the end of that trip. This'll allow me to avoid the extra baggage charge I would otherwise have to deal with if I flew both big bags out of Melbourne at the start of May. But it does mean I am once again packing my life into a suitcase. I'm actually rather surprised at how small the pile of stuff is that I've gotta stuff into my bags. It's kinda amazing how little I've needed to survive this year of traveling.

So... another update appears to be in order...

Monday morning I got up at 6, was out the door by 7:20, and on a train to Traralgon at 8:30am. Once again Metlink conspired to make my trip down to Southern Cross Station more stressful than was strictly necessary, and I only made it there with 5 minutes to spare! Gah. I will be happy to leave Metlink behind. But at least the V-Line train to Traralgon was one of the new "sprinter" trains and so I enjoyed a comfy, smooth ride all the way out there.

(A note to all the Canadians reading this: Traralgon is pronounced "Ta-ral-gun". There's an extra "r" in the town's name that isn't pronounced, for some reason. It's taken me forever to figure out how to pronounce it, ha ha!)

Anyway.

I went to Traralgon to meet Di, a Guider I've chatted with online for over 10 years, and Adrienne, a Canadian ex-pat and Guider who is now living in Traralgon with her husband and five kids. Traralgon is in Gippsland, the region of Victoria to the northeast of Melbourne. The ride out there took me through all sorts of cute little towns, farmland, and rolling hills. When I was nearing my destination the train passed what looked like several huge factories of some sort. I learned later on that these were either paper mills or coal-fired power plants, as these are two industries that the area is well known for.

Di and Adrienne met me at the station, and once again I was amazed by how easy it was to (a) identify and (b) become instant friends with fellow Guiders from the opposite side of the world. We did a brief walking tour around Traralgon's downtown, then headed off to a local restaurant for lunch. There we were met by several other Guiders, some of whom were ALSO Canadians! (For whatever reason, there seems to be a lot of Canucks and former Canucks in the area.) Lunch was delicious - I had fish and chips and sure enjoyed the all-you-could-eat salad bar. MMMMM.

In the afternoon, Di and Adrienne took me on a bit of a tour around the valley that Traralgon sits in. We visited the local Guide camp property, which has a really cute main building and several nicely-laid out tenting sites. We drove up to the top of one of the bigger hills for a panoramic view of the valley. I hadn't realized that Traralgon sits on a very rich deposit of brown coal, which is why there were several coal-fired power plants visible from where we were. We also drove across the valley to get a closeup look at one of the open pit coal mines and the Low Yang power station, which was pretty cool. (I somehow managed to leave my camera at home for this trip, so Di took all the pictures. Once she sends me copies, I'll post 'em.)

In true Aussie fashion, we paused throughout the afternoon to enjoy tea, first at Di's house ('cause we had to pick up some stuff for the Guide meeting that night) and then at Adrienne's ('cause I had to dump my stuff there and get changed into my uniform and all that jazz). They run a unit of older girls (Pathfinder aged), and the girls had decided on the program for the evening. When Adrienne and I arrived at the hall, half-barrel portable fire pits had been set up in the parking lot. Once all the girls had arrived, we split into groups to tackle different parts of the night's cooking. The girls prepared sausages, onions and tomatoes in foil wrap and baked them in the fire like we would prepare our standard foil dinners. I spent a good chunk of the evening in the kitchen, working with another group of girls to make lamingtons. (MMM. Lamingtons.) I think we ate more sponge cake than we actually turned into lamingtons though. :-)

While the sausages were cooking, and after the lamingtons had been made, I took all the girls and taught them a few silly games. This mostly resulted in a lot of hooting, hollering, and screaming, but I'm pretty sure they all had a good time, ha ha! Then we enjoyed a nice sit down dinner together. The girls surprised me at the end of the evening with a beautiful gift. They'd worked all together the week before to make me a dilly bag (we'd call it a mesh bag or a ditty bag) for my camp dishes! It's got a picture of a white cockatoo on it - and while they wouldn't have known this at the time, the cockatoo is one of my favorite Aussie birds! Cockatoos were the first "new" birds I spotted when I was driving from the airport in Sydney way back in September, and ever since they've been a kind of a symbol for me, to remind me that I'm in a different country. So thank you, everyone. That was a very kind and thoughtful gift!

I spent the night at Adrienne's, and her daughter kindly lent me her bedroom. (Thank you!) I also got to enjoy the jacuzzi at Adrienne's house... now THAT was a wonderful treat. I haven't had a bubble bath, let alone a jacuzzi bath, in god only knows how long. My shoulders were very happy by the end. :-)

In the morning, and after a yummy hot breakfast of pancakes and bacon and homefries and eggs, Adrienne, her husband Rob, Di and I drove out to Tarra Bulga National Park, about a half hour from Traralgon. The park is in the hills that lie between Traralgon and the ocean, and is another remnant of the southern temperate rainforest that Jen and I explored in the Otways on the Great Ocean Road. It was beautiful. We took a short hike through the rainforest to a suspension bridge over a tree-fern-filled gully, and then back to the car. We also drove up one of the tallest hills (Mount Tassie), to get another panoramic view of the valley. Then we headed back to town to enjoy lunch, and then all too soon it was time for me to get on the train and head back to Melbourne!

It was a short visit, but a wonderful one. Di and Adrienne and everyone else made me feel so welcomed! I was sorry I couldn't stay longer, but Jen and I had a "date" with a Gumnut group in Melbourne last night that I had to get back for! So after another comfy 2.5 hr ride on the sprinter train (I snoozed a good portion of the way back), I found myself at Flinders Station. I changed platforms, caught a train heading out on the Belgrave line, stopped and bought Jen and I Boost Juices, and made it to her school by 4pm. Phew!

Jen, unfortunately, was having problems with her laptop, and was waiting in the front hall of the school for the computer repair guy to show up. She needs to get the report card program put on her machine, but apparently it had a virus, which is what the computer guy needed to deal with. What with one thing and another, we didn't leave for the Gumnut meeting until much later than we'd planned, and we were 2o minutes late! Yikes! But the girls had fun anyway, and we taught them some new games and songs and showed them where on the map of Canada we live. They were so cute!

The daughter of Jen's teaching partner, Isabelle, was one of the Gumnuts (hence how we ended up being invited to the unit in the first place), so once the meeting was over we went back to her house for dinner. So by the time we finally got home, it was well past 9pm. I was POOPED. Again. This last bit of my Aussie adventures is proving to be very tiring.

And then I read that stupid, insensitive blog comment that someone sent me last night, and I was so angry/upset about it that I had a hard time sleeping. BLAH.

Today I'm madly trying to get everything ready for my adventure off to Broken Hill tomorrow, and finish booking stuff for our Grampians trip, and all that jazz. Time is slipping by rapidly! So I'd better get back to it. If you don't hear from me for a few days, it's because I am once again in transit. I will do my best to report next from Broken Hill on Friday evening. Cheerio!