Sydney & Melbourne revisted

Dad & I are safely in Melbourne now, after spending 4 days in Sydney seeing the Blue Mountains, including the famous Three Sisters, taking a cruise around the harbour, a dinner with cousin Ern, wife Gill, her son Peter, his wife Michelle, their 3 children Ellen, Jess and .  Cousin Ern & Gill also took us on a tour around Sydney one day, we went to Coogee beach, Bondi beach, Double Bay, and a also to the cemetary where relatives are burried, but we couldn't find the grave stone cause we had the polt M42, but there was no map to tell us what the grid system was, so after 45 minutes of all of us seperating & searching we gave up, plus being Easter Monday the office was closed.  After that we went & had a picnic lunch near the cliff where people try to jump off & kill themselves (forget the name right now).  But here is a photo of cousin Ern & dad with the city of Sydney behind them.  You can see the Opera house & harbour bridge.  Cousin Ern lives in Lane Cove which is sorta located between dad & Ern's heads.   

Since being in Melbourne, I've gotten my hair cut at a hair salon school & all I'm going to say is I got a great deal!!  $20 (that's about 15 quid) for wash, cut, & blow dry!!!!!!!!  Can't find those prices in London can you?

We also went on a river cruise, went opal shopping (bought an opal too) and met up with my mate Tania & her boyfriend Cal for dinner.  Yesterday we took the train to Tan's shop which is called Rock Paper Scissor and then a taxi over to the family reunion dinner.  There we met cousin Vicky, her husband Chris, cousin Howard, his wife Hillary, their son Scott (a few months old), cousin Susan, her husband Dave, and their sons, first one I can't remember right now but he's about 14 and the yonger one who's name is Matt.

Today we're off to Phillip Island to see some penquins and tomorrow we're spending the day with cousin Vicky & Chris.

Saturday we're off to Cairns to see the barrier reef!

Nagambie, Australia

Seeing cats was not what I thought it would be, but I enjoyed it - I've decided to call it a singing ballet, as I don't think it really fits into the musical category as there was no real plot (LOL)

The day after seeing Cats I had a bit of a lazy morning & didn't leave the hotel room till 11am when I had to check out.  After that I went looking for a place to grab some lunch wondered all around & finally found a cute little restaurant/bar serving pasta, salad & a drink for $11.50, which was a great deal so I took it!

After my lunch, I then headed over to the train station to catch the train to Beth & Mike's work in Parkdale (south of the city centre).  40 minutes later I was there meeting Beth & Mike.  To those of you who don't know Beth & Mike (which in case you're not sure would be all of you) let me explain how I know them . . . Beth was roommates at college with my dear friend Anne in Connecticut.  When Anne found out I was going to be in Aus she put the two of us in contact.  Beth explained she lived in Nagambie (1.5 hours north of Melbourne) and that she'd love for me to come up & visit for a few days, so I took her up on the offer.

We left their work & drove home to Nagambie, where I learned they live on a river, have a motor boat which they do lots of waterskiing on & also are FANTASTIC rowers.  When I say fantastic, I mean best in the world in their age group at last year's master's regetta in Vienna, Austria!!

We first went out for a boat ride to check out the local wildlife and then had a barbie on the river's edge.  After a wonderful night's sleep in a real bed (hotel beds are not real to me any more) and a quick breakfast I spent all of Friday reading & relaxing on the river edge, alternating between sun bathing on the floating dock and napping in the hammock, and reading with my feet dangling in the water.

At lunch time we took the boat over to Tahbilk vinyard, which turns out to be the oldest one in Victoria (Vic is one of the states of Australia) and which had just celebrated it's 150th anniversary last weekend.  We had a lovely seafood risotto for lunch & toured their cellar.  I bought 2 bottles as gifts to bring back to Umina with me.

That evening, Beth & Mike's mate Neville Howell came over for drinks & dinner.  He's an amazing man, who's just turned 80 and is probably more active than I will ever be at any age!!  We had another lovely barbie on the water's edge before heading back to the house as the paper wasps where attacking Beth & me.  We stayed up till nearly midnight chatting about his business & rowing & stud farms & philosophy & my travels & a heap load of other things.  It was a wonderful evening with lots of laughs and great company :-)

This morning, we again woke up & had breakfast before heading out to check out some property (another stud farm) Neville was considering buying before heading to the airport to fly back to Sydney, but not before having my first Aussie meat pie!

Now I'm back in Umina & really want to migrate to Aus & live in Nagambie on the river & learn to row . . .

Coober Pedy, Adelaide & The Great Ocean Road & Melbourne

So after a day long ride in a Greyhound Bus, we arrived in Coober Pedy (opal capital of the world) which is mostly underground!  We spent the night sleeping 6.5 metres where the temperature is 24-26C year round, even when the temperature outside is 54C (in the shade, aka FREAKIN HOT!)

Since we arrived at 8pm, we went straight to bed & then went exploring in the morning, before touring the opal mines & surrounding areas in the afternoon.  Sara found some opals in the ground around one of the mining holes & was allowed to keep it - how cool is that?  At 8.50pm our next Greyhound bus left Coober Pedy & headed over night for 12 hours to Adelaide.

The bus was rather cold & there weren't many people on it so we were excited to stretch out until the driver told us we could only take up 2 seats for safely reasons :-(

We arrived in Adelaide around 7.45am and walked to our hotel, where I got shoved in a holding area as the room would not be ready till noon.  Sara went out to get some breakfast & check out the city.  Apparently she was NOT impressed, she found it quite & boring.

In the afternoon after checking in & having a shower, Sara was off to Hahndorf, a German city about 25km away from Adelaide.  It was an interesting little town, but she was so knackered from the overnight bus, she slept the whole way out to the town & walked around in a sleepy daze (lol)

The following day Sara picked up the car from Avis & off they went Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road bound.  The first day was about 570km drive to Mount Gambier, with nothing much to speak of along the way, but stopping every 2 hours for toilet/stretch your leg breaks.  The one thing we did learn in Mt Gambier is that when we were arriving in Melbourne, the Grand Prix along with a flower show and food & wine show were all going to be going on, so we were going to have a hard time finding a place to stay which wasn't super expensive . . . luckily thanks to Tania (girl I'd met in Africa) who lives in Melbourne, she gave us a few ideas & we were able to find a place that was reasonable, NOT the InterContinetnal for AUS$650/night!!!

Spent the night in Mt Gambier and left the next morning stopping at all the "sights" on the Great Ocean Road and staying the night at the 12 Apostles Motor Inn & Conference Centre.

The next morning we drove from 12 Apostles to Geelong, again stopping for photos at all the important places.

After a night in Geelong we drove up to Ballarat to see Soveign Hill & try our hand at panning for gold, which we soon learned was a lot harder than opal mining & we ended up with nothing to show :-( and then drove into Melbourne, but missed our drop off time of 6pm by about an hour due to city traffic.

Next morning we woke up, returned the car & saw that Cats was playing so we stopped in for a quick avaiability check, and walked out with 7th row centre stage tickets (SCORE!!!!!) But then realised we needed to do a bit of shopping as none of us had anything aside from shorts, trainers & flip flops, so the rest of the day was spent shopping at the DFO (direct factory outlet) where we all found something to wear for this evening's performance!!