Now this is Australia!

They made it!!!!! Danielle and I met the "oldies" (as they've been deemed) Saturday (12/13/08) afternoon and we've hit the ground running! Although it was raining we decided to head into Melbourne anyway and get some food and see what we could find. We ended up eating and seeing the movie Australia as it was raining and cold so we wanted to chose and inside event. The movie was beautiful! I don't care what the critics say it was so good and I recommend going out and watching it!

The oldies heading to Cairns! We have SO much luggage! Danielle and I are packed for a year guys... what's your excuse! hahahaha back aches and pulled muscles later we all made it relatively in one piece.

Dad and I standing on the balcony of our apartment in Cairns! Check out that view! Cairns was so awesome! We spent three days there and although it was hot and sticky due to the 85% humidity 3 days was NOT near enough time!

Our first day out we walked to the marina which was a stone throw away from our apartment and we found this amazing wooden ship so we expored closer... we ended up getting a tour and found out it's the Duyfken which was a Dutch merchant ship and helped aid in the success of the beginning of Australias settlement. It was so cool inside! We got to explore the whole ship! Just amazing! And we could touch anything we wanted! Just look below!

Watch out you scallywags!

The next day we took off for the Great Barrier Reef! Beautiful just doesn't cut it but it's all I have! We took the Quicksilver out to the reef and once we got there our adventures began!

Lycra suits to protect us from jellyfish stings... we look like smurfs I know! Hahahaha Oh Dear! This is us suiting up for snorkling but first!

The oldies went on a helicopter tour of the reef! Lucky! I'm happy they got to though!

Dad looks so happy!

While they were braving the air we were braving the ocean!!!! Snorkeling was SO AWESOME!!!! I didn't think I would do it as I'm SO scared of big water and SHARKS but I just put on my sexy smurf suit and said why not! I jumped in that water like it was a kiddy pool and the next thing I knew I was looking at the amazing coral and ocean life below me! Just breath taking! We took pictures with a waterproof camera but those aren't developed yet. I just can't believe how amazing it was!

Then!!!!! Then we went on an ocean walk! Oh my goodness that was amazing! we put on wet suits and this huge helmet as you can see in the picture above of my Auntie Cata and we walked under the ocean! That's right WALKED! Poor dad couldn't go because of his heart surgery a year ago so he went on a semi submarine tour of the coral reef around the docking station. He got to see a sea turtle!!!! As we walked under the ocean we got to hold a sea cucumber, coral, sea anenimi... sp? and a conch shell! The guide fed the fish while we were down there too and they just came in droves! They were so awesome! They crowded around all of us just swimming like we weren't even there! It was amazing!

The gang! We all had so much fun at the reef! The observatory was amazing the food was delicious and the reef was just breath taking!

The next day we went on a train tour of the rainforest which ended at Kurranda where we caught a sky rail over the canopy down to the bottom. The rainforest is beautiful and although we didn't get to see the Barron Falls at their fullest we enjoyed in nonetheless.

Us on the train... and after we got off the train!

That's right we got to hold Koalas!!!!! This is Princess and we each got a chance to hold her and cuddle her and take pictures! So amazing!

It gets better!!!!!!

Feeding Kangaroos!!!!! We each got a turn and there were so many to feed we were all speechless!

Ranger Dave where were you?!?!?! We waited and waited and you never showed up! :(

We took the SkyRail from Kurranda down to the bottom of the mountains of Rainforest to the Tjapukai Aboriginal Culture Park where we had lunch and then spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the grounds.

The afternoon started with an Aboriginal Dance. They showed us traditional dances and fire dances as well as other fun dances which Danielle and I were picked to participate in. Hahaha it was fun as you can see from the picture up top. We did our best but I don't think they will be recruiting us any time soon! After that we got to try our hand at throwing spears and boomerangs! It was hard but so fun and after that we got a lesson on their food and the history of the didgeridoo. It was all very facinating. We watched a special on their creation story how they percieve the world to have begun and then the history of their people which was really sad because all they suffered and still suffer at the hands of those that don't understand them.

Dad got recruited!

That night we cooked at the apartment and enjoyed each others company and headed to Sydney the next day... bye Cairns we will miss you!

This is Danielle and I at Manly Beach. We had an all day bus tour of the city sites. The beaches are beautiful and this one in particular has pine trees surrounding the sand. Sorry I didn't get them in this shot.

We took a cruise of the harbor at lunch where we got to eat and take pictures of the harbor bridge and opera house! You can see them in the background! Although the day was full of interesting things to see and do we were spent from our time in Cairns...

"All toured out"

You don't even have to ask if the water is cold! hahahaha

Bondi Beach

The next day we drove up to the Blue Mountains where we saw the three sisters!!! We actually got to walk out to see them up close and personal. Danielle and I went down the back of the sisters on the Giant Stair Way which was 900 steps one way! We didn't realize how steep it really was until we had to climb back up! Ugh! It was amazing though!

We left Sydney on saturday and headed south towards Canberra. We stopped in Wollongong and saw the Nan Tien Temple. It's the largest Buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere. It was so inspiring and just down right breath taking. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the shrine but got to go inside and have a guided tour by this amazing 63 year old man who loves his job! After our tour we got to hike up a hill behind the temple and ring the gratitude bell... you are to thank God for the things you are blessed with then ring the bell 3 times and make a "wish" offering up your prayer to God.

The bell is huge!

Beautiful!

We stayed in Wollongong and got another apartment... I like traveling with the oldies! It had a washer and dryer so we did our laundry....

and some how my clean panties got flung into the toilet!!!! There is never a dull moment around here folks!!!!

We got back on the road today and headed to Canberra but not before stopping at Pebbly Beach where we saw Kangaroos on the beach just lapping up the sun! These are not like the roos we fed at the park as they are wild animals and below is the roo that almost killed Uncle John!

Isn't he huge!?!?!?!? He walked straight up to Uncle John and scared us all we thought he was a gonner! Uncle John just stood still and when he thought it was safe he started walking away slowly... I don't know how we did it but we managed to get out of there both excited and scared!

Well that's it for now tomorrow we discover Canberra! When I can I will update! Love ya!

Dip 'n Dots

Well surprisingly the last week of work sailed by like a blink of the eye! I'm shocked as it's 1 bad to have workers working for you when you are getting prepared to go on holiday and 2 it sucks to be the worker as it always seems the week drags on and you have no desire to work or deal with the task handed to you. But lo and behold it did not turn out to be that bad! Probably because we got to throw out fertilizer onto the young vines which included sitting on the back of a tractor scooping up hand fulls of these blue dip 'n dot sized pebbles. It was like being in a parade and throwing out candy to all the little kids! It was so fun! And our hands turned blue like a smurf. But mainly we were hungry for Dip 'n Dots as they looked like the bowl pictured above but all blue! It was very tempting to indulge especially in the intense heat but I don't quite think it would have been near as refreshing as we would have hoped! hahahaha
After that our 5 weeks of being out at the vineyard came full circle as we had to return to the block we trained at the start of our stay at Willra. So... you know what that means! Spiders ONCE again! The number of run ins were minimal to our first encounter with these young vines but needless to say still discouraging and yucky for lack of a better word! I would share with you the story of the face off I had with one mother spider but as I've been pointed out by my environmentally friendly friends I'm a heathen and an environmental vandal so I won't expose my crimes on a public forum such as this so I don't receive more scrutiny for my unkindly deeds.
On a much happier note I get to see my Daddy tomorrow and I'm oh so excited! Danielle has given the run down of our planned adventures so just click on her name to the right of the screen but I will of course keep you updated on our adventures as they happen or sometime after as I don't know my computer access abilities at the present moment. I'm excited my dad gets to come visit for Christmas this is our first overseas adventure together and I'm so excited he gets to experience Australia with us! My Auntie Cata and Uncle John are joining us as well and for all of you who know all of these individuals you can see we have some fun times ahead of us! Laughter all around!

Until next time!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Well we had Thanksgiving in the land of Oz! It turned out to be a good event some mishaps but overall a wonderful evening. We planned out our meal yesterday, puchased our goodies this morning organized everything and when Smyth came home after work we all got to work cooking and cleaning and preparing for our Thanksgiving Feast.

Danielle couldn't have Thanksgiving Dinner without sweet potatoes and marshmallows... Well they only have one kind of marshmallows half being vanilla and half raspberry... yuck! So we hand picked out the vanilla ones and ripped them to small bits and spread them on top. It sadly didn't end up too well the mallows turned very sugary and lumpy... A very sad Dani. :(I of course couldn't go without my corn bake... we thought that would be an easy dish but it turned out to be a lot harder than we thought. They don't make cornbread here so they didn't have the cornbread mix. So we thought we would look up how to make it from scratch... easy enough... think again corn meal is apparently not heard of here so I called my friend Dail and asked his opinion on what to do to make it work to our advantage. Knowing it wouldn't be the same but we needed it to at least be some what tasty. Well it turned out after all day of searching for the mysterious corn meal they stinking had it... it's just called Polenta and do you know what is said in the ingredients say?! Point blank Corn Meal! My word! When I asked if they had any corn meal they looked at me like I made up this thing. Apparently the Italians eat it and love it and use it for lots of meals but they just call it Polenta so since there is a huge population of Italians here they just happend to have it. Thanks Smyth for saving the day! I made my corn bake from scratch and it was mmmmmm mmmmm good!

Our final product minus the yams we forgot to put them on the table before we took the pic... oops! We had Chicken made with homemade stuffing by Smyth. Very good! Corn bake, sweet potatoes, rolls, mashed pumpkin... yum! and Fruit Salad with custard. Yum Yum all the way around... we forgot the greens but we didn't do too bad for our first time on our own!

It's dig in time! Bon apetit (sp?) we are really stuffed and are now cleaning up so I should get off the computer but I had to share our fun day. Thank you Smyth for letting us use your house, car and kitchen for this fun adventure.

I am thankful for all my family and friends that have supported me in this grand crazy plan of adventure I miss you all terribly and I can't wait to share all my stories and memories with you. I am thankful to have this opportunity to live life to the fullest and on the edge of the world. It's been a most amazing chapter in my life and it's something that will both change me and stick with me for the rest of my life.

Mushy gooshy time is over!

Did you notice my new profile pic. Smyth has this amazing didgeridoo and it has turtles all over it! So love it! The aboriginal culture is just amazing! It's bad luck for a woman to play it so I didn't even try ~ knowing my luck it would actually come true. Not taking any chances.

Well folks have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Love you all!

Muah!

The Apricot Crew

In order: Me, Irene hiding behind the lunch box, Seamus, Garry, Mich O'Tool, Warren, Antwon, Ursela McGregger, Danielle and Bob the dog

(he looks like Fozzy Bear from the Muppet Babies he is the sweetest dog!)

You may not be able to tell but Antwon has a shaved eyebrow and a lock of hair missing on the left side of his face... he passed out and "someone" mysteriously took it upon themselves to give him a make over. Well he is so funny about it he doesn't care about how he looks he just is annoyed that when he is taking a shower more water drips in his eye and it stings. Oh my this lot needs help. Too funny!

Apricots and Irish Adventures...

Well this last week has been a long one! We spent 9 days straight picking and packing Apricots. It was fun and very interesting but anything after 9 days is a little much! We were so tired by the end of that time we all barely spoke words to communicate to one another... just those tired half hearted grunts and nods of the head and quick flick of the hand. Garry the owner of Willra (the Farnsworth station we have been working on for the last month) hired 5 more backpackers to help us out on this endeavour! They were all from Ireland! 4 Lads and 1 Lass. Too much fun listening to them talk and banter with each other. What happens is you stand on this trailer with three different levels and the tractor pulls you along the inside of the orchard so you can pick all the apricots at all levels at once. You dump the contents into a box in front of you and when it's full you turn around and exchange it for an empty box placing the full one on these huge frames that are on the other side of the trailer! It's insane but so cool and I'm sure dangerous on some levels but once you've survived a motorbike crash you think you can survive anything so it's all good. Haha just kidding all you fuddy duddies out there! It wasn't that bad! We picked for a day and a half and then headed off to this packing shed which is basically a factory for fruit! I've never worked in a factory before but now I have a whole new appreciation for my parents as they have worked in one ~ hmmm come to think about it that's where they met and fell in love... awww how sweet! Well it came full circle for me and man it can be crazy! First you dump the fruit onto this conveyor belt and it travels through the picking spot where the bad ones get hand picked and thrown out. Then they travel down the wash line and get sprayed with water and sucked under a brush to clean them off then they are spit out onto a ramp where they fall onto these scales all lined up in this huge line that continuously moves and they get dropped off at each station according to their weight. They fall into a box and that's where you pull the bag over all the apricots when it's reached max weight and you pass them to the lid guy and he stackes them on a crate to go off to sale. It's very interesting. We had to make the boxes and lids before we got started and line the bottoms with bags. A very hands on job. Although it's not something I would want to do forever it was very interesting to see how the process works and I was happy to be a part of it.

Our new Irish friends were so fun. As we picked apricots they started playing this question game to pass the time. I feel that I've played it before and it won't be anything new to you but with Irish accents and banter it made it oh so memerable and funny! The person that is "it" picks a topic like, Film, Sport, TV Program, Thing, Entertainment... whatever you wish and then everyone else asks yes or no questions to try and guess what you have selected from that topic. You can only ask yes or no questions and if someone doesn't then you can't answer there question... well that was hard for everyone as they started to explain things or answer in full sentences as apposed to one word... Yes or No! Then instead of saying yes or no they would say... It's debatable... They would lose it over that one! "You can't say that either stick to an answer yes or no or don't pick something that's too hard to get!" They got all worked up about every answer and question. Needless to say it sure did pass the time. In addition to these fun afternoons of endless questions most every morning they came to work hung over from the night before. So the boss would have fun picking on them for looking like crap. We would hear all the stories of the night before which usually drunk stories don't impress me but when said in an Irish accent apparently everything is funny to me. Needless to say we totally enjoyed their company and stories and high energy and it was fun to have new people to work with. We now get the rest of the week off ~ we are not complaining as it's Thanksgiving and you guys are off for holiday so we feel like we get to do the same. We are cooking for a friend tonight and sharing Thanksgiving with her at her home. So I should probably get off this computer and get to cooking! Yikes my first Thanksgiving meal to prepare! I'm so nervous! We will let you know how it turns out!

Later Mates!

Talent in Australia

Check out this youtube link:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=RR72wOt3oBU

Australian Idol is my new thing to watch while living in the land down under and I think you all should take a look at this clip! Just amazing and so fun!

They had a Micheal Jackson night and this Wes (pronounced Wez) kid is just amazing. I think he is going to win and rightfully so he has an amazing voice and can perform like no other! He did What a Wonderful World last week and it brought me to tears.

I must make a correction about a blog or so ago. The Rugby Anthem "Hero" is not from Bette Midler but Mariah Carey. Sorry fro the confusion. Regardless it doesn't fit and was poorly sung. Oh well can't be any worse than Rosanne Barr singing the National Anthem at the World Series.

Lord of the Flies

In addition to the Spiders we now have to deal with these horrible little black flies now that it's warming up. They drive me insane! They play cards on your nose, try to search for gold in your nostrils, try to get a drink from your eyeballs, go on searching expeditions on your forehead, cheeks or neck and duck for cover from the wind in your ear! It's repulsive! The more you chase them with your hands the more vigilant they get. Apparently you have to blow at them with your mouth because they hate wind and if that doesn't work you supposedly just get used to them and they don't bother you much. WHATEVER! I can't stand them. They camp out on your back in a huge colony and they take turn with their enemy attack! It's so yuck! I absolutley hate it when one gets trapped in between my sunglasses and my eyeball and they freak out buzzing back and forth between my eye and lens! Can you imagine! Well I don't have to it happens at least every hour! Yeesh! But I guess that's just one of the set backs. Everything else is good. It feels like Cali here to be honest. The Golden wheat fields and the bright green grape leaves not to mention all the snails and lady bugs and pincher bugs. I haven't seen so many since I moved from Cali. It's because of the Golden Fields and Green leaves that you see everywhere that Australias colors are Green and Gold it's kind of cool ~ they are the colors of the greatest Football team EVER! So I guess it's just as well! Go Pack Go!

I feel really comfortable here in Robinvale as one the town has my sisters name in it and the street names are from all of my favorite people... Ronald, Robin, George, Morris, and David! So needless to say I feel very safe and welcome here not that street signs are my only rule of thumb but it helps. :)

So we have a new president... we didn't get to vote but apparently it wouldn't have mattered anyway. And can you believe it our ballots came in the day after the election! Seriously! We are keeping them because they have historical significance so that's kind of cool. Would have really liked to vote though. I'm not a very political person but I guess we will see what happens with all of this now. It's interesting being here during all of this though. The election was a really big deal to the rest of the world. People here had rallies and everything it was very interesting and they can't even vote but it was important to them to see the outcome because as they all say here "America sneezes and the rest of the world catches Pnemonia." I hope that Obama lives up to the expectations that the rest of the world has placed on him because they are looking to all be saved by his acceptance into the White House. I would have prefered Palin but she wasn't running for President so I guess we will have to see what happens in 2012... Here's hoping!