Day 25: P-day

Planning day!  We slept in, planned for the next week, did the laundry, went shopping and just took it easy! π² and K took the train into the city with Jordane so it felt like lots less people.  Days like today are few and far between but they're so welcome!  L got to play with Aaliyah--Sean's daughter.  They had a great time playing lego princesses.  The other kids were a little cagey after shooting pool all day so they're ready to go out tomorrow for our adventures in Ballarat!  We made some tater tot casserole for dinner and wowed everyone with our fantastic American cuisine haha!  We did think to take some pictures of our day so, boring or not, here's what we did today.

Day 24: Sunday

Oh how I love Sunday! When we got home at midnight last night the little kids were all still awake.  L climbed in our bed sometime shortly after I fell asleep and unplugged my phone so when I woke up this morning it was one hour till church!

Have you ever tried to get ten people to church in 60 minutes? Oh it's big fun!  We walked in right at the end of the opening hymn though so all's well that ends well.

I met a great lady at church named Isabel.  How do we meet Chilean's everywhere we go in the world?  And what is it about Chileans that makes them so incredible?!  I love it! Isabel reminded me so much of Nieves that I felt like I've known her for years.

We went to Colleen's after church and had a BBQ.  Sean did a spit roast with a leg of lamb and a pork roast...oh.  my.  YUM!  It was so good!  I've never had lamb with mint jelly--it was so good!  The kids had a ball running around and playing.  I had another 'through the looking glass' moment sitting at the table.  Cathy was giving Sean a hard time about something or other and a rather serious topic of conversation sprung up and it was just so...normal.  I just couldn't believe I was sitting there, involved in this great conversation.

I know I say it a lot but I just can't believe we're really here.  Yes it's Australia with kangaroos and koalas and blah blah blah but I have family!  I have cousins!  And they're so like me and my siblings.  And they fight and squabble and give each other wet willies and whatever.  But most of all, they love each other.  It's a beautiful thing to see.  It's normal, nothing spectacular, just your average family.  But they're MY family.  The one I always dreamed about having as a kid.  The one I've longed for as long as I can remember.  And they're real.  They're here.  And I get to spend time with them.

Luckiest.  Woman.  EVER!!!

Day 23: Recovery

Today was blissfully calm.  We slept in, cleaned out the cars and took a long bath.  Glorious!!  Then tonight the kids stayed in and watched video after video while π and I went with Cath and BJ to a friend's 40th birthday party.  BJ says it was a typical Aussie party.  I say it was fun and we could have been anywhere in the US.  Highlights were Cath teaching me the nut bush and me teaching her how to swing.  Not a lot to blog about, but maybe now I'll have time to add some pictures to some past posts!

Day 22: Kangaroos, Emu's and a Koala!

I should have known how the day was going to go when I very carefully pulled out of my parking space and heard a scrape.  There was a 2 foot pole thing—completely invisible to the driver—on the passenger side of the car.  I have scraped Cathy’s baby.  Kill me now.  Of course we’ll have it fixed, but I don’t want to tell her I’ve injured her super nice car.  Ugh. 

In my horror as I got back in the car after assessing the damage, I pulled my phone out to text her.  I was trying to think of what to say as I went to pull the car door shut and my phone literally just flew out of my hand.  When I picked it up off the pavement, the top of the screen was cracked.  Seriously!  In less than 5 minutes I’d screwed everything up.  In spite of everything else that’s happened today, I’ve had a knot in my stomach ever since.  I decided to tell Cath when we’re face to face—easier to kill me when I’m there in person, less time to worry about how bad the damage is when you can see it first hand.  Ugh twice.

We decided to breakfast at the Umpherson sink hole. We’d been told to go at dusk to feed the Opossums French fries but that just hasn’t ever worked out.  We pulled in around 7:30 this morning and walked down into the sink hole to make some breakfast. 

We found we really don’t like their fruit loops nor their coco pebbles—actually most of their cereals are made with ‘real’ sugar and they just taste weird.  That’s what I’m told at least, I’m not a fan of sugar cereals normally so I certainly wasn’t going to try ones that everyone else was saying were nasty.  π² thinks it's because everything here is made with wheat instead of corn, é thinks it's because everything has raw sugar and not refined.  Who knows?

The kids all went exploring while we heated up some cheese pizzas (that can be breakfast, right?) and some canned soups that we hadn’t eaten the night before.  When the kids could smell the food, they came running.  π walked over to where I was and whispered, “Um, Doll…look up!”  I looked and swallowed a scream as four little eyes were not only staring at me but were calculating the wisdom of jumping onto my head!  A Mama possum and her baby smelled breakfast too! 

We spent the next hour petting and feeding the possum, thoroughly enraptured by her tameness.  The kids explored the sink hole and it’s gardens, we read every plaque surrounding the grounds and learned that once upon a time a third of it was filled with water still and the man who owned the land put a little row boat on the ‘lake’ and would row around the perimeter.  Too fun! 

We’ve started to realize why we’re moving so slowly.  Where breakfast maybe takes half an hour to forty five minutes at home, here we’re looking at a two hour minimum! At ten we packed everything up and headed back to the cars…only to find that π had forgotten to unplug everything that he’d had charging and the battery was dead, again—thus the car wouldn’t even open.  The key doesn’t unlock the door anymore after the car was broken into awhile back so we were really stuck.  AAA to the rescue again—only each state here has their own version of AAA so it was a different company than before since we were in South Australia and not Victoria.  (And how cool is that? We now know the different states in Oz as well as various cities in each state—the kids are quite proud of themselves for that one!)  Luckily for us they were just as speedy as the Victoria AAA and it was only half past 11 when we finally got out of Mt. Gambier.

We made pretty good time, only stopping once or twice along the way and we pulled in for ‘lunch’ at 3:30.  (This really means that we got out of the car at 3:30 and the kids all went to play on the zip line and we started cooking meat pies on the grills.)  We were quick though and we were back on the road by 5:30.

Since it’s winter here, 5:30 is pretty close to dusk so how π ever saw the Tower Hill Wild Life Reserve, I’ll never know.  But he pulled in and I followed him.  Within the first 100 meters, we saw a herd of Kangaroos.  We drove really slowly after that, seeing Emu, rabbits, Roos (Mama’s with their babies are amazingly cute!) and tons and tons of birds.

 

We pulled in at one point when there were a bunch of Roo’s on the road.  We stood for probably 15 minutes just staring at one another.  We saw a little walk that led to a lake so decided to watch the sunset.

The view was incredible!  There were probably 50 black swans on the lake dancing  and swirling around in the fading light.  There were kookaburra—we’d just looked up their picture on google at lunch to see what they looked like!—singing in the trees.  Once the sun sunk all the way into the lake, the frogs started singing.  It was a cacophony of sound, and the neatest thing I’ve ever heard!  The frogs, the birds, the hopping of the roos!  AMAZING!!!!

We got back to the cars in pitch black—thank heavens for torches on our phones! And headed slowly out of the park.  Naturally we needed a bathroom break again.  Unfortunately, ∞ slammed K’s finger in the door.  It’s not broken but it’s nasty looking and so painful!  It’s amazing how a quick potty stop can turn into a marathon in a moment! 

Seemingly hours later we were again trying to drive out of the reserve when a woman with a young girl flagged us down.  π, in the lead, didn’t stop—unsure of what she needed or wanted.  I did and she asked, “Would you like to see a Koala?”

Quickly flashing headlights to get π to come back, we got out of the car. 

The koala was just sitting on the ground (highly unusual we’re told) eating the leaves of a eucalyptus tree.  It was phenomenal.  (I’m running out of synonyms for FREAKING AWESOME!!)  He was so tame and calm—Tammy (the woman who had flagged us down) volunteers in the reserve and told us that many of the animals on the reserve are hand raised so they’re used to humans handling them.  

She asked the kids, “What would you like to name him?”

“MARVIN!” they shouted!  We all laughed and L said, “Hi Marvin!”

 In his enthusiasm about going to Oz, L asked one day at home, when we would get to meet Marvin.  When I asked him who Marvin was he looked at me like I was insane and said, exasperatedly, “Marvin?  From Australia?  You know Marvin!”   Looks like we finally met him!

Everyone took their turns petting, feeding and posing with Marvin.  It was life changing.  He was so soft!  We visited with Tammy and got to know her a little bit, then she took a picture of us and for real this time, we headed out. 

Naturally, all the kids were hungry again, and they all needed to toilet after that and here it is 9:30 and we are just going to get on the road as soon as π’s order of fish and chips are ready.  We’ll be pulling into Cathy’s house super late, but I’m so excited to be back there and at the thought of spending the whole week with them that I just can’t wait!

What a monumental day!

Day 21: What?! Three weeks already?!!

No way!  I didn’t realize until just now that we’re 3 weeks in to our 10 week holiday!  Two weeks in country though—which is amazing to think about.  We are currently sitting back at the park that we ate lunch at yesterday in Naracoorte.  I don’t know where the time went today.  We got up early and I was at the Laundromat right as the man opened the doors.  I washed all our laundry from the week (holy loads of dirty laundry batman!) and was back at the cabin by 8:45.  We were due at the temple at 9 so we rushed out the door. 

The contrast between the dodgey rat hole we were staying in and the temple was phenomenal.  The minute we walked onto the temple grounds, we were surrounded by that familiar warm, peaceful feeling.  What a beautiful place!  And TINY!!  But the atmosphere inside!  Have you ever noticed that each temple has it’s own feel?  Well, we were greeted not just with warm handshakes, but with hugs and a genuinely warm welcome.  It was so homey after the first few minutes you felt like you were at Grandma’s house.

It’s weird to be a novelty but with these darned accents we stick out everywhere we go.  The difference at the temple was when people asked where we were from, all we had to do was say Salt Lake and that was it.  Everywhere else we have to explain where Utah is compared to California.  (About the same distance from Cali as Melbourne is from Adelaide.) 

Oh and while I’m on the subject, why does everyone think we’re from Canada?!  The ticket taker on the cruise at Port Arthur asked me to say, “Out and about” and he thought I sounded Canadian too!   Yes, technically Canadians speak English too but come on, ay!  Don’t be treating me like that!

Anyway, we enjoyed our time at the temple immensely and returned as quickly as possible to the cabin.  I was nervous leaving J with all 4 littles but they were only there a little over an hour and they had TV, movies and electronics to play on so they were fine.  We figured we’d come back all together to take pictures after checking out of the caravan park.

Leaving the park was difficult once the kids saw the life sized chess board.  We stayed an extra hour and a half because everyone needed a turn.  É was super excited because he finally beat me in a game!  First time ever!  If I recall correctly, pi² was also about 12 when he first bested me at chess.  Aah the milestones of youth!

When we finally pulled the kids away from the chess board and started loading them into the cars we realized it was already time for lunch. 

There are names like this all over this crazy country!  How do you even pronounce this?!

We made it to the park and used the grill to make some hot ham and cheese sandwiches and another round of really funky chips.  There are some wacky flavors of chips down here! Many taste like they’ve been shaken around in chicken bullion.  They have a type of sun chips that have really good flavor but they’re the consistency of pork rinds.  Oh and their main type of cheese isn’t cheddar, it’s Tasty.  That’s right, tasty.  What type of cheese is that?  Tasty.  Not mozzarella, provolone, processed etc, just tasty.  You can’t buy cheddar.  And yellow cheese doesn’t exist at all.  It’s all white.  I have seen mozzarella and provolone, but no cheddar, just tasty.

After eating while the kids were running and playing we realized that we have pretty much been doing a park tour of the country.  It’s what the kids are enjoying the most.  We went to see the caves here in Naracoorte the other day and instead of going back to the museum to see more stuff, they wanted to find a park.  The parks here are all incredible.  Unbelievable really.   É has said a few times now that if he has to be homeless ever in his life, he wants to be homeless here because you’d always have a place where you could cook yourself a hot meal and relax.

As we started towards the freeway, around 3:30, we remembered we hadn’t taken pictures at the temple!  We weren’t too far so we went back only to find that the gates were locked.  They’re only open a few hours each day apparently so we took what pictures we could and headed towards the freeway once again.  This time we were waylaid by a road sign that read, “Hello Dolly!  Authentic Lebanese food”  We had to stop!  I wanted a take out menu so I thought I’d just buy a piece of baklava and maybe a fatayer (a Lebanese empanada…er fried pie…er meat pie—depending on your culture) to share with the kids just so they could know what Lebanese food tasted like.  That was my biggest mistake!  An hour and a half later we actually pulled out of town with bellies full of Lebanese food and children with a new found love. 

How did I get these kids who love exploring, adventure and trying new things?  I’m so blessed!  I mean, we’ve had our fair share of squabbles and tantrums, but on the whole, they’re doing so great.  We’ve only had one or two major melt downs in 3 weeks which is almost a better record than at home! 

We decided that instead of going to Sovereign Hill on our way back to Cathy’s house, we’ll retrace our steps along the Great Ocean Road and hopefully see it without the storm—and go to that park again.  Then next week if we’re feeling adventurous we’ll head up to Ballarat to see the ghost town and fun stuff they have over there. I guess there’s something to be said for the flying by the seat of your pants kind of travel that we’ve done this week.