Last Days

Jeez I'm bad at this! I meant to conclude our trip postings the day we returned, and that is now nearly a month ago. So here we go.

We stayed in Eden for 2 nights and a day to make sure we didn't spent too long cooped up in the car. Friday was spent exploring the town, and driving to an amusement park just out of town. Think All Fun Water Park with less water slides and lots of other fun stuff to do too. There were two water slides, both very fast and fun, a go-cart track, a roller coaster, mini golf, a giant magic carpet slide, a tobaggan hill (luge without snow), life-size dinosaurs with sound, a giant maze, and big playground for the little ones. And a day pass to go n everything unlimited times was only $33! We decided that this was well worth it, and we spent the better part of the afternoon doing just about everything lots of times. It turned out to be the perfect time to go too, because the kids were still in school, it was the beginning of the summer so there weren't many tourists, and summer rates were not yet in effect! So there were no lines, and there was maybe 15 other people in the park besides employees. Free reign! Here's some pictures.

Yes, they let Jeremiah ride with me!

We woke up the next morning at 5am in order to be really sure we would make it to the wedding on time. With no detailed map of Melbourne and the surrounding areas it was a bit of fun trying to find the way to the little town of Mornington. But it's alright, amazingly enough we only took one wrong turn, and got there with 2 hours to spare! However, we still managed to arrive at the wedding about 3 minutes before it started. How did you manage that you ask? Well, we forgot the invitation on our fridge back here in Canada, so that was the first hurtle. We thought we had overcome that one by calling Auntie Jill from Cathleen's house and getting the information off the invitation, but somehow the scrap of paper that we had written it down on got lost in our travels. Strike one. Strike two was that the town had no internet cafe's so we could get the info off of Marc's Facebook. We went to the info center and found a map of the area, knowing that seeing the name of the beach would trigger our memories. It did, so we headed to Mills beach in search of an assembling wedding party. We saw one from up on the cliffs above the beach, so now confident that we still had an hour and a bit to kill, we got changed, I fed Jeremiah, and we wandered the beaches and eventually wandered toward the crowd. Just as we were a few hundred feet away the bride came out from between a couple of the beach huts. We looked at her, then each other, and knowing what the other was thinking we both said "uhhh... that's not Kate..." at nearly the same time. Panic then ensued. There was less than half an hour to go untill the wedding was supposed to start. Marc jumped in the car and ran to the other info center we had passed on the way into town and thankfully they had the internet. After explaining our situation they let him check his Facebook to make sure we had the right beach. We did! So he came back to us at the beach, and told me what he'd found out. So we parked ourselves on the beach a little ways from the wedding in progress, thinking that we just had to wait for it to be over for Mik and Kate's to start. Another confused looking couple headed toward the wedding (much braver that we were), talked to some of the people there and headed back toward us. We stopped them to ask if they too were looking for the Coles/Walker wedding and they told us they were, and that the fellow in the other wedding party said it was on the other side of the point. 5 minutes to go... With not enough time to get back to our car, we literally ran dow the beach and around the point, to see halfway down the adjacent beach, another wedding assembled and just about ready to start. Needless to say we made it, but only just. They had delayed it by 10 minutes because of the apparent confusion, and thankfully we were not the only ones to get the location wrong.

The wedding was gorgeous.

If you look very close you can see the skyline of Melbourne in the background of that last photo.

We stuck around for part of the casual reception, but Jeremiah was getting extremely tired after such a long day, so we called it an early night and headed for the Hostel at around 8. We felt so much like the old couple who has to leave early to put their kids to bed, but that seems to be the norm these days!

Sunday was a day of travel back to Sydney and packing like mad as our flight was to leave at 3:30 Monday afternoon.

The trip home was similar to the trip there in the sense that things were lightly delayed by an accident again, this time a car hit the bus we were on and we had to transfer to another one. Why can't people see the huge vehicles in front of them?? Planes, busses, yeesh! Anyway, no one was injured or anything, it was just a minor delay. Our travels home took us on a bus, a train, two planes, a van a ferry and a car. Pretty well every mode of transportation possible besides a bike! But we got hoe safe, and that's what matters. This is what we returned to though!
I tell ya, stepping off the plane into snowing and -2 was a little bit of a shock after coming from 35 degrees and sunny. Home sweet home! Haha!

Down to Eden

Ok, so here's the first half of the trip down to Melbourne.

On the thursday before we left, we rented a little car and drove down the coast to the city of Melbourne in the state of Victoria. It's quite the drive, almost 1200km, so we opted to do it in a few days, and stay a night and a day in a little seaside town called Eden which was about half way. The drive out of the city was supposedly straightforward except for a bit near downtown where there are exits and bridges and off ramps and toll booths galore. Cathleen gave us excellent directions, which if we followed to the t, we would have been fine. However (and there's always a however...) one part which required us to be in the far left lane before going over the harbour bridge, we neglected to do. In my defense as the navigator, I thought we were in the far left lane, but there was a bus lane between us and the curb that apparently also had a lane beside it as well that I didn't see... So needless to say we ended up downtown in the lunch rush hour. It was mayhem. One way streets, bumper to bumper cars, and we had to try and make our way out of this madness and back onto the Princess Highway. Thankfully we had a decent map, and between my mad navigating skills, and Marc's mad driving skills, we made it out of downtown in somewhere around 10 or 15 minutes. To go 4 blocks. And we took the shortest possible route. So back on track again, we cruised along, making relatively good time despite the diversion. We managed to make it almost out of town before making another wrong turn. Actually, we didn't turn, and that was the problem. Looking at the map, I thought I saw a more scenic shortcut that may have helped us make up some of the time lost in downtown, so we carried on straight when the signs were pointing us to the right. As it turns out, the road I was directing us toward was not the Princes Highway, it was in fact some other highway heading for some other town. The highway we wanted to go on appeared to split into two on the map, and i thought I was following the one we wanted, when I really wasn't. Not to huge a deal though, we backtracked a couple km's and easily got back on the right road. Strike 2 for the navigator. Oh, just for the record, I didn't make Marc do all the driving because I didn't feel like it. Believe it or not, I'm not old enough. I suppose it's the same deal here, but you have to be at least 25 to drive a rental car, and I am only 24. Sigh. I really wanted to try driving on the other side of the road too!

At around 2:00pm our tummies began to get too loud to ignore for much longer, Jeremiah had been sleeping for the past 3 hours, and was starting to stir, meaning within 15 minutes he'd be fully awake and very hungry. We were passing trough a little town called Berry anyhow, and I had seen a sign on the edge of town pointing toward a wood fired bakery, so we turned around and sought the place out. It turned out to be really good. We had lunch there as it had a restaurant part to it as well, and it was delicious. I fed and changed Jeremiah, Marc Bought a baguette, and we were on our way again by 3. By 6:30 we were running short on gas, Jeremiah was stirring again, and we needed to figure out what we were going to do about supper. Bega, the next town on the map, wasn't too far off so we opted to have our next pit stop there. As Marc was filling the tank with gas I took Jeremiah out to stretch my legs and his, which was much needed after sitting for 3 1/2 hours. I wandered into the little convenience store, and asked the older fellow behind the counter if there was a grocery shop near by. He said there was a woolies across the car park on the other side of the street. Translation, there was a Woolworths (Ausie grocery chain) on the other side of the parking lot. Brilliant! I told Marc that Jam and I were going to wander over there while he finished up with the car. We got a few groceries, used the facilities, I fed and changed Jeremiah, and we were on our way once again. 60km to go!

Pulling into Eden at 7:45pm, I was a tad nervous, only because I hadn't checked what time the office of the Fountain Caravan Park we were staying at closed. As we pulled up, the receptionist was just sliding the closed sign over the open one just outside the office door. *few!* Couldn't have been better timing. They closed at 8. I hopped out of the car saying "please don't close yet!!" and she laughed and said I still had a few more minutes as it wasn't quite 8:00 yet. I followed her into the front office and gave her my name. "Aaah yes" she said, "McIlveen... Now I have had a bunch of fishermen check into the cabin next to the one you booked, and I think they'll be quite noisy." My heart sunk a tad thinking about how many more times Jeremiah would wake up in the night because of the noisy neighbours... "So I've upgraded you to a luxury cabin. Here's your key and card pass, it's the first cabin on your right inside the gate." I thanked her profusely, knowing full well that the luxury cabin was over double the cost per night of the single I had reserved. And they still only charged us for the small cabin! We are very blessed. Here are a few pictures of the place. It was much nicer than I had imagined. Oh, don't mind the mess... I tried get Marc to wait before taking them so I could tidy up but he insisted it didn't matter. :P

view from the front door

Yes, it had a swimming pool! We were totally spoiled. It was awesome.

Check back in a few days for the other half of our journey!

Oh So Blue

Although we are now home safe and sound, I'll get to that part in a couple posts. First off I would like to catch up on the trips we made before we left the gorgeous sunny warmness for this frigid place.

With a exactly one week left, and lots left to see, we packed up everyone (but not Richard, unfortunately he had to continue working), rented a minivan, and took off to the Blue Mountains for a couple days. Now, when I say mountains, most of you are probably picturing rocky peaks with snow on top. Picture instead, a large version of the Sooke Hills mixed with the Grand Canyon, but with all deciduous leafy trees instead of conifers (needly trees). Here's a couple pictures, it's easier than explaining.

Beautiful, no? That's as close to panoramic as your gonna get from me today! They are about an hours drive west of Sydney, and the little town of Katoomba is where we stayed for the night, and it is the tourist center of the mountains. We stopped once at a little fruit store in a town called Billpin to feed the Bubs on the way there. It is known for it's apples, and the apple juice we drank a lot of while in Sydney was made in that very town. Very good juice. We also went to a little lake just outside of Katoomba, and did a little swimming. It was very refreshing on a nice warm day!

From the lookout in Katoomba (where the above pictures were taken) you can see the famous Three Sisters rock formations. They apparently have significance with the aboriginals, and the back story to the name is that they are said to be three sisters that were turned to stone by an elder or a wizard or something... You'll have to look it up for the whole thing, i can't remember the details.

From there, Marc walked along the cliffs on the Prince Henry Cliff Walk toward the Scenic World and saw a bunch of cool stuff on the way. Here are a few f the pictures he took. Cathleen, Ben the Babies and I drove there because it was an hours hike, and apparently not suitable for strollers or young children.

All shots of a ice waterfall on the way. Apparently it's more impressive after it rains.

It obviously hasn't rained for a while... but it was still beautiful!

This little cockatoo was taking a drink from the river, but flew away just as Marc snapped

a shot.

The Center has a few attractions, one being the steepest section of railroad in the world, the other being two cable cars, one across a valley, the other down to the bottom of the ravine. We chose to go down on the train, walk about on the boardwalks at the bottom, then return to the top on the Skyway cable car. Here's a shot of the train I stole from the website...

As you can see, i's VERY steep. 50 degrees I think. It's basically like going down a roller coaster, but in slow motion. It felt like we were going straight down, and I'm sure I did't breath the whole minute we were on it. Maybe it was a bit more nerve wracking because I was holding onto Jeremiah for dear life. Fun none the less! Here are a few pics Marc took from in the train. They played Indiana Jones music as we went down.

It used to be a coal train, carting the coal from the mines at the bottom, up to the top of the mountain, until they realized that they could make more cash taking hikers up and charging for the ride, and doing scenic tours.

Once at the bottom, we wandered around the boardwalks in the rainforest, reading the little factiods about the plants and such for an hour or so. I failed to take any pictures as I was clearly too immersed in the wonder of the forest! Ben was a trouper doing that much walking, and had a good time too.

This is the cable car that brought us back up to the top. The alternative is a set of stairs and ladders somewhere around 1000 steps high. Yuck.

The view from the cable car. Beautiful no?

From there we made our way back to the car after grabbing a bite to eat at the little cafe in the Center, and began our trek home. On the way we saw a lot of these crazy pink trees and I just had to take a picture. Their called Bougainvillea.

And so ends the trip to the Blue Mountains. It was a great trip!

Must hurry!

I know it's been a little while since I posted last, but I simply haven't had any time! This past week has been jam packed with travels all over the place, and as much as I'd looove to write all about them, we've been going non-stop pretty well since last Monday, and I haven't really had access to a computer since last Wednesday. And it was a jam packed day, full of TONS of laundry, packing for our trip to Melbourne, attempting to get a few things in order for our departure back home this coming Monday, and taking care of the babe of course.

All the excuses asside, I'll give you a little taste of what we've been up to this past week, but unfortunately you'll have to wait for the juicy details. Goodness, at this rate I may end up writing about it at home!

Working backwards from now till I wrote last, we are currently overnighting at a YHA (Youth Hostel Australia) in Mlebourne after attending Kate Walker and Mik Coles wedding down in Mornington. Before that we stayed in a little town called Eden halfway between Sydney and Melbourne for a couple days. We left for Eden on Thursday morning, and have driven over 1000km in the past few days! Tuesday we (as in Cathleen, Ben, Nathaniel, Marc, Jeremiah and I) took a trip tot he Blue Mountains for a couple days.

My time is rapidly running out, and if I don't post this quick I'll have to go get another chunck of time. But I want to go to bed. So I say adieu for now!

Manly (and I'm not only talking about Marc!)

This past Saturday we made the token excursion to Manly Beach. It is a very popular swimming and surfing beach in the city, and beginning this weekend there is a bus that goes from a mall not too far from here at 9 am, all the way to the beach, and back at 3:30 pm. Being just over an hours drive, that gave us 5 hours to spend at the beach. Just enough. So we woke up bright and snarly Saturday morning, and Cathleen dropped us off at the mall so we could catch the bus. No problem! And we ended up being the only ones on the bus! Upon arrival to Manly, we asked the bus driver what he got up to for the time until we left, and he just gets to sit on the beach too! Lucky man who gets that route. Anyhow, as we got off the bus, he mentioned that if we wanted to go earlier than 3:30, we could just arrange to meet whenever we wanted because there were no other passengers to take back, or we could just meet at 3:30. Sounded mighty fine to us, we wanted to stay as long as possible, so we said we'd just meet at the afore mentioned time. He said he wouldn't leave without us, so off we went.

Marc rented himself a surfboard and wet suit for the day, and I set up the little sun tent on the beach, and got settled in with Jeremiah. Although I'm sure the locals thought we were totally off our rockers for having a little tent set up on the beach, we would have been lobsters by the end of the day without it. It was wonderful when it came time for Jam to have a nap, I just hollowed out the sand a bit and put a blanket down.

Marc had a great time surfing, and by the time he had to take the board and suit back, he was standing on the board, riding the waves! I'm not sure if I got a shot of him doing it though... I got a video, but you'll have to see it on facebook because uploading it onto the blog takes eons.

Here are a few more pictures of the day.

This is called a Blue Bottle jellyfish. Well, this one's dead, but apparently they sting, and are generally not very friendly, but not deadly. Thankfully we only saw them dead on the beach.

Surfer Dude!

I stood him on the sand until a wave came along, and he promptly lifted up his feet and started crying as soon as the water reached his feet. It was quite cute.

Awwwww.

We packed up all of our paraphernalia to head for the bus but realized as we passed the washrooms that we were both rather desperate and would be emmensly uncomfortable for the hour ride home if we didn't stop. So we did. But subsequently we were 5 minutes late for the bus. "No problem" you're thinking, "the bus driver said he wouldn't leave without them!" NOT. Either that, or he was over half an hour late, and arrived after we gave up. We'll never know. This is not such a big deal, because there is a ferry that goes across the bay to downtown then a bus from downtown to right outside the house, but we had purchased return bus tickets and therefore lost $15 to the bus system that we will never get back. We tried to use those tickets to get home from downtown, but the routes are ran by two different bus companies and they wouldn't let us. Oh well, I suppose we got a nice ferry ride out of it all.

When we got home, Cathleen and Richard's friends Graham and Cass were over for supper and the evening. We had a lovely time chatting, and generally having other adults around. We spent most of the evening (after the kiddies were in bed) playing a board game called Robo Rally, which is a lot of fun, quite silly, and overall reduced us to being a bunch of kids anyhow. It was delightful! If the game was still in print, I'd probably go out and buy it. But they don't make them anymore, which is very sad.

Anyhow, that was Saturday. I'm working on a post about our trip to the Blue Mountains, but it's getting rather late, and I'm exhausted. Check back in a day or two to hear all about it!

Nelson Bay

Wednesday took it's turn being the adventure day of the week this week, and borrowing the car, Marc, Jeremiah and I drove up to a little town called Nelson Bay about 2 1/2 hours north of Sydney. Marc is an all star at driving on the wrong... I mean Left... side of the road, and we made it there without incident. Oh, here's a tidbit, car accidents here are not very commonly called accidents. Thus far I have only heard them referred to as "smashes". I thought this rather amusing. Anyhow, after getting up relatively early to get a jump on the day, we arrived in Nelson Bay with just enough time to find parking and go get our ferry tickets. The area of Port Stephens in which Nelson Bay resides is well known in the state of New South Whales for it's multiple pods of bottle nosed dolphins which reside in the bay. Apparently there are over 150 dolphins that live in the area! So taking the little walk-on ferry across the inlet is a good way to spot some without going on a dolphin watching cruise. We hopped on the little old wooden ferry which barely had wide enough isles for the stroller, and kept our eyes peeled on the water in hopes of spotting some playful dolphins.

On the way to the little town of Tea Gardens, which is where the ferry travels to, Jeremiah batted his eyes and charmed the First Officer of the ship, who's name ironically enough was Katie! She stood and chatted to us for a good 10 minutes or more as Jammers flirted and cooed and showed off his dimples.

Just about on the other side, we saw hat appeared to be an island, but upon closer inspection, looked to be a grove of short trees growing right out of the water! However, on the way back when the tide was lower, we could see that the water was just very shallow, and it was in deed an island.

Arriving at Tea Gardens, we were famished and therefore began to seek out an establishment at which to eat. There were several choices, and the indecisive pair that we are, we walked up and down the street until we were so hungry we just picked the closest shop. It happened to be a Chinese place. Now, you'd think I'd have learned by now, but no. I have not. Fear not, I didn't get ill, but the stuff was tasteless. Rather a disappointment. Anyhow, we followed it up with some ice-cream and got back to the boat just in time for it to leave. Shortly after departure the captain came on the sound system and told everyone to lookout the windows as he slowed the engine down. There was a Mother dolphin and her calf playing in the shallows up ahead! But as our luck would have it our camera ran out of batteries right before Marc was able to snap a picture of them. So we have no photographic proof of the remainder of that journey, which included a trip to Fingal Bay where we sat on the beach, caught some rays and watched the waves.

All in all a great day of exploring.

Happy Birthday Benjamin!

As of December 1st, Benjamin is now 5 years old! We had a birthday party for him on Sunday, out at a lovely park just out of town. Fagan Park is an 11 hectare park with a great playground, lots of beautiful walking trails, and the reputation for being extremely windy. Being that the park is on a long slope, and the wind blows over the crest of the hill and down toward the valley, this makes for perfect kite flying! We flew a kite and managed to get it all the way to the end of it's string. It was quite satisfying! The kids enjoyed running around like mad things pretty well the whole time while the adults sat under the one large tree by the playground and chatted. About half way through we brought out the water guns and they all had a marvelous time chasing each other around and getting thoroughly soaked. We even joined in for a bit! After that I promptly put the camera away, snuck up on Cathleen, and began a great chase around the playground after which we were both quite wet (and tired!). It was a blast! The only time we managed to get the kids all in one spot was when we handed out the cupcakes (which Marc made).

All in all a wonderful day.

Yesterday Marc, Jeremiah and I went on a little excursion. Ben was a at daycare for the day, and Cathleen didn't need the car, so we borrowed it and drove out to the coast. Marc is very talented at driving on the left side of the road, thank goodness, and with me as navigator, we managed to only make one wrong turn. Unfortunately it was onto a freeway headed north, and said freeway has very few exits... However, we successfully found one a ways up the road, and turned ourselves back around to get back on track. Minor detour! I wanted to try driving, but their insurance requires the driver to be over 25. And that, I am not. Unfortunately as well, the car we will be renting to drive down to Melbourne also requires the driver to be over 25, so I won't be able to drive it either! Oh well, at least Marc doesn't mind driving, and I like navigating!

We made it to the coast, a little town called Mona Vale, in just over an hour, stepped out of the car and got hit by tremendous winds. But the view was spectacular!

We made our way down the bluff to the beach, and just as we stepped onto the sand it began to rain. Turning around to look in the direction of the wind, we saw some tremendous storm clouds billowing up on the horizon. Marc ran and dipped his feet in the water to see if it was cold or warm, but mostly just to say that he went in the water. It's not cold, but it's not tropical warm. Apparently it's around 21 degrees. Not too bad I think!

Needless to say we didn't stay at the beach for very long. The wind was picking up even more, and believe it or not it was quite cold! It was whipping the sand against our bare legs and driving the rain hard toward us. So we trudged back to the car, piled back in (much to Jeremiah's dismay), and followed the road a bit north to a beach town called Avalon. We had just enough time to have lunch, and we found a little place called The Roost! It was a little chicken joint that served various kinds of roast chicken, chips (fries), burgers and lots of different salads. We each had a chicken burger and some chips, which were quite good, then headed home.

Today is going to be a lazier day, full of laundry and planning our last week here in town. We have decided that tomorrow we will drive up north of the city to a place called Port Stephens, which apparently has a couple pods of Dolphins that reside in the bay. I'm looking forward to it! And I promise to take lots of photos. Anyway, lunch is calling. Check back in a few days for some dolphin pictures!