Australia - Day 2, part 1

On Wednesday we drove a bunch on their bumpy, skinny, generous speed-limit roads to Wilson's Prom. Through lots of rolling hills and pastures of cows... to this area. It was flooded out back in March 2011, so many parts of the area were closed, but we saw plenty... Our eyes were peeled for Koalas in trees, Roos crossing the road and anything else that would catch our eye... here was our first find: Echidna who darted into the bush as soon as he caught sight of our carthen we came to this view - breathtaking! At this pullover we talked to a couple from Britain who is travelling AUS for 3 months! Nice!!and then we could have run over this little guy but didn't and stopped to photograph him -and a stop at Squeaky Beach - the sand was marbled, so gorgeous!at our next stop, we went on a loop walk which took us on a beach for half of it. We found these little crabs all over the place and found out that they cause the "brown sugar" looking sprinkles overtop of the sand! Unreal! So they put a little bit of sand in their mouth, roll it in a ball while pulling out the organisms they need for nutrition... leaving the sand covered in these little balls! Wow!(wouldn't be a good beach to hang out on - but sure neat to walk past)A Crimson Rosella from the Parrot Family - we were in a "caravan park" (campground) and these birds were flying around. This one let us get pretty close - so unbelievable to see this in the wild!a GalahWe stopped at a opening where we were told we might spot some wildlife - sure enough down a path we came to a clearing and there were a number of Emu'sand a Magpie that tried to dive-bomb me twice - freaked me out! (we later learnt when we talked to a local that the kids even carry branches with them on their walk to school this time of year as the Magpies are in mating season and I guess dive-bomb them?! crazy bird...

then we saw our first Kangaroowe continued on into the country - a lot of the rolling hills gave us the feeling that we were visiting Europe; it was beautiful -and lots and lots of cowsto be continued...

Australia - Day 1

Wow - I haven't blogged in ages!! Life has gotten so busy I guess, and I just don't make the time for this anymore! As I sit here in Australia on a rainy night - I may as well take advantage of the bit of time I have and free wi-fi in our room to try to complete one post.
In September Jason was invited to come to Australia by one of his Vendors - paid trip - of course he couldn't say no! So we worked it out that we would go a week early so that I could join him for a week of sightseeing - and this all came to fruition a week ago!
We flew out from Vancouver on Saturday November 19th to San Fransisco on a little puddle jumper of a plane. This plane was not allowed to land in San Fran until the weather cleared - we circled and circled and ended up going East to Sacramento to land to re-fuel as they said the airport was closed! What a lie. What was a supposed to be a 1hour40min flight turned out to be 4 hours on the plane! Wow. We missed our connecting flight to Sydney because of all of this. We didn't get stressed just tired and annoyed at the lies. The Airline gave us a voucher for a deal for a neighbouring hotel - which we took advantage of. So by 2:00am we got to our Best Western and had ourselves a good sleep. United only flies at 10:39pm daily to Sydney, so we had a full 24hour delay. The next morning we had our free big breakfast at the hotel and took our time checking out. We took advance of the free shuttle to the airport and brought our luggage to get it checked and out of the way. We spent the afternoon in the airport looking around, people-watching, using free wi-fi and relaxing... finally flying out at 10:39pm.
We thought we'd get right to sleep shortly after take-off, but they fed us dinner! At 11:00pm! Weird, but maybe that's their attempt at getting us on AUS time. We ate our meal and watched Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts) - well, we both fell asleep before it ended which is too bad! We now want to see how it ends. So we slept for a good length of the trip! We were pleasantly surprised to look at the clock a good 8-9 hours into our 14hr flight! Not so bad after all!
Arriving in Sydney and then flying to Melbourne - by now Tuesday, Nov 22nd Australia time. We grabbed our little rental car and started on our adventure - which was interesting right off the bat with Jason driving the right-hand drive and a manual-speed!!! Ahhh! He's so capable though and does amazing! driving on this side seems soooo wrong and takes a lot of concentration of where we were driving and turning! See Costco?!Jason had booked us 3 nights in Frankston, Victora, AUS - so we made our way that way stopping first at an Information Building and then exploring the first part of the peninsula - here is Mornington Beach...We ended the day by driving to Peninsula Hot Springs for a discounted dip in their 20 mineral pools - so relaxing! The only time we've worn our suits all week - didn't really realize the water here is colder than Vancouver's beaches! At least the weather has been sunny and warm enough with the wind.