AUSTRALIA

OK, here we go... If you read my very long blog from last week, you know we had a good, but looonnnggg trip to Sydney. We left Anchorage on Friday, October 10th and arrived in Australia on the 12th. Even though they are about 18 hours ahead, it was still a long trip, but not quite 3 days! Here's Leo catching a quick nap in the airport in L.A.

We got into Sydney Sunday morning and rented a car and drove almost two hours North to Belmont. This is where the AIM Asia Pacific headquarters is located and also where the Lesleighters live. Here's a photo of Len, Robbyn and their youngest daughter, Joanna. We arrived in Belmont in time for a quick (and wonderful!) shower and then walked just down the beach to a picnic area. For lunch we had, of course, bbq! Len grilled some meat on the barbie, which is a favorite way to cook meat in Australia- just like you hear in the movies!

After lunch Len and Robbyn took us to Blackbutt Reserve to see some of the local "wildlife". The koalas were so cute and tiny!

The wombats, on the other hand, were HUGE! They were the size of a pig. I surely wouldn't want to meet one of these at night. They reminded Leo and me of the "ROUS's" from the Princess Bride :) Don't know what happened to this photo. I've had some trouble uploading, but just kept it since it takes so long to get pictures on here.

An emu- the national bird of Australia :)

On the way back to the Lesleighters we drove along the coast. I don't remember which little town this was, but it was warm and beautiful.

On Tuesday we flew from Sydney down to Melbourne. The next morning we drove out to the Mission Aviation Centre in Coldcreek for devotions. We basically just showed pictures of Alaska and told a bit about our family. It was fun to meet a lot of the staff and students there.

After devos we had a tour of the facility. Here's a picture of the hangar floor. Only the plane in the very front of the picture actually flies. After two hours at the hangar, I was ready to go shopping! Kristel Clerke, a wife of one of the instructor's whom I'd been in touch with before we went, took me shopping and we had a wonderful afternoon! It was super fun to spend time with her and get a good start on my Christmas shopping :) I'm only sorry I didn't get any pictures of Kristel or her family.

On Thursday morning Leo and I had an interview and took a tour at Mt. Evelyn Christian School (MECS). We were very, very impressed with everything. The people were so nice and they have an awesome program there. We would be thrilled to put our kids in school there, if we ever lived in the area.

It's a long story, and also in the long blog I wrote, but here is the photo of the two pairs of Carhartts walking around Victoria :)

Friday was a fun day for us. Bruce and Delyse Searle took us up Mt. Dandenong for lunch. At the top of the mountain is a look-out and some fun stuff, like this Giant's Chair. We had dinner at their house that night too. We really appreciated all these two did to welcome us and spend time talking with us about all the possibilities of being there. It will be neat to see how God weaves our paths together again.

It was kind of hazy that afternoon, but here's a view of Melbourne from the top of the mountain.

A lot of you may recognize this man (or maybe your husbands will, at least if they learned to fly at Moody!). This is Neil DuBois. He and his wife, Becky, were so good to us while we were there too! They took us to this place called Badger Weir, which is just a park and we stood there with sunflower seeds in our hands and the wild birds landed on us and ate out of our hands, or off our heads, or wherever the there happened to be birdseed.

Here's Becky, the Bird Lady! She was awesome :)

Leo thought it was great fun too. I honestly would have been happy to just take pictures, but no one else thought that would do...

So, Neil let me borrow his hat (thankfully!) and I had my few moments of feeding the birds. I was seriously kinda freaked out, which Leo thought was hilarious. One of the things that impressed me most about Australia was the exotic birds everywhere! There were cockatoos and these birds called galahs all over the place... this is a rosella on my head and we also fed king parrots. Even though birds aren't my favorite thing in the world, it was really, really cool to see all these beautiful birds in the wild.

Here's a kookaburra at the place where we were feeding the other birds. They are meat eaters and we hadn't brought any meat to feed them, but we were told that when people are grilling, the kookaburras will often swoop down and steal the meat off the grill :) I guess the kids think it's great.

After the birds, Neil took us to a place near a big golf course to go kangaroo-spotting! We saw a few in the distance and then were able to get pretty close to this one. It was SO awesome to see them hopping, they make it look so easy and graceful! As we were leaving, we drove by a field where there were a ton of them hanging out in the shade, but I couldn't get that photo to upload.

On Saturday morning we took the train from Lilydale into Melbourne. It's about an hour's trip. My goal for the morning was to finish up my shopping at the Queen Victoria Market! There were stalls and stalls of people selling everything from t-shirts to kangaroo jerky. It wasn't the zebra dukas or Toi Market, but still, it was really fun :) The highlight for me was at lunchtime. There was a tiny little food court with only like 4 restaurants, but one of them happened to be one with Indian food!!!! I'd been craving it since we landed in Sydney, so here's a picture of me with my butter chicken and garlic naan- it was SO good.

We took the train back to Lilydale, where we'd left our rental car, then drove to Research for our last night in Victoria. It was only about 30 minutes from Lilydale and a very pretty drive on all these back roads through the country. We had to take this picture of the roadsign :) We were so thankful for safe driving, as it is always a bit of an adjustment to get used to driving on the other side of the road, and the car! It's also an adjustment when you come back to the states. I must admit I turned into the wrong lane once when we were in Anchorage. Thankfully, there wasn't any other traffic and I could back up... anyway, it's easier on the 4-wheeler back in Port Alsworth!