Greetings from Melbourne

YWe're now in Melbourne in the state of Victoria, but here is what we've been doing:

All the electrical outlets have switches on them to activate them. Not sure why since no current flows without some load. I will discuss this with Roddy when I get home.

Besides their crazy accents, the Aussie's use lots of slang. Instead of saying breakfast, they say brekky. McDonald's becomes Macca's. Bus driver is coachie. Afternoon is arvo, which makes no sense; and they tell you not to pronounce the 'r'.

We left off back at Wanda's home in Abbotsbury, in the state of New South Wales. On Tues 8/29 Wanda had to wake us at 9 a.m. or we might've slept all day. We drove up into the Blue Mountains and saw the Three Sisters and an escarpment reminiscent of Niagara Falls without the water. We crossed an old single lane bridge and saw some falls. We had a grand view of Perpendicular Point. We continued south to their second home in the St George's Basin town of Norwa. Another lovely home. Across from their home is the bush, which we'd call forest. And there were kangaroos in her yard and across the road.

On Thursday Wanda drove us back to our hotel in Sydney. We thanked Wanda and her family for their hospitality and said farewell. Hope to see them all again. From our hotel room we could see the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Over the next two days we saw Bondi (bond-eye) beach with smashing white capped waves and water in shades of emerald and aquamarine with surfers. We'll get back there when we return to Sydney in a couple weeks. We walked to the Sydney Opera house, went to the top of Sky Tower, took a harbor cruise. We saw a wedding ceremony with drums and dragons while visiting the Chinese Garden, where we also saw nesting ibis. Ibis are as common as pigeons. Sydney is so very multicultural with a huge variety of shops and restaurants. The land is hilly. There are wonderful buildings from the 1800's and brand new modern. The plant life is beautiful.

On Sunday we flew to Hobart in the state of Tasmania to begin our tour. It was a 2-hour flight to a very small airport, and the landing was made in strong winds. We met Udo, our Aussie tour guide, originally from Germany. Udo told us that all native trees must be able to survive drought and fire. The eucalyptus tree along with wattle are hardy natives. A fire may burn the outside of eucalyptus, but small leaves will pop out and continue to thrive.

Our welcome dinner included calamari that was huge, broiled and the best Anne has ever had! For desert we had a warm chocolate date cake with caramel - yummy.

On Monday we took a walking city tour of Hobart, then visited the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary. The Tasmanian Devils are actually very cute, they just make devilish sounds. They are protected because in the wild many are dying from a communicable cancer. Kangaroos are also protected. (If a farmer believes there are too many kangaroos on his property, he can petition the state for a cull. A team comes in and in one night will slaughter and process meat and do the entire cleanup. But it can't be done randomly.) We were able to feed them. We saw wombat (also cute) and koalas. We later took a cruise to MONA (museum of old and new art). Later we dined on blue-eyed trevalla fish.

On Tues we took a tour of Port Arthur, which was a British convict settlement. Those convicts were convicted of a lot of very petty crime. Interesting stories. There also was a massacre here in 1996 which led to strict gun control laws in Australia. As we drove south there were many lakes, rivers, hills. Lovely fertile farm land.

On Wed we were to go to Cradle Mountain, but there has been a late-season snow dump and the roads aren't passable. As we drove north, we crossed the 42nd parallel. In small Campbell Town, a path of bricks has been made with a convict's name and any known information listed on each brick. We drive to Launceston (lawn-sest-on) 2 days early because of that snow.

Thursday morning we walked around a lovely gorge, then we visited with the protected platypus and the echidna. We had a lovely lunch at a winery.

There are a lot of sheep here. And in this area, most sheep give birth to twins, which is unusual.

On Saturday we flew to Melbourne and met with the other members of our tour. Three of them have ties to Michigan. Melbourne has 40,000 university students, with many from southeast Asia. It's Australia's 2nd largest city. Today we visited the gorgeous Botanical Gardens with lovely huge plants. We received a smoke blessing there and words of wisdom from a Yarra (an Aboriginal tribe) woman. We visited the ANZAC war memorial (Australia and New Zealand Air Corps) to pay our respects. Then we got some retail therapy at the Victorian Market.

Now we are resting up for tomorrow's adventures. Wishing you all well.

Fondly,

A & M

View of Melbourne from the ANZAC War Memorial