Finally, some photos!

It's amazing how people have figured out how to put so many restrictions on computers- no downloading, no uploading, etc. I was hoping to get a lot of recent photos added here, but our tiny hostel in Foster, Australia (that's about an hour+ east of Melbourne) has locked the ability to upload photos from a camera, so I'll just have to settle with uploading some photos of our time in Queensland (that's northeast Australia, basically the area around Cairns south to Brisbane.) Disclaimer: I am on unlimited free internet right now, so this may be a long one!

Since leaving Newcastle, we spent a couple of days in the Hunter Valley Wine Region (we discovered verdehlo- a white varietal that's typically used in fortified wines but they actually bottle here.) The tour we did was a lot of fun and definitely recommend if you're in the area, because it's not as crowded as the more well-known wine regions of Australia. After that we headed to Sydney, where I saw the opera house for the first time (it really is as beautiful in person as in photos.) I was surprised to find out that the roof is actually covered in tiles (think bathroom sized tiles)- and they're all off-white and beige, I was relieved to find out that the color choice was intentional and not because they're faded- always the skeptic- the different shades help to reflect the curves of the roof even on really sunny days. We did a tour of the interior of the opera house, it's definitely not as impressive as the exterior, but they're in the process of remodeling so that may change soon. Outside the opera house we even happened upon a marriage proposal in process (she said yes) :-)

We had the pleasure of meeting up with the friends we met in New Zealand while snowed in at Mt. Hutt- thanks to Lauren and Jared for being such great tour guides of their home town. We also met up with a friend from school, Casey Taylor, who's there for a work project- lucky girl!

After Sydney we travelled to the nation's capital in Canberra- we spent a full day being true tourists. We checked out Parliament House, and happened to be there right when the Governor General's Secretary was announcing that the Prime Minister John Howard had (finally) called elections so Parliament would be dissolved until elections would be held on Nov. 24. There were TV cameras, etc. set up for what we thought would be a very profound announcement, they had school children lined up all around to watch- it was actually about 20 seconds long, and no one asked questions or anything. A bit anti-climactic really. After Parliament we went to the National Museum- an excellent place to visit if you have trouble paying attention for extended periods of time.... or for more than 60 seconds really. All the displays were very interactive, lots of videos, bright and flashy things to look at- our tour guide totally fit the museum, in one hour he skipped around from exhibit to exhibit getting us thoroughly lost. By the end, Steve and I were begging for a map and 5 minutes just to figure out what- typical type A's, ha! We then made our way back through the museum in a very orderly way, left to right, reading all the signs before moving onto the next exhibit.

We then left Canberra in search of Melbourne, which we're still on our way there. We're currently parked in Foster, taking a bit of a breather from big cities and planning to do a couple of hikes tomorrow in Wilsons Promontory National Park- the southernmost area of Australia mainland.

Since our time in Australia is (very sadly) coming to an end in a week and a half, here are a couple of observations:

How to talk like an Australian: shorten words and add "ssy" or "y" to them, e.g. breakfast = brekky, Australian = Aussy, sunglasses = sunnies, mosquito = mossy, and the ssy is pronounced more like ZZY (that's an instant way to pick out a foreigner- they say Aussie instead of Auzzie, that's according to our Sydney friends that we met in New Zealand.)

Bikers (as in cyclists) are allowed on the motorway- so you're driving at 110kph (about 65mph?) and pass a cyclist- crazy people, honestly.

Outside of Sydney, they have built koala bridges across the interstate. They're these wire contraptions, about 30 feet above the roadway, that cross 4-6 lanes of traffic. Apparently, as we've heard, it was a developer's crackpot scheme to get around ordinances related to building a giant highway through koala territory. We haven't actually SEEN a koala on one of these. We have photos, I'll hopefully get one of those up soon to demonstrate.

We've been here long enough to start calling things by the "Aussie / non-US" name and not even think twice about it, e.g. cilantro = coriander, bell pepper = capsicum, cell phone = mobile, college = university.

Steve and I have uncovered what we think is either one of the greatest conspiracies or cover-ups of our time (ok, maybe that's a bit overly dramatic), but here goes. We walk into a store that is called "The Big W" and notice that everything bears a striking resemblance to Wal-Mart.... all the employees have the same nametags, the price signs are the same, even the same slogans. (Now remember we're two consultants here, so interested in these kinds of things the average consumer would probably have zero interest in.) We asked the checkout clerk if they were owned by Wal-Mart and she nervously answers, um no, we're owned by Woolworth's (basically one of the big grocers here.) So on a separate trip we ask another clerk and get the same type of response- so, either Big W/Woolworth's has completely ripped off Wal-Mart, or Wal-Mart has gotten sneaky in making its way into Australia. Perhaps you find that interesting, perhaps not..... ok, onto pictures now:


hmm... experiencing technical difficulties with blogspot.... will try to post photos in a couple of hours.

Cheers,
Anna