Blogs from New South Wales, Australia, Oceania

Arriving in Australia was definitely a long journey! We left Minneapolis at about 5:45 P.M. on Thursday, May 24th. From Minneapolis, we had a 4 hour flight to LA. Then in LA, we boarded our 15 hour flight to Sydney. The plane was huge! There was a tv screen for each seat. We had our choice of about 30 movies & there was also tons of music. There was a map that showed the progress of our flight and the times at home & in Australia so that was pretty cool. The flight actually went better and faster than I expected. We arrived in Sydney and found out our bags were over weight and each of us had t pay $125-$150 dollars, depending how much our bags were over weight. We were slightly annoyed by this, ... read more

So here it is, my first morning waking up in Aussie and it's a bit colder than I was thinking it might be. It feels like the fall breeze back in Minnesota. I'm happy to say that I woke up feeling replenished and on Aussie time. I can only hope that I hold this feeling throughout the day. Kelly and I woke up this morning and went on a run through the hills of Goonebellah, and it was a beautiful hilly run. When I say hilly, i mean HILLY (or HELLY should I say.) We were able to give ourselves a nice running tour of the town, and got a feel for how far it's going to be to walk to the child center. It will be just a quick 20 minute walk. We went to ... read more

arrived in ballina on 12th march, checked out some pretty spectacular wetlands just behind bicentennial park. it is an overnight rest area with pretty good facilities, and slack rangers who don;t seem to differentiate between overnight and well pretty much stacks of free camps. wetland pics are breathtaking as it was actually raining in the wetlands. just as we had to deal with neanderthal slasherman at broady, we had a pretty scary night when susboy rocked up in tyre screeching ute, and just acted suspiciously dumb. later that night i found a large hunting knife in the dunnys and a scream mask sitting on a rock behind our r.v. what sicko did this. suffice to say we slept with both eyes wide open,and we were happy to see morning with all our body parts intact and ... read more

After Hawker, we moved south to Peterborough, which is about 250km north of Adelaide. It is absolutely a town created by a railway. South Australia originally established its rail in 1856 on what was known as broad gauge (5’3”). When the area inland was opened up, to save money they used a narrow gauge (3’6”). When the transcontinental rail arrived from NSW, it used a standard gauge (4’8½”). All these met at Peterborough so engineering works were established to service trains of all three gauges. To make things even more complicated the transshipment point from broad to narrow gauge was set up 20km south at Terowie. At this point every passenger, luggage, freight, livestock, etc had to be unloaded and reloaded onto a new train to accommodate the change of gauge. After 1883 when silver and ... read more

Monday 21st May 2012 – Left Canberra yesterday afternoon – seems like days ago! Caught a 5:00 pm flight to Sydney, then boarded the Emirates A380-800 with hundreds of others all going to Dubai. After leaving Sydney, we flew south of Broken Hill, to just south of Whyalla (across the top of Spencer Gulf) before starting to track a more northerly course after overflying Ceduna. By 23:35 Eastern Standard Time, we were 1,053 km from Sydney, travelling at 916 kph (Mach 0.84). We travelled east of Meekathara, south of Uluru, south of Port Headland. At 07:10 Eastern Standard Time, we were flying over Colombo. At 11:10 Eastern Standard time on Monday 21/5/2012, we arrived in Dubai, after flying 5,542 miles (about 9,000 km). The flight was very long and tiring. As I write... read more

Endlich ist es so weit: Wir sind jetzt offiziell Scuba Diving Certified! Ann und ich haben gestern unseren zweiten Tauchgang gemeistert und sind damit mit unserem 3-tägigen Tauchkurs fertig. Bis auf ein paar Kratzer und Schürfer von den Korallen und Muscheln am Meeresboden sind wir auch heil geblieben. Das Tauchen war schon eine sehr spannende Geschichte. Vor jedem Tauchgang hatten wir erstmal eine lange Theorie-Session, bei der uns alles von lebensrettenden Maßnahmen, Tauchausrüstung und Tank, bis hin zu Handzeichen und Tauchtechniken beigebracht wurden. Am Mittwoch war das Wetter leider nicht ganz so gut, also haben wir uns ziemlich das Popscherl abgefroren vor unseren Tauchgängen (und vor allem auch danach...). Ann und ich sind gemeinsam nach Swansea Heads gefahren, was mit dem Bus etwa eine Stunde von Hamilton entfernt ist (mit dem Auto nur gute 30 Minuten...). ... read more