For those who have not yet travelled to Australia, it's a very big place! Close in size to Canada, we post a map to give readers some idea of the vastness of this continent. On the map, our air travel is shown by red dashes (arriving in Brisbane from Vancouver, then flying to Melbourne, and later, flying from Darwin to Perth). Ground travel is shown in black dashes. At the bottom of the map, we show that the road distance between Brisbane and Perth is about the same as that between Ottawa and Vancouver (about 4,300 Km). The distance we travel by bus going from Melbourne in the South to Darwin in the North is even more, about 4,800 Km, spread over two weeks, or about the same distance as Vancouver to Quebec City!! While Ferdy ... read more

For their 30th anniversary this year, Marion and Ferdy decided to go back to Australia, no kids this time, to explore many of the areas we did not see when we traveled there as a family in 1998, and when Marion visited April in Perth in 2012. So, we're leaving on November 3, 2017 and will spend a month there. We will fly to Melbourne, via Vancouver and Brisbane, where we will meet up with second cousin Erwin Doreleijers to visit with his family in Frankston for a couple of days. After that, we will take the Greyhound bus from Melbourne to Adelaide to visit with friends Kathy and Mark, and Joy and Geoff, to explore that area for a few days. That's where comfort ends for a while as we travel by Greyhound bus through ... read more