Snow In Australia

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DAY 632



Well since our last blog, our world on our amazing adventure has just been as crazy as ever.

Caroline has been busy and has been away on business, a couple of weeks ago she flew to Port Augusta, and had a busy trip but enjoyed it, and on Monday 9th August was going on another longer journey, but that has been canned for a week I think.

I took her to the airport the week before last, and dropped her off, she was leaving the cold and wet of Canberra, heading towards about 30 or so degree’s and when I collected her again a couple of days later it was cold and wet again.

My weeks has also been a busy as usual, work is going well and so is our social life, we were unable to cycle last week as the people who own the Bicycle hire place wanted a weeks holiday, the cheek of it, and boy we really missed getting out and about around Canberra.

As a substitute, a couple of Sunday’s back we went to Rob and Sarah’s to have another Mexican Fiesta which I had decided to do, So Caroline and myself went out and got all the ingredients.

We went over to the Hanilys then before we started to cook went down to Shepard’s Lookout for a quick walk to work up an appetite.

Milo the big Brown Labrador enjoyed his walk and we all got back after our brisk trot and had a good old cup of tea.

Well, I was up at silly O’clock last Saturday morning and had to drag Caroline out of bed, today we were off to Thredbo to the Corporate Winter Games where we were competing in the downhill tube race, where you are expected to slide down the ski slope on a customized intertube type of device hope you don’t end up sliding down on your face.
We set off at 6.30 and fuelled the patrol up, we had planned our journey on being about 2 ½ hours and though we had a Maccy D’s brecki on route turned up at 9.40 ready to sign on for the games.

The journey to the Snowy Mountains was just beautiful, the scenery was breath taking, but sad, over the 203 K’s down, we saw, 11 dead Wombats,15 Dead Kangaroo’s 2, dead Foxes, an Echidna and something that resembled a dead fox/Hyena, though I do now you don’t get Hyena’s here in Australia.
The last time I was on Ski’s was 1975 and I was 12, in Sappada in Italy, so I could not trust myself to stand astride to planks of shiny wood, so instead we opted for the down hill, Out of control, suicide tubing.
After signing on, we managed to find a car parking spot for the day, got in to our gear, then headed off to get acclimatized to our surroundings, Jesus it was cold.
We purchased a lift pass, and took the chair lift up “Merrits” to see what was going on.. there were lots of people, Skiing, boarding, sledding and just having a great time, but it was so cold I thought I had had a stroke as I couldn’t feel my face, though the chair lift was great fun.
We met some of Caroline’s colleagues in the Restaurant at the top, we ordered some soup and I was toying with the idea of tipping it on to my head to try to get some warmth in to me.
We sat, in the restaurant for ¾ of an hour and had a bowel of soup until the feeling returned to our faces, then as Caroline’s Colleagues went off for another Ski we took the chair lift down.
We went to find Caroline’s boss Tony, with his buddy Gerry and we found them, in the warmth of their hotel, where they hadn’t long got up from a heavy night on the grog.
Tony and Gerry are both British, Tony’s is from Birmingham like I am and his sisters live about 2 miles from where I lived, how mad is that
At around 2.30 we all amassed in a bar, had a beer then hit the Wild Brumby Schnapps, pretty good on such a cold day.
We were all talking tactics about the up and coming event and Caroline had that worried look on her face and were mulling over questions like, how to you stop, How do you brake and how do you turn, all these questions held a significant amount of validity.
Well the Wild Brumby Schnapps was doing what we had paid for and all those questions just seemed to pale in to insignificance.
It was 3.30 and time to get ready, we had hired a helmet each and walked up to the slope where the event was being held.
A line of read Cordial was run across in the snow so we all new where we had to get to, the rules where, No Biting, spitting or Gouging and no tampering with any one else’s tube.
It was two people to the tube, so I said to Caroline, just dive on the tube, grab hold of the handles and just stay on, if you feel you are coming off, do your best to come off cleanly, we really don’t want any broken limbs.
We were on the start line, holding the tube, along with 7 other tubers, the hand waved down and we were off, Caroline was on and so was I and we were sliding down the snowy slope, towards to finish, suddenly Caroline is gone, I don’t even get the chance to wave Goodbye or even look back to see if she is OK, and I am on my own, on this crazy ride.
The next thing I know is the tube that I was on is now airbourne and it is on top of me, I get a face full of snow and go skidding past the finish line, though I will be disqualified as both people need to be on the tube to complete the run.
I get to my feet and look for Caroline, back up the slope about 40 Mtrs away, she looks OK, and she puts her thumbs up, what a laugh that was.
All of her colleagues have a go and some are just spectacular, one guys was dragged behind the tube on his belly for the hole distance, we were Hysterical laughing, I bet he had a sore belly, let alone his conkers.
Another of her female colleagues who came from their Sydney office, broke a tooth and was a little bit distressed about it.
Well we were all done and no of us reached the semi finals, so we wandered down the slope and handed back our helmets that we had hired and got them back just at 5.00pm.
We were invited to dinner but that was not until 7.30 so would have to wait around for 2 ½ hours and we were cold and wet.
The sensible thing to do would be to head off so as much as we wanted to stay and have dinner, we walked to the car to change in to our dry gear and headed ff back towards Canberra.
We got back to the house at about 8.20 and it had been a long day, especially considering that we had left the house at 6.20, we had driven 450 K’s for a ½ an hour event in the snow.
It wasn’t to long before we were in bed, lovely and warm, and fast asleep and in the blink of an eye it was Sunday Morning.
I got up at 5.00am as I could not sleep, I had gotten my 7 hours and that was enough, so I was wide a wake and went and watched some TV and did a bit of blog work.
The day was wet, dirty and really, really cold. So It was going to be one of those days when not to much gets done.
I had a couple of cups of coffee, fed the cat and let him out then went back to bed a about 7.20, and it was toasty, I snuggled in to Caroline and started to doze back off to sleep.
Suddenly there was an almighty rumpus, the cat flap was going ten to the dozen, and Caroline shot out of bed at 90 miles an hour, 2 seconds later she shouted me and I bolted out of bed.
Caroline had said Snowy has half in and half out of his cat flap, with his front paws out stretched, whilst something the other end was pulling him backwards.
I asked if she thought it was the Pep’e the Possum, but Caroline was unsure, she hadn’t got her contact lenses in and couldn’t see, suddenly Snowy was catapulted back in through the cat flap and he shot off in to our bed room where he took refuge under the bed.
We tried to coax him out but he was having no of it, he looked to frightened, the big sookey woos.
We finally got up about 9.00am we are moving out of this house sit on Thursday 5th August, as Jane is back from Russia, so we have quite a lot to do,
This week will be as busy as ever, we have our 4x4 club meeting on Tuesday, where we will have to report on the Christmas party arrangements, Wednesday is when Sarah and Bec are back from Hong Kong, and as I said we move out of the house Thursday.
So well that’s about a decent round up on what we have been doing, we left the UK to have an adventure, and oh boy we are doing just that.
The blog had nearly 2000 reads last month, with special thanks to Jan Wright, who’s poorly foot is getting better, which we are really pleased about.
Whilst convalescing Jan is re reading the blog.
Oh just one more thing, on Sunday I said to Caroline, shall we guess where we were a year ago today and we both had a shot, using our wedding anniversary as a guide I new we were in Undarra on that date, so when we got home I looked it up again.
The blog day is 267 and the title is “Having another rough day” I read it and had tears in my eyes, without been condescending, what a great blog entry it was.
Everyday we realize how lucky we have been to have such a life changing experience.

Love to you all.

Kangaroojack

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Photos

Australian Snow
Yes this is the real thing, well sort of

The Team
Ready for the suicide mission

Tampering
Here a couple of tubers are not playing fair.

Broken Smile
One of the casualties