Blogs from Armidale, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania - page 2

I love a sunburnt country A land of sweeping plains Of rugged mountain ranges Of drought and flooding rain We took a trip to see it Its secrets to uncover And found it not too shabby But with limited mobile cover We knew our good friends the Roffes were heading towards us on their own inland odyssey and we played phone tag with them for about a week, getting a voicemail every so often but never managing to call them when they were in town somewhere. In fact, we had just about given up hope of seeing a familiar face when we pulled into the car park of the Peterborough Visitors Centre and nearly ran Dave over. We had morning tea with Dave, Clare, Michael and Tim and spent a nice couple of hours in Peterborough. ... read more

How many prisoners have swum to freedom through the shark infested waters surrounding Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour? At this stage, we have no idea; but we do know that Fred Ward was one of them. On 11 September 1863, carrying tools of escape, Fred’s courageous and loyal wife (Mary-Ann Bugg) swam both ways through shark infested waters in order to get her husband back. The pair (plus one other prisoner) then made a daring escape to their freedom. With Police in hot pursuit, Fred became NSW’s most successful (and last professional) Bushranger. Given the title Captain Thunderbolt by those who knew and loved him, he was by all accounts a gentleman; agreeable, handsome and a good conversationalist who avoided violence. The fact that he was so likeable appears to have helped his success as a ... read more

Hello everyone! O-Week was one of most eventful weeks ever! Since us LHU girls got here 5 days early, we had the chance to meet many other older students that lived in Drummond & Smith. The RF's (residence fellows....what we would call an RA!), academic support team, and the DSRAC (the student board of the college... president, VP, secretary, social reps, sports rep, ect.) are some of the people that we met. We all became pretty good friends. It was very helpful during O-week because the other freshers (freshman) were just getting to meet others and here are these American girls 10,153 miles from home but we have friends in Australia!! It was SO comforting! O-week started on Sunday, February 13th with a meet and greet in the courtyard. There was a moon bounce and some ... read more

Thankfully we had a much better night’s sleep on Saturday night but it did get very cold and was almost down to freezing. Thanks to Sarah and Darryl there is a very handy little electric fan heater in the caravan and it warmed us and Sweetie up nicely. Some places inside the caravan felt damp but the rain had been so heavy that it would have been amazing if nothing had come in. Sunday morning, although cold, was a much brighter and calmer day and we felt more confident about the journey to Armidale which was only 100 kms. We stopped for a while at Uralla and then went on to find the caravan park in Armidale. There were plenty of powered sites available although some of them were a bit soggy so we took a ... read more

Catherine, Lachlan and Xavier set to leave 13th October to fly to Perth and meet up with Ian and Dave. Dave will then fly back to Sydney. Before that however, we have moved house, unpacked, planted 200 hundred trees, mulched 200 trees, cleaned old house, had a garage sale, thrown three skips worth of junk away, been disgusted by the amount of dirt and dust that finds its way into your house and under your furniture when the door is locked, only to be revealed to all when you move! Very embarrassing. We need a holiday!! ... read more