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Published: January 11th 2007
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We have arrived home after spending 2 and a half weeks at various locations on the mainland - and so far, I am pleased to say, our house is still standing. In fact, they apparently had tons of rain over Christmas which is good news in terms of the dry conditions here.
We began with the "Joneses". we greeted a heavily pregnant Sharon, Marcus and Sharons' parents on Sat 23rd Dec. As a result of the imminent birth of Sharon's baby, Ivor and I (later Steve Jones from the UK - who used to lodge with us) stayed in a little house 5km(3 miles) from their house.
The place was great - though lurking in the shadows were one or two massive spiders!!! Ivor opened the curtain on Christmas Eve morning, and a Huntsman (another one - see first blog entry!!!) fell out and landed on the wall beneath....I screamed and jumped out of bed................Ivor ran for a mug, scooped it up..........I opened the window.......Ivor tried to flick it out..... it clung onto the mug and sank its fangs into his finger!!.Ivor screamed, threw the mug out the window, fell on his knees whilst the flipping spider legged
it under the dressing table. Fortunately, they are not poisonous - just frightening - and Ivor said that it didn't really hurt, it was just the shock of it!! We finally managed to find it again and put a cup over it for Marcus to identify - just in case it was a poisonous spider and we should have been scurrying off to the hospital with Ivor!!
Christmas Eve - we went into town to visit the Market. This was an experience - hundreds of traders shouting and trying to sell their wares. We bought some prawns for a proper Aussie Christmas meal - waited to meet a jet-lagged Steve and then went off back home. Melbourne was packed full of English people (all there for the cricket) which Ivor and I actually found a little bit strange, having been used to being two of few Poms out there!!!
All our plans for the next couple of days were full of ifs and buts and maybes - a lot depended on when the baby arrived. Ivor and I realised it could just be Ivor, me and Steve having Christmas Dinner on our own.
Christmas Morning arrived-
no baby. We scurried across to the Jones household and were greeted by a wonderful looking Christmas table- ready for dinner!! Ivor, Marcus and Steve (who had become my main companions- inc. Sharon's dad over the time there, as Sharon was obviously incapacitated and her mum stayed with her as she slept and tried to rest!!) started some silly boys' games - which I was getting used to being dragged into!! One included balancing a plastic gorilla on your head in the car (passenger seat) for as long as possible, whilst the driver tried to drive bumpily!!! Another was shooting a fly zapper ( a little plastic gun) at a particular Christmas card on the mantle piece!! .................Eventually it all became too much......particularly when Ivor and Marcus started trying to zap each other ....I started to crave girls' company and went and sat with Moya (Sharon's mum) in the Kitchen.
The rest of Christmas day was spent doing the usual - games, eating too much, party hats, particularly rubbish TV........... Ivor and I had to laugh - it poured down and was actually quite cold - all this talk about a hot Aussie Christmas- and we had pretty much a
traditional British one!!!
Boxing Day morning ........Sharon's dad rang us at the house. Baby "Matilda Grace Poppy Jones" had been born - 8lbs 7oz at 1,45am. Sharon had been in Labour for just 3 and a bit hours - most unusual for a first born apparently. I had been doing the "wedding ring over the tummy" test the night before - obviously rubbish as it indicated "a boy" !!!.
Later.....we all piled of to the Boxing Day test match (inc Sharon's dad and later Marcus for just a couple of hours!!) A good day - I learnt a lot about it - watching and listening to the Barmy Army was hilarious!
The next few days was full of more cricket...........bike rides.........a bit of shopping and also a great night out with Steve and Ivor. Steve left for Sydney on the 30th of Dec and we left for a place called "Dimbula" on New Year's Eve. We had hired a Toyota Rav 4 - an excellent big 4 wheel drive that felt much safer to be driving in the Kangaroo infested Aussie outback.
Dimbula was a strange place............a railway line ran through it..........it was very very quiet and
very brown (as was most of NSW and Victoria and Southern Australia)however, the people were fortunately very friendly. We arrived at the hotel (a place built in the 1920s) only to be told that they had had a freak accident and there was no hot water. The wind had blown something onto the controls of the fork lift truck - which had started moving by itself and punctured the gas cylinders that supplied the hot water. They were - it would seem - actually very lucky that there had not been an explosion. Ivor and I decided to stay there anyway. We had pizza for tea on the balcony and then sat in the bar - I really miss an English pub. The bars here are uncomfortable and not in the least bit cosy. They are also very male dominated. We "people- watched", had a few beers, before piling off to bed at 11pm when the noise and the smoke got too much. We decided we should celebrate the British one anyway, as we were born there - with Lemonade at 11am the next morning!!!
We set off for the Flinders Ranges bright and early on New Year's day.
The roads, understandably, were very quiet. We arrived at a rather dodgey YHA in Broken Hill - where they filmed "The Flying Doctors" -at about teatime.
Broken Hill was great - full of interesting buildings, mining, rail and medical history and lots of other things to see. Over our few days there - we saw 'desert sculptures', railway museums with trains that had been built in Manchester, ghost towns (where they filmed 'Mad Max'), mining museums, memorials, the Flying Doctor air base, we saw fantastic sunsets and we went on some really exciting drives through gorges, on very dodgey roads. We also ate goat and kangaroo meat at a pub that specialised in "different" meats.
There was great walking up in the Flinders Ranges and so we got up at 5am in order to climb a mountain - it reached 40 degrees on one day - and was way too hot to go walking later in the day!(Still not used to the snakes and biting ants so spent most of my time clapping-to ward off the snakes-and leaping about frantically, when walking past ants' nests!!)
The only down-side of the trip was that we passed a road-train which kicked
up some stones and it took a massive chunk out of the windscreen and we managed to get a flat tyre. We also experienced quite a few kamikaze kangaroos. A very sad event was when we ran over a kangaroo - at a very slow speed. It leapt from nowhere and we had obviously broken its legs. I burst into tears (always useful in a crisis!!) and Ivor stood looking at it, wondering what to do. We eventually went off to find a Park Ranger(at 9pm at night) who then went to find the poor animal. Apparently we should have clocked it over the head with the wheel jack to finish it off. It is very difficult driving up in the outback - bit different to your usual wildlife. Millions of Emus were also milling about.
Our last stop was Adelaide - Port Wilunga. We were staying with our friends- Andrew and Jen- and Andrew's parents in their holiday home. It was very pretty there and we went out for a great meal, followed by a wine-tasting tour round the vineyards. (something I have always fancied doing!!!)Ivor also had a go at body-boarding in the surf. I went for
a couple of runs along the coast which was really beautiful - though hard work after all the festivities and over-eating!!!
Monday 8th Jan - we flew home via Melbourne. Jen came with us as she had to go back to work. Our next stop is Bruny Island with Jen (in Tassie) and maybe a trip upto Cradle Mountain - I can't believe we still have another 5 weeks holiday!!!!
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Steve J
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Great Blog!
Sarah - what i great blog! I'm gutted i didn't stay longer! Happy New Year. Steve