Back from Melbourne

Yes, we are back after a quick trip down to Melbourne to see hubby's father, who is not very well at all, and to visit the rest of the family. When I say Melbourne it is not strictly true because we never seem to make it into the city centre, we are always hovering on the outskirts of town. Luckily I have been there before, but one of these days we'll try to have a day or two in Melbourne.

On the way down we stopped overnight in a nice little town called Junee, it is roughly between Wagga-Wagga and Gundegai. It has a nice railway station and many beautiful old buildings, unfortunately many of them shut down and for sale. It has a chocolate/licorice factory with a cafe and also a prison.  The owner of the factory was very friendly and when he heard I was Swedish he proceeded to tell me all the words he knew in Swedish. They didn't make sense to me really, but he had learnt them from a young girl who had worked there. Since I haven't properly lived in Sweden for many years, my Swedish can be bit prehistoric so I am assuming it was cool, Swedish slang. Anyway, we visited most everything except the prison even though we loitered outside it for a while nearby to take pictures of turtles. There was a sign up about them crossing the road but they never did while we were there.

We had a few nice meals out with family even though we didn't see everyone. The main reason for the trip was really to visit my father-in-law since we couldn't be there when he turned 89 last week.

Oh, I almost forgot, another reason was to "pick up" an organ which we finally have room for. It belonged to hubby's grandparents and he has fond memories of it from childhood. Well, it weighs a ton and we will have to come back for it or have it moved professionally. So instead I bought an easel and a table in a market, so at least we came home with something, right!

The trip home was uneventful, but oh, so long. It was only broken up by me being stopped for an alcohol test. I just never know if you blow out or in; it's like whistling. 

Fitness

There is a very visible fitness trend here, and everywhere you go people are either walking carrying weights and listening to music or running. The running can be interrupted by a person with whom you have to box for a few minutes and then continue running. Very close to our house are some pretty steep stairs down to the river and people keep running up and down them, over and over again.  You can also see mothers running with special baby carriages, or people running or cycling with their dogs.  These are the things you see just stepping out of your house.

Then you have the water sports, surfing and kite surfing, swimming and kayaking, fishing, sailing etc.  I am sure there are other water sports as well, and Sydney in particular is just a haven for all of that.

Australians are also very big on team sports.  They start already in school.  It is Australian Rules football, soccer, basketball, netball, rugby. There are probably others that I don't know about. You have a team that you "barrack" for and you stay loyal to that team all your life.

Horse racing is also very popular and also dog racing. There is even a public holiday in the state of Victoria for the Melbourne Cup Day.  This holiday is very big and fancy and ladies dress up and wear crazy hats. Oh, and horses race too, of course.  It looks like fun and it is on my list of things to do before we leave here, but it has to wait because I don't have a hat. I need to get something, maybe, something like these hats.

This fitness mania is a paradox since Australia is also a country where obesity is on the rise in a big and worrying way, as it is in all the well to do countries in the world. There are lots of ads on TV for weight-loss programs and companies offering you ready meals with the right amount of calories etc. It seems some people are making good money out of this problem, but then again it has to be dealt with.

Hope the rain stops soon so I can get out for a walk and get rid of some calories!

Archibald etc

It  was such a beautiful clear day  I decided to go into Sydney on my fantastic Seniors Card. You have to be 60 and not work more than 20 hours a week so I am the only one in this family who qualifies. It means you can travel all over the place, by trains, busses and ferries for only $2.50.
  So I went walking around a bit once I got into the city and then to the NSW Art Gallery where they have a portrait competition every year called the Archibald prize. The first-prize portrait this year was a faceless figure, not a traditional portrait, and there were lots of other fantastic  pieces. I have to go back.

On the way back to the train station I came across this nice and inviting sign, the opposite of what you usually see in parks otherwise.

Sydney Royal Easter Show

Sounds quite impressive with the 'Royal' in there in the title, doesn't it,  and it was, even though I didn't see any Royals. There were lots of people of different nationalities, families, teenagers and seniors all having a great time, though.

It seemed equally popular to go and see the animals and the sheep shearing, as to see the cake-decoration competition, or the Elvis impersonator (he was great by the way), or the wine tasting (we had some lovely rosé from the Mudgee region). What I am saying is that there were people everywhere, but it is a spacious venue in Sydney Olympic Park so there was plenty of space. The walking almost killed me however, I wish I had had a pedometer to see how far we walked.

My absolute favorite event though was the wood chopping which according to the signs is a time-honored activity here in Australia and this particular competition is colloquially called the Wimbledon of Woodchopping!!

The men were mostly chopping with axes and the women did sawing. Here you can see one of the female contestants hard at it but I was actually looking at my favorite one further away.

In the final part that we looked at they had to lop off the top of a 3 metre high "tree", the tree-felling event. This was done by a special technique which meant that they had to insert bits of wood to stand on to be able to reach the highest bit. This event was won by a New Zealander (darn it!)  The only thing that worried me through the whole thing was that it would have been so easy for someone to let go of their ax and for it to fly into the audience. It didn't happen so all's well, but just imagine.

Just a normal Sunday

A few weeks ago we went to Brighton-le-Sands, not to be confused with Brighton in the UK.  It is is a part of Sydney where I like to walk around because you see people of all different nationalities. All the new Australians with their families have picnics in the park or on the beach, and it looks very cosy. It is on Botany Bay so you don't have the big waves like you have on the surf beaches. There are loads of restaurants, Greek, Italian, Lebanese etc. We ended up in an Italian place, and had oysters and some other nice dishes. In fact it is sometime called 'Little Greece by the Bay'.

Just south of Brighton-le-Sands is another similarly multicultural suburb called Sans Souci.  Surprisingly enough, the obvious nickname has not been adopted, although the local pronunciation of the name (san suzie) leaves something to be desired!

In the evening we had a hail storm, and hubby rushed out and drove the car up to the undercover shopping center across the street to protect it from being damaged. He was not the only one having that idea.

If you are my Fb friend you might have seen that our son's cat has been returned after a seven-month absence. We will probably never know where he has been, since he won't tell us, but since he had a chip in his ear, it was possible for a vet to contact our son, the owner, and let him know where he could pick him up.

Since his disappearance happened on hubby's watch, he is particularly pleased to see the cat back and is spoiling him silly.

SKI-ing

Hubby likes to say that we went SKI-ing this week-end. When people say :"Oh, wow, where did you go?'  He  tells them that somebody told him that it actually means Spending the Kids Inheritance, again one of these silly TLAs (three-letter abbreviations).
This brings me to the subject of the Grey Nomads. These are the young, vigorous, healthy 60+ who travel all over Australia and other places as well. We spoke to a couple who had been traveling for three years. They have their house rented out and they bought a caravan and a four wheel drive car and set off. They seemed very happy and sometimes, somewhere,  they meet up with people that they had met maybe a couple of months before. Sometimes the grandkids come out where ever they were and spent their school holidays with them. Maybe that's the way for us to go in a couple of years...or not.

The dry red center

When I say dry I am referring to the alcohol rules in and around Alice Springs and Uluru.

We had an embarrassing experience when stopping at a roadhouse on the way to Uluru and wanting to buy some beer for us and our two passengers, one of them an aboriginal women. First of all you have to show your driver's license to show that you don't actually live in the Northern Territory and then when they saw that our friend was aborigine she was refused. In the end it turned out that it was ok if she drank her beer there but she couldn't take it with her or buy any more to take with her.  I felt so humiliated on her behalf. I know full well that there is an enormous problem with alcohol in the aboriginal settlements but I am not sure that this is the right way to deal with it.
On a more pleasant note, our trip of 400 km between Alice Springs and Uluru was made so interesting by the fact that we had picked up these two travellers and one of them was the daughter of a very famous Aborigine artist. His name is Bill Whiskey. There are several places on the web where you can read about him but I have just given a link to a short film about him on Youtube. Our friend, his daughter, is also an artist.

That Old Man - YouTube

► 7:09► 7:09

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZdEjXC9fe0

She told us about her family's dreaming, the cockatoo dreaming and that she was so happy to come home and be with her family.
I feel that I definitely have to find out more about the dreaming. It is such a profound part of life.

We dropped them off at our arrival at Yulura and they were being picked up by her family. I hope that our paths might cross again sometime.

Uluru, you rock

Yes, Uluru is the aborigine name and it is also known as Ayers Rock. It is situated in a national reserve and you pay $25 per person for a three-day pass to visit the park. It is very nicely arranged so that you have viewing places for sunrise and sunset. There is also a cultural centre where you can find out about the aborigine life and practices. You can also have guided tours or you can decide to simply walk around the rock or shorter walks. It is recommended that you don't climb it and I personally didn't have a problem with that!! Some people do insist on climbing though,  apparently 35 people have died so far doing so.

We were fortunate to see two beautiful sunrises and one sunset and also spend a whole day in the national park. We visited the the Olgas which were equally impressive, if not even more. It is also very special to know that you are on sacred ground, in a place that is very, very old.

The other big rock we saw was when we drove in towards the Yulara resort from Alice Springs. It is Mount Conner, just as impressive in my view but virtually unknown.

Shoe holidays I remember

We have had a few memorable holidays involving shoes or lack thereof. The first one that I remember was when we lived in France and the kids were young and we went to the Atlantic coast of France, near Bordeaux,  with Aussie friends and their kids.
We wanted to have a picnic near a big sand dune called Dune de Pyla but when we arrived we realized we would have to fight for the tables. Hubby spotted one and ran for it, forgetting that he was wearing the preferred shoes of all Aussies on holiday, flipflops. He instantly stubbed his big toe so badly that I had to take him to hospital (and yes, we lost the table). There in hospital he was instantly whisked away and I had to sit in an un-airconditioned room for ages. Hours later he was wheeled out reeking of alcohol. It turned out that every time a nurse would pass by while he was waiting, she would see his white suffering face and give him some very strong green, medicinal Chartreuse on a sugar cube. Without wanting to belittle his suffering here I think he realized he was on to a good thing and by just moaning a little in pain every time a nurse went by,  he would get another one (and another one)
Anyway, his toe was fixed up but he was told  not to go on the sandy beach or in the water. By the way, did I mention that this was the first day of a two week  beach holiday? So hubby had to spend two weeks sitting on a bench up on the promenade watching us frolicking on the beach.

The other memorable shoe holiday was a week spent in the south of France with 2 families from Grenoble. They had planned to go to Bandol and invited us as well but I couldn't quite make up my mind since hubby was in the States and was coming back the day they were thinking of leaving. Anyway, hubby came back and said "sure, yes let's go" and we went. We just packed a few things in a hurry since it was a beach holiday. Well, the next day going to the beach it turned out that since hubby had left more or less in what he was wearing from the plane he hadn't thought to pack any other shoes. That is a big problem when you have size 13 US or 47 European. They don't have shoes that size, ....anywhere. His great-auntie Isabel, who is not with us any more,  used to say "You would be a lot taller if you didn't have so much turned under.".
Anyway so as not to waste too much time walking around shops looking for suitable beach shoes, hubby decided to brave it out. So he wore his black business shoes to the beach, with shorts and bathers because he is not one of these cool dudes that can walk barefoot everywhere. No his feet are too tender for that, so he had to put up with the general ridicule.

This brings me to our latest excursion to Uluru which I mentioned before. Hubby walked around the rock, 10.6 km in all, and by the end he looked like this. He had walked the last kilometers without soles on his shoes, just hobbling along as best as he could, poor dear, in 38 degrees heat.

There have been other holidays involving shoes but I don't want to bore you. Instead stay tuned for the next  installment about Uluru.

Ships of the desert

Many people, when they think of Australia, think of koalas and kangaroos, and I did too to begin with,  but after our trip to the Red Centre I realized that there are also a lot of camels. Our waitress said that there are about one million feral camels wandering around. Apparently they were imported to use for transport etc., while the telegraph line was being built. We visited a camel farm on the way from Alice Springs to Uluru, there is also a camel farm at Uluru and I think you can take a camel ride to the rock but I didn't see anyone doing it.

We saw feral camels several times, the first time was in the evening and they were nicely posing on a ridge against the evening sky. The second time was driving near Kata Tjuta.  I can honestly now say that I have seen more camels than koalas in the wild in Australia!

Today the Australian camel is exported to Saudi Arabia and some other places to be used in races as well as for food.  In one of the restaurants we were in, in Alice Springs, there was a welcome platter (which I didn't have) with camel, emu, crocodile, and kangaroo meat. It is at times like that I can seriously consider becoming a vegetarian!

This is not a picture of me waving but me simply doing the Australian salute. It means that you are waving away the flies. They are abundant. I must have swallowed 5 right there. I think I am the "Old women who swallowed a fly" in the kiddie song!

A town called Alice

We have been on a little outing to Alice Springs and Uluru. We flew from Sydney to Alice in three hours and then rented a car. We spent one day in Alice trying to visit the Ghan train heritage museum but it was closed and hubby was very disappointed. It turned out that we were also there on one of the days when the Ghan doesn't come through Alice which was a shame. I guess we just have to do the trip by train another time. Click here to learn more about the Ghan.

Outside Alice we visited some rock paintings and a watering hole. Fortunately we had been upgraded to a four-wheel-drive car so we could drive on unpaved roads. Before leaving for Uluru the next day we visited the overland-telegraph station which told the story of the early settlers but also the sad story of the lost children (more about that another time).