Back together again!

That was a long stretch! ~5 weeks. No fun - I don't recommend it to other couples. But Ben and Ani were back in Dubbo last weekend, so we were all happy again for a bit. (Now we're back to our usual depressed selves...)

So Friday we mostly poked around Dubbo doing things like this:
- going for long walks and showing Ben the kangaroos that I pass on my way to work
- picking up free furniture that Kerry managed to scrounge from people she barely knows - yay free stuff!
- hitting the op shops/salvos (in American that's thrift stores) - yay almost free stuff!
- getting our first Australian CD: Slim Dusty's "A piece of Australia"
- buying "not quite" tomatoes from the couple selling tomatoes out of the back of their truck by the zoo recently. The lady explained that they're "not quite" cookers and they're "not quite" perfect eaters, so they're just the "not quite" tomatoes - we still thought they were amazing.

Then Saturday we headed out to see what north-western NSW has to offer, and found it has quite a lot: emus, wild domesticated birds (specifically budgies and cockatiels), lots of other very cool birds, cows, red dirt, a few road trains but not a lot of cars overall, flatness, lots of space, flies.



(Yes, those are all flies on Ben's butt.)

The birds were very impressive - how can you not love huge flightless birds and blue parrots!?! And for some reason, we both found it really exciting to see wild-domesticated birds in their natural habitat.

We kind of bungled our attempt to see Macquarie Marshes, but that's OK (Peter and Betty - if you come over we'll figure it out). Then we camped in a state forest that I think we had all to ourselves (other than the cows). Ani fulfilled her duty of scaring up a roo, so then the trip was complete.


View Larger Map