Easter Holiday

Generally, when planning trips, we try to avoid the “peak” times as much as possible. That’s the benefit of being semi-employed and in grad school – our schedule has a lot of flexibility. However, when we decided to buy tickets to the Blues and Roots Festival in Byron Bay, we neglected to notice that 1) it was during the Easter long weekend, 2) Byron Bay is one of the busiest places in Australia during Easter, and 3) our driving route would take us along one of the main holiday arteries at peak time. But despite the crowded campgrounds and traffic jams in the middle of nowhere, we had a fantastic getaway.

Hanging out in traffic in the middle of nowhere, with guys honking to draw attention to their mates peeing on the side of the road because there was absolutely nowhere to go.


It's hard to get a sense of how crazy it was, but this is our crowded campground at the festival. We're waaaaaay at the back


The Blues and Roots Festival was good fun. They had some great artists, and it's just fun to listen to live music.

And the gumboot fashion was just astonishing! Here's just 1 example:


Other highlights of the trip included the Macadamia Castle,

a dip in the orange-coloured Lake Ainsworth,

and several Big things, because all good road trips in Oz MUST include some big things. We saw the Big Banana, the Big Prawn, and a big oyster (but I don’t think it was officially “the” big oyster).

We explored several small towns and their quaint personality. We had Devonshire tea in the beer garden at the post office/cafe/general store in Wollomombi. There were flowers and sculptures on one side of the garden, and shark jaws and beer signs on the other. We missed the goanna pulling championships in Wolli, but we had some great fish 'n' chips. And we drove down Waterfall Way, each enjoying the waterfalls in our own way.



We also spent a lot of time on the beach, 'cause you just gotta.








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Good times

Australia likes Easter. A lot. The local papers are filled with announcements about Easter parades, Easter bonnet workshops (seriously - I think it's a national requirement that all children must make at least 1 Easter bonnet and then be paraded around, generally to their great embarrassment), Easter chocolate raffles (which replace the more typical meat tray raffles), Easter brunches, etc. So I'm scanning through all these wonderful Easter activities, and stumble across this:

A week later, it was followed by this:

It was part of a celebration for the bicentennial anniversary of Governor Macquarie. No place like a cemetery to celebrate an anniversary! Along with crematorium tours and hearse-rides, the open day also featured a colonial costume parade. Oh yeah, and a stations of the cross service. You know – all those normal anniversary celebration activities. Unfortunately, Ben and I were unable to make it.

Food

I come from a family that loves food. We like trying new food, we reminisce about food, we remember important events by what we ate. So although food has not featured much in the previous blog entries about Mom and Dad’s visit, it did play a very important role. In fact, Mom kept an entire food journal, and we have photos of almost every meal. While I won’t bore you with a complete recap of everything, here are some of the things you can look forward to trying when you come visit us. We of course had to introduce them to several classic Aussie foods:
Vegemite
Meat pies
Sausage rolls
Chico rolls
Aussie burgers (I wish I had a picture of Mom eating one of the best Aussie burgers we’ve ever had… cute little mom sitting there with a burger that was about the size of her head and beet juice and tomato sauce all over her face)
Kangaroo
Barramundi
Lamingtons
Anzac biscuits
Pavlova
Lemon Lime and Bitters
Ginger beer

They also got to try several fun fruits, which aren’t necessarily unique to Australia, but were new for Mom and Dad:
Quandongs
Rambutan
Longan
Lychee
Dragonfruit
Fresh passionfruit
Durian
Green ecology limitless magnificence (I think that counts as a fruit)

So if you don’t know what any of those things are and are eager to find out, go get your plane ticket! And Mom and Dad - if there's anything I missed, let me know.

Australia Day

Yes – the holiday that marks the end of the summer holidays and celebrates all things Aussie… like barbeques and beer and fireworks. And we were right in the middle of all the Sydney shenanigans. We decorated ourselves with Aussie flag tattoos,

ate kangaroo (also known as Skippy steak for those of you who may be familiar with Aussie TV in the 1960s)

and joined a million other people gathered in Darling Harbour to watch the boat and firework show.



When you're 5ft tall on a bridge with thousands of other people, and you didn't arrive the day before to claim a front row seat, this is how you still catch all the action.

And I think Mom and Dad practically have Australian residency after the gusto with which they celebrated Australia Day.

M&D out of Sydney

Mom and Dad enjoyed their first 2 days in the small, obscure Aussie town of Sydney, but they really wanted to see one of the more famous cities that Australia is known for. So we headed to Dubbo – that wonderful, iconic, tourist capital of Australia. I know – it hardly needs an introduction since everyone has already heard about it. We also visited a few lesser-known attractions outside Sydney: the Hunter Valley and the Blue Mountains. And while both those places offer scenic views and good food, neither of them have what Dubbo has to offer.

We started our day with a relaxing walk along the Macquarie River, listening to the melodious sound of the cockatoos.

We then headed to the zoo to see where I hung out most of last year. The temperature was only supposed to reach ~104 F, so to avoid the risk of hypothermia, I thought it would be a good idea to stay as active as possible. So we got geared-up with some classic, old-school bikes – the ones that have no gears and you pedal backwards to brake.

And then we set off to get slobbered on by rhinos


elephants


and cheetahs.


Eventually we abandoned the bikes to go in search of roos. We found some wild ones,

and we also saw my old roo-mates: Emmett, Parker, and Xander (...and Kristie).



Having finally had our fill of animal slobber, we decided to check out some of Dubbo's other wildlife. So we headed to the cozy South Dubbo Tavern for Monday Night Trivia. Our team didn't win, but we did make lots of friends thanks to the amazing assortment of peanut butter candy (something notably absent from Aussie lollie shelves) that Mom and Dad had brought from home. So friendly people, friendly animals, beautiful sky, lots of sunshine - what more could you ask for!?

M&D in Sydney

As Mom and Dad flew over Sydney, the clouds parted and a ray of sun lit up the opera house.

They were ushered through immigration and customs with smiles, and were greeted on the other side by 2 wonderful people. (…OK, that might be pushing it, but at least they were greeted by the people they came to see.) Outside, the sky was blue and the temperature was perfect as we drove to Bondi, one of Sydney’s iconic beaches. As we were heading down the hill to the scenic cliff walk, we spotted dolphins jumping just off-shore.

Seriously?!? Ben and I have never seen dolphins along the coast. And it wasn’t just a few random jumps - they kept jumping and playing long enough that we could run back to the car to get the binoculars, and we got some great views.

And thus begins my parents visit to this corner of the world. Not that they didn’t have a few drops of rain, but overall the weather and animals cooperated as if they’d been part of a magical Disney experience.

They had about 3 days in Sydney – plus a few extra hours here and there. So along with beautiful beaches and dolphins, my parents’ itinerary also included exploring Sydney's diverse neighbourhoods, eating fresh seafood at the Sydney Fish Markets


going under and over the Harbour Bridge

meandering around the opera house and the botanical gardens

listening to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the stars

visiting the Taronga Zoo and saying hi to my baby, Luk-Chai


and getting to know the local wildlife.



We also had a Christmas party. Mom and Dad provided the presents; we provided the mini-Christmas tree and the Christmas crackers.

Maybe it was a raw deal for Mom and Dad, but they didn’t seem to mind. Ani, on the other hand, was not thrilled with our decision to put all the party hats that came out of the Christmas crackers on her.

Visitors

No - we haven't fallen off the earth. Yes - this blog is still active. Yes - I've received the reprimands from several of you about the lack of posts, particularly during such an eventful month. I blame it on my parents, always causing trouble...

So my parents arrived the morning of Jan 22 to finally come check out this awesome place that we're living. And it was so much fun to have them relaxing in our house,


checking out the places we work,


and spending time with their granddogter.

The general itinerary for their trip was as follows:
Week 1: hang out with us and get a glimpse of our lives
Week 2: get away from us crazy kids and spend some time exploring Oz on their own (mostly Kangaroo Island and the Great Ocean Road areas)
Week 3: the 4 of us head to New Zealand to explore the South Island
Week 4: we wrap up our time on the South Island and see a bit of the North Island
Then we had 1 last day in Oz together before they flew home... to a big snow storm.

And although that sounds like a relatively benign schedule, in reality it was anything but relaxed. It's been an action-packed month, and we returned to fairly crazy schedules, too, so more details & pics will follow.