Merry Christmas from Australia!

No chance of a white Christmas here, rather it is 17 degrees and sunny. It was a quiet Christmas morning for us - pancake breakfast, reading books, and uploading photos. We now have basically all of our photos onto the computer, sorted through, and uploaded onto the internet. They are available here.

To hear an Australian version of Jingle Bells, click here (Holden: Australian version of chevy, Ute: a mix between a car and a truck, Eskie: cooler, Kelpie: Australian shepherd dog).

Returns

It feels like it has been forever since we last posted. We returned to Melbourne, to meet up with Jessica's friend Amy who was flying in after a trip to Africa. We stayed at a wonderful caravan park (read: campground) North of Melbourne, which ended up costing only slightly less than the hostel we lasted stayed at in Melbourne. On the other hand we didn't have to pay as much for parking, and the facilities were exceptionally clean. We visited the Melbourne Museum which was enjoyable (and free) but overall unremarkable, but we still did not manage to get to the Immigration museum or the Ian Potter National Gallery, which we have been intending to do.

We met up for coffee with Amy in Fitzroy, Melbourne's oldest suburb. We hadn't managed to make it into Fitzroy yet, but were glad we did. We found great used book store to stock up on books (we spend a great deal of time reading), had lunch at an amazing vegetarian restaurant, and returned at night for some live music - Fitzroy is a hub for Melbourne's live music scene.

After three days back in Melbourne, we decided to return to Wilson's Promontory National Park for a couple more nights camping. We hiked over to Oberon bay, and did some short walks down to Whiskey Beach and Picnic Bay as well. We enjoyed "the prom" as much this time as on our last trip, but the flies seemed to be worse this time, especially on our hikes. Eventually we will have some great pictures to share from here.

Unfortunately, our relaxing time in the prom had to come to an end, and we returned to Sale, where we signed the lease for our new 3 bedroom house. Even though it is much larger than we need, it ended up being much nicer than the other options in the same price range. The house wasn't cleaned before the last tenants moved out, so our first day was spent trying to bring it up to our standards. We spent one night in the house, which was a nice change from the tent, especially with the stormy, rainy, weather. However, the electricity cannot be hooked up until after Chrissy (read: Christmas), so we will be spending the next week or so in Maffra, thanks to Steve's boss.

Steve is still trying to sort out the paperwork needed to practice in Australia - insurance quotations started at $12,500 for the year, but thanks to some advice from colleagues other sources which are up to 4 times cheaper have been found, but some require membership to Chiropractic associations - which means more paperwork. Registration with the State is also needed, but they are closed for Chrissy until the middle of January, so work will have to wait until then for Steve.

A few more photos have been uploaded to the address in the last post, and we will try and get some more added when we can

More Pictures

Check out this address for pictures - http://www.flickr.com/photos/54632595@N00/

Hopefully that works!

Also, see the ads on our blog? Aren't they pretty? They help us fund our trip. So far, we've made $5!

Forest Fires, Job Offers and Apartment Hunting

To sum up the past 7 days in five words or less, it's been exhilerating, relaxing/buggy and (finally) stressfilled.

Going back to the beginning, we spent 3 wonderful nights in Wilson's Promontory National Park. A wonderful big park with many hikes and hills and beaches. We got to play in the surf on a (nearly) deserted beach. We hiked up Mt Oberon (really only half way up, to be honest, as you *have* to drive up the first half). We saw wombats - a baby, a mom and a deviant one who tried to break into our neighbours tent - and bushy tailed possums and many wonderfully coloured birds. On our third morning in Wilson's Prom, we woke up to rain. All to familiar with the annoyances of a wet tent, we packed up as quickly as possibly so as to escape before the tent was soaked. While packing up, there was simultaneously a flash of lightening and a crack of thunder and next thing we noticed, a black plume of smoke was rising over the forest just north of us. Wilson's Prom, you should remember, has a history of devastating forest fires, so we were understandably worried, packing faster in the hopes of escaping the wildfire. We were assured on our way out the fire was in fact under control and nothing to worry about, however, retrospectively we're glad we left as for days later we heard news the fire was still burning in Wilson's Prom!

The next couple of days I've labelled relaxing/buggy, however don't be misled as buggy is in no way relaxing. The relaxing, pathetically, went on inside our car where the bugs were reluctant to venture. We camped for free along 90 Mile Beach, where there wasn't much more to do than read books and walk along the beach. You aren't even really supposed to swim along the beach as it is no monitored by the lifesavers.

Last night, Steve signed his contract. Though he's now (theorectically) gainfully employed, he's still got the headache of registering with the board, getting insurance, etc. We've also got to find ourselves a place to live and as we're trying to find the cheapest place possible, the pickings are slim. We visited one unit with a loft bedroom and another more conventional one bedroom unit. On Thursday we are going to visit a 3 bedroom house. Our trouble aside, the craziest, most mind blowing aspect of the whole experience was one we learned apartments are not rented with fridges in Australia! Furthermore, if they advertise a house with laundary it doesn't actually mean there is a washer and dryer, rather a sink and a space where you could put the washer and dryer if you were rich enough to own one.

Road Trip!

We have a new travel companion, Mick. He's only 16, but he has traveled a heck of a lot of Australia (300,000 km or so) and will be travelling a bunch more with us. So far we've we've travelled over a thousand kilometres up and down the Great Ocean Road in our new (ie 16 yr old), shiny (now dusty), red ford laser (Mick). We (or at least Steve since I can't drive manual yet) have pushed Mick to his limits on 4WD dirt tracks and curvy ocean roads and we've come out alive, so that's a good sign.

We started out our road trip in Torquay - surf capital of Australia. Did some window shopping in Roxy, Billabong, Rip Curl and so on. Visited the Surf Museum and were awed by the number and variety of surf boards that have been constructed over the years. Imagine surfing on a 18 foot, wood board. It's kind of insane. Of course we actually had to try surfing ourselves. Steve is an old pro, however it was my first time so we took a lesson. I had fun, though it's really hard and definitely takes more than 2 hours to learn. Hopefully we'll get out a number of more times this summer so that I can get better.

From Torquay we continued on down the Great Ocean Road (built after the first world war by returning service men for those who are interested). We camped two nights for free in a Scout Camp (Steve lied and said he was still a Scout leader - bad Steve). We did some bush walks around there and were terrorized by flies . (They don't bite, but are wicked annoying.) We drove farther, visited waterfalls, saw echinas in the wild (wiki it if you don't know what one is), did a treetop walk, camped for a couple nights in Otway national park, saw the 12 apostlees and other geologic formations, survived a thundstorm in our tent, then finally drove back the way we came, past Melbourne ending up on Philips Island where we are now.

Last night we went out to watch the "Penguin Parade". The "Penguin Parade", happening every night around dusk, is the return of a 800 strong penguin colony from the ocean where they feed to the beach/dunes where they social, mate and sleep it off. They are the funniest little penguins - only about a foot tall but sooo noisy.

Today we're planning on heading east towards Wilson's Prom, another national park. It is a fine, sunny day, so perfect for spending in a car! Yay road trip!