The Last Weekend

Saturday-Tuesday 13 October 2012 Breakfast, Visiting the Farm, and School Visits

                Bec and Cruz picked me up at 10:30 for brunch with some girls from school. We ate at 'Cafe 57' - it was delicious!

After brunch, Cathy dropped me off at Anne-Marie and Stat's house.

                I went with their people to a beautiful beach house and farm on Coronet Bay where Stat's parents live. We played with three week old goats, cuddled up baby chooks, and giggled at a pig and a ram who found their niche with the bulls.

                Elsie and Tony live right on the beach - which meant sunsets and stargazing and shells!

I brought home lots!

Anne-Marie and the kids dropped me off at home at about 4:15. Bob brought me back to the Nunawading train station and I caught a train to Southern Cross. I bought a ticket to Traralgon. Other than the train being a half hour late, it was a fine trip.

                Melissa and Jill picked me up from the station and we went pretty much straight to sleep. The next day I headed to school with Melissa. Her school is a similar size to mine, but with a much higher poverty rate, and it's pretty far out in the country. I floated around to a few classrooms, ending in a 1/2 room and getting to watch a wonderful Ballet/Magic performance by a few of the girls in the class. It was quite awesome.

Melissa and Jill dropped me off at the train station, and I had to say goodbye to Melissa! It was so sad, but at least we got to have a bit of a farewell!

Once I got home, Monday was my night to pack up everything! I had to get stuff ready for camp!

Tuesday morning, Kevin, my supervisor, picked me up to -

Cathy is awesome!!

(That's where Cathy got my blog notebook and added something of her own to it)

Anyway, Kevin picked me up to take me to an primary school designed specifically for kids with Autism, called Wantirna Heights. It was absolutely fantastic! I spent the day in the class of a teacher named Shari. She was absolutely fantastic! Throughout the day I got to see a few different classrooms of all different levels of behaviours and academics. At the school there are about 90 kids, but some of the students are in what they call Satellite classrooms. There are two classrooms at general primary schools where Wantirna Heights has teachers working. ABC Primary School, for instance, has a Wantirna Heights Teacher working there. Students from Wantirna Heights that are nearly prepared for a general classroom experience are in that teacher's classroom, and several students from ABC Primary School that need help with behaviour or academics are also in the Satellite class.

Overall, it was wonderful, and I'm SO glad I went! I actually exchanged emails with Shari, because she is very interested in visiting the U.S. and experiencing its Special Education Programs.

Judy picked me up from Wantirna Heights and we went over to Anne-Marie's for dinner. I got to meet the people who swapped houses with them when they were gone for six weeks. I spent the evening playing ping-pong and other games with the boys, and convincing them all to come visit us in Seattle area! They may not actually make it all the way here, but we're thinking we should just meet them in Hawaii! Perfect!

It was rough to say goodbye to people - It was so wonderful to spend time with them, though. After dinner, I went home to finish up preparing for camp!

Back to School and Softball

Friday 12 October 2012

I headed back into school in Friday to visit and coach the very last softball game.

                I got a fabulous reception:) Kids went nuts, and I got a lot of running hugs!

                I gave Blake his Seahawks Jersey, NFL football and stuff, and that was REALLY fun.

                Our softball game went alright, although we only had six kids - how does that happen? Every time!

                Anywho - we tied the first and lost the second. Pretty much the same as the rest of the season.

                I went to Jo and Rick's for dinner and Goodbye - I got to see Gretchen's Ultrasounds! We had a good chat, and Jo sent me home with some fabulous White chocolate Tim Tams!

MCG Tour

Thursday, 11 October 2012 

                I walked to the Nunawading station and caught a train into the city.

 

                Once I found the right gate through which to enter, everyone at the MCG was absolutely wonderful! I got on the tour and then immediately we went onto the turf - pretty exciting! 

We saw lots of opulence including training areas, locker rooms, media boxes, etc. 

Some of the coolest things I learned, though, were the following:

• The MCG is the fourth largest sports stadium in the world holding 105,000 people. (The largest in the US is Michigan State - 101,000).
• Throughout the building there are more than 450 security cameras and a jail large enough to hold 100 people in case of emergency.
• It also has a library within, which has the Oldest Dictionary that defines the word Cricket - printed in 1600.
• Also on Match Day, there are 400 chefs on the ground! Crazy!

                After the tour, I went downstairs to the National Sports Museum, which had a spectacular collection of Olympics Memorabilia, as well as the history of Australian Rules Football (Footy).

                One of the coolest parts about the museum, however, is the interactive area called 'Game Time'. It includes a sports writer desk, cycling practice, archery practice, tennis, footy kicks, footy handballs, netball, soccer, and cricket simulation. Damn cool. I wish I had had a kid with me so I could have justified staying longer to play:)

                After I got out I headed to the Queen Victoria Market for one last time, to pic up a few more souvenirs, but alas! The market closed an hour before I got there. Crap.

                I caught a train home, and was picked up by Blake. We headed to the chase for a drink before going to see the movie 'Looper'. That was not what I expected. I'm not prepared to make any judgements until I watch it again and my brain clears up. I love all the actors involved, but it was weird. I even looked at some forums talking through the confusio, but it didn't help. Other than the time travel, there was more supernatural going on that I was thinking. Mom - do NOT watch it. Full stop. Anyway - it made me think.

Sovereign Hills

Wednesday, 10 October, 2012 Sovereign Hill, Ballarat

               

 Bob and Judy had decided during the day on Tuesday to go ahead and brave the cold and take me to Sovereign Hills in Ballarat. About an hour and a half drive to the gold-mining town theme park.

               

It's made up of several main streets filled to the brim with 'old time' shops and business - all of which are still 100% functional including:

a wheelwrightery

a confectionary

Multiple steam engines/boilers

restaurants

foundries

blacksmithy

battery house

gold coin press

gold purifying demonstrations

a stream where you can pan for gold

a replica chinese gold camp

Four favourite things were:

The first thing I did was go to the wheel-wrightery. In here were the industrial age machines, and the guy presented them in a manner advertising the wheels and the new systems. It was hilarious! The very, very best part though, was that all of the machines were powered by steam engine - literally!

I saw how all the machines worked to create the wheels. Including cutting the wood, putting it together, drying it, banding it for shipment, etc.

Next, I went off to the Boiler Room to see the spectacularly huge boilers! They each hold 17 tonnes of water for the steam engines, and there are four working steam engines on site.

Next I went to the Battery House. A Battery is a huge crushing machine to smash the rock and quartz to get the gold out of it.

AND it was powered by a steam engine! Right there! I was the only one in the Battery House, so the guy offered to take some closeup pictures of the engine. So cool!

                Next favourite was probably the gold pouring - they demonstrate hose they purify gold. The gold gets heated to 1200 degrees in order to melt. Within seconds after pouring, though, the gold hardens at 900 degrees. However, that's beyond the flashpoint of wood, so if you touch the wood to it, it immediately catches on fire. He quenched it in water and held up the pure. gold. bar. $170,000 worth of sparkles. He let two kids from school groups hold the bar. It was insanely cool. It's amazing how much pure gold actual does glitter.

                After the park we went to the gold museum with a great history of the gold rush and the use of gold coins and coins in general. We also went to the Ballarat Botanical Gardens, which holds the Avenue of Prime Ministers - which holds busts of every prime minister up to Gillard (she just has an empty stand so far). Stopped for pizza for dinner on the way home and it was absolutely lovely!

Great Ocean Road!

Tuesday, 9 October, 2012 Great Ocean Road

                The wonderful Bob Laslett drove me to the Nunawading train station at 6:45 am. I caught the train into the city. I had to catch a bus for the Great Ocean Road tour at 7:45 outside a hostel in the city. I got into the city - panicking a bit when my train went the opposite direction around the city loop. It went to all the same stops, though, thank goodness.

I hopped off the train at the Southern Cross Train station to walk about five minutes down the street to get to my stop. Unfortunately, coming into the train station from the other direction got me all turned around inside the station. I got out of the building trying to figure out how to get the correct direction.

                I stood there panicking for about five minutes (and I only had ten until the bus was to leave). I called my daddy and his omniscient GPS workings. I made it to the bus stop (Thanks, Daddy!).

                However, the buses that stopped in front of my bus stop were all from different companies! I was struggling to stay calm when a guide came around the corner and asked if I was Megan - Haha! Perfect! It turned out they parked on the other side of the building. I hopped on the very, very full bus (24 people in 24 seats) and set off.

                We headed out to our first stop, Campbell's Beach! Our tour guide (Campbell) started telling us about the Melbourne Zoo, and he answered a question that has been burning Kylen and my brains for about....three months.

                The elephants all around Melbourne are large sculptures of elephants with crazy designs and patterns and colours. Campbell told me that the elephants were placed to commemorate 100 Years of the Melbourne Zoo. Whew - makes me feel better to know.

               

  The Great Ocean Road is divided into three different areas; the surf coast, the green coast, and the shipwreck coast. Our first stop was a short one in Campbell where at the edge of the woods we found a herd/group of grey kangaroos! It took me quite a quite to actually see them off in the distance, but I got some distant pictures of Wild Kangaroos! Pretty exciting start to the day:) 

We piled back on the bus and headed toward Bell's Beach - a perfect place for surfing! We also had morning tea (supplied by the company) and took some fabulous pictures on the spectacular day (weather was BEAUTIFUL all morning). 

After about fifteen minutes we hopped back onto the bus and headed to the great Great Ocean Road Sign.

                There's a huge sign and statue commemorating the men who built the road right at the start of the GOR proper.

                After WWI, the soldiers came back from war, and the War Committee put them to work building the road. Seem s a bit rude to me, but apparently it was pretty therapeutic for those men coming back from the war.

                After taking some silly pictures there, we headed toward Lorne - stopping off periodically to take some pictures and look at the beautiful coast.

                Lorne was  acute little beach town with pretty views. A really interesting thing about Lorne is that it's the home of the Pier to Pub crawl. Three decades old, it's a tradition in which a group of people jump off the pier, swim across the bay, run into a pub, and skol (chug) a beer.

                The beer part of this practice has been phased out, as there were 2,000 participants in the Pier to Pub Swim this year. It is a big event in the area, if not outside of Lorne.

                Next we headed toward a little caravan park called Koala Point (or something akin) where we walked around the wooded area. We actually saw five of six koalas floating around in the trees. Most were sleeping, but one was feeding and moving around quite a bit! I actually got a video, but it was on my phone, so it wasn't too great. But that was definitely pretty fun to see.

                We next went on to Apollo Bay, where we had lunch at a pretty great Greek Restaurant. People said the other stuff was good too, but I got a fabulous salad. The food was nice at the restaurant, but the ice cream down the road was magical! They made their own and had very original flavours including Vegemite (which I did NOT try). I got a safe double scoop, one of vanilla, and one of mandarin, and had a wonderful creamsicle ice cream cone!

                After lunch, Campbell took us to Otway National Park and we went on a beautiful temperate rainforest walk. Since most forests here are gum forests, that dark brown of trunks and deep green leaves that I'm use to are much more rare. I felt very at home there, even more so than in the Blue Mountain rain forest.

                At the tail end of our walk, it had started to drizzle, and when we took off for th 12 apostles, it was beginning to actuallly rain.

                In general, I don't mind the rain - I like it, even - but I'm generally not trying to look at one of the wonders of the world. It was very, very wet and windy. In fact, I convinced myself and a fellow tourist (Gavin, from wales) to buy ponchoes - mostly to protect my camera. The rain, I am sure only fell upon us because I didn't bring my rain coat. That morning the weather was promising (even at 6:45), and so I chose the other jacket, much to my dismay.

                The 12 Apostles is a misnomer, first of all. Not only are there not twelve, but they look nothing like apostles, and it is not a religious monument in the least. They are impressive, thouhg. Beautiful orange and yellow limesotne formations raising out of the (today) very rough waves. When looking back at the cliffs themselves you'll see the same gold and sunset layers in the ground on which you are standing. My british friend and I took turns taking photographic proof for each other as evidence of our attendance at the National Monument. We stood more grimacing than smiling on the edges of the lookouts. ALthough you couldn't see more than about 100 meters out to sea, the rain hadn't quite blotted out the rocks we were there to admire.

                After we had taken enough proof, we trudged  back to the bus to find the previous (and better) name for the 12 Apostles: "The Sow and Piglets". I think the experience would have been less miserable is I knew I had been looking at bacon.

                Our next stop was the also Iconic London Bridge. Unfortunately, London Bridge in Australia has fallen down, and there's quite a story to go with it.

Firstly, London Bridge is another limestone rock formation in the shape of a bridge with two arches. Prior to 1990, it looked like this:

Now, it looks like this:

                Campbell told us the story of the day London Bridge fell.

                It was a Tuesday, so the Bridge wasn't particularly crowded. There were only two couples on it. (Before it fell, tourists were allowed to go out and stand on it!). The couples chatted for a bit and one of the them decided to come in. Almost immediately after they had crossed the closer of the two arches, they all heard a deep rumbling sound, and then a huge splash as one of the huge archways crumbled away and fell into the surf below. I can't imagine the astonishment and then panic of the couple still standing and now stranded on the outer arch.

                Fortunately, one couple was already on solid ground. After talking to the stranded two, the others jumped into their car and headed for the nearest town (Apollo Bay) which was almost two hours away.

                When the couple finally found a pay phone, they called 000 (Australia's equivalent of 911), through which they found there was only one helicopter designated for rescue services, and it would be around eight hours before it would make it to the London Bridge. However, the 000 operator was smart and quick on his feet. He called the Channel 7 News, and told them about the 'story' on the terms that they take the helicopter out and rescue the couple. Channel 7 jumped on it! However, being a news agency, they did some circles around the rock and terrified couple perched atop it before actually picking them up. So naturally, they were a little ticket, and didn't want to do an interview. The man originally said he didn't want to because he had called in sick from work. Ha! Campbell went on to tell us that it came out later that the couple was having an affair.

                After telling us that part, Campbell said, "Okay, that was a lie. Lots of rumors circulated, but they were just a married couple out on the Great Ocean Road." Not sure about taking a sicky though, that may have been true.

                Then we drove the two hours in the dark in dumping rain, and I desperately tried to fall asleep on the wet, sticky, smelly, and bumpy bus. Overall, it was a grand day and tour!

Monday, 1 October

After dropping off our luggage, we walked a few blocks to Paddy's Market - very similar to the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne, but a bit smaller I think.

There, we finally got Melissa to start buying things like souvenirs, etc. Yay!

After a bit over an hour there, we dropped our purchases off in our locker and headed down Pitt Street, which took us straight to Circular Guay, home of Captain Cook Cruises, street musicians, performers on the rocks, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and, of course, the Opera House.

On the way to the quay, though, we passed an awesome band playing in an arcade. Would you believe I actually bought their cd? Hh! After listening for a bit we continued on. We made it to the ticket booth for our cruise about a minute too late for the earliest, so we had to wait a half hour. We went on a lunch hunt and walked around. 

The cruise we got on was a hop-on, hop-off cruise all around Sydney Harbour. It stopped at Fort Denison, Shark Island, Watson's Bay, Taronga Zoo, Luna Park, and Darling Harbour. The first time we decided to get off was Watson's bay - a little peninsula so skinny you could stand in one spot, look to your right and have a full view of the ocean (first picture), and then look to the left and have a full view of the harbour including the bridge, opera house, ferries, and sailboats (bottom picture). 

Super Cool!

We wandered back to the wharf to catch the next boat to Taronga Zoo - a very cool zoo built right into the hillside. We got there pretty late, so we had just barely two hours, but we got a discount - pretty cool!

We didn't get to see everything, but we did get to see some highlights like: elephants, gorillas, chimps, wallabies, lizards, and a peacock!

There were two high points to the zoo. One, Melissa had never seen a peacock in real life before, so she went absolutely nuts! It was so funny to watch and I think she got some good pictures. And two, there was a toddler gorilla that would not let up. He was in the enclosure with a male, two females and two adolescents (I think) and he was really wanting to play. He was moving so quickly the others were getting annoyed. So periodically one of the other gorillas would have to just pick him up and move him away. It's hard to explain, but it was awesome!

Anyway; although the night was late and we didn't have a lot of time it was good and we're quite glad we did go. When we got back to Circular Quay we got some wonderful Ice Cream and walked our way back, stopping at Coles to pick up some dinner to make in the communal kitchen. The communal kitchen is something that's very interesting to me. There are all utensils; pots and pans, dishes, stovetops, etc. so we made a spectacular spaghetti dinner, and then wandered our way up to an early night.

Kylen left at five am for the airport shuttle to go back to Melbourne for one day and then head back to the U.S.!

Melissa and I decided to have a slow exploration day on Tuesday, and we started going up Pitt Street toward the Quay, and just ducking into any store we found interesting. On the way we found an Aboriginal Cultural Centre that we decided to investigate since we're both in love with traditional aboriginal painting styles and art. We spent a while there, where the guy tried to sell me some $400 + paintings. I got a few little treasures there, but I could have spent a lot more time and money.

Next we continued toward Circular Quay and decided to check out several things 1) the Harbour Bridge, 2) the Rocks, 3) the random pirate ships we saw floating in the harbour and 4) the Royal Botanical Gardens.

First, we headed to the rocks to stumble into the Museum of Modern Art. Free admission, so we said, "Sure!".

The art was cool and interesting for a while, but we both got over it pretty quickly, and headed up to the top floor to check out the view of the harbour from above - it was magic! I got some great shots of the opera house (below) as well as some of the Harbour bridge, ferries and sailboats.

Next, we found our way to a little arcade with some antiques and artwork. There we got a lecture, and then were given a map of the Rocks, and some ideas.

So, our next stop was Harbour Bridge. It's a really momentous sight, but a lot of stairs. We accidentally took the wrong stairs and went up some extra flights, too. There are some pretty misleading signs....

Eventually, we made it up and enjoyed the views and the spectacular sights. It really is huge!

Heading down the bridge, we moved toward the botanical gardens, which was quite a walk.

After finally finding an entrance, we moved through the very green gardens, taking pictures of trees, birds, and flowers. After about twenty minutes, though, we started looking for a way out. It was much harder than it should be, and we were stuck for another about thirty minutes hunting for an exit. Finally, we found it!

We did a celebratory high five, and started toward the beautiful Art Museum. The woman at the store had told us the museum was open until nine on Wednesdays so I was thinking we had all evening. We only had just gotten in when Melissa informed me it was only Tuesday! Which meant they would be closing in fifteen minutes! Damn!

Vacations almost always muss up my understanding/recognition of the days of the week.

We decided to look for a few minutes as there was no entry fee. It was actually pretty cool - especially when I found a painting of a woman that could be my cousin. Wow. I even took a picture of the painting.

After they closed up, we moved back toward the city centre, past St. Mary's spectacular cathedral, a park, and the setup for the SYdney International Food Festival before we got to the base of the Sydney Tower Eye. We decided to go up and take a look at the price. $25 wasn't bad, so we decided to go on up. Aside from the tiny, smelly elevator, the view was pretty cool - itjust so happened as well that is was sunset! The colours were brilliant sna dif there weren't 400 people crammed up against the windows who weren't even looking out, it would have been very pleasant!

We headed back down a bit later and had a magical chef salad dinner to finish off our lettuce, marinara sauce and salad dressing we bought the day before. Played cards for a while and then headed to bed.

Wednesday, 3 October

On Tuesday morning we had booked a tour for Wednesday of the Blue Mountains. We did have to get up quite early and meet the bus across the street at 7:10 am.

It was a fifty minute ride (ish) to the Featherdale Wildlife Park, and our guide, Graham, was quite awesome. He says, "'ello!" the same way Bruce the shark does in Finding Nemo, which endeared him to me immediately.

The Featherdale Park is a bit of a sanctuary for animals who have been hurt - they are all more or less running amok for guests to intermingle with. There are, however, animal sanctuary areas for the animals to go to get away from the people.

And I FINALLY got to see a wombat that was AWAKE! Winner! I petted one, even though the sign said, "We bite!"

I held a beautiful owl with only part of his wings, and petted a Kookaburra with only one eye.

And then, the highlight of Sydney, especially for Melissa, was that we got to pet some Koalas!! Yay! At feeding time you can come by and take a picture with them. Melissa was so excited she nearly had a cow. It was hilarious and adorable. Also, the Koalas were adorable. Did you know they have two thumbs?? That's what I'm figuring out in this picture...

After that, we hopped back on the bus and headed to Leura, a cute little mountain village with a killer candy shop. At the Woolworths we got some food for lunch and spent a while in the candy store. 

Hopping back on the bus we headed for a short walk near Katoomba Falls before going to lunch.

It turns out lunch was at a golf club, and you could have purchased a buffet (that we didn't know about, but looked delicious), so we ate out on the terrace in the beautiful sunshine.

Then, we headed to 'Scenic World', where the Blue Mountains stuff really actually happens. We took the 'Skyway' (crazy high cable car) across the valley, and another one down into it. We went on a long walk through the temperate rainforset at the bottom and enjoyed seeing some awesome trees, greenery, and actual vines!

We headed back up to the 'Scenic Railway'. It's the steepest railway in the world at fifty-two degrees. For future reference, that's TOO STEEP.

And, little did we know, you go through a tunnel. A tunnel that is so small you would have to duck to go through it if it weren't for the cage around the top that keeps you from falling out. 

As we were surprised by the tunnel (going up through it backwards, by the way), and grabbed Melissa's arm, hard, and I may or may not have left some grip marks. :/ Sorry, Melissa!

Unfortunately, we had to wait in a really long line to get onto the railway, and so Graham had to come and find us. He guided us the quickest way back to the bus, and everyone there heaved a sigh of relief. 

Back on the bus, we headed out to Echo Point, a pretty lookout with an Aboriginal Cultural Centre!

Both Melissa and I really enjoy traditional Aboriginal Art, so we had a lot of fun looking at the work. They also had a wall available and paint, and a guide of which symbols mean what, so you could paint! I did some fabulous work about a campsite/waterhole, a river/fire, Kangaroo tracks and some Men/women:

I also dress a non-traditional tree, and some of the traditional paint got on my pants. Melissa says it's magic paint and won't come off ever. Ugh.

We hopped back on the bus and went on the hour long drive back to Olympic Park, where we would be catching a cruise home. We were on the cruise at sunset and it was absolutely gorgeous!

We also met a guy from San Fransisco! He had just gotten to Sydney the day before, so we chatted a bit about what we enjoyed doing, etc. The cruise pulled in at Circular Quay so we started walking down the now familiar path back to the hostel; stopping only long enough to get pizza from Pizza Hut for dinner. our new roommates when we got back were Melbournites, who actually live about ten minutes from me in Melbourne. Hah!

Thursday morning we woke up slowly, got our things ready and headed down to check out. We locked up our big bags in a luggage locker and headed to St. Paddy's Market to burn a few hours before our 12:05 airport shuttle. 

I hate Sydney. Full stop. We got to the airport relatively quickly because our shuttle was completely full, so we didn't have to make anymore stops. We got off at the domestic terminal because we aren't leaving the country.

We tried to check-in at a Kiosk, but the Kiosk said, "No, eff you!". It told us to go to the service desk.

The service desk people told us we were at the wrong terminal. Apparently our flight was an international flight. So, in addition to the $12 we payed for the shuttle that we could have ridden all the we to the international terminal, we had to pay a $5 ticket to get to the international terminal. This also meant that we had to go through customs and border crap and intense security.

I have no idea how long it's going to take to get out the other side...blurgh. In all, we had to ride a train, go on two lifts, and up and down eight escalators, then walk to the very end of the terminal. Literally, the next gate is the actual end. Now we wait for two hours. 

Let me reiterate: I hate Sydney.

The flight was relatively quick (other than the fact that my seat AND tray table were broken), so we landed and pulled up to the jetway. We were all standing in the aisles as people do on airplanes, and waiting to squish out through the bottle-neck door, and finally, the captain comes onto the intercom and says, "Sorry for the delay, but they are having a problem with the jetway. They had to call for help. Thank you for your patience."

I wasn't patient - and I had to pee! And we didn't know how many customs, etc, we would have to deal with coming through the gates. Thank god we didn't check any bags. We ended up landing early - by six minutes, but sat on the plane for THIRTY. Holy crap. Thank goodness Bob and Archie were there to rescue us after the horrid Sydney-itis. 

Back to Melbourne, a comfortable and wonderful place:)