The missing link...

This is a fill in from the 18^th of  January to my last post when we arrived in Yallingup. We spent a few weeks traveling Adelaide to Melbourne, reconnecting with old friends and seeing fantastic places.



We headed out early for the airport, again forgetting that a 1 hour drive up the coast is a different time zone. At least it meant we were early and not late! Queensland doesn’t partake in daylight savings, and I think this got us every time we went there. Next trip we will get it. We were hoping to meet up with the McPherson’s who we had just exchanged with and all their connections worked out so we had a ½ hour or so to chat at the airport after they arrived and get a feel how they liked BC and to tell them of our time at their home.



Picking up Nathan from his day at the zoo with Bill and Gina



We made it to Adelaide and were greeted by my friend Gina. How fantastic to catch up with her. I met her in  88 working in Banff, and then later stayed with her in Adelaide in 89 when I was there. We lost touch at least 15 years ago, but it really felt like it was nothing to just pick it up again. We had been to some amazing places in Australia already, but there is something so different about those you really connect with. We got to meet her 2 sons, see her cousin and parents that I had met 21 years ago. We got to know a little of her area and took Woody the dog to the ‘billibong’ for a walk. Really they call it a billabong! It is a small river flowing through Adelaide that they have made park all along it. Adelaide has interesting old houses too, character houses. Stone homes, and 16’ ceilings. I remember being so interested in that last time I was there. Gina and her Dad, the zoo ambassador, took Nathan to the zoo one day and gave Tom and I a chance to explore downtown on our own. When we met them after, Nathan and Bill were chattering on about all the animals they saw. Excited!

2 of the apostles

We spent the next few days driving along the

Great Ocean Road

. This is one place I wished I had seen last time I was here and I have been reminded of this every time Bonnie comes home with 1,000s of pictures of this stretch of road. I can see why, I probably took 600. The limestone pillars and arches that have formed along this coast are incredible. We would pull into one lookout and go see, then 200 meters down the road was another pullout that was completely different. The 12 apostles are the most famous and deserving, but all of it is fantastic.



Lee, Maddie and David with Tom and Nathan



We drove on to Melbourne to stay with Leslie Anderson, now Lee Nelson, and her family for a few nights. She was my closest friend for many years in elementary school. Again it was so incredible to have this history with someone and pick it up. She had moved back here right after grad and has such an Aussie accent now, that it is fun to learn the new words and figure it out. Getting to meet her kids, Maddie and David, after all these years was great, not just pictures on facebook. The kids were so excited to have a young guy around and really kept him so entertained. Lee took us on a tour around down town one day and we got a good feel for the city. It feels very Canadian for some reason. These two stays were where Tom picked up his new favorite food, cheese and fruit platters for dessert every night. He has been making them at our new place quite a bit since Max has been visiting.

 Next we drove down to Phillip Island south of Melbourne. This is the place everyone I met from Melbourne told me to go see and we had the luck to have Bonnie’s great friend’s Wendy and Debbie there to host us. How would they know the enthusiastic ‘come and stay with us if you come our way’ 10ish years ago would still be remembered! They are really great ambassadors for their island and it is a real gem.  We went the first night to see the little penguins making their way up the beach to their nests. It is all a protected area and it is a well run tourist attraction style place that is a really great way for the masses to see the penguins without disturbing them very much. They have lights, but apparently they are low enough or the right spectrum that won’t bother them. It was so great to see them coming up the beach and following 

A parent and a chick in a nest

trail to their nests. Above the beach is a boardwalk area that allows the penguins to go where they need and us to watch. There are no camera’s allowed and everyone seemed to stay with it. The next day Wendy and Debbie took us to a different nesting area where we could see some chicks. Fantastic! We saw a lot of nests and took picture of some great chicks up close. We toured around the area and saw pelican and sting ray feeding, a great bird watching site, a surprise wallaby up close and fantastic different coastlines. Again another great dog, Daisy, stole our hearts. I could have packed Woody or Daisy up and taken them home.

We then flew out to the much anticipated Western Australia! It is the only place that has been sunny the whole time we have been in Australia. The weather was cool in Adelaide and Melbourne while we were there and we felt the weather was following us. We knew it was when Perth and the southern coast were predicted to get a cyclone right after we arrived. That luckily turned to a day of thunderstorms followed by a couple of days of cloud. We really have been in great weather ever since.

In Perth we stayed at Cottesloe beach in Perth with a lovely couple that we met through home exchange. They turned out to be very interesting. She is a home ware designer named Anna Chandler and she has some fun and crazy stuff in her home and in her store. We have seen it in stores all around now that we know it. They live in a great area, just a quick walk to the beach and a short drive to everything else. We did a bit of touring around the general area and had a chance to go to an out door movie theater one evening. It is more of a social event than a normal movie. They make wood oven pizza’s there and serve drinks or you can bring your own food. People come to have a social dinner together and then watch the movie. The last day there we went for lunch with my friend Jane, another landscaper from Vancouver, that I know through Capilano College and beyond. She was on her 5^th trip here and was just heading home, so I got a few good bits of Western Australia plant info from her.

Well there it is long and caught up.

Take care,

Lana, Tom and Nathan