long time

We know we've been out of touch, here's to say, we've been trying. We'll post soon, and bring you up to date on all our travels. It's been raining, and wireless has been in and out. More soon. we miss you. xoxo.

P.S. thumb is good, biting gnats - not so much.

King of the old gum tree

The birds, much like the rest of the landscape here, are really captivating. The noise is like waking up in Jurassic Park every morning. The bird calls and the trees that grow sideways, it's a bit prehistoric feeling. Being in this landscape makes me wonder what it looked like completly untouched. This photo is of a pair of Kukaburras, and that is actually a gum nut tree. Nan and Grandad have a handful of Kukaburras in the backyard. Their call is really great, and it does sound as if they are laughing. It's very much like a Muah!, without the M, and repeat the uah, uah, uah a few times. Make sense? Other birds habitating the backyard are the Minah bird, which has a bright yellow beak, and is really chatty and apparently a pain grandad says. They feed them the table scraps from dinner, (that might be why they like it here so much) which they pretend to fight over. The Kukaburra always wins. We've seen a few small parrots, which are really bright green. But they haven't stopped enough for photos. Every other morning there is a bird that sounds like a penny whistle, which might be my favorite. Although the Kukaburra does make me laugh every time I hear his uah, uah, uah, uah. We've packed or bags again, and are headed to the train later this evening: on to Brisbane! Goodbye to you Kukaburras, I'm sure they'll miss our portion of scraps, although they don't exactly look underfed do they?

Alison's Food of the Week : Nanna's cooking

It wasn't very hard at all. Simple really. We have now been at my grandparents house for 10 nights,(thanks stupid thumb), and we have decided that every meal my Nan has prepared is the best we have eaten. She has wowed us with such traditional fare as roast pork served with peas, green beans, carrots, potatoes, yorkshire puddings, and a heathly splash of gravy. The condiments on the table included HP sauce and mint sauce made from the mint in their lovely garden. We've had a home cooked big Australian Breki like the one we had in the picture Rachel already posted and Nan's own MEAT PIES!, with mushy peas and chips. Both of these meals were accompanied by HP sauce, tomato sauce, and salt and white pepper. I asked why white pepper instead of black, but they didn't know. Tomato sauce is the Aussie equivalent of ketchup, it doesn't have as much flavor, more like runny tomato paste. These are important things to know for future writings. Let's get back to the food. We have also enjoyed more exotic foods like her Moroccan chicken tangine and rice, which had tons of spices, apricots, and raw almonds. One night Granddad did most of the cooking. We had Thai basil beef with chili paste and snow peas, egg fried rice, and sang cho bow. The last item is a ground pork mixture of asian goodness, eaten wrapped in a piece of lettuce leaf. Yummy. I don't want to tell you about everything because it would be to much for some of our more delicate readers to be able to handle. This is aleady a lot to dream about. I will conclude with the meal shown in the picture at the top. Chicken shnitzel covered in a luscious Diane sauce surrounded by boiled white potatoes, sauteed tomato and zucchini, steamed snow peas, and broiled tomato halves with fresh thyme. Whatever Diane sauce is, we like it! Beautiful, filling, tasty, perfect.

We see wildlife

Yesterday Grandad let us take out the golf cart, for a pre-dinner drive. They want us to catch sight of the many kangaroos that are living here that I was beginning to believe didn't really exist. But at the second hole, there they are...four of them, so cute, sooo not afraid of us. We though at first, like deer, if we got too close, they would hop off. Then we thought, we can get photos of them hopping away, action shots - yes! Well let me tell you, they did not, would not, hop away. After trying to sneak up on them slowly by foot, Alison, trying to be a cowboy, drove by them in the cart, and they didn't even budge, they just stared at us. It was comical really. They were laughing, I was laughing, Alison was not laughing. We got some good photos, and figured we probably won't be this close to them ever outside of a zoo. Very exciting either way. I found this out as well, kangaroos sleep lying down. The ladies at Nan's craftclub told me this morning. I went to craft club today up at the clubhouse, me and sixteen ladies of the community. Weatherwise it was the prettiest day we've had so far. We read our books in the backyard. Grandad did most of the cooking for dinner (a real honor I'm told). Excellent meal.

um...

Do they have enough warnings? I'm not sure, but I want this sign. It's awesome.
If you can, click on the photo to check it out in detail.

after the doctor....

we head to the beach. It's still gray out and a bit drizzly, but we still have to see the sights. I'll do a few short posts just to show you some pictures. And to let you know that even with minor injuries, we are leaving the house.

that's the thumb

So back to the doctor yesterday...we headed to the poly-clinic about 8:30am and after waiting for a bit went to see the lovely nurse pratitioner who checked Alison's chart and decided it was time to open things up, and get the evil out. I know. He numbed up Alison's thumb, she tried to tell him stories the whole time without looking, and he kindly showed me everything, so I could tell her later. I'm so nice. It was gross. But hopefully it'll be better soon. Really, it wasn't that bad, a couple cuts here and there, he drained stuff, relieved some pressure, and wrapped it up nice. It immediately looked better. It took longer to prep everything, and wait for the shot to work. He sent some stuff to a lab so we can find out what happened, we call on Friday...and we got this all for the low, low price of $65. I'll pause for you. $65. I would go to the doctor ALL the time - only $65, seriously? Amazing. We got more medicine, and pain killers, not so heavy this time, and we're keeping an eye on it. On other fronts, we are planning on getting the train on Sunday to Brisbane, we'll arrive early Monday morning, where Uncle Ian will pick us up.

We might move in...

Been hanging out with Nan and Grandpa, we took a nice drive the other day when it was not raining to Morpeth, which use to be a port town, and is now filled with cute shops and cafes. We have not yet seen a kangaroo, or koala, but we have seen alot of kangaroo or koala crossing signs by the side of the road. Stopped by the Morpeth Wine Cellar, had a tasting and bought a bottle of nice white wine. We have not opened it yet since Alison is heavily medicated. For all of you on pins and needles about the state of Alison's thumb, we went to the clinic a few days ago, and it seems she's got some sort of infection. Since it is under the nail, it looks horrific, but she does get to keep the thumb, and was given antibiotics, and massive pain killers. I really wanted to get a photo with the doctor for the blog, but alas, Alison wasn't really in the mood. (Who knows perhaps we'll see him again) Lots of stuff is happening under there, so hopefully we won't have to go back to the doctor, and have him cut things open. Ew. She'll probably lose the nail. And as Todd commented, it seems that making her do all the hitchhiking really didn't matter that much. I'll try to get a photo later for those interested. Since she is medicated she's been sleeping very well. I keep trying to stay up late, which so far means 10:30. This retired life gets some taking used to. Yesterday I took a walk up to the driving range and hit a bucket of balls. I wouldn't start betting on me yet, but it wasn't too bad. Alright I have lots of practicing to do. I think Alison would have gotten a kick out of it, had she not been asleep. It was probably better that I was alone for my first go. Then I went to the clubhouse and had a beer. Nan is feeding us very well, the past couple of days we've had homemade meat pies, shepards pie, chicken cutlets, pork with yorkshire puddings, and a wonderful trifle with mandarine oranges and passion fruit - heaven. The rest of which I had for lunch the next day - the trifle that is. Oh yea, and some magic toast things for lunch, with egg, cheese and vegetables made in the broiler. Yum. By the way, we are having a hard time checking our email, we're not sure why, but Yahoo doesn't want to play nice right now. All for today. It's lunch time.

Off to Grandma's house we go

I'm playing catch up a bit and posting more than once today...sooo we sorted out all of our grown up things that we had to do. Verify our train tickets, get bank accounts, tax id numbers, visa stuff, blah, blah, blah. We repacked all of our stuff into manageable packages, hopped on the train, and two hours later were in the Broadmeadow station. We are staying with Alison's grandparents, and it couldn't be lovelier. They live a short drive from Broadmeadow, in Salamander Bay, off the Le Meilleur Horizons Golf Resort. It has been raining here since we arrived, we've been reading, visiting and eating wonderful food, but today there was enough of a break in the storm to take a walk around the neighborhood. We stopped at the clubhouse when it started to rain again to have a beer or two... or four, but who's counting, it was raining after all. More tomorrow...

Breakfast

So let me tell you what's on this plate...I'll preface by saying that on our second day in Sydney we made our way downtown, and figured the city out. This was our $5 breakfast - called either a traditional Irish or Australian breakfast, depending on where you looked. This includes: toast, eggs, a sausage, roast tomato, mushrooms, bacon and beans, and a beer. Yep, that's bacon, right next to the sausage. Wow. Pretty awesome, and very good for walking the city for the rest of the day. I had no idea. Perhaps the beginning of our trip will not be the slimming down part of our trip - I'm just saying. It is unseasonably rainy here from what people are telling us, but it is allowing us to become accustomed slowly to our new schedule. We are still waking up at 5:30am. So we are going to sleep pretty early. We liked the bar across from the hostel, and spent a rainy afternoon drinking some Victoria Bitters, and Tooheys (two excellent Australian beers), and playing our travel Scrabble. I would also like to add that this is not Alison's food of the week post, I (Rachel) wrote this as Alison's thumb, is hurt...aka: bruised, fractured, something to that nature which we are not sure. She is fine, but nursing a bum thumb.

We're here....

So, we've made it. Thank you to everyone for the well wishes and celebrating with us, in various forms of going aways. We had such a wonderful time. So far we don't think we've forgotten anything. Our flights were...long, but Quantas is great, and has many movies to enjoy. Our flight to L.A. was delayed because we had to fix our tire, glad they caught it, and then we were off. Luckily we both slept a good chunk of the way. We watched Globe Trekker episodes about Australia, and a documentary. Our arrival, customs, and hostel was uneventful. Our hostel, the Sydney Star, was quiet, and the people were nice. The internet service was dicey, which was only upsetting because we wanted to post stuff here. We wandered around Sydney, and checked out the neighborhood. We will be staying in the same hostel when we come back through Sydney in March. We rode the monorail around town to see some sights, checked out the two blocks of Chinatown, and will post some pictures soon. Along with photos will be Alison's food of the week. That is some exciting stuff to be looking forward to!