A Trip Down Under

We had some vacation time to use, and since Lil' Bit will be making his/her appearance in a few months, thought that taking one big fling before that would be fun. And we were right! We had a blast!

We flew into Melbourne and spent 4 nights there.  We walked by the Yarra River.

This is the Exhibition Hall. This is where Melbourne signed some important document...look it up if you're curious. :)

I felt like we had found South Carolina again. Check out the tree!

At the Melbourne Museum, we saw the skeleton of a blue whale. Check out the size of this guy!

We visited the old prison where lots of hangings used to be done. One of the things we got to do was help reenact the trial of Ned Kelly, a famous criminal there whose trial is debated to have been unfair. I nudged Matt enough that he finally volunteered to play the prosecutor. Check out that hair! My, doesn't he look distinguished!

Outside the old prison...

And inside.

 We spent one day checking out the Melbourne Zoo. Gotta say that the penguins grabbed our attention the most. The King penguin has yellow, and the Gentoo penguin doesn't.

We also stood in a clear tunnel with water and creatures all around.

Don't we make a cute family?

We visited a museum based on the Holly Woodside, a ship. Matt steering correctly...

and me apparently steering from the back of the ship. Whoops!

Matt found a real replica of Crocodile Dundee's hat and knife.

DR. PEPPER!!!!!!!! 'nuff said

From one of our favorite comedians: "I want frosting all over it, and I want sprinkles, but not all over it."

 At the maritime museum we checked out more ships. Here we are before going below on a submarine (no, it wasn't moving).

Okay, so not a perfect shot. We're up on a lighthouse and it's supposed to look like I'm holding that tall tower like an ice cream cone. We tried!

After Melbourne, we flew to Sydney for about 4 nights. We took a tour of the Blue Mountains, where we got to do what I've been dreaming of doing since a kid: playing with koalas and kangaroos! But first, we saw a crazy scary bird with a bone out of the top of his head!

And some birds taking the opportunity to pose.

Hooray!!! It's a koala. And yes, she's happy...even if it looks like she's eyeing my hair as her new favorite type of leaf.

We bought a few ice cream cones filled with kangaroo food for these wallabies. They weren't as interested in the food as they were in the cone.

Matt messing with an actual kangaroo. This fellow was friend and liked to stand up near him.

So really, Mr. Emu, why do you give me the look of disgust?

Baby wallaby!!!

 Back in Sydney at Darling Harbour. We stayed just across the street from here, so spent several hours in this area just enjoying city life.

We found it amusing that in the mall at Darling Harbour, the USA Outlet was just across from...

Silk Road! It's like two familiar worlds colliding!

Sydney has their own monorail. That's just cool.

Name the iconic building in the background!

And this is me publicly being sad that my sister wasn't with us to visit there.

We took a whale watching tour. We saw one whale. Pour guy must have been left behind by his buddies. And he was shy, because we never got a good shot of him. And by we, I mean Matt, as I was too busy making sure that I wasn't dizzy on the boat.

From Sydney we flew out west. It was a shame on one hand to be in Australia and not visit the Great Barrier Reef, but we're so super glad that we chose to fly out to Perth then drive up to Exmouth instead. The time we spent out west was very relaxing after all the touristy things we had done in Melbourne and Sydney.

On the drive out of Perth, we stopped to see the Pinnacles. They are just bunches and bunches of limestone rock sprouting out of the ground really, really tall.

Yes, we did, in fact, have to watch out for kangaroos crossing the road during the drive.

Hard to tell, but you can kind of see me standing underneath. We stopped here and had fun looking at the Milky Way and remembering how to find the Southern Cross. Great moments under the stars like that remind us both of Africa (insert contented sigh here).

This is the view off one of the beaches in Exmouth where we stayed for 6 nights. It was peak season here, can't you tell? Pretty much all the beaches were like this: gorgeous and basically deserted.

Our conclusion: emus aren't pretty birds, though they try so hard to be by walking dignified.

We hiked in a gorge. Great views, but some seriously steep inclines.

On the drive back down, we caught this sign during the day. Makes a much better picture.

We enjoyed a few down days back in Perth before flying back to Melbourne to catch our flight out of country. One of those days was my 30th birthday. Here's to celebrating another momentous birthday in a country that's not my home!

Australia, thanks for the fun memories you gave us. Glad we got to see you, but gotta say...glad we're going to back to a place we can call home and can have fun retelling stories of our weeks together.