Crikey!

Two news items of note. The first is a news clip about a shark hanging out around North Stradbroke Island, which some of you loyal readers may know as one of my favorite day trip spots. The video is only about a minute and a half long.

Second news item: Huge 4.7m crocodile caught at popular swimming hole. This croc was found in a swimming hole up in the Northern Territory, sort of near where we were doing lots of swimming in popular swimming holes. My favorite line from the article, "He had barnacles growing on him, which suggests he's been in saltwater for quite some time." Barnacles! Crazy!

One year in Oz

We've been here for just over a year! Can you believe it? I remember writing home to my sister about two weeks into it, crying, and telling her that I wanted to go home. She told me that it would get easier and that the year would fly by. I didn't believe her, but wouldn't you know it? She was right!

Of course, it hasn't hurt that we've had visitors almost nonstop since December, and that we went home for a visit in June and that I went home again in September/October. It also doesn't hurt that we've been able to visit some amazing places since we've been here (just wait for the Kakadu post) and we've got even more trips planned.

For now we're smack dab in the middle of our second spring in the Southern Hemisphere. The jacarandas are in full bloom and the days are warm and dry and they're predicting the warm and dry weather to continue all summer, thanks to El Nino.

I think it will be too hard to summarize the past year, but that's the point of the blog, isn't it? If you want a relive any moments, just use the directory over to the right there.------>

Here we are a year ago. Obviously, this was taken when we were still in California.

When Roxy was still Bruce.

Here we are now (well, a few weeks ago in the Northern Territory):

Croc-free waters.

If you haven't visited us yet, you still have time! Plan your trip! Buy your tickets! (Try to avoid December, January and February, though. It gets pretty warm 'round these parts.) Thanks to all of our previous visitors, I know all of the best places to take out-of-towners for day trips. Like this place:

Moreton Island: Just a short ferry ride away.

Or this place, just an hour's drive:

Mt. Ngungun. If a baby can hike it, so can you!

Or this place:

North Stradbroke Island looks like California, but the water is warm and there are kangaroos.

We've got a couple of empty months coming up. We don't have anyone scheduled to visit us, so we're going to have to do some exploring on our own.

(This post is a bit scatterbrained, but it's better than nothing, right?)

What we've been up to...

I know it's been a while since the last meaningful update. Sorry! We've been busy around these parts. In reverse chronological order:

• Five days ago. We celebrated our one year anniversary in Australia.
• Six day ago. Nate's cousin Ashley dropped in for a visit. She's traveling through Australia and stopped in on us for an extra long weekend.
• Nine days ago. Roxy turned 10 months old!!
• Twenty-six days ago. Roxy and I traveled to California for a visit with friends and family. The wedding of my college roommate Sibila was the impetus for the visit.
• Thirty-three days ago. We all traveled to the Northern Territory to explore Kakadu National Park with some entomologist friends.

I don't know how much of that I will get through in this post, so I will start with the easiest.

Roxy turned 10 months old

She's not crawling officially yet, but she gets around. In this photo, she's wedged herself underneath the sofa and she's not very happy about it. She gets herself 'stuck' somewhere once or twice a day.

"Put down the camera and help me!"

Ai yai yai! I only made it through one bullet point. Good thing it was a cute one. More to come.

new post coming soon

It's been nearly a month since our last post. Some monster posts are coming soon. We were camping in the Northern Territory for a week, then Roxy and I went to California for two weeks. I left my computer in Brissie and could download my photos until today (we flew in about five hours ago).

Keep tuned in.