New Zealand Day 7: New Year's Eve at Lake Wanaka

We left Queenstown for the hamlet of Wanaka. We used some of our credit card bonus points to book a room at a swanky B&B. The guidebook said, "Wanaka wakes up in a big way for New Year's Eve," so we expected things to be a little crowded.

We were not disappointed! The streets were filled with teenagers - lots of lads and ladettes with bad haircuts and bottles of blue Powerade. Do I sound like an old lady? Just wait until you hear what we did to ring in 2010!

The banks of Lake Wanaka.

Our B&B was pretty nice. Nate swiped the biodegradable bottle of organic peppermint hand soap and I took a nap under the possum fur blanket on top of possum fur pillows. We figured that set probably cost at least $1,000! ooh la la!

We had an early dinner because every restaurant in town was booked up for seatings after 6:00. We took a leisurely stroll back to our B&B, put the baby down for the night, shared a tray of New Zealand cherries (DELICIOUS!) and were snoozing before it was fully dark outside. We didn't hear any midnight revelers and slept through the fireworks over the lake. Unlike most of them, our alarm clock doesn't have an off switch and she was chirping bright and early on New Year's Day.

These two pictures are the only ones I took in Wanaka. We would recommend you skip it.

New Zealand Day 6: Queenstown

We woke up to a rainbow in Manapouri, a small town near Te Anau. I asked the lady at the front desk of our hotel if they get a rainbow like this every morning. "Well, not every morning. But we get them a lot."

We hightailed it to Queenstown, which is situated on Lake Wakatipu near The Remarkables mountain range. The Remarkables is featured in Lord of the Rings and is a pretty popular place to ski in the winter. We admired it from the car and it really is quite remarkable.

Lake Wakatipu had gorgeous blue water. Sorry - no photo of The Remarkables.

We decided to embrace our touristness and do what most people do when they go to Queenstown in the summer: eat a Fergburger and Bungy Jump. We checked Fergburger off the list; Roxy and I shared a Bun Laden (veggie burger) and Nate had a Little Lamby (lamb with mint jelly).

Outside of Fergburger before the line was out the door.

After lunch, we walked down the street and paid a lot of money to get tied to a rubberband and pushed off of a bridge. Queenstown is the home to modern bungy jumping, so we figured, why not? We're not too cool.

The bungy site was so incredible gorgeous. The bridge is over the Karawau River, which is a brilliant turquoise color, and is pretty cold (which I found out when I dipped my fingers in the water while hanging upside-down).

Wide shot of the bridge and river.

There goes Nate!

There goes Cory!

The equipment they used was surprisingly low-tech. They used bath towels to pad the space around our legs, and they paddled out in an inflatable raft with a PVC pole to get the swinging jumpers after the jump.

The staff working on the boat had enormous biceps!

They're making money hand over fist. They probably have 20 people jump every hour, and if the tickets price wasn't enough, they charge $70 each for photos and DVDs (we passed). We did get shirts that say "Jumper" on them and had an adrenaline rush for the rest of the day. Lots of fun!

We headed out of bustling Queenstown and on to the small hamlet of Glenorchy. We stayed in a room above a bar, right across the street from the Possum Fur store. The Australian possums are destroying the native trees, so it's good for the environment to buy a sweater made of possum fur or a possum fur coat.

One of the few buildings in downtown Glenorchy.

We were the only occupants that night and we got to sleep with the heater on! Our bedroom was in one room with a sink. The toilet was across the hall and the shower was next door. It was kind of like a college dorm and was ideal for us because the baby went to sleep at 7, so we locked her in the bedroom and stayed up to watch Superman in the lounge room next to our bedroom.

New Zealand Day 4: Te Anau

We had a lot of driving to do on Day Four. Luckily for us, we took the Southern Scenic Route to our next destination. I didn't get many photos of the drive, so just imagine sweeping landscapes, lush green hills filled with fluffy white sheep and snow-capped mountains peeking up in the distance.

Not even close to doing justice to the scenic drive.

We stopped in Te Anau, a tourist town that serves as a base camp for trips into the Fjordland. Basically, it's a place for tour buses to pick up hundreds of tourists who want to see Milford Sound (tomorrow). It's also a starting point for hikers to start on the Milford Track, which is one of New Zealand's "Great Walks." The Milford Track is called The Finest Walk in the World (Ahem. If you want to hike instead of walk, try the John Muir Trail), and we would have loved to do it. Alas, one-third of our party would be scooting up the trail instead of walking, so we have to save it for another trip.

Te Anau doesn't have much to offer, so we rested up after a big travel day and looked forward to the next day's visit to Milford Sound.

Family portrait (crashed by friendly Fletcher the Dog) on the banks of Lake Te Anau.

New Zealand Day 3: The Catlins and Curio Bay

We bid a farewell to the fur seals and albatross and continued south towards the southernmost point of the south island.

We drove to the Catlins Conservation Park, which is an underrated region of farmland, forest and beaches. The weather was gorgeous, so we found a track to walk and got up close and personal with the New Zealand flora.

Descending into the forest.

Nate heading up for a closer look at McLean Falls.

We found a place surfer's hostel with a spare bed in Curio Bay, which was a great spot. Very remote with only a few hostels and a campsite overlooking the oceans where rare Hector's dophins splash and play.

Our room in the hostel. The place was a bit run down, but the ocean was within walking distance.

We at dinner at Blue Cod Blues, which was the only place to get food for 25 kms. Good burgers and the fish and chips were wrapped in newspaper.

"I've got the blue cod blues..."

Our hostel was just down the road from a petrified forest, which doubles as a burrowing site for a yellow-eyed penguin colony. The Maori name for the penguins in hoiho and they are featured on the NZ $5 note (Sir Edmund Hillary and Mt. Cook are featured on the other side of that note, but we'll get to them in a few days).

View of the petrified forest. Those rocks are fossilized trees from the Jurrasic - pretty awesome!

The penguins arrive back on the beach around dusk after a long day of fishing. Their arrival was a bit earlier than the blue penguins we missed up in the Otago Peninsula, so we were able to keep Roxy up long enough to see them.

I left Nate and Roxy on the beach and went to find a loo and when I came back, this is what I saw:

The little blue rock on the left is Nate and Rox. The little white rock directly to the right of them is the first returning penguin.

We gave the penguins plenty of space as they navigated their way across the rocky beach to their burrows in the shrubs. These penguins are quite clumsy, stumbling and hopping all the way back to their home.

Mr. Penguin as he cleaned up after the work day.

Hopping to bed!

They were really quite amazing little animals and it's amazing how close we were allowed to get to them. Signs all around advised onlookers to give the penguins at least two car lengths of space and almost everybody seemed to observe that rule.

"Don't mind me! Just headin' home!" These people were actually much further from the penguin than it appears in this photo.

We saw four of them before we called it a night. Later that night at the hostel, we told our fellow travelers about seeing them. I said that I was disappointed that we saw only four. The gregarious Dutch fellow laughed and said, "ONLY four? The world's rarest penguins and you're upset you saw ONLY four?" I think he was a bit bitter because they spent five days on Stewart Island and didn't see a single kiwi bird (which is the main reason people go to Stewart Island). We had a good night talking with the Dutch couple and an American couple while the baby slept soundly in the room next to us.

Murri Christmas!

Apologies in advance: Our Christmas cards will be late this year. There's a 'postie' union strike on for tomorrow and I put the cards in the mail today at 5:01pm (sure, I'll blame the strike and not my procrastination). They say it won't affect Christmas mail deliveries, but I don't see how that's possible if there's no one around the sort the mail.

Scan of the polaroid we got at the Murri Claus meet-and-greet.

A few weeks ago, the State Library of Queensland invited children to meet and have their picture taken with Murri Claus. Who is Murri Claus, you ask? Why, he's Santa's cousin! Where does his name come from? The Murri people are indigenous Australians who traditionally occupied Queensland. 

Before he arrived, we danced and sang songs about Murri Claus and his life in the Outback. Last year Murri Claus arrived in a tinny (a small aluminum boat) on the Brisbane River. There were some rumblings about seasickness from our song leader, so this year, Murri sauntered up, fresh off the trail and accompanied by a couple of elves riding on miniature ponies.


Many of the babies in my mothers' group had their picture taken with Santa Claus at the mall. We though we would go the non-traditional route with our bub. 

Who is this? Where am I? Why is everyone so cheery but me?

I expected some tears when we handed her over to Murri, but she did pretty well and only got a little panicky when everyone was trying to get her to smile at the camera. 

She was dressed in the Christmas outfit we got it for her to wear on the plane on our Christmas adventure! We're hoping she'll charm the flight attendants and maybe we can get some free headphones for the flight. 


So a very Murri Christmas to you all! We're celebrating it at the beginning of a nice, hot Brisbane summer. While a lot of you are shoveling your way out of a snowstorm or inching your way through a foggy morning, we're trying to beat the heat! Sure wish you were here!

Current favorite movie

Escape Artist

I was talking to my friend Katie the other day about her cat Brix. Apparently, Brix, an indoor cat, got his first taste of the outdoors a couple of weeks ago and now all he wants is to get outside again.

It made me think of Roxy. She is scooting all over the place these days. I'm afraid my long evening walks get a bit boring for her when she's stuck sitting in the pram for so long. She also doesn't do all that well when I try to browse at the shops. Instead of climbing out, she tries to scoot out of her pram.

While thumbing through some greeting cards, I turned around and saw this:

Lucky for me (and her!), she didn't have all the kinks worked out:

Those pesky feet sure get in the way.

I don't think she appreciated my laughter...or the laughter of a fellow shopper.

She spends some time every day looking longingly through the security gate we've installed on the front door.

"Nobody knows... the trouble I've seen...."

She's got a game plan, though. Sometimes I find the friends that she's sent to get help.

Her most trusted friend, Giraffe Reimsen. She should probably send one of her friends with legs next time.

Coincidence?

I mailed some items last week and noticed something interesting about the dimensions of the Australia Post mailing box...

It is exactly the right size to mail four packages of Tim Tams!

(Only two packs are shown here, but another two would make a perfect fit.)

I mentioned my findings to the postmistress on duty. She told me that she learned about that when her daughters were living overseas and requested Tim Tam care packages. Given that Australia has one of the largest diasporas in the world (about 5% of Australians live overseas at any given time vs. 2% of Americans), and the national love of Tim Tams, methinks this is not a coincidence.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Australian Brush Turkey - not quite plump enough for dinner.

November 11

This is part of an e-mail about Remembrance Day that I wrote to my uncle, who is a veteran.

"In Australia, November 11 is called Remembrance Day. At eleven o'clock in the morning, everybody in the country observes a moment of silence for those lost in wars, and to honor the veterans of those wars. All of the news anchors, politicians and plenty of everyday folks wear a red poppy on their left lapel (as close to their heart as possible) all day because poppies bloomed on many of the worst WWI battlefields in Europe. Nobody gets a day off from work, and nobody says, 'Happy Remembrance Day.' It's a relatively solemn day and wreaths of poppies are placed at memorials and veterans gather to remember their fallen mates."

In other news...

Roxanne turned 11 months old on November 11. There's an old wives' tale that babies get cranky and grizzly right before a big developmental milestone. Well, she cranked to no end on Saturday and Monday and then all of the sudden, she started scooting deliberately all around the place.

Crankenstein Lives!!!

I shot the following video earlier today. She thinks it's a lot of fun to scoot into the bathroom and then scoot away as fast as she can when I try to get her. Sometimes she gets so excited that she just turns around in a circle before she figures which direction she wants to go. Tonight before her bath, she scooted as fast as she could to the edge of the tub and pulled herself up! Uh oh. We're installing the baby gate this weekend and keeping the bathroom door closed from now on.

[This video doesn't seem to work on Safari - anyone else having that problem? It plays in Firefox just fine.]

Ashley's Visit

Nate's only first cousin Ashley dropped in for a visit at the beginning of October. She's traveling all around Australia (she's in Western Australia at the moment), and we were lucky enough to be a part of her itinerary. We hadn't seen her in three years!

Roxy modeling her new little ripper shoes Ashley got for her.

Overseas visitors means one thing: Lots of new adventures! Ashley dubbed Rox, "Adventure Baby," because she did so well on our daily trips.

Day 1: Gold Coast, Surfer's Paradise and Coff's Harbor.

Ashley has surfing on the mind, so I thought she would be the perfect guest to take down to the Gold Coast. It's only about 75 km down the road and we haven't been there yet, so we hopped in the car to see if it really is paradise down there.

Well, it's not. When we told Nate about it that night, we used words like, 'tired,' and 'run down,' and 'not paradise,' to describe what we had seen. There were lots of skyscrapers, overpriced food, crowded roads, only so-so beaches and surf. We spent some time on the beach, but it was really windy and there were dead jellyfish in the surf, so it wasn't ideal.

One of only two pictures I took on our visit to the Gold Coast. Deserted beach because of the wind and sand.

The trip wasn't a total bust. We escaped the Brissie heat and also drove over the border into New South Wales for about ten seconds, just to say we did it.

Day 2: Moreton Island

The next day we ventured off-shore. Ashley works for a ferry company in Alaska, so we decided to take a local ferry to Moreton Island, the 2nd (3rd?) largest sand island in the world. It's just off the coast of Brisbane, about an hour and a half by boat. It's very sparsely populated, but there are lots of campsites and the only non-camping accommodation is the spendy Tangalooma Resort. We just went for the day.

Ferry ride!

Lots of activities to partake in on the island.

Day 3: Glasshouse Mountains

Day 3 was a Saturday, so Nate was off work and joined us on our adventures. We drove north to the Glasshouse Mountains, which are in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. We were in Australia Zoo territory and traveled on Steve Irwin Way for a portion of our trip. The guidebook describes the Glasshouse Mountains as, "ethereal volcanic crags...[that] rise abruptly from subtropical plains." Sounded promising, and lucky us, it delivered!

We hiked up to the top of Mt. Ngungun after a picnic and we could see all the way to the Sunshine Coast.

Ashley in the Ngungun Cave on the way up the hill.

Stopping at a look-out on the way up.

Ashley setting the self-timer with the Sunshine Coast in the background.

Extreme breastfeeding!

Day 4: Sunshine Coast, Moolooba, Peregian Beach

We piled in the car the next day and drove north again, this time in search of beautiful beaches. The Sunshine Coast did not disappoint! We have been up there for when my mom visited in February, but Rox was just a wee thing back then and the weather didn't really cooperate, so we didn't get a lot of quality beachtime.

This time we had perfect weather and a game baby. We started out with a yummy fresh lunch in Moolooba and drove up to the lovely Peregian Beach where we spent the afternoon tanning (Ashley), napping (Nate), reading (Cory) and eating sand (guess who).

Nate built Rox a fortress in the sand.

The dancer in Ashley came out when it came to posture.

She got a smooch for walking so well. Lookatthosebuns!!!

Ashley flew onto Perth the next day. She thought she might come back our way if the beaches in Perth weren't as good as the Queensland beaches. The last I heard from her, she was snorkeling with turtles and sharks, so I think we might not see her again on this trip. It was great to have her and we had a great time exploring so many new places!

Happy Halloween!

Skeleton Baby dances with ghosts!

Halloween isn't really a big deal here, but we were invited to a Halloween Party by Nate's Aussie boss and his American wife. It was a party for kids, so there were about a dozen little specters running around. Most of the little girls were dressed as witches (although there was a notable SuperGirl-Who-Flew-Into-A-Building) and the boys were dressed in whatever costume would allow them to carry the biggest toy weapon, i.e. machete, sword, AK-47. It was pretty much like Halloween party in America.

Coven leader Jade making a deal with Skeleton Baby

We had hotdogs and hamburgers and ate cupcakes adorned with imported candy corn and candy pumpkins. Just to remind us that we are in Australia, someone brought over pavlovas adorned with chocolate spiderwebs. Pavlovas are an extremely popular dessert here. I love them; Nate feels just the opposite.

Spooky!

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?)