Look how Quincy let himself go while we were away!

I always will want to remember how Quincy, our 7 year old cocker spaniel,  looked when I picked him up after a 9 and a half week absence. I really had to look closely to be sure it was him. I briefly thought that maybe there was a Q-dog look alike who was older, fatter and less well groomed than our dog in Jane's household. As it turned out, he's not fatter, just fluffier. He goes to the beauty parlor tomorrow. We're so happy to be back home with him. THANK YOU so much, Jane, for loving and looking after the big guy.

Last post!

In less than 24 hours we'll be leaving 3 Male Street, Apt 210 in Brighton, Victoria, Australia. Here's a picture of Joe standing on the terrace of our apartment. It was a great place to spend 9 weeks. We will always remember fondly our time here in Australia!

Creepy Crawlies on the beach in Frankston

Joe and Sandra and I took a little road trip today (our last day in Australia!) to see these fun sand sculptures.  The sand used is different from your usual beach sand. Each grain of beach sand is round but this sand, called "brickers sand" is square so it holds together better. It took the sculptors (some flown in from as far away as Texas) to do these sculptures and they were certainly hampered by all the rain. Once a sculpture is complete they're sprayed with something that protects them somewhat from the wind and rain, but until then, they're vulnerable. Apparently the artists would come in the morning (after a night of rain) and have a lot of rebuilding to do. The end results were fabulous though!

Did you know the average worker bee only produces 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime?

The world's largest cockroach comes from Australia -- 9 cm and 30 grams.

The "Exterminator"

Port Phillip Bay in Frankston

Made me giggle

Love all the slang terms here -- especially "chooks"

Another Aussie English lesson

A picnic on the beach! Here are some things to load into the back end of your ute (be sure to fill it with petrol before the trip): a big esky filled with biscuits, a pizza covered in aluminium, a salad of rocket, mushies and capsicum. Maybe you'd get take-away chook and some chips. The kids are going to want some lollies for dessert and maybe some icy poles too if you can keep them frozen. You'd also pack into your ute your bathers (a confident bloke would bring his budgie smuggler), your thongs for walking along the beach, a singlet if it's hot and a jumper if it's cold. Some in the group might want to get some exercise so they better bring their runners.
Did you remember everything? Spare tyre? Mobile? Good on ya! Let's get going!
Later, at the carpark, you'll turn on your indicator, pull over to the kerb, and open the boot to get out everything.  Time to put the shrimp on the barbie!

Christmas day on Brighton Beach

After a very delicious Christmas lunch at Jim and Sandra's we took a walk along the beach. There are over 80 of these bathing boxes, and this post is going to be filled with pictures of some of my favorites. It's been strange to be where it's warm at Christmastime but what has made it even more novel an experience for us is to be where it's so light so late. These pictures were taken at 7:00 in the evening.
I'm glad we've been here this year but when next year's "festive season" (as they call it here) comes around, I'll be happy to be in wintery North America. That just is Christmas to me as is being with our friends and loved ones. Love and miss you "dahlings"!

Merry Christmas and goodbye Tim and Olivia

It's 9:30 Christmas morning. Tim and Olivia just got in the cab to begin their long trip home. We all had a breakfast of eggs and toast together here in Brighton, Victoria Australia, and they'll get to LA about 17 hours from now at 7:45 AM  to have another Christmas morning breakfast. I guess if you're going to have a two-day long day, Christmas day is the one to have it on.
They had a great trip on the Great Ocean Road, in large part due to the crazy cast of characters with them on the tour. It was all young people backpacking. Several were young men from England who were just doing the tour to kill time till the real purpose of their visit to Melbourne: the big cricket match at Melbourne Cricket Grounds on Boxing Day.  I think it's something like the "Ashes tournament". Wish I understood the game and cared about this rivalry because it seems to be about as big as a rivalry can be. Oh well, it would be wasted on us to go to that match tomorrow. We're thinking of going to the IMAX theater to see "Megamind".

Christmas Eve in Melbourne

Tim and Olivia should be home in a couple of hours from their 2 day tour of the Great Ocean Road.  They were lucky to have good weather. Wasn't super hot, but it's been sunny. I just heard on the news that Queensland is so flooded that there are lots of cars stranded on some highway in that state due to roads covered with water and pavement disintegrating. They were interviewing folks stuck there and they're not too happy about the long delay(since yesterday apparently). One guy said, "Try spending a night in a ute (pickup truck) with the windows up because of the mosquitoes." Sounds miserable! We, on the other hand, had a fun day. We took the train into the city just to soak up the atmosphere there. I thought I'd take pictures of us on the train platform and on the train. We've gotten all over the place these past 8 and a half weeks using trains and trams. I have to get a picture of the Australian Open tram! We snapped some photos of Federation Square and we walked through the free Australian National Gallery of Victoria and practically had the place to ourselves. I must admit, if I were at home, the last thing I'd be doing on Christmas Eve is going to an art museum. This is just an unorthodox Christmas for us this year. I haven't bought a gift, baked a thing, sent a card or decorated anything. When Tim and Olivia get here, we're ordering Thai food for take-out. I did buy some Christmas truffles. That's my one and only Christmas purchase.

Middle Brighton train station. 

We pass this everyday just before we get to Flinders Street station. It's the AAMI and I don't know what it stands for

but I know it's where they have soccer and "footy" which is Australian rules football.

Overlooking the Atrium from inside the NGV.

A day of bicycling

Today was the second time Joe and I have rented bikes and done this trip, and just like the last time, I forgot my camera! Olivia took a couple of pictures with her phone and emailed them to me, but her phone's battery was about gone, so I didn't get many. It was a gorgeous day -- finally-- and we were out in it pretty much every bit of it. Tim and Olivia didn't have enough sunblock on and they're burned, but being young and from a North America winter, they're happy to have the color and are hopeful that it will all turn to tan. We tried to warn them about the powerful sun here.
Anyway, about our trip today . . .  we went from Federation Square to Docklands where we finally found the Webb Bridge. The skyline picture includes Etihad stadium where big events are held as well as Australian rules football. Unfortunately the AFL season was just ending when we got here, because we would have enjoyed seeing a match. It's now cricket season, but I just don't see that being a sport I care much about. Apparently, Boxing Day (which I know is the day after Christmas, but other than that, I don't get what that day is all about) there will be a huge, important (to those who care) match between England and Australia.
The other picture is of the sculpture "Cow up a tree" by John Kelly. I just learned (love the internet!) that he was inspired by papier-mache cows that some man named William Dobell was commissioned to make during WWII. He was to move them around airport bases in the hope of fooling Japanese pilots (it's not clear why this would fool pilots!). Anyway, John Kelly liked these cows then imagined them being washed away in a flood; thus the "cow up a tree"
We then continued south along the bay to St. Kilda. Tim ordered an iced coffee at a nice outdoor spot along the beach and it came with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in it. He didn't expect that! Conversely, apparently if you order a milkshake here, it means milk with syrup mixed together -- no ice cream.

A Golly of my very own

I posted about these Golliwog dolls the first week or so of our visit here, so I won't repeat what they are, but I have a new story to tell you about them. When Oprah was here a week or two ago, the newspapers reported that while she was in Melbourne, she'd be visiting the Royal Arcade where there's a toy store which sells these Golliwogs. The article stated that the Oprah producers asked the store to take the "Mammy" doll, which has a yellow scarf around her head and a yellow and black dress, out of the window because they thought it would offend Oprah. I was in this store yesterday and the store owner told me that none of that was true. They had already had their window displays planned for the holiday season and the color scheme was pinks and silvers and there would never have been a doll with a yellow and black striped dress in that window. So, another example of how you can't believe everything you read. The shop owner did tell me that Oprah bought a golliwog. Here's my golliwog, Maisie.

Tennis at Melbourne Park

We headed to Melbourne Park to watch the finals of the Australian Open wildcard play-off. We were watching the women's final between Jelena Dokic (a name and face I recognized) against the #2 seed whose name I now can't even remember. Dokic had won the 1st set and it was 3 all in the tie-breaker of the second set when it just started pouring. We had umbrellas but still got pretty wet. They decided to move the match indoors to a court that didn't have great viewing so we left. You can see the black clouds looming in the picture.

Maroondah Reservoir

We went to this park and reservoir and Jim and Sandra were amazed at the difference in the water level. They had never in their 5 years here seen the waterfall of spill-over water. All this rain has made for pretty waterfalls but I could have been happy with weaker waterfalls and less rain!

Yering Station for lunch then on to Domaine Chandon

Healesville Sanctuary

A koala with insomnia! We actually watched him jump from one perch to another.

This Tasmanian Devil was racing all around like a crazed devil--Ha ha! 

Picture-less post but funny stories

Two days of traveling on the train with Tim and Olivia and we had two funny encounters:
A young guy who had some obvious mental deficiencies got out of his seat a few rows behind us and sat across from us (next to three other young guys who were smirking at each other as they overheard his conversation with us). When he found out Tim and Olivia are from Chicago, he said, "Bummer. It's too violently liberal there. I think the next president should be the Terminator. He could be called the Presinator." He went on and on about his feelings about American politics.
Today a lady told us, "I've been to the U.S. several times. I went to Memphis." When Joe said, "Home of the King," she said, "Yeah, the true king - Jerry the King Lawler." She then proceeded to tell us all about this wrestler we'd never heard of and how she's his #1 fan and to prove it a documentary had been made about her passion for him. I think she said she has over 7,000 DVDs of him. Just before she got off the train she said, "I love America so much more than this place." Then she pulled up her sleeve and showed us her tattoo which was a heart with the American flag in it and the words above and below it were that she's a southern girl and "God bless the USA". No time to take a picture-- darn. What characters! Hearing our American accents brings out all the crazies.

Tim and Olivia are here!

Tim and Olivia admiring the street art on Hosier Lane (wish there was one more O in that word -- I'd steal the sign!)

Tim and Olivia arrived safe and sound. I was sitting on the terrace reading and watching for them. It was a relief to see them pull up (a little later than I'd expected them). In my usual way of "catastrophizing", I was thinking, "What if they forgot to bring our address and phone number with them. How would we ever find each other?!" Don't know why I do this! We went to the Balaclava area and had lunch at Las Chicas. Very yummy and funky little restaurant. Then back on the train to downtown to wander around and see the busyness of it all. There seems to be a lot more people in the CBD now. The Christmas windows in front of the Myer department store were packed and there was a long wait just to get to the start. Here's a picture I took a long time ago of one of the windows-- before the crowds.

Point Nepean National Park in Portsea

We decided to take the one hour tour of this park on the very tip of the Mornington Peninsula. It was a lovely ride, but we were freezing! It's hard to believe it was low 80s and sunny just yesterday. We passed the Cheviot Beach where, on a December day in 1967, Harold Holt, the Prime Minister, decided to go for a swim against the urging of the friends and body guards with him. He dove into the surf and shortly disappeared and was never seen again.
The driver took this picture. As you can see, we were the only ones on the train. We apologized for making him do the trip and he said they drive the train each hour even if it's empty. We tried to talk him into letting us sit in the tractor with him, but he said there was no room, but that he'd turn on his air conditioner so he'd be cold too.

 

Cape Schanck Lighthouse and Bushranger Bay walk

The thimble-shaped rock is called Pulpit's Point.

We walked down to it through some really strong wind!

Montalto Winery

Sandra and I had a fabulous lunch at this winery. I don't know why I didn't take any pictures of the beautiful restaurant, but here's one of the vineyard. There are dozens of lovely little boutique wineries in the area. The bonus of visiting this wine country rather than the Yarra Valley is that the Port Phillip Bay and the Bass Strait are nearby so there's some beautiful coastline. It was a blustery day today so we didn't do as much beachy stuff as we would have on a summery day, but it was great to see nonetheless.

Arthur's Seat Look-out and the Enchanted Maze on the Mornington Peninsula