HAPPY 2007!

Here's to everyone at home...we wish you a 2007 full of happiness, good health, and love.

We had an unforgettable evening watching the fireworks over the Sydney Harbor Bridge, Opera House, and Sydney skyscape from our carefully staked lookout. The fireworks were like none we'd ever seen and the company was superb. Good times were had by all but it was a pretty tame New Year's Eve as far as they go.

Mike's resolution: To eat little to no processed sugar. (I know...he's crazy!)
My resolution: To stop cheating and eating fish. (Don't worry...I'll eat enough protein Mom and Dad!)

Sydney in a few days...

After the tournament Cara, Whit, Claire, and I were invited into "The Wedge" a three story apartment in the Sydney suburb of Newtown inhabited by frisbee friends: Nadine, Marcus, Emily, and Greg. We have taken over the living room in this large apartment. Newtown is a hip neighborhood in Sydney. King street, which is just outside the window is full of cafes, pubs, restaurants, and book stores. It is also close to the oldest university in Australia, University of Sydney.

For our first day at The Wedge we took advantage of some free passes to the Sydney Aquarium provided by our amazing host Nadine. We saw all types of fish and learned a few things as well. Did you know that the male platypus has a venomous spur on their hind legs? It's not enough to kill a human, but it will give you a sting. We also saw a salt water crocodile, seals, nurse sharks, a ray-shark, and a guitar-fish.

That night we met two friends (Ru traveling from Germany and McTee traveling from the Bay Area) in Bondi Beach for dinner at a Thai restaurant. Ru and McTie were leaving for New Zealand the next day to continue their adventures. They traveled across Australia after Worlds in a VW campervan, a good way to go if you've got the money and time. After dinner we went to our first "RSL club" to find some cheap beer. RSL clubs are equivalent to VFW's in the U.S., except with alcohol. The clubs are different from the pubs because they only allow in locals who are members of the club and visitors who can prove they don't live within a certain distance of the club...a couple thousand miles back to Texas was sufficient. Because they are exclusive they have entertainment for their members such as pokie machines (video poker) which makes money so they can lower their price of beer. It's a nice alternative to most of the expensive pubs in Australia.

The next day was a rainy day, so we decided to venture out into Newtown and enjoy some coffee in a cafe while reading and writing post cards back home. By the time we got back it was time to watch Borat! Amazing! After a few more hours whiling away at The Wedge we were invited to play in Sydney's Ultimate League play. They split up into about four divisions based on skill and play one game a week on Tuesday nights. The league pretty much lasts all year round. A different take on league play which seems to be the norm in Australia. Whit and I played on the Inner West team, while Cara and Claire played on other teams. Also, teams get to choose their players instead of a random draft.

The next day was also overcast and we split up to stay with separate frisbee friends in different parts of the city. Cara and I moved to Surry Hills to stay with Ed, a friend Cara met at the Melbourne Hat Tournament. Ed was born in Australia and grew up in Canada, and just moved back to live in Australia after spending six years as a lawyer in Canada. While we were staying with him he accepted a job as a recruiter hired out to law firms. Congratulations! Claire and Whit moved in to a house in Bondi lived in by a work-friend from the Bay Area. Surry Hills is another very nice part of town which is nicely located near a lot of pubs and restaurants. Ed lives with 3 roommates and a friend who is living their currently. Dave, Michael, and Tiernan are all from Ireland working for awhile in Australia and Steve is from the UK. After settling into Ed's place Cara and I got ready for our big date to the play "Babes in the Wood" at the OPERA HOUSE!
















Ed told us of a beer and pizza dinner for $10 which happens on Wednesdays at a local pub just a block away. The price sounded right so we headed to dinner just before 6pm when the deal started. We arrived a little early so we order a drink to wait it out. We each ordered a pizza and beer which truly was $10 a piece. What we received was amazing! A huge gourmet pizza (I got the Spanish and Cara got the Salmon) and a long-neck (750 mls) Cooper's Ale...which is a quality beer. We each ate half of our pizza and took the rest to eat the next day. Finishing the beers got us to a good place to ride the train to Circular Quay and the Opera House. It was an awesome experience to actually get to see a play in the Opera House. The play was a really good social/political satire on present day Australian life, and therefore present day Western society in general. It was very entertaining and thought provoking. So the play was great, but the views of the Harbor and Opera House at night at intermission were reason enough to go.

Thursday was a beautiful day. We met Whit and Claire at Bondi Beach. Mark (Steve's brother visiting from Japan where he is working in the JET program) and Ed joined us at the beach as well. We hung out on the beach, surfed, swam, and played paddle ball. The beach was crowded in a nice way. The sand along the east coast is very fine and soft. Not beautifully white like Destin, Florida but golden and of similar texture. We ended our day at the beach at dusk with some fish and chips and a beer in a pub overlooking the bay. That night we met up with Claire and Whit in Surry Hills to wander around and find a pub and some grub. Our grub was delicious Indian restaurant called Maya's on Cleveland St. where we had masala dosas. We then met up with Ed and his roommates at the Dolphin pub on the way back home.

Friday morning we picked up our brand new Toyota Camry rental car from Apollo rentals and headed towards the Blue Mountains to begin our Roadtrip of New South Wales Holiday Extravaganza! There's another whole post about that one...check it out.

(P.S. Check out the updated pictures from the Great Ocean Road entry below!)

Happy Holidays indeed!

The last week has been yet another series of mind blowing (Skizzip phrase) experiences.





Here's a link to a video Whit made of Claire cutting my hair...it's pretty awesome.


Also, Claire and Whit's blog is way cooler (they like technology) and has details about the road trip that we didn't include, not to mention loads more pictures. Check it out. www.drewd.com/clairenwhit

Sydney Beach Tournament: Longest Day


Cara, Claire, Whit, and I played with Blokes and Sheilas, a co-ed team from Canberra, in the Sydney beach tournament today. It was a one day tournament with beautiful weather all day and an amazing beach to play on. With all the free fruit (grapes, lychee fruit, oranges, mangoes, asian pears, nectarines, apricots, peaches, watermelon, apricots, pineapple, papaya, cherries, and strawberries...not kidding) we could eat and a lagoon nearby to swim in, it could not have been a better set up for a day of beach frisbee. We even got a little game of beach cricket in before our last game!

Our team was great fun and we made some new friends. Thanks to Leon and all the other Blokes and Sheilas for letting us play with them.













One of the best things about tournaments here is the whole weekend is typically full of tournament related entertainment. The Friday night before both tournaments we've played in there was a round of urban disc golf, usually played in a local city park/gardens. The night we arrived in Sydney was the Friday before the tourney, so we all got to play a round of disc golf at a park just across the harbour from the Sydney Opera House. It made for an incredible background. The next day, on Saturday night, there was a holiday pub crawl for a local charity that was being endorsed by the tournament, so there were quite a few frisbee players at that as well. We all dressed up (Cara was Rudolph) and headed down to Manly, a surfer and barfly community north of Sydney.













Tomorrow we begin exploring Sydney. Big thanks to Warwick, Mike, and Rosemary for all the food and a nice bed to sleep in the last three nights.

-Tank

Great Ocean Road; Mt. Kosciuszko; Canberra

It's been a while, but...finally...here are the pictures of the Great Ocean Road, Mt. Kosciuszko, and Canberra that we promised oh so long ago. But, I accidentally erased about 12 pictures from this leg of our journey...technology and I just don't get along.

GREAT OCEAN ROAD:


As you can see our trip along the Great Ocean Road, Australia's answer to California's Hwy. 101, started out splendidly! We got a flat tire about 80 km. out of Melbourne. But nothing could stand between us and the ocean vistas, sheer cliffs, koalas, quaint towns, and famous surfing beaches so touted by Victorians, so we quickly performed some tyre maintenance and went merrily on our way.

We decided in the interest of time and money (the GOR is a tourist trap with expensive accommodation) to hit the whole thing in one day, stopping at the standards and moving along. This isn't really that hard to do, since it's pretty short. Our first stop was an amazing 20 minute walk through a rain forest. I thought all the rain forest environments were in the north, but it turns out that they also have temperate rain forests in the south.

























Then Mike spotted our first koala. He was on a tree branch directly over the road, and just his little head was sticking out from behind the branch. It was really funny because it looked like he was contemplating suicide hanging right over the road like that and looking down at the road. We took a turn off at the advice of our Lonely Planet book and drove for another few kilometers before we hit the jackpot of koala habitat. Within one km. we saw at least 10 koala...we were so excited. I hereby claim NO responsibility for the long term effects of the next series of pictures BLOWING YOUR MIND. We went a little koala crazy:



The light stinks in the picture, but this little guy was climbing the tree, and stopped to inspect us.























This one was walking across the road at a leisurely pace as we were driving by. They look really funny when they walk because we're so used to seeing them in trees.













This was by far the most awesome thing we saw on the entire GOR. It's a mamma koala (right) clutching her baby (left) as they both sleep, in case you can't see because of the shadows. They just sat there sleeping and hugging, hugging and sleeping.











We took a sunset stroll along the beach.


















The most photographed spot in all of Australia, the Twelve Apostles, are actually only 7 rocks that jut out of the ocean right off shore.



















MT. KOSCIUSZKO:


We arrived at Mt. Kosciuszko National Park on Tuesday after hightailing it from the Great Ocean Road and Melbourne that morning. We found a sweet campsite thanks to a really funny local guy who talked fast and knew a lot about the park. The ranger station was closed, so he let us in on all the tips. We camped in a valley next to a huge open field. At dusk, hundreds of kangaroos came out to feed in the field, and one of them even tried to take our dinner.








Here's a picture of the sneaky little guy. I thought he was going to pounce, but we scared him off with rocks.
















Mike was set on hiking the tallest mountain in Australia, Mt. Kosciusko...you know...that man vs. nature thing. =) It's only 2,228 meters tall (~7000 ft.) but it still felt like a mountain. Especially since we decided to forgo the trail and hike straight up. There is a ski lift that runs during the summer taking lazy tourists halfway up the mountain leaving them to hike the remaining 13 k on a metal grade hiking track (booo!! too easy!), but we need all the exercise we can get these day without ultimate training everyday. Turns out, it's also $23 round trip a person for the sweet ride to the halfway point. We told ourselves that we weren't taking the Gondola because it wouldn't count as hiking the mountain, but really we were just too cheap.


We climbed up the steep grade that followed the ski lift to the walking track and had an easy climb the rest of the way. The flies were awful almost the whole way up, but the view was nice. All the valleys to the west were full of smoke from the bush fires, but the eastern valleys were visible. The landscape was interesting. There weren't any trees, even though I think it's still under tree line...it was more like a boulder strewn tundra with small hardy plants and streams running through lichen covered rocks. We also saw the highest alpine lake in Australia on our way up. We ate lunch at the top (I deleted the picture...booo) and started the long trek down to make it to Canberra before dark.















CANBERRA:

We got into Canberra, the capital of Australia, on Wednesday, Dec. 13th, just after hiking Mt. Kosciusko. We got in just in time to eat some delicious sushi and check out the small quadrant of coolness in the city. There was a national park nearby so we decided to camp out there for the night.



The view of the Parliament House from the National War Memorial monument and museum. The Parliament is actually built into a hill, so almost all of the building is underground. It's pretty sweet.















Wall of Remembrance "Field of Poppies". The National War Memorial. Very pretty and moving to walk through.










We stayed at a pretty shady hotel above a pub, but the pub was great...cold beer and delicious potato wedges, plus they were playing the Ashes (a cricket tournament with Britain that we've become enamored with) on huge television screens. We did some more Christmas/Hanukkah shopping during the day, visited the Parliament (amazing designs in and out) and National War Memorial, and went to the National Museum of Australia, which I have to say we were both very impressed with. It's the best museum I've ever been to, and while it's probably better from a visitors perspective, I've talked to many Australians that also think very highly of it.



The hotel we stayed at was above this pub.

Melbourne: BBQ, Bush Fires, and a Blown Tyre

We spent an amazing weekend in Melbourne with new frisbee friends. Lee and Karen welcomed us back into their apartment after our trip to Grampians. Saturday we met and drank with some of the players in the Melbourne Ultimate community in a huge beer garden and then joined them for a BBQ dinner (BBQ #1 of the weekend). This day was extremely hazy and hot because of the smoke which was blown in from the bush fires raging north-east of the city.





This picture was taken around 10 am when the smoke from the bush fires was thickest in the city.









Dave and Nicki salsa dancing!




Sunday, after spending the night at Dave and Nicki's apartment, we joined them at their friend's house for a pre-Christmas celebration BBQ (#2) with some of their friends. We made the "Death row Salad" recipe we learned from Lisa and had our first shrimp on the barbie. There was tons of great food and we even had our second helping of Pavlova! Dave and Nicki were nice enough to bring us along to Dave's parent's house for another BBQ (#3). They are an orienteering family, and we got to hear about his dad's travels on cargo ships and trains. It was another great meal. All four of us put on a great show of eating.


Monday we headed out of Melbourne for the Great Ocean Road in our small rental car. Before we were even 100 km out of town we blew our back right tyre. After a quick change, thankful for the full size spare, we were back on the road. The Great Ocean Road was beautiful. Some of the quick highlights: beaches, coastal cliffs, huge waves, high winds, Bell's beach, and KOALAS!!! We have some great pictures which we will post soon.

We are off to Mt. Kosciuszko today and Canberra and Sydney following that.

Cheers,
Mike

"A little less talk and a lot more action..."

We listened to our viewers...here are more pictures from Melbourne in no particular sequential order...more to come later.




Me continuing my chocolate crossaint tradition in the Queen Victoria Market. Melbourne's was mediocre, NYC is still takes the award for best chocolate croissant ever.











Some sweet graffiti we saw in an alley just outside of a Melbourne arcade (mall).










Lee and Karen, our very gracious hosts, and frisbee friends, in Melbourne.











Adam, our travel buddy and fellow ultimate player, from Rice. I'm really focused on the pizza after the tourney party...and it was freezing.











Mike and I on the way back home from the tourney party. The streets are all lit up for Christmas.

The Melbourne skyline from one of the many city parks.

Melbourne is full of arcades, or malls. They are squeezed into little tiny alleyways and are many stories high. Each arcade has it's own distinct very character.

Grampians National Park- Halls Gap, Victoria

Mountains!!! I'm finally in the mountains and feel at home...ahh. Mike and I have spent the last two days in Halls Gap, Victoria...the intro to the Grampian mountain range and Grampians National Park. We took a combonation train/bus ride to get out here so have no car. Now, this made our time here a bit more complicated because there was a huge forest fire here last January and lots of the park (camping grounds, hikes, even roads) are still closed. The sites that are open are diffiuclt or expensive to get to without a car. So we chose to stay at a local Backpacker's Inn called Tim's Place because we read in our trusty book that they offered free use of mountain bikes for their guests. It's turned out to be the best place we've stayed at in Australia.





Without a car, we had to a bit of eco-traveling yesterday. We got up early and biked 17 kilometers up a mountain to hit a few beautiful lookouts and McKenzie Falls. Now, most of you know that my body is just not meant to be on a bike...I look funny and awkward and complain a lot...but it was a blast. I just kept thinking of Lorig, and wondering how in the world she biked through the U.S./Canadian Rockies considering how much trouble I was having getting up these wussy little Australian "mountains". So I thought of Lorig and forged on. We saw lots of wallabies and parrots in the forest on the way up. Evidence of the forest fires the previous January was everywhere.








McKenzie Falls











We were totally exhausted by the end of the day (45 kilometers in the moutains) but the vistas were totally worth it and we had a great time. At sunset heaps of kangaroos come out to forage in a field right next to the Inn, so we spent both days at dusk watching kangaroos and laughing because they look so silly. At night, as if we hadn't had enough time on bikes that day, we rode our bikes to a local pub with some girls from Germany we met at Tim's Place.













It was so relaxing and settling to be in the mountains, especially after being in the city for a week or so and not staying in one place for more than one night at a time. Today we're headed back to Melbourne for a few days before we leave for The Great Ocean Road and Canberra, the capital of Australia.

Love to all,
Cara

ps. Check out the sweet music video that Whit made about our adventures in Western Australia at their blog under the "Moving On" post.