Happy Australia Day! I'm off to Bali!!!

Aussie word of the day: prang = (car) wreck/ accident. "I hope I don't have a prang driving Josh's car."

Aussie phrase of the day: cotton on = catch on/ caught on. "He's cottoned on to the joke."

Today I am celebrating my second Australia Day and SM's birthday for whom I'm making a, hopefully, very delicious banana cream cheesecake... actually, it's more because I wanted to try the new recipe than because it's his birthday. This morning we were awoken by SM's dad at 8a.m. to join his parents and the neighbors for an Australia Day breakfast picnic by the lake. I meant to take a photo of Lake Leschenaultia but forgot my camera as usual. We had a family picnic there at Christmas as well. It's a beautiful little spot nestled in the wooded Chidlow area and it doesn't have snakes or snapping turtles so it's a great place to go for a swim. SM and I swam there several times over the Christmas holiday to try and keep the holiday pounds off, but he decided he was too unfit to keep at it - and I was kicking his butt. This time last year I was partying on the deck of my friend Grethe's posh city pad overlooking the Swan River and watching the Skyworks display. A rare opportunity since it is one of those incredibly busy events that people have to practically camp overnight on the river foreshore to get a decent spot.

This year I'm having yet another exciting opportunity on Australia Day... I'm going to Bali. Bali is a common Australian travel spot. It's only 6 hours by plane and in the same time zone as Perth. I'm looking forward to 9 days of hot, sweltering bliss... and maybe a bungy jump as well... it's all 'up in the air' (haha, pun intended). I'm hoping to indulge myself in lots of amazing seafood, fresh tropical fruit salads, a massage or two and loads of cheap shopping. While I am there I will apply for my Work and Holiday Visa so that I can stay and work in Australia for another year. I'm still looking for that elusive new job, the job of my dreams. In the meantime, I've applied to several different temp positions until I find what I'm looking for or a more ideal opportunity presents itself.

I also sold my car this week. SM was glad to help me unburden the load onto one of his co-workers - a desperate Irish guy so eager to get his hands on a cheap set of wheels he paid $300 more than what I bought it for and probably would have paid more. Now I'm driving SM's manual drive Toyota Camry. I've finally got the hang of shifting, but am still sometimes killing it at stoplights.

Here's to sipping Mai Tai's on the beach - or whatever fancy cocktails they make in Bali!

Going home... for now

April isn't very far away and as the months have been flying by, it's really just around the corner. I'm coming home for a few weeks at the beginning of April and am really looking forward to all the sweet sounds, smells and sights of Missouri in the spring. A few things I'm looking forward to are:

• Mojitos on the patio at Houlihan's
• Church with Dad on Sunday morning
• Sunday brunch at Country Kitchen
• The fresh way the air smells after it rains
• Endless amounts of chips and salsa at ANY Mexican restaurant
• A weekend trip to Osage Beach outlet mall with my mom

What are you looking forward to most about the spring?

Where have I been, Hyden?

The last stop on our quick road trip was the tiny town of Hyden, a few hours jaunt up the Brookton Highway where a few of WA's famous land formations sit at the base of a hill. Hyden is home to Wave Rock, aptly named for it's unique wave shape. It it also the home of a lesser known rock formation called Hippo's Yawn, again aptly named for its obvious shape. Both are bewildering sites to see, but of course have plausible reasons for the way they were formed over years of weather and water erosion.


We stopped for the night at the Wave Rock Resort. The resort was within walking distance of both Wave Rock and Hippo's Yawn and allowed us the frightening prospect of encountering one of Australia's infamously poisonous and deadly slithering reptiles. We walked the one kilometre track through the bush to Wave Rock where the flies were much more of a threat than any other creature could be. They attacked with vigor like wild, divebombing, kamikaze pilots into our facial orrifaces. I desperately needed my fly net from my trip up north, but was without that luxurious protection this time.

The granite cliff formation of Wave Rock rises 15 metres up and stretches 110 metres long. Mineral deposits contribute to its unique coloring and crystals collected from the rock are amongst some of the oldest found in Australia. The rock itself is over 60 million years old.

Just down the walking track from Wave Rock and shrouded in gum trees was the gaping mouth of a rock Hippopotamus head which was Hippo's Yawn. It was another site to behold. I had the eerie sensation of its mighty stone jaws clamping down on me and swallowing me whole when I stood within its cavernous walls.

The Aboriginal Dreamtime lore of nearby Mulka's Cave also lends an eerieness to the Wave Rock/ Hyden area. Mulka was the illegal son of a woman who fell in love with a man with whom marriage was forbidden according to Aboriginal law. As a result of this woman and man breaking the law Mulka was born with crossed eyes which prevented him from properly aiming a spear and becoming a successful hunter. Frustrated, Mulka turned to hunting and eating children and became the terror of the district. He lived in a cave where the imprints of his hands can still be seen today. When Mulka was confronted by his mother for his anti-social behavior he killed her. This disgraced Mulka further so he fled his cave and was later captured, speared to death and his body left for the ants as he did not deserve a proper burial. This legend served as a grim warning for those who broke Aborginal law.

Of the three accomodations we had on our trip Wave Rock Resort was my favorite for all the amenities it provided us. Debbie and I shared a two room cabin with four beds, a TV, kitchenette, BBQ, and private bath. The reception office was also a general store where we could buy mosquito repellent, cereal and other various sundries as well as some souvenirs. The resort also consisted of a caravan park full of campers and elderly couples doing the "drive around Australia" thing. There was also a very clean outdoor pool that looked refreshing and cool. After our little bush walk and site-seeing a dip in the pool sounded a treat. However, the sun had sunken into the horizon and the fact that the pool was mostly in shade during the day made its inviting waters anything but pleasurable. It was more like taking a dip in an ice cold pond, but we stuck it out and swam around to warm ourselves up.

It was the end of a nice, scenic trip around the central and south central parts of Western Australia. We had one beautiful bottle of sparkling wine (champagne) left to enjoy while we savoured the last day of a memorable trip over grilled steak and salad on the tiny front verandah of our little cabin.

Dog statue at random dog cemetary

on the the side of the road.

[drive back to Perth]

FINALLY... the end of the Kalgoorlie, Esperence trip

So where were we... ah yes, the Super Pit in Kalgoorlie - the largest gold mine in the southern hemisphere. Note: Australia claims a lot of the biggest things in the southern hemisphere. We drove up to the Super Pit lookout where you could see down into the pit. It was definitely large and deep. The Super Pit is in my opinion the Grand Canyon of mines. The dump trucks and utes going up and down the sides of the mine with their heavy loads looked like little toy trucks. After seeing how narrow the roads going up and down the sides of the mine were I decided maybe being a dump truck driver wasn't such a good idea after all and Debbie agreed with me.

After feeling like a peon standing next to giant truck tires and a massive shovel that showed how big the mining equipment was we moved on down the road to Esperence. We stopped briefly for some lunch at the halfway point between Kalgoorlie and Esperence in a town called Norseman. Looking at a map of the area there is a town en route from Kal to Norseman called Higginsville, which is also the name of a town about 30 miles north of my hometown. The trips between our destinations were becoming shorter now after the longest stretch which was from Perth to Kalgoorlie. I figured it is about the same distance from Perth to Kalgoorlie as it is to drive from Kansas City to Omaha, Nebraska.

We pulled into Esperence in the late afternoon and checked into the Blue Waters Lodge - a hostel that overlooks the bay and our accomodation for the next two nights. We settled in then found a pizza place to get a cheap dinner. Debbie and I shared a bottle of red wine with our pizza dinners at a picnic table across the road from the bay and discussed our current relationships, our post-Master's degree lives, what our futures would hold and where life would take us in the next year. After this deep and meaningful conversation it was time to lighten up the mood and find some nightlife to lift our spirits. Unforutnately, there weren't many options. The Pier Hotel seemed to be the one and only place to go on a weekend night, but at least there was kareoke which Debbie talked me into doing.

Travelling on a tight budget meant I would take all the freebies I could get and I got a free drink if I kareoked... so I did. Debbie was under the false impression that I am a good singer - she once heard me jokingly belt out the Star Spangled Banner and thought it was really good, ugh - so she encouraged me to have a go at the kareoke. Besides getting a free drink, the only thing kareoking would achieve was proving Debbie wrong about my singing skills. Despite a year of voice lessons and years of choir training in high school, my vocal talents are limited to classical music, not rock 'n roll. I would never make a good rock star. I also never seem to pick the right songs for my vocal range. I started out with John Denver's Country Road, but it was too low for me to sing and in an attempt to redeem my singing status I thought I would try something a little higher and more fun to sing... like Cindy Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. I think the kareoke lady actually cut off the end of that song just to get it over with - yeah, it was a painful experience for everyone involved. Luckily I wasn't in America because I would probably have gotten booed off stage. But the good-natured people of Australia were kind enough to look away and silently swig their beers to dull the pain caused by my tortured vocal chords. It made the evening more enjoyable and go by quicker anyway.

The next day Debbie and I drove out to Cape Le Grand National Park about a 30 minute drive from Esperence to have a look at some of Esperence's notorious white sand beaches. According to one online source Esperence is the oasis at the western end of the Nullarbor Plain - a 100,000 square mile desert made up of a limestone plateau that stretches across the southern half of Australia. Once you've been through the desert plains Esperence is a tropical oasis. The beaches of Cape Le Grand were definitely beautiful and there were many to explore, but we only visited three:

Hellfire Bay...

...Lucky Bay...

...and Le Grand Beach where we sipped champagne on the gorgeous white sand beach and soaked up the afternoon sun and relaxing atmosphere.

We toasted to the end of the semester and to new beginnings. Families and groups of young friends from the beachside caravan park joined us in enjoying the beautiful day on the beach. I spotted a pod of dolphins gliding in graceful, sweeping arcs across the surface of the sparkling ocean water just off the beach. I watched the calming movements of these gentle sea mammals as they were catching their lunch while Debbie recorded our travels in her journal. The sky was cloudless, the weather was warm and a mild breeze blew. The cheerful, melodious strains of the laughter of children playing nearby completed the perfect scene. Life was good and we were grateful.

Just before the sun went down we returned to Hellfire Bay to BBQ some sausages for afternoon tea. Then made our way back to the city of Esperence and the Pier Hotel for a quiet, light, salad bar supper and a bowl of soup. The next day we had breakfast at a local cafe and visited a few shops then headed out of town to Hyden, our last stop on the trip.