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Thursday, April 16, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Autumn in Australia 2009
This autumn has taken members of our family from Tasmania to Singapore to even a few remote places of Australia with no people. The end of March was an exciting time. Nathan worked hard and earned a spot on the Western Australia triathlon team. The top 6 boys earned a place to compete in the National competition to be held in Tasmania. Nathan and Todd headed off to Tasmania along with the team to attend the competition. Nathan had a great race, getting his personal best time, and getting a ranking of 23rd in Australia. Think about geography for a moment and give your condolences for the triathletes having to swim in the frigid waters off the Tasmania coast. It was an open water swim.
The picture below is of Nathan leaving to fly to Tasmania.
While they were off to Tasmania, Mikaela headed off to Boshack. It is a camp that teaches the kids life in Australia in the olden years. The week she was gone she learned a bit about astronomy, Aboriginal customs, and general farming. They were given the foods the earliest settlers would have eaten, including: crocodile, emu and kangaroo. The following is a picture of Boshack:
Todd left Tasmania to head straight to Singapore where he had a Technology Conference. Since, Mikaela was gone to camp and Nathan hadn't returned from Tasmania yet, the two youngest kids and I flew out to Singapore to join Todd. We had an amazingly good time. For those of you who know Carson has been ill, we were a little worried to take him. He has now lost 10 pounds and it has been a real concern and undiagnosed problem. But, he was able to make the trip and enjoy skipping school and seemed to have enjoyed himself. (We are learning the Australian medical system, felt very frustrated for awhile, but feel he is in good hands now as he is under the care of pediatric gastroenterologist.) The kids and I took to Singapore on our own, we basically never saw Todd, except when we arrived at the hotel in the late evenings. See the smile box to see the pictures. The definite highlight of the trip was when the kids had a fish sauna. You stick your feet in a tank of little fish and the fish stick to your feet and clean the skin, the fish just work their way all around your feet.
Tribal men breathing fire in Singapore: Carson has been juggling and begging for a non-toxic accelerant ever since Singapore.
Elise got chosen out the audience to let a hawk take meat from her at the Jurong Bird Park. She was so excited. She had to talk to the audience in a microphone and a hawk swooped down and took some meat off the sticks she was holding.
After we all got back home, it wasn't long before fall break was upon us. We loaded up the van with everything but the kitchen sink and headed up north. We had no idea how much of nothing we would find. Once you leave the metropolitan Perth area headed north you find very little. At times we worried about the ability to get gas to keep the van moving. We had two destinations in mind, we only made it to one, a favorite of the locals, a place called Monkey Mia. - the distance to the other too great we determined for a 5 day trip. Here dolphins come into shore every morning for a tasty fish treat given out by lucky on-lookers under the guidance of the wildlife department. There are 5 dolphins that are fed, the 5 females of the group. The other dolphins just swim around and look cute. If you are chosen you can go into the water and feed one of the dolphins one of 5 fish they get each morning. Carson and Elise were both lucky enough to be chosen.
We spent most of our time at Monkey Mia. We took a tour on a boat that took us out in open waters to see DUGONGS, 10 points for anyone who had heard of those before.
These are a mother and baby dugong
They are similar to manatees that live in the waters off N.America. We saw lots of other marine life, tiger sharks, dolphins, dugongs, and my personal favorite a sea turtle. Australia hasn't devolved yet into a liturgist society so we got to sit on a net behind the boat and get pulled through the water. That was a lot of fun. The kids really enjoyed that part. Once we came upon the group of tiger sharks we banned the kids from riding in it further.
The only down side of the trip was the flies, flies and more flies: The following picture of Mikaela says it all:
We all got fly nets and wore them outside so the flies wouldn't bother us. Emus are wild in north and meander all around the populated areas. Some have become tame and help themselves to your lunch others are still quite shy and avoid human contact. This picture shows an emu that wanted to join us for lunch or rather eat our whole lunch we eventually had to pack up - he was fairly persistent. (You can see two of the kids still with fly nets pulled up on their heads.)
Australia is huge and has a very low, relative to its size, population. Although we knew before headed out that large stretches of land contain no settlement, it was quite amazing to see for ourselves how quickly leaving the Perth metropolitan area to the north there becomes very little inhabited areas. Australia is beautiful, and we hope to keep exploring it and seeing all its beauty, even if these places are located in remote areas. Smileboxes containing pictures of Nathan's triathlon in Tasmania, the trip to Singapore, and our Northern Australia pictures are now posted on the blog.
The picture below is of Nathan leaving to fly to Tasmania.
While they were off to Tasmania, Mikaela headed off to Boshack. It is a camp that teaches the kids life in Australia in the olden years. The week she was gone she learned a bit about astronomy, Aboriginal customs, and general farming. They were given the foods the earliest settlers would have eaten, including: crocodile, emu and kangaroo. The following is a picture of Boshack:
Todd left Tasmania to head straight to Singapore where he had a Technology Conference. Since, Mikaela was gone to camp and Nathan hadn't returned from Tasmania yet, the two youngest kids and I flew out to Singapore to join Todd. We had an amazingly good time. For those of you who know Carson has been ill, we were a little worried to take him. He has now lost 10 pounds and it has been a real concern and undiagnosed problem. But, he was able to make the trip and enjoy skipping school and seemed to have enjoyed himself. (We are learning the Australian medical system, felt very frustrated for awhile, but feel he is in good hands now as he is under the care of pediatric gastroenterologist.) The kids and I took to Singapore on our own, we basically never saw Todd, except when we arrived at the hotel in the late evenings. See the smile box to see the pictures. The definite highlight of the trip was when the kids had a fish sauna. You stick your feet in a tank of little fish and the fish stick to your feet and clean the skin, the fish just work their way all around your feet.
Tribal men breathing fire in Singapore: Carson has been juggling and begging for a non-toxic accelerant ever since Singapore.
Elise got chosen out the audience to let a hawk take meat from her at the Jurong Bird Park. She was so excited. She had to talk to the audience in a microphone and a hawk swooped down and took some meat off the sticks she was holding.
After we all got back home, it wasn't long before fall break was upon us. We loaded up the van with everything but the kitchen sink and headed up north. We had no idea how much of nothing we would find. Once you leave the metropolitan Perth area headed north you find very little. At times we worried about the ability to get gas to keep the van moving. We had two destinations in mind, we only made it to one, a favorite of the locals, a place called Monkey Mia. - the distance to the other too great we determined for a 5 day trip. Here dolphins come into shore every morning for a tasty fish treat given out by lucky on-lookers under the guidance of the wildlife department. There are 5 dolphins that are fed, the 5 females of the group. The other dolphins just swim around and look cute. If you are chosen you can go into the water and feed one of the dolphins one of 5 fish they get each morning. Carson and Elise were both lucky enough to be chosen.
We spent most of our time at Monkey Mia. We took a tour on a boat that took us out in open waters to see DUGONGS, 10 points for anyone who had heard of those before.
These are a mother and baby dugong
They are similar to manatees that live in the waters off N.America. We saw lots of other marine life, tiger sharks, dolphins, dugongs, and my personal favorite a sea turtle. Australia hasn't devolved yet into a liturgist society so we got to sit on a net behind the boat and get pulled through the water. That was a lot of fun. The kids really enjoyed that part. Once we came upon the group of tiger sharks we banned the kids from riding in it further.
The only down side of the trip was the flies, flies and more flies: The following picture of Mikaela says it all:
We all got fly nets and wore them outside so the flies wouldn't bother us. Emus are wild in north and meander all around the populated areas. Some have become tame and help themselves to your lunch others are still quite shy and avoid human contact. This picture shows an emu that wanted to join us for lunch or rather eat our whole lunch we eventually had to pack up - he was fairly persistent. (You can see two of the kids still with fly nets pulled up on their heads.)
Australia is huge and has a very low, relative to its size, population. Although we knew before headed out that large stretches of land contain no settlement, it was quite amazing to see for ourselves how quickly leaving the Perth metropolitan area to the north there becomes very little inhabited areas. Australia is beautiful, and we hope to keep exploring it and seeing all its beauty, even if these places are located in remote areas. Smileboxes containing pictures of Nathan's triathlon in Tasmania, the trip to Singapore, and our Northern Australia pictures are now posted on the blog.
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