One Year of Immigration - Holiday Weekend of Celebrating

Australia pretty much shuts down from Xmas eve until mid January. In fact, the main reason we ended up living in our current flat is that the realtor for this building was one of the few people who returned our call when we immigrated at this time last year. Lucky for us though, cause we love it!

We talked about going to Antarctica over the long break, but that just seemed darned expensive. And cold. Wet. Possibly boring, crossing the Drake Passage for several days each way. Then we talked about getting camping equipment and roughing it outback, but when the reality of bugs, bats, snakes and dingos set in, well, meh. A couple possums visited us while we were at a holiday evening BBQ the other night and we (our Australian, Dutch and Iranian expat friends) were all torn as to whether they were more cat or rat-esque. They are marsupials, so technically they are more kangaroo-like than anything. Still, I was mildly frightened by them.

What we ended up doing was eating a ton of fabulous food with a few groups of really good new friends, and going to the Mornington Peninsula for a jaunt. It's about 2 hours south of us and one of those places that makes you wonder why you don't go EVERY weekend?

Really our only complaints are the volume and voracity of flies (note Tom's biodegradable fly fan, a common accessory in the park). Sadly, our sunbrella blew off a cliff and we accidentally littered. We felt badly about that. And we missed our sunbrella the rest of the day.

It was also quite sunny and hot...a bit hard to find the moderation between "overdressed / sweating like a beast" and "destined to fry / melt quickly". But how fabulous to be outdoors in this incredible setting! I'm concerned about my exposed fingers here and thinking they really should make long sleeved summer gloves:

"Draw on Tom's daypack"...a quick game for the kids:

The only way to cool him down was to get him a Bubble-O-Bill, seen here being eaten "Easter bunny style" (ears first, retains the nose):

This was a little concerning. We wondered if we could / should make a donation to limbless wallabies and what the long range bomb explosion plan is?

The Point Neapean National Park was gorgeous. We hiked in about 5 kilometers (listen to Miss Metric here!) and took a tractor-pulled people hauler back to the rental car. It was exciting to visit the site where Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared while swimming in 1967.

We don't have a fancy-pants camera with changeable lenses, but this is what you get when you shoot a picture through your sunglasses. It was a great trip.