A mob of kangaroos

Saturday, April 29

A walk with Karen and Ashley had us finally see about 20 kangaroos in the field behind their house.  A great day of footy in the backyard, capped off by a massive bonfire in the evening.

Sunday, April 30

For breakfast, the boys tried some Vegemite and Promite, both were well received by the boys and look forward to sharing the delicious taste with their friends.  Walked over to the Naracoorte Footy field, knew the field was big, but wow, it is huge.  Gives new meaning to the concept of windsprints across the field.  The field is almost twice as long as our football field, and several times wider.

Black lava

Friday, April 28

After another rainy night, we started our morning by walking out to the Port Fairy lighthouse.  The walk had black lava beaches.  Port Fairy is tltled the most liveable community in the world, but not for birds as we must have seen at least 30 dead birds on the path of our walk.  There is a warning poster at the start of the walk about there being poison out in their effort to eliminate foxes, but thinking that is not working real well.  We then headed to Naracoorte via Mount Gambia.  As we stopped at the South Australia State border for a picture of the welcome sign, we saw emu’s out our right window and kangaroos out our left window.

And it is still spectacular...

Thursday, April 27

A cool morning, but a great day for a drive.  When in the car it would rain, and when we got out to have a walk and view, the sun would come out.  Levi finally spotted our first kangaroo in the wild, but there is some debate whether it was indeed a kangaroo, or if it was a wallaby.  Our first stop was at the Twelve Apostles.  Still a fantastic view after all these years.  We then moved onto the Loch Ard Gorge.  Named after the Loch Ard ship that sunk off the coast here in the 1870’s, and only had two survivors who washed up in this gorge.  Not sure how one would have survived being washed up here onto the rocks.  The drive was not as spectacular along this section, but the pitstops to see the ocean coast were far more dramatic.  The 30 meter cliffs were amazing, but that spectacular view is well hidden from the road.  Our final stop was the Bay of Islands.  We ended up for the night in Port Fairy, the end of the Great Ocean Road.

Loch Ard and London Bridge (which has fallen)

Bay of Islands

Cape Otway

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Love the cabin as it poured rain all night and was cold and windy in the morning.  Winter has hit in Australia as the temperature dived to 12 C, but we did have the good fortune of sunny skies everytime we got out of the vehicle.  We headed out to do the Walk and Waterfall driving loop.  Our first stop was at Mait’s Rest, which is a one kilometer hike through rain forest.  Incredible the size of the gum trees.  Their bark strips off and drops to the ground, with a whopping 40 tonnes of biomass falling per hectare per year.  We then drove on to the Otway Bay Lighthouse.  Built in 1840’s, it has been instrumental in preventing disasters at the meeting of the Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean.  Great views from the top of the lighthouse, but breezy and cold with 80 km winds.  We then moved on and drove the loop.  On the way out we had the good fortune of seeing two koala’s in the wild.  The last part of the drive was 20 km through thick rain forest on an exceptionally windy one lane wide road with all blind corners meant for two way traffic.  Glad there were no posted logging trucks on the road, as I have no idea how that would have worked.  Guessing it would better for the logging truck than for our little SUV.  Finally back home and back inside in time for the rain to start again.  The entire drive, whether on the ocean or not, was spectacular.  Unlike other drives (such as the Garden Route in South Africa) that will have a break in the spectacular views, this was not stop amazing.  And we have been told it only gets more spectatular as we move west.  Cannot wait for the drive tomorrow when we hit the Twelve Apostles and London Bridge.

What a drive!

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

ANZEC day today, in commemoration of the Australians who fought at Gallipoli (Turkey) in 1917 and defined Australia as a nation.  30 000 people attended the 6:30 am service in Melbourne.  We woke up to heavy rain in Lorne, but as we headed out for a walk on the beach, the sun came out and gave us a great day for both our walk and for our drive down the Great Ocean Road to Apollo Bay.  Prior to heading down the highway, we checked out the Erksine Falls.  Then the drive!  Spectacular, and good reason this drive is considered one of the best in the world.  The road is carved into the side of the mountain leading into the ocean for the entire duration.  It was built after WWI to commemorate those who fought in the war.

From the road, the whole way to Apollo Bay.

Surfing central.

At Torquay

Monday, April 24, 2017

Packed up from Geelong and headed for Lorne on the Great Ocean Road.  On route, we stopped at Torquay which is the home to Rip Curl and Australian surfing.  Lots of shops.  In at the Rip Curl shop, we figured we could by a basic board for 1000, the fins for 150 each, a wet suit for 700, and then there are always lots of other accessories.  But like any other sport (i.e. skiing), you are always in for a couple of grand.  We then stopped in at Bells Beach, which just finished hosting one of the world surfing competitions.  Our final stop was at Lorne.  Glad we booked a little cottage, as it rained solid all night.

Surfers at Bell's Beach

The race is on.

Sunday, April 23, 2017

What a day!  Started with Luke and Cindy running the Geelong half marathon.  About 850 runners in the half marathon.  Beside the “Look out for Snakes” signs, not a lot of signage but enough to get our runners to the finish line.  Luke finished in 1:38.04 and Cindy finished in 1:50.43.  Excellent results for a broken training schedule.  A cool and pleasant morning, excellent for a run.  Of course, they give out top three prizes out for every category, except for the under 20 category, in which Luke finished third.  Laughing, as they are handing out the awards, one of the organizers leaves in his truck, and attempts to drive up the incline next to the presentations.  However, the ground is soft from the rain last night, and he ends up sliding backward down the hill into the middle of the award ceremony and almost wiped out some kids standing at a table with boxes of bananas on it.  The announcer handled it well with the statement, “We will just pretend that this is not happening.” and then continued announcing category winners.  There was some food, and they did give all the runners a piece of sausage, so Nate and Levi were happy.  We then took the afternoon train into Melbourne and caught the Hawthorne Hawks host the West Coast Eagles (Perth team) in Australian Rules Football at the G (Melbourne Cricket Grounds).  Of course we missed the train, and therefore missed most of the first half, but that worked out all right because each quarter is 30 minutes long, so we still saw over an hour of actual play time.  For never really taking a look at the game before, what a great evening of entertainment.  A small crowd of 30 000 (the G holds over 100 000), they were lively and passionate about the entire game.  The Hawks won their first game of the season handily, but both teams played hard until the final horn.  Again, what a fun game, continuous action.  Someone gets injured, the trainer comes out and looks after the injured while the play goes on around them.  At the end, the home crowd sings their teams song, and then they show the team on the big screens in the dressing room singing their song with the team start in the middle of the circle.  On the way out, Karen and Ashley bought the boys an Aussi Rules Football, which they have been busy passing and kicking to each other.

Seeing old friends again!

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Packed up from Melbourne and headed to Geelong.  Our house is right across the street from a Primary School that has a very nice playground and field.  Karen and Ashley come in from Naracoorte to meet us in the afternoon.  Good to see Ashley five months after her visit to us in Canada, and great to see Karen again 20 years after our last visit.  We then had to head to the start line of the marathon to collect starting packages.  After seeing very little action there with very little indication of a marathon happening in the next 16 hours, Luke is not feeling confident there is going to be a lot of food at the finish line tomorrow.  Carb load for our dinner and an earlier bedtime in prep for the big run tomorrow.

Cross Country Club with the open door true running feeling.

What safety standards?

Thursday, April 20, 2017

A quiet day around the apartment.  Watched some hockey in the morning and then headed off to a local park.  Beautiful location with great play structures.  Kids loved it. 

Friday, April 21, 2017

Went for a ride on Puffing Billy, the steam engine that runs out of Belgrade, about half an hour out of Melbourne.  We were amused, for a country that has hand rails on their bike paths at slight inclines, they allow every one to ride on the window sills with their legs out the windows.  There is Africa with no safety standards, but you would not be allowed to ride the train with your legs out the window, and then there is Australia.

Around Melbourne

Tuesday, April 18
A slow start to our travels today as we found playoff hockey on the TV, and watched Toronto beat Washington in OT.  The biggest surprise of that statement involves both Toronto and playoffs being used positively in the same sentence. 

Another beautiful day, and we headed back into Melbourne central for the days adventure.  We had to make copies of Levi's medical forms and get those mailed off to the insurance agency.  To do our photocopying, wee ended up at the Victoria State Library, a beautiful building that was amazing to tour around.  From being packed with university students working, to the art gallery and on the top floor where the infamous outlaw Ned Kelly's suit of armour was located.  Ned was a crowd favour in the 1800's as when he robbed a bank, he burned all the mortgage statements of the local farmers.
We then headed to the Federation Square, the meeting place in Melbourne, and voted (rightfully so) one of the ten ugliest squares in the world.  There was a busker going in the square and a fairly good crowd had formed.  The day before people were watching footie on the big screen, and today we were on it.



Wednesday, April 19
Made the drive to Phillip Island, about 90 minutes SSE from Melbourne.  Another excellent day.  We started by going to the koala park, and then headed over to Churchill Island Heritage Farm.  The boys got to try their hand at milking a cow and cracking a bull whip, and watched a sheep get sheared and a Billy the dog round up some sheep.  As we departed the Island, we stopped for an hour at the Surfer's Reserve Beach, what waves!  No swimming here, the riptide looked wicked, and the waves were huge.  We then had the opportunity to drive by the beautiful Melbourne skyline at night.

Thursday, April 20
A quiet day with us spending the afternoon at the park, and then planning our Australian route after dinner.

Melbourne

Melbourne city scape from our apartment

April 17, 2017
Still tough getting up at an appropriate time as we still seem to be on South African time.  Eventually did get up and moving into the city centre.  Parking is a bit of an issue as parking downtown is $50 minimum, but we were able to find some more reasonable parking areas.  Even the donuts are $7 each, or $25 for a four pack of donuts.  Needless to say, the boys did not get any donuts.
We did a walking tour which are highly recommended.  The tour is free and the guides request a gratuity at the end.  Our tour was about three hours and was excellent.  We highly recommend these tours, and they are gaining popularity around the world, as we did one in Brussels as well.

The street art in Melbourne is very interesting.  It is legal and constantly evolving.  Poor art is quickly painted over, while better art will have a longer lifespan - maybe two or three weeks.  Show up in a month, and the street will look totally different. 

Yarra River in Melbourne

We have to get this figured out!!!

In Singapore, even the guy to the right is tired.

Getting ready to leave our second continent almost ended like trying to leave our first continent, with us not getting on the plane.  Our arrival at the Singapore Air check in at the Johannesburg airport had us informed that we do not need a visa, but we do need an eTA which is an electronic visa.  This should not be an issue as they are applied for online and require no time to get.  However, we are in Africa and if you have been reading, Internet in Africa is not good.  Our data on the phone is not good enough to get the process going, and none of the airlines in the area have internet.  We then race to the Vodacom shop (South Africa's version of Bell), but they do not have internet - where they sell internet.  We end up in the Dry Cleaner's store next door and bribe the girl 30 US to use her computer.  The eTA visa takes about 7 or 8 minutes to complete, and all five must be completed individually and from scratch.  Then my credit card is denied after doing the first three completed.  Even MasterCard is against us.  We finally finish and run full out back to the check in desk.  The desk closes at 1:05 pm, and we are checked in at 1:03 pm.  We get a personal escort through passport control and all the way to our plane.  Not even time for a washroom pitstop.  On the plane, we are all rattled but on our way to Singapore.
Remember the unabridged birth certificates we required for South Africa.  Well we did need them for when we first landed into South Africa.  However, when we departed South Africa into Swaziland, and then reentered SA, and when we departed South Africa yesterday, the birth certificates were not required.  So our thoughts that South Africa was trying to curb illegal adoptions is false, they seem to actually be trying to prevent more kids from entering the country. 
Singapore Air is a fantastic airway.  Our flight was about 10 hours to Singapore and another 7 to Melbourne, with a four hour layover in Singapore, felt way shorter than our flight from Brussels to Capetown via Addis. 
Good internet in Australia, we are closely checking into the requirements for the Asian countries while listening to the Toronto / Washington overtime game.

Soweto tour

In front of Mandela's house.

Thursday, April 13
My first time into the Soweto district of Johannesburg.  Originally a township, and still classified by many as one, it has approximately 5 million people living in it.  Our guide explained that this is often the starting point in South Africa for all blacks coming to Johannesburg looking for work.  Soweto offers cheap accommodation (squatter residence) that is not available elsewhere in Jo'burg. When I was here in 1990, I could not get a tour into Soweto due to fighting, and at the time decided I would just drive in and out on my own.  I chickened out as I approached due to the fear of death.  Today, it is a thriving tourist destination with B and B's all over the place (in the tourist districts).  We visited Mandela's home, and then then walked down the street to where Desmond Tutu resides.  The only street in the world with two Nobel Peace Prize recipients on the same street.  Soweto also has the largest hospital in the world, and four shopping malls.  They look like any other, minus the tight security to drive both in and out.  There are two massive decommissioned power generator stacks that are now a symbol of hope and you can also bungee jump off of.  They were located in Soweto, powered Johannesburg, and made the blacks in Soweto ill.  The local government now boasts that 70% of Soweto has power and water.  My math adds that up to being 1.5 million people without.  But it is progress from no one having power or water.  Now for our last night in Africa, and then a pleasant 24 hours to get to Melbourne. 

It's a protest march.

Wednesday, April 12

Took a drive to Pretoria today with the mission of seeing the Voertrekker Monument and the Union Building with the statue to Nelson Mandela.  The Voertrekker Monument is the largest monument in Africa and has the world’s largest frieze.  The frieze is a carved in granite depiction of their trek in the mid 1800’s.  Quite beautiful.  I noticed that white men fight (and defeat) Zulu men, but the Zulu men are killing women and children.  Propaganda is always alive and well, even in the 1930’s when the momument was erected, but even they had their limits as one of the original casts had the Zulu warrior swinging a baby, not the torch as is now depicted.  This was an excellent visit and a very well developed museum.

As close as we could get to Mandela statue.

Next we were off to the Union Buildings.  Our drive kept getting diverted by road blocks, and we soon discovered there was a major demonstration and march going on to put pressure on the South African president Jacob Zuma to step down.  We ended up walking in the city centre and also noted that the many businesses were closed up, and a very large police presence.  Not sure if there was going to be violence or not, we elected to avoid the protest and went for lunch.  We made another attempt to go to the Union Buildings after we heard that the march was over.  Police were putting away all the razor wire.  News video after showed a packed square.  Everywhere we have gone in South Africa certainly seem to want Zuma gone.  Guess when you use government money to buy friends birthday presents, like summer homes, people lose their faith in you.  Who knew?  Elections are not until 2019, but the feel is that Zuma can do lots more damage in those two years.  Zuma is remaining vigilant that he is staying on as leader.  Interesting politic times in South Africa continue.

Farewell Capetown

Monday, April 10
We went for a walk in downtown Capetown to have one last look at possible souvenirs, but nothing of interest for the boys was found.  It was then a trip out to the airport to drop Nancy off for her flight back home.  How quickly six weeks went with having her as our travel companion.  Her backpack was considerably heavier as we had her loaded down with stone carvings to take home.

Tuesday, April 11
Now we are off for our flight to Johannesburg.  We land mid afternoon, pick up our CRV and head to our accommodation.  After seven weeks of training myself that the signal indicator is on the right side of the steering column (and avoiding the wipers coming on every time I go to turn), the CRV has the blinkers on the left side.  Back to the retraining.  Turns resulted in both front and back wipers going on today.  Our accommodation is nice, but the neighborhood is awesome.  No evening walks here.  And driving... here you truly must look both ways at green lights, as in the five minutes of driving in this area it is clear that running a red five seconds after the conversion is acceptable.  I am alright with this practice, but Cindy does not like my new driving style.

Our Capetown apartment, one last time.

What a garden!

Mandela Gold

Sunday, April 9

A great day.  While in Plettenburg Bay on our way north, we camped next to a couple (Chris and Michelle) from Capetown.  They invite for lunch upon our return to Capetown.  A fantastic visit and incredible food.  How good was it, our boys sat at the table the whole time, and after we left could not believe we had been there for four hours.  We then stopped in at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, reportedly the best in the world.  We will not argue that.  After dinner, we worked at packing Nancy up for her flight out tomorrow.  Lots of stone and wood carvings making their way back to Canada.

Kirstenbosch Garden, one of the paths

Wine and Raptors

Friday, April 7

We will drive to Stellenbosch today.  The drive is rainy all the way, until we pass Sir Lowry’s mountain pass and drive into sunny and hot weather.  Set up camp for one last time in South Africa.  Boys enjoy the campgrounds mini carts (which are pedalled), until they have to push them uphill back to reception.

Saturday, April 8

Wine tour time.  We head first to Spier.  The grounds are amazing, and while Cindy and Nancy try the wines, us boys head to a bird recovery area, more accurately, a raptor rehabilitation facility.  Birds of prey that are injured are brought here.  Of the several hundred birds they receive a year, 60% are returned to the wild, and the others are either kept in the facility or have to be destroyed.  For not being bird people, we had a great time.  The eagles can exert 500 lbs per square inche pressure with their talons, glad the owls are more gentle.  We then headed over to the Muratie Winery.  This, in contrast to Spier, is one of the oldest and undeveloped wineries in the region.  A very unique experience to visit this winery, and the surrounding areas were beautiful.  We then returned to Capetown.

Muratie Winery