LITMIR.BIZ

      G'Day Mate...

      Well, we arrived in Australia safe and sound.

      The flight was 14 hours long. That's a long time to sit in one seat. Left LAX at 10:30 p.m. arrived Sydney at 9:00 p.m. I read a book, watched a movie, and had a late dinner the first 3 hours. Then slept for 9 hours, read for 2 more hours and then we landed. Piece of cake for me. It was a much longer flight for Cindi because she didn't sleep much.

      Because we crossed the International Dateline, we didn't have a November 11th, but we will get two December 24th's when we return.

      We rented a car at the Sydney airport with no problems, all we needed was our driver’s license. We made the reservations on the internet before we left the U.S. so the price was way lower than if we had rented it after we got there. Sydney is on the east coast of Australia, about halfway between the top and bottom. So after collecting our luggage, we drove south along the coast, about 180 miles, to Batemans Bay where we were staying for the first part of our trip. Driving on the wrong side of the road definitely takes some getting used to. Not to mention we are upside down. :)

      Our first impressions...

      Australia is unique. It doesn't remind us of any other country we have been to.

      The natives are very friendly although they speak some form of English that is unfamiliar to us. Most of the time we understand the words, it’s how they string the words together in phrases that causes us to say "uh?"

      Eating in restaurants is way more expensive than in the U. S. We were surprised that getting free refills of coffee or soft drinks in a restaurant is unheard of. Also, there is no tipping.

      McDonalds, Subway, Burger King, and KFC are everywhere. So is K-Mart. Have not seen any other "brands" we recognize.

      We are staying in a timeshare for three weeks before we meet up with our guided tour group back up in Sydney. So we spent the first morning scouting out Bateman's Bay and food shopping at the local supermarket. First thing we bought was a coffee maker. It turns out that Australia is a nation of tea and instant coffee drinkers. Coffee made in a "drip" type coffee maker using ground coffee is practically unknown. K-Mart only had 1 brand of drip coffee maker, but 15 brands of coffee "kettles" to choose from. It was a similar story in the supermarket. One brand of coffee grounds, 20 brands of instant coffee to choose from. Did a little sightseeing at a local beach just to the north of Bateman's Bay today. While we were there a bunch of kangaroos came out of the woods to eat the neighborhood grass. Nobody paid them any attention to them except us. I, of course, was circling them with my camera to get the best shots.

      This part of Australia is definitely not a tourist area so we were something of a novelty with the natives. Every time we opened our mouths we would be asked where we're from. And then a conversation would start from there. We spent our time looking around the area and doing day trips up and down the coast. The area is beautiful, the weather was perfect, and the people very friendly. We had lunch at a winery, attended a music festival, happened upon an Australian Ladies Tour golf tournament and followed a couple of the girls around, visited a number of little towns, and saw lots of really cool beaches. Cindi really likes it here. She keeps talking about moving here.

      By the way, RV's are pretty much unknown here. Trailers are fairly common, but self contained RVs like you see in the States are far and few between. We have seen a few but they are the smaller variety and are week-end things only. They call them Caravans instead of RVs.

      We made a couple of three day trips inland to see the capital city, Canberra. Like Washington D. C., it's a one industry town. We visited Parliament House when the House of Commons was in session and sat in the gallery for a while and watched them conduct "Question Time". It was really comical to see the way the ruling party and the opposition party yelled back and forth and insulted each other over the issues. Whenever Cindi and I would laugh at some outrageous thing being said on the floor the people sitting next to us would laugh at us laughing. It was a real hoot. Between the two trips, we toured every public government building in town, including the mint. We now know a LOT about Aussie history, organization, and government. On our second trip their High Court was hearing a case so we sat in on that for a while, very interesting. And we spent at lot of time in the War Museum, that’s a pretty special place.

      On one of our day trips we drove past a golf course high on a bluff overlooking the ocean. So the next day I went back to play it. It's a beautiful course, much better than Bajamar, the coastal course I used to play in Mexico. It cost $41.00 to play including the club rental. On the second hole I put my drive right in the middle of the fairway but I walked along the left side of the fairway to admire the ocean view. Then I looked down the grassy slope and saw a golf ball laying way down there on the wet rocks just waiting for me to come down and pick it up. So naturally I started down the slope.

      Although I got going way too fast, actually I was running at full speed, I figured that I still had everything under control. Why I thought that, I can't imagine. When I hit the bottom

Скачать книгу