Happy Australia Day!

Happy Australia Day everyone!!! On Jan 26th it was Australia's 219th birthday. This long weekend we went into the city to see all the celebrations going on. First stop was 'The Rocks' by harbour bridge where we were fitted up with Aussie flags and tattoo's. From there we made our way over to the Opera House to watch the final stretch of "Ferrython" where all the harbour ferry and tour ships race from the harbor bridge to Manly and back. Just imagine about 200 boats all going full speed in one direction. After that bit of excitement we walked through the Royal botanical gardens and made our way to Hyde park where we stopped for some lunch - The Great Australian BBQ - Snags with onions hot off the barbie, and a cool drink to wash it down. Can't beat that. We chilled out at the park for a while and watched a few shows on some of the stages going on. It totally reminded us of Taste of Saskatchewan, with all the little tents lined up and each one with a different treat or snack to try.

After lunch we made our way over to Darling Harbour, this is where the main celebrations were going to be later in the evening. We watched some belly dancers and other street performers, which was really cool. Being in the sun all day there was only one thing that could cool us down... a tall glass of Aussie brew at the Docks hotel right on the harbour. Oh man that hit the spot. This time around we weren't going to settle for a crowded viewing of the fireworks like on New Years Eve... oh no, we made sure we got a prime spot, front row baby. We paid for it alright, it was +35 that day and we sat there in the heat for 3 hours guarding our spots. I tell you it was worth it though. There was a parade of all kinds of ships that sailed by us only meters away. From little Navy attack ships to huge 100+ year old pirate style ships. The main ceremony went on for a few hours while everyone waited for the sun to go down.
Just after 9pm the fireworks started to the tune of AC/DC's Thunderstruck! We got most of the show on video if you want to watch in our video album, but it just doesn't do it justice. They set off 7000kg of fireworks only 50 meters away from us. The fireworks went on for about 15mins and then finished with a F111 Fighter-bomber jet fly by. He buzzed the harbour and it looked like a screaming fireball zip across the sky as the sound shook the whole place.
The next day were extremely crispy, I guess thats what happens when you sit out in the hot Aussie sun for nearly 12 hours.

Today we went down to the Spit in Neutral Bay for a little Sea Kayaking. We hired the kayaks for an hour and cruised around the harbor. We almost didn't go because Erynn was afraid the kayak would tip and we would get eaten by sharks. I think this got in her head because on our Blue mountains tour John the tour guide told everyone how a man was attacked by a shark when he was knocked out of his row boat. She mustered up the courage to give it a try since no one else kayaking seemed to get eaten by a shark. We soon discovered though as we were paddling along that sharks were the least of our worries. There were hundreds of jellyfish all around us. This is how most people get hurt in the ocean - getting stung by jelly's. (you remember Nemo don't you?). This created new fears for both of us. Erynn was afraid that we would tip and get stung by these guys, so she paddled like mad to get away from them. I was afraid that one would fly up from Erynn's frantic paddling and land on my lap!! Neither would be fun to deal with. We managed to escape the jellyfish attack and had a blast zipping around the harbour.

Thats all for now!

Nate & Erynn

Aussie Fact of the Day - The Australian Lyre Bird is the world's best imitator; able to mimic the calls of 15 different species of birds in their locality and string the calls into a melody. It is also been known to mimic the sound of mobile phones and people whistling songs. (we saw one of these on our Blue Mountain tour)

The Blue Mountains and Jenolan Caves

First of all, we need some help from everyone reading this. We keep getting asked what a “uniquely Canadian” food or dish is… So far we have only been able to come up with "Poutine" (quite a sad example). We are looking for some other answers to this question. Are Canadians that boring with food?? Or have we been away from home so long that we can’t remember?? So if anyone has any idea’s you let us know ok?!

Well it seems like forever since we’ve been outside of Sydney city limits but we finally managed to get out to the Blue Mountains last weekend. We decided to book a daytrip exploring the Blue Mountains and the Jenolan Caves. Our tour group was a good one – nice and small – consisting of 18 people in total (including John the tour guide). Our tour departed the city at approximately 8 am and we didn’t return back until around 730 pm. So we definitely got a good days worth of exploring out of it!!

The Blue Mountains are a couple of hours west of Sydney and were formed around one million years ago and got their name because of the distinctive blue haze that surrounds the area. Since the area is densely populated with oil bearing Eucalyptus tress, the atmosphere is filled with finely dispersed droplets of the oil, which, in combination with dust particles and water vapor, scatter short-wave length rays of light which are predominantly blue in color. Hence the name, The Blue Mountains. Feel smarter now? If not, here it is simply, the oil from the gum tree's make a mist which looks blue when the light hits it. got it?

Our first stop was a lookout point to see the Three Sisters. Wow!! What a sight!! The Three Sisters are 922, 918 & 906 meters tall, respectively. They are absolutely gorgeous and our pictures do them no justice. There is legend behind them that three sisters fell in love with three brothers from another tribe but tribal law forbade to marry. It’s a long story so if you’re at all interested you’ll have to do the research yourselves. Looking down from the lookout point made my stomach turn a bit because of how high up we were. That would be one scary fall if I slipped…. so I held on to the railing tight. We had only a certain amount of time to get as many pictures in as we could because we were off to go on the 3 scenic rides!! First off we went on the Scenic Skyway. This was a glass pod that basically moved us across wires and took us across the mountains. The floor was glass and you could see everything right below you – all 900 meters below that is. I prayed that the cables wouldn’t snap!! Next stop was the Scenic Railway. This is the steepest incline railway in the world. It took us 450 m down to the floor of the mountains. That was something else because 250 m of it in a complete vertical drop – oh and no seat belts I might add. I thought I was going to go flying out the top of the thing!! I mean we went straight down!! Once we reached the bed of the mountains we went on the Scenic Walkway. Basically its a trail through the bottom of the Mountains, with a fancy name. After we wandered around there for a bit we jumped on the Scenic Cableway which hoisted us back up the Mountain via some wires. Similar to the Skyway but a little less stable. Since most of us went on these rides our tour guide gave us 1 hour before meeting back at the bus. We had to get a move on because we still had to drive to the Jenolan Caves!! Of course we all can’t be on time so we ended up waiting approximately 20 minutes for a couple girls from Perth. We were all considering leaving them because we can only wait so long otherwise we’d miss out on a lot of stuff. Finally we found them and we headed for the Caves.

The Jenolan Caves are just outside the Blue Mountains National Park and are formed from limestone. They really are like a whole underground world!! As our tour ventured into them, we actually had to take our backpack off at some spots because the spaces to move through were a bit tight. Dad W you definitely would have had your head gashed opened many times because there are spikes and spears from limestone all over the place. I guess there are so many areas of the caves that haven’t been explored yet and they still have no idea just how many chambers there are within them. You can do more in depth tours where you strap on a suit and helmet with a light and you go crawling through the smallest of spaces. Our tour lasted just under two hours, and at the deepest point we were 180 meters underground!! Some of the other caves go even deeper and have freshwater rivers flowing through them.

After the caves our journey was to get back home. We stopped at another lookout point at the Blue Mountains on the way but unfortunately missed out on the Boomerang presentation. Seems like only Nathan and I were interested in seeing our guide show us how to properly throw a boomerang. This annoying lady from North Australia piped up and said nobody was interested in seeing that. We didn’t realize until after we were back in the Blue Mountains that John wasn’t going to do the demonstration. He said that the park authorities have banned him from throwing boomerangs in the national park because it’s dangerous… did you know you can kill somebody with one of them?? Damn Darwin lady… when she piped up he didn’t hear us. Too bad… would have been nice to see one thrown by an expert. This lady from Darwin was one of those know it all types, she was actually arguing with John about whether or not HE rode a motor bike in the outback… um I think he would know best… retard. For the rest of the 2hr trip home we put on our iPods to drown out Darwin lady, reclined our chairs and dozed off until we got back into the city. It was a nice end to a long day.

We hope everyone is doing well back in Canada, and that everyone has reclaimed their cars/pets/children out of the massive snow banks from that freak snow storm that hit last week. Bye for now!

Erynn & Nate.

A Diamond Night in Emerald City

“Close your eyes and tap your heels together three times. And think to yourself… there’s no place like home.”

December 31, 2006 at approximately 9:08 pm, Dorothy’s Ruby Red Slippers were projected onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge encouraging thousands of children dressed in green to simultaneously click their heels together three times and say out loud “there’s no place like Sydney”. In doing so, Sydney was bathed in green lights staying true to the theme that it was in fact The Emerald City. Roving stilt walkers and characters from the 1939 film classic, “The Wizard of Oz” roamed the Lord Mayor’s picnic in the Royal Botanical Gardens in relation to the theme of this 2006 New Year’s celebration.

The Family fireworks show began at 9:00 pm with this year’s bridge effect being a Question Mark that appeared within the bridge but soon turned into a Coathanger that measured more than 100 ft wide and 45 ft tall. The bridge is commonly referred to as “The Coathanger” because of its arch-based design. Blasts of red and white illuminated the night sky before turning Sydney into an Emerald City. Afterwards, 50 illuminated boats made a majestic passage around the harbour for all to see. Each boat featured diamond emblems that glittered on either their hulls or masts causing their reflections to dance upon the water.
A series of mini light shows between the family fireworks and the midnight set began to slowly reveal the much anticipated bridge effect that would bring in the New Year. A Diamond inside of the Coathanger. This diamond was to usher in the 75th anniversary of the Sydney Harbour Bridge with spectacular firework displays and special effects never seen before in Australia. The crescendo came shortly after midnight when the glowing diamond symbol erupted in a sea of stars exploding in all directions. The show lasted for 13 minutes and is said to be the biggest and the best to date costing approximately 4 Million dollars.

Nathan and I began our celebrations shortly after 4pm with our drink menu consisting of Vodka and Coconut Rum. We made a nice dent in both bottles and by 8pm we felt we were plenty primed to hit up the New Year’s festivities. We ended up missing our bus by minutes but in the end that turned out to be a good thing. By the time we reached the Harbour Bridge it was 9pm… and that meant the first set of fireworks were starting. Blasts of color exploded all around us. It was amazing - we were in the middle of the action!! I haven’t seen fireworks like this in my whole life. I mean – I thought the Canada Day fireworks were big but these ones put them to shame.

We finally made it to the CBD and started to make our way to our destination. We bought tickets to the “Jungle Fever NYE 06/07” party at Jackson’s on George, which luckily was just seconds away from all the harbour action. Walking down the street I was amazed by how many people I could see heading towards the harbour, but when we actually made it there I was blown away by the amount of people. The police estimated that over 1 million people were along the shore for the fireworks and daylong festivities. It was insane!! The streets were closed down and everybody was just partying and having a good time. What a great atmosphere to be in!!

The Jungle Fever party featured renowned 4Play DJs plus a line up of Sydney’s popular DJ’s. They played the best in commercial dance, house, and electro across three floors. The venue had fantastic views of the bridge and the harbour, which offered the perfect platform for us to watch all of what was going on outside. We partied there until about 1130 pm before making our way into the crowd to ring in 2007!!

At first I thought it was going to be easy to get good spot for viewing but soon I realized what we were taking on and there was no turning back… literally. The crowd we were walking through no longer was just a crowd but a giant mob of pushing and pulling fiends hungry to get as close to the action as possible. They were moving one way and you went with them – like it or not. I was pinned and I couldn’t move at all!! I mean I couldn’t even turn my body around to make sure Nathan was still behind me. Luckily he kept close and we didn’t lose each other in all the madness. The crowd finally halted a bit but I think there was just no more room for anybody. We were packed in there so tight that when you blinked your eyelashes would brush up against somebody else. But now I had a problem… I was facing the wrong way. It seriously took me a good 5 minutes and a lot of force to get my body facing the bridge so I could watch fireworks rather than the people behind me.

Unfortunately we didn’t have the best view of the house but there was no way we were getting closer. What we did manage to see was absolutely mind-blowing. We were amongst so many different people and cultures but yet at that time we all had something in common - to celebrate the New Year. It was an experience I honestly can’t even describe. I would tackle that crowd again in a heartbeat because it was so worth it.

We went back to the Jungle Fever party when all was said and done and danced away the night. When we couldn’t party any more we packed it in and started to make our way home to bed. That was another experience. The streets were a mess!! There was McDonald’s garbage everywhere you looked. Probably due to the fact that it was the only food joint open down where all the action was taking place. There were even a couple people passed out within the rubbish. We trudged through the McChicken and Big Mac wrappers in search of our bus. The next thing we remember was the bus driver yelling at us to get off the bus because he was going no further. Where were we?? We didn’t recognize the area. After we wandered around for awhile we finally realized we were at the shops not too far from our place. But… unfortunately we were still 2 km away. By this time my feet were on fire. I wore new shoes and ladies you all know what that does to our feet… blister city!! Being the gentleman he is, Nathan took off his shoes for me to wear home while he trudged along in his socks. It seemed to take forever but we eventually made it back to our bed…safe and sound.

We’re both ecstatic that we were able to experience something to this extent. It will definitely top our New Year’s for many years to come.

Hope you all had as much fun as we did!!
E&N

Aussie (New Year’s Eve) facts of the day:
- approx. 11,000 shells, 10,000 shooting comets & a total of 100,000 individual pyrotechnic effects were incorporated into the fireworks display
- there was an excess of 3000 kg of explosive devices launched into the night sky
- 2 km of power cable was required to power the bridge effects