Canberra.

Catherine was here visiting from South Carolina while Tom was in the states. We were busy. They're both back home, safe and sound and knackered (really tired).
The next few missives will not be in the order of the actual events, but does that really matter?
Where was I... Canberra!
Canberra (CAN-bruh) is the capitol of Australia. Like DC, the politicians hang out there with lots of their supporting cast. Unlike DC, which I claim is half country club and half insane asylum, Canberra is clean and safe and it's fall there.
DC is laid out kinda in a grid with letter streets going one way and number streets going the other. Canberra is also a planned city. I think the plan was to keep neighborhoods quiet and keep tourists confused. The city is several concentric circles radiating outward into overlapping fish scales.
Getting anywhere involved keeping at least 4 lefts and 5 rights in my head. Left on Parliament, right on Qeanbeyan, left on Parliamentarily, right on Oodnaldana, left on Oodnalada, right on Ooodladanadad...
If you miss one, pull over and breathe because you cannot fix it. Just go somewhere else.

The mint was surprisingly interesting with lots of clear road signage to point the way.
They made these pretty Olympic medals.
Thomas loved the huge robotic arm, "Titan." It weighs and dumps coin blanks into their rightful hoppers thence they are off to rotating bins and pressers and punchers and whatnot. Thomas watched, and watched and watched... and watched.
Zzzzzzzzz... oh! Sorry, dozed off.

After that was Questicon, a giant hands-on science museum with all kinds of stuff to teach you stuff without you knowing it. Again, I was using the video camera more than the still, which I share with you all here.

Tidbinbilla is a nature preserve with lovely woodlands populated by swamp wallabies and "planted" animals like emus, koalas, echidnas and platypuses. They are free to roam, within pre-determined, agreed-upon and committee-approved reason. See the wallaby?
Look right in the middle for two dark ears.


There are three 'roos looking from across the pond.



Canberra shopping was fun with a walking mall right across from our hotel. Thomas saw his first sushi train (revolving conveyor belt of little dishes) and enjoyed the seaweed salad, rice rolls and prawn cakes.
A way-too-early plane took us to Sydney 3 days later.

Away from Alice

We got out of here. That is, we had an 8-day trip to Sydney and Canberra.
It was supposed to start with a flight to Adelaide, connecting to Canberra. But how was I to know Alice Springs airport considers itself one of those real airports where you have to show up an hour before your flight and all? Whatever happened to, "No worries, Mate?" I'll tell you what happened - they announce your name once or twice about the time you're dropping your dog off at a friend's house and then they close the plane doors and you have to just, um, make other arrangements. So we did.

They couldn't get us to Canberra but they could fly us to Sydney.
I remembered Sydney and Canberra looking kinda close on the map and the lovely lady in front of us in line said, "Oh yes, and the drive is quite nice." So we did.

The entire trip then went in a similar, "Oh, I messed up, no I didn't, this is better," kind of way.
Example, as we came to our landing in Sydney, I looked out the window at the red-tiled roofs below; there was the Opera House, the blue harbour dotted with sparkling white sailboats, the bridge and.. what's that off the wing? a rainbow? No, a double rainbow! Seriously, it was like that the whole trip.
On landing, we got a nice rental car from nice people. We saw a Domino's Pizza (9 months without) and had a good dinner in our easily-found, comfy hotel room.
Next morning, I got my first real sausage and egg McMuffin in 9 months ("Now, made with pork!") and we headed off along the eastern coast of Australia.
It was a crisp, fall day. The sky was blue, the leaves were turning yellow and red, gold and brown. With the blue-grey of the eucalypts, it was quite a picture.
Oh, you want a real picture? Weeeeelllll, we decided to make a video of the adventure and I was rather neglectful of the still camera.

We did pull over early on the road to see the "Sublime Overlook." We had to see if the Aussie Highway Department idea of "sublime" was the same as ours.

Yep.

I'm telling you, the whole trip went this well.

Black cattle grazed on green hillsides rimmed with rock walls. We stopped in a little town called Berry with hot donuts, antique shops and little cafes. If not for the wombat crossing signs, it could have been Virginia on any October weekend. Even Thomas saw the similarities.

We reached Canberra about dinner time and found our hotel - next to the park, across from the walking mall.

More tomorrow, it's midnight.

to an orange, briefly

Our yard came with an orange tree.
When we got here in late August, it was in bloom. I knew it was a citrus, but had no idea what kind.
It is a beautiful, generous, laden, succulent, bursting with juciness, navel orange tree. Thank you to whoever, about 20 years ago, planted this tree.
Since early June (late fall), we have been walking up to this tree whenever we feel like it and plucking a ripe orange from her branches. Just like that. In our yard.
If you have time, please write a haiku to this tree in the comments. I need to get on with the blogging.

Standley Chasm - photos

When I in Awesome Wonder

Standley Chasm will speak for itself in the following post. I will but introduce it/her.

Ida Standley was the first school teacher in Alice Springs. That was in1914. She was hired to teach the children of European descent, but took it on herself to also teach the mixed-race Aboriginal children who happened to be taken from their parents by the government and housed in "The Bungalo" -a corrugated iron shed.
She would teach the white children in the mornings and the half-caste children in the afternoons. She was also made matron of The Bungalo where she supervised up to 63 children from infants to age sixteen, all night.
She was about my age when she got here and, understandably, about dead when she left.
Her last year here was spent in a tent at Jay Creek (about 30K from Alice) overseeing an Aboriginal school being built. She was about 60 then.
She was the first whitefella to see Standley Chasm and I bet she said, "WOW."

Standley Chasm is like a standing ovation for God. They say it is its most spectacular an hour either side of noon. We were there about 3-4 p.m. Had it been any more spectacular, we would all be unconscious.

It is unusually moist and drippy with ferns and cool, shady hollows all along a small stream.
There are cycads. Those are the plants that look like someone lopped the top off a palm tree and stuck it in the ground; only they're much stiffer than palms and are so ancient, dinosaurs ate them.

I'll be quiet now and let you look at the pictures. I needed to upload them tonight as we leave for 8 days in Canberra (CAN-bruh) and Sydney tomorrow morning. I'm sure we'll have lots more to share after that. It's our first trip away since we got here last August. This will be good.

At the Alice Airport...

Thomas knows he has to carry his microscope with two hands because it cost fifty dollars.

NASA (et al) trust a balloon made of plastic wrap and a hired crane to carry a bajillion dollars of telescope equipment.

Wait till their mothers find out!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG8YLHiG_ZI&feature=related

P.S. That's a guy Tom works with running for his life.

Nothing says, "Christ has Risen!" like a bandicoot

Hmmm, almost May. Let's see what the camera has in it... Oh, Easter!Like Christmas, Valentine's Day, etc. the Aussies don't decorate nor make near as much of a hoo-haw of holidays as we Yanks tend to. So the Yanks cluster in our own groups and hoo and haw privately. There was a fun party with egg dying and egg hunting organized by Tom's boss. I brought red beet eggs. All the usual Easter foods were there as well, except Kowalaneck's keilbassi. It was a nice, family-style day.
Thomas will forever remember it as the day he got his ShamWow; a gift from friends there. He spent the rest of the party making and sopping up spills (outside). You following me Camera Guy?

The greater version of Tom's work organized a super-duper Easter fest

with egg gathering (I can't call them "hunts" since no eggs are ever hidden but rather tossed on the ground to be grabbed up as fast as possible by the participants), cake walk, games, bunnies to pet, thousands of flies, the ubiquitous sausage sizzle, a guy losing pounds of sweat in a bunny costume, face painting, crafts and American CANDY! I didn't realize I missed Reese's peanut butter cups till then.

Easter morning, we found our basket full of toys and treats including, "the biggest bowl of jelly beans ever!"We're not sure if the Easter Bilby (see above) or the Easter Bunny left them.
Bilbies are a small bandicoot which once roamed the sands of Alice but kinda got eaten by feral house cats. Since introduced rabbits are also a huge problem in Australia, the bilby has a force of people behind it to make it the symbol of Easter in Oz.
There was a partially chewed carrot on the table. We all know bunnies enjoy a nice carrot, but bilbies also are known to eat bulbs and roots, so it remains speculation. The bilby gains a bit of an edge being native and possessing a handy pouch.
I also got a chocolate wombat, but that's another story.

We had planned to go to Glen Helen Resort / waterhole for Easter dinner after church, but decided to come home, play with our toys and have steaks on the grill.

I did not expect the steaks to be so appropriately shaped. Pretty cool, huh?

Re: the baked beans - it was one of the prizes in our home egg hunt. Thomas LOVES baked beans. He couldn't believe he won a whole can.
Easter Monday is a holiday here as is Good Friday. In fact, more places (Kmart, Target, grocery stores) were closed Good Friday than Easter Sunday.
School was on fall break for three weeks following Easter. I'll try to remember what we did.