Melbourne with Family and Friends

We spent several days in Melbourne and have had a couple of travel days. We took a bus from Ulla Dulla back up to Sydney. Riding the public bus in Australia isn't much different than in the US ... you don't! It wasn't too bad, but lots of interesting sights and especially smells. We just spent one night in Sydney before flying down to Melbourne on Tuesday. Melbourne is also a large city of about 3 million people. Like Sydney, it looks very new and modern.

Phillip Bonnell, a friend of the family, was at the airport to meet us and take us out to Jean Bonnell's home where we would be staying. Jean has a very nice home in the "suburbs" of Melbourne. When we arrived, the whole Bonnell clan was there and we had dinner together.

Here is a photo of the group that was there. As you can see, there was quite a crowd. Lots of kids too, which just jumped right in with Zach and Andrew. Next thing we know, they were off in the next room playing.

The next day, we scouted out all of the houses the Halfords lived in while in Melbourne. Judy especially wanted to see where she was born and other places they lived. Jean went with us for the day too.

We came to the first place, which was actually the house that Jean had lived in previously when they were there. Well ... that house had actually been torn down and a new house was in that location. So we went ahead and found what "may or may not" have been a house the Halford's lived in. That phrase .... "may or may not be" became a very common one that day. There is a big privacy gate and brick wall in front of the house. Well John wasn't going to be deterred by that (it was his house after all) ... so he hops out, rattles the gate which was locked, peeks through the mail slot, rattles the gate again, paces back and forth at the wall, checks the mail slot again, and shakes the gate one more time for good measure. In the meantime, we're all still sitting in the car because there isn't really anything to see. He comes back over to the car and says "Well, I've done all I can do here ... what are you going to do?" to which I responded "Get out of here, before the police come!". I was surprised how many different places they had lived in the Melbourne area ... we must have gone to 5-6 houses. As a pastor, they would rent the houses and then have to move every so often.

Each place we went had a similar view ... a large brick privacy wall. John would say that it used to be a much smaller brick wall in front of the house when they lived there, and we would scout out the next place. What I did learn that day is that the Aussies do fine masonry work. Here is a fine example of what we saw at most of the places that day.

We would then head to the next place with John often coming to jarring stops and starts. Or come to an intersection and start to turn left and then swing back right. Judy and I were tempted to count the number of horns blown at us by people behind us.

We actually did get a good view of the house that Judy was born in. It hadn't been torn down and didn't have a huge brick wall in front of it to be scaled. Judy and her mom took a picture in front of it as you can see here.

Judy then became very nostalgic about the place and began to suck her thumb right there in the driveway. OK, I put her up to it ... I originally suggested she lay on the driveway in the fetal position, but if the police came we may not have been able to get her out of there in time :)

After 5 hours, taking out an hour for lunch, we headed back. Fortunately, Phillips wife, Jennifer, had offered to let Zach and Andrew come over to her house and play with her boys for the day. That was a huge help. I don't know how many brick walls they would have put up with for the day.

Later that evening we enjoyed dinner out at the pub with Jean, Phillip, Jennifer, Ross and Gaye Beath (Judy's aunt and uncle), Ben and Joel Beath (her cousins) and Ben's girlfriend, Phoebe. We had a great dinner together and then visited until 1AM back at Jean's home. Jean was an extremely generous hostess to us all for the days we were there. We hope to return the favor when they come to visit the US in 2009. Jean asked to pass along hello to everyone, especially Becki and the Curran's.

We flew up to Cairns today in Queensland. Beautiful country with huge mountains and forests. We'll go to the rainforest today and out to the Barrier Reef tomorrow.