Our Aussie Experience: Outback Living

Wanted to provide an update on the past 2 days since I haven't been able to provide an update lately.

Two days ago we made the trip from Sydney to UllaDulla. We boarded a private coach (bus) and headed out. We first stopped at an Australian farm. As you can see from the sign, it was a fair-dinkum colonial farm. Fair-dinkum apparently means genuine.

Here they showed us lots of ways of the farm and the outback. We had a genuine Australian farm hand show us the ropes which included shearing sheep, milking cows, cracking a whip, throwing a boomerang, watching dogs herd sheep, and then had a Aussie BBQ for lunch. "Throw another shrimp on the barbie" ... OK, we had steak, but you get the point.

There were a couple of highlights of the day. First was the boomerang throwing. Pop pop was the most successful in throwing it and having it return, upon which he took a lengthy bow and encouraged much applause from the group. Everyone, including Mee-maw gave it a try.

Whip cracking was a popular activity. It was much harder to do that it looks. You have to get the right arm motion to get the whip to actually make the cracking sound. Zach and Andrew really got into. So did I and proceeded to hit myself in the face with the stupid thing. Judy on the other hand seemed to not have much problem with it ... I suspect its from all the practice she's had at home (Get it? Blogs are great ... always the jokes at Judy's expense). Look at the photo ... that face says "I thought I told you to ...".

Another fun activity was sheep shearing, which Judy was able to participate in, and watching the dogs herd the sheep. The boys got a kick out of watching these dogs round up the sheep. A couple of the sheep went after the dogs and the boys were ready to see a big face-off ... dog vs. sheep. The sheep quickly got in line and the big fight didn't materialize.

The big highlight of the day for the boys was the chance to get up close with a kangaroo. The farm had 3 kangaroos that they kept. We weren't supposed to be able to see the kangaroos, but

Judy asked if the boys could go it with them. They nicely accomodated the request. We took several photos including one with the Travel section of the Columbus newspaper (They will run pictures in the travel section if you submit them). The boys were even able to pet the one kangaroo which wasn't bothered at all by us being there ... the other two let us get close, but not touch them.

After the farm visit, we continued on to UllaDulla which is a coastal town about 3 hours south of Sydney. We took the scenic route which was really beautiful. Lots of rolling hills and forest along the way which provided great views.

We spent the day yesterday in UllaDulla. In the morning we attended a church service with about 200 members from the Australia church. In the afternoon, we spent a day at the beach. The water was freezing cold, but the boys got in it anyway. I couldn't believe they could take the temperature of the water. They played a game for a while where they were apparently challenging the ocean ... we heard lots of growls and saw lots of fist pumping and ice cold waves came crashing in on them. They would run away (fall down half the time) and then be back challenging the ocean again. We also explored some tidal pools for shells, crabs and other little sea creatures. Finished the day with a good ole fish and chips dinner and then a "dirty Bingo" night with the church members. Dirty bingo is played by having prizes for each time you get a Bingo and then once the prizes run out, you go and take prizes from other people. Sort of like the gift exchange at our Christmas party each year, but without the fighting :) It was a lot of fun and the boys got lots of little gifts they loved ... I made them actually give some of them away to the Australian kids or we would need 3 more suitcases to get home.