Golfing Sunday

We made it out to the golf course around 1:00 Sunday afternoon. It's only $15AUD to play 9 holes ($25 AUD for 18) so it's a pretty good price for a couple of hours of fun. We thought that we would rent a cart, but they only had 9 and they were all either rented or reserved for others. So we walked. It was actually a really pretty day to be walking.

Josh was a little rusty, but a quite a few good shots and shot a bogey on a few of the holes. I think that he was the most proud of the one over on the Par 5 hole 9. I don't think that the golfing hurt his joints, but toting the golf clubs around wasn't so good on his back. He seemed to have fun.

I, on the other hand, need a few more hours on the driving range. But I still had fun. And I didn't get too frustrated when I would chip the shot just a few feet down the fairway.

The course wasn't crowded at all compared to what I've seen in LaGrange, but we did have one couple start breathing down our neck. I think that we'll try to play on Fridays from here on out when it seems like there is NO ONE out there.

Weekend thus far

Friday, Josh and I went to town to get a few items and we had lunch at a little bakery that served meat pies. Josh has already had one brought to him at work by one of the guys that lives out at man camp, but I figured that I should try it out. Plus, they were only $2 so it made for a cheap lunch out.

We both choose Meat and Mushroom because mushrooms always makes things taste better.



I peeled the top off and this is what it looked like.


Not too appetizing to look at (especially when you bit it open), but it really wasn't too bad. It was like a beef stew cooked into a pastry. I can't say that we'll be having them too often, but I'm not a real fan of beef stew. It WAS really filling though which is kind of nice when you're only paying $2 for something.

That afternoon we drove into Toowoomba to see a movie. It turns out that 'Star Trek' was actually a pretty awesome movie and I really enjoyed it. We went to the 4:15 showing and got out around 6:15. The movie theater that we go to is in a mall type complex and so we figured that we'd just walk back through the mall for a little bit while waiting to get hungry enough to eat. It turns out that Toowoomba - like Dalby and much of Australia - also has early trading hours and so the gates to the "mall" were already closed at 6:15 at night. That is one of the hardest things to get used to. If you want something from a store after 6pm, then you better hope that one of the corner stores has it because every major place is shut down until 8:30 the next morning.

When we parked the car in the afternoon, there had been plenty of cars in the parking deck. Not as crowded as when we went up on a Saturday, but still pretty active. When we left, it was only our car in the section of the deck.



(That ghost-like face is me trying to find a place to eat on our GPS.)

We went ahead and went to a restaurant in Toowoomba which was pretty good - though the service was terrible as usual. It turns out that servers here get paid about 18AUD an hour and so it's not really necessary that they work too hard for good tips (most people only tip if the service was exceptional). Combine that with the fact that most Queenslanders are fairly easy-going, laid back people who enjoy lingering over dessert and a last pint and you can be sitting at the dinner table for a bit. I had the enjoyable task of driving the 75 kms back to Dalby in the pitch dark.

Yesterday, we stayed close to home all day. We did make it over to Sharlane's house to pick up golf clubs so I think that we're going to hit the course this morning.

29.05.2009 (Morning Update)

Yesterday, I had tea with the ladies again. Do I sound like a kept woman yet? I think that my time for hosting tea is coming up so I guess that I need to get my act together. One of the women, Kathy, is going to head up a Relay for Life team for an event here in Dalby in September. So we were getting together to talk about a team name (which didn't happen) and just to chat. I also got to meet Kelly, who is the girlfriend of one of the guy's that Josh works with. She is really into biking (brought her mountain bike, but has slicks) and actually teaches a spin class out at the PCYC (Police Citizens' Youth Club) which I guess is like a YMCA back in the States since it has a lot of kid's activities, but it also has a gym that you can belong to. I'm going to check out the gym on Monday and maybe hit up Kelly's spin class next Friday (we slept in today).

Josh started his 3 day weekend last night. I was getting ready to head out to pick him up at 3:00 and I get an email telling me that he wouldn't be home until 5:30. He has A LOT of work to do and not enough hours in the day to do it. He even hopped online this morning to handle some outstanding work emails. I know that he's glad to be home and relaxing for a few days though - at least we don't have to get up at such an unseemly hour. I think that our plans are to head to Toowoomba today to check out the 'Star Trek' movie (his choice, not mine) and then I *think* that we might play golf on Sunday. I found out that Sharlane has a set of men's and women's clubs that she'll let us borrow - plus, if golfing turns out okay, then maybe the girls will get together during the week and do it.

let's talk about driving

Australians, as they are about a lot of things, are very casual about driving. Here is the road that leads down to our house (Orpen). Notice that there are no lines down the middle or the side. Almost all the roads around here are like that with the exception of a few main roads.

I think that the idea is that you can drive wherever you want until another car meets up with you and tnen you just move to your left.


In Dalby, there are 5 stoplights (3 on the main highway, 2 on the road that parallels the main highway) and there are no stop signs. Instead, all over the place are 'Give Way' signs which means 'Yield' in American.


So you come to a road crossing and if you have the 'Give Way' sign, then you just have to slow down, look to your right first (always to the right first) and left and then go. If nothing's coming, then you don't even have to stop. It's so much more efficient. But knowing how traffic works in Atlanta, these signs would be terrible.

If there is a road crossing where one road is perhaps not bigger than another road and they don't want to handle traffic with 'Give Way' signs, then they stick a roundabout in the middle of the road. Here's the sign warning you that you have a roundabout coming up.


And here's the roundabout.


This is the one in our neighborhood - only one lane. Remember on some of the ones from our trip last weekend, there were 3 lanes! The general rule is that you yield to your right. So you approach that dotted line and slow down. If nothing is coming from the right, then you keep going. It's scary when you are the car with the right away and something pulls up from your left and you aren't really sure if they're going to stop or not.

Also, Josh constantly trys to claim that I don't look to my right on this roundabout. But I do. Every time. Also, he says that I get really close to the outside curb when going around. And well, okay - that statement might be true.

And don't forget - we're learning all of this with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car.

There are a few things that we've had to get use to -
1. not hugging the left side of the road and scaring the passenger,
2. not turning on the windshield wipers when we really want a turn signal (signals on the right)
3. not going to the other side of the car to get in when you're driving (I've done it 3 times in the past 5 days - it's embarrassing)

Just as a note, I'm the driver in the family over here, but these pictures were taken one our trip to Toowoomba a few weeks ago. Josh drove so that he could get some experience behind the wheel, but I think that he can count on one hand the number of times that he's driven over here.
I was a happy passenger though.

Pizza (and Beer)

Tonight we had some guys from Atlanta over to eat pizza with us and hang out. Tuesday nights are cheap pizza night at Eagle Boys. It's really good pizza AND on the flyer that I got in the mail the first week that we got here, it advertised that their "Australian" pizza is 14% larger than "American" pizza. This pizza has to impress.

Also, since the 2 guys that came over drink beer, I was put in charge of going to buy it. I hadn't remembered seeing any alcohol being sold in grocery stores or in the corner store, so I headed to the drive-thru liquor store. I still had to get out of my car, but you really just drive in, tell the guy what you want, pay and drive out.

Josh had done all the research on authentic Australian beer so he told me to get Victoria Bitter and XXXX.

The Roo sipped back a bottle of each.

Victoria Bitter is the most sold beer in Australia. Matt tried one and said that it tasted like a Colt 45. My guess is that the other 5 stubbies are going to stay in our fridge for the next year.

When I asked for XXXX, the guy wanted to know if I wanted XXXX Gold or XXXX Heavy. I elected for Gold because drinking something labeled Heavy is just not an option when you can drink something with Gold in the title.

XXXX is a Brisbane brewer and it's a very popular beer here in the state of Queensland (and beginning to be across all of Australia). I had 2 sips of it from a glass and I concurred with Matt that it basically tasted like Bud Lite. I was hoping for a nice appley crisp taste - I was highly disapponted. I switched to Diet Coke after the 2 sips. Much better.

The pizza was delicious and it was nice having people over --- even if I was the only girl.

25.05.2009 - Just an update

My younger sister complained that since I didn't post yesterday (in her words "Gave up blogging"), she didn't have anything to read while at work. Since it is our family's sole purpose not to upset Sweet Melissa, I figured that I better not skip two days in a row.

My camera battery died on me (again) so it's getting charged so no pictures with this post, but I realized that it's been awhile since I did just a generic update on how our lives are going and what we are up to. I also call this 'easy blogging'.

Josh finished his 8th day of work in a row today. This is the first time that he will have to do 11 days straight (he's done 10) and he seems to be making it through okay. I drove him into work both Saturday and Sunday so that we could both get a little more sleep (and because I had nothing else to do). I like driving out there because on the way back everything is waking up and it's really pretty looking at the open fields with the sun coming up. I saw a kangaroo both mornings (Josh saw one on Sunday) along with plenty of dead roos. Also, right near the power station there is this HUGE dead boar. It is the nastiest, grossest thing ever.

On the Saturdays and Sundays that he has to work, Josh only has to work 8 hours and gets off at 2:30. Which means that I should be at the park at 3 to pick him up. I somehow got it in my head that pick-up time was 3:30 and didn't realize it until I got to the park at 3:24 and there were no other vehicles there. Oops. He was almost finished with the ~1.5 miles when I caught up to him. I don't think that he would have been so nice if it had been raining.

Speaking of rain, only about 3 hours to the east of us, the coasts are getting battered by some storms. They show pictures on the news of cars in the sand and towns completely shut off due to the floods. We have been pretty lucky and only got 2 days of rain (Tuesday and Wednesday) last week which was welcomed since we were afraid that we wouldn't see real rain for awhile. Apparently when it rains too hard, the workers out on the power station get sent home at half-day since they can't do any work. Josh does "office work" in a trailer so he still had to do his full 10 hours. It would have been nice to get a call that he was coming home early, but I guess that he should put that college education to good use.

I have been busy working. I even worked today even though it's technically Memorial Day. I figured that since I had work to do and no one was here to entertain me, that I should just get it done. In the past few days, I've also gotten a few more bug bites on my feet. I have no clue what it is giving them to me. I've gotten a few as soon as I take my sneakers and socks off from working out and some in the middle of the night. You would think that it was a flea or something, but Josh isn't getting bitten and I'm not getting bit on a regular enough basis. Our best guess is that I'm getting some chiggers when I wear my flip-flops outside and the bites aren't showing up until later. It's completely ridiculous - especially considering how sensitive I am to insect bites.

We don't have any big plans for this upcoming weekend. I think that we'll take in a movie in Toowoomba on Friday and maybe drive up to the Bunya Mountains for a hike either Saturday or Sunday.

Caloundra

Last Sunday before we headed back to Dalby, we stopped by the beach in Caloundra to see if it was worthwhile coming back to once it was a little warmer (it's almost winter here!) and because we've never seen the Pacific from this side of the world before.

Caloundra is on the southern part of the Sunshine Coast which is just north of Brisbane. The Gold Coast is just south of Brisbane. Apparently all coasts in Australia are beautiful, but the Gold Coast tends to be more high-rise condos right on the beaches (think Miami) with amusement parks nearby while the Sunshine Coast is more lower apartment, condos and hotels. If we go even further up the Sunshine Coast, it gets even more remote.

We parked at King's Beach and sat for awhile watching the lifeguards do some type of training with their raft boats. At this beach, they have lifeguards on station year-round and in order to be protected you have to swim between the yellow and red flags. Josh is pretty adamant on the point that he won't be getting in any Australia beach water since everywhere you are warned about rip tides and jellyfish.

There was also this awesome board walk that ran up above the beach. We went out there about 9:00 in the morning and there were tons of people out (though there are none in this picture). Lots of people running, riding their bike or setting up for picnics in the park that is right down the way. We spent about an hour walking along the boardwalk watching the surfers ride the waves in.

I did go down at one point and test to see if the water was as cold as I was thinking it would be (it was probably about ~70 degrees outside). It wasn't painful cold like the San Francisco bay, but I don't think that I would go at this time of year without a wetsuit.

Also, from the beach you could see some of the Glasshouse Mountains - those peaks in the picture below. The one all the way to the left in this picture is really funny looking - all crooked.

Obviously Australians think that the water is warmer than I do as noted by the guy in this picture who has no shirt on.

After walking we had brunch at this cafe right on the beach. It was delicious! We both thought that Caloundra was beautiful and will hopefully be visiting a lot more of the beaches over the next year.

International Mail Call

I got a package in the mail yesterday. I actually got the notice in the mail on Tuesday and went and picked it up on Wednesday. It was from my mama - or my mummy as the post office woman said. I was thankful that they (because I'm sure my dad put some sentiment in it too) spent that much to send me something.


And when I opened it up, it was full of books.

No candy, no note (which is okay because I talk to my mom almost every day over skype), nothing that Josh would be interested in - just 11 books. I think that I've read 2 of them already, but as a notorious book re-reader, I'm okay with that.

It was a great package because in the month or so that we've been here, I've made my way through 10 books.

(There's only 8 showing, but 2 of those are double books in one binding.)

Granted they weren't the hardest books to get through. And they weren't all good (I joined GoodReads to keep a track of what I read while over here and I also ranked them. I gave 5 of these 10 2-stars out of 5 and another one 1-star.). But 10 books in 4.5 weeks is a lot of books for me. Especially combined with the 45ish hour workweeks, the weekends Josh is off and the other household things that have fallen my way (breakfast, lunch, dinner, laundry, grocery shopping). I don't know where the extra time has come from (no more commutes, lack of telly stimulation), but I love it.

My mom has indicated that she doesn't think that she can do this every month so I better slow my roll.

Cute Zoo Animal Pictures

The little otters were adorable. The two of them would perch up on this log and look around a little bit and then they would dash off and do a circle through their little pond around the habitat until they paused again to look around.


Seriously they were all jacked up on the Mountain Dew.

This little lizard (aka water dragon) that I'm pointing to is not necessarily cute, but there is a cute story that goes along with seeing him.


There are signs all over asking you not to touch the water dragons (or else you'll get kicked out) and right before we took this picture, there was a family with a 2 year old girl trying to get her picture with it. The girl kept moving closer and closer (giving Josh a near heart-attack), but her dad was telling her 'Don't touch, don't touch. Just sit and look.' And then he started moving down the pathway and left the mom there to get a picture. The first thing out of the mom's mouth was 'Touch it, touch it.' I guess it was her misguided way of trying to get the girl to move closer to it.

I followed instructions a little better and just pointed.

That's Josh feeding a kangaroo along with OUR roo. Kangaroos are both cute and scary - have you seen their claws? Also, if you look in between this roo's legs you can see another leg just kind of hanging out in the air. That would be the joey in the pouch. He decided to crawl in there and not turn around and so his tail and one leg were sticking out. I think that it's about time for that kid to move out.

Now - cutest animals ever.

The koalas looked like big stuffed animals just sitting up in the trees. I could have snuggled up to one.

We even got to pet one later on in the zoo.

I got to pet this one too, but see that pole running across? That pole kind of blocked my face from the picture. But it didn't ruin my excitement of getting to pet such a sweet animal.

Australia Zoo

We spent right at 6 hours at the Australia Zoo on Saturday. 6 hours! That's a lot of animal seeing. Here's a picture of the map of the zoo to give you an idea of how big it is.

Just as a recap - here's how the day went:

9:15 - Arrived at the zoo and had no trouble getting a parking space or buying tickets. The only people there right at the opening were families with small kids and 2 American young adults.

Saw Komodo Dragon, Australian Lizards and Otters. Saw Native Turtles and Aldabran turtles. Saw Gator, saw Gator, saw Gator, saw Gator, saw Gator.

10:00 - Saw Tasmanian Devel. It was Tasmanian Devel day (they are trying to raise money for the plight of cancer that is endangering the devel). We hung around here a bit to see watch them get fed, listen to the keeper's talk about them and watch them bring one out on the leash. Josh did not do his imitation of the cartoon devil. Saw Gator. Saw Dingoes and Cassowaries.

10:30 - Snack because we hadn't had much for breakfast. Saw Koalas (on Koala island) and Foxes.

11:00 - Went to the Crocoseum to see their twice daily show. It was awesome. The birds were so well trained and were dive bombing the crowd. They had the elephants and snakes out there. And the main event was getting to see them get a gator to go for the meat. It took forever, but it was pretty awesome.

11:45 - Saw Eastern Grey Kangaroos and Wallabies. Bought roo food for a $1 and fed and petted the kangaroos. Saw a kangaroo throw up from eating too much food (not our kangaroo - another one) and saw a Joey crawl into its mama's pouch. Saw Echidnas. Saw all kinds of birds in The Wetlands section. Saw Emus, Elephants and Red Pandas.

1:00 - Went to main food court and ate lunch. We were pretty much starving at this point. Saw Gator, saw Gator, saw Gator.

1:30 - Took shuttle back up East Asia section and saw Tigers. Watched them play in the water with toys and the trainers. They were just big ol' kitty cats. Came back and saw Koalas (again, but this time in an open range. And we got to pet one.). Saw Red Kangaroos. Went into Rainforest Aviary and saw more birds. Saw birds of prey in their special cage. Saw Southern Hairly-Nosed Wombats, Common Wombats and Australian Snakes. They had about 12 snakes on display. About 7 of those snakes were venomous. It was creepy. Saw American Alligators.

3:00 - Made it to the gift shop and walked around in the air conditioner looking for a magnet to remember our trip by (it's kind of our thing). We settled on a cute koala.

3:15 - In the car driving back to the hotel.

I'm pretty sure that the only things that we missed were the Camels (but we did smell them) and the Kookaburras (but I did sing that old camp song when I saw their name on the map). What impressed us most was how active and interactive the animals were. We were afraid that we were just going to be walking around looking at animals napping in their cages, but in most cases, there was a keeper at each exhibit to answer your questions or to play with / take care of the animals.

We were also impressed with their signs.

The last 4 don't just get an X, but they get a red Death mark.

Josh says....

If you can't beat them, join them.

Boxing Kangaroos

HA!

Caloundra - 15.05.2009

I had a post and pictures all planned out for yesterday, but I worked too late and by the time it was 8:45 all I wanted to do was hit the hay and not try to be coherent for the internet. And I'm kind of glad that I didn't post because I was going to talk about driving in Australia, but our experience today really made me understand driving in Australia.

We left for Caloundra around 11:45 (after my tea with the 2 other girls that I know). Josh hasn't been feeling that well since he has been working side-by-side with a guy that came in with a cold this week. Caloundra is a coastal town about 3.5 hours from Dalby, but because we needed to get our quarantined and now cleaned shoes from Brisbane, we had to head east to Brisbane and THEN up the coast instead of just going diagnally from Dalby.

We made it to the outskirts of Brisbane within the 2 hour and 15 minute mark and that's where it started going downhill. We bought a navigation system last night because I wasn't really confident on us just going off to big cities without having some type of directional aide. And I missed the exit that I was suppose to get off of. The GPS lady told me that it was coming in 600 meters, but what she really meant is that I should have gotten over to the left all the way and flowed left until 600 meters when road appeared. And I got to experience my first double-lane, motorway roundabout.

A roundabout is what the Australians have decided is the best way to avoid building bridges on highways or putting stoplights and stop signs on smaller streets. It's also an immense amount of stress when you have 50 cars wanting to go aroudn the small roundabout. The rules are you yield to the right, but I also think that the rule is that you just punch the gas and just hop that the other guy slows down enough to let you get around safely to your exit. AND your exit can be any number out there. It's pretty funny when you approach the roundabout and hear the GPS lady tell you to enter the roundabout and take the 4th exit. Josh and I quickly learned to start counting the exits.

Luckily, I was able to follow directions to get us out of our misdirection and we made it to the warehouse to pick up our shoes. For anyone interested, they were both Josh's shoes, but I'm pretty sure that he didn't need either pair of them. And since I was primarily in charge of getting our stuff together to be packed, I think that I am somewhat to blame for them getting in the stack dirty. But we got the shoes.

After lunch, we were on our way from Brisbane to Caloundra - only a 111 km ride - should have only taken about an hour. What I didn't account for was that everyone in Australia gets off of work at 3:00 on Friday. And when you have 4 million people hitting the streets of Brisbane all at the same time, you have a major traffic jam. It was a nightmare. And made us not miss Atlanta at all!

It took us 2.5 hours to go that 111km ride. And with a sick boy in the passenger seat and a stressed out girl in the driver's seat, it wasn't such a great way to start a weekend holiday. When we finally made it here, the hotel/condo room made it totally worth it. Even though we're only on the 2nd floor, the room is spacious and modern and clean. It was dark when we got here so we haven't gotten to see a lot, but we were able to relax some, get some dinner and are back in the room now. I'm trying to finish up some work and Josh is trying to feel better. We did get some medicine from a convenience store to hopefully help Josh through the night. I've got my fingers crossed that he will be feeling better in the morning so we can still make it to the Australia Zoo.

If he's bed-ridden, then I'll just make a day at the spa.

Aussie School Children

I didn't get out of the house in time to take any pictures of the schoolchildren. And I really am hesitant to take pictures of them because if you were a parent wouldn't you be weary of some woman standing around taking pictures of your kids?

And apparently the Aussies don't realize how stinking cute their uniforms are because it was really hard to find a picture out on the web that showed the uniform off well. Here's one that I found out on the world wide web.

Usually the shirt is either a button-up like this little girl's or it's a polo with the school's name on it. The boys wear matching shorts or pants and the girls wear skirts or shorts. But ALL of them wear those hats. If the kids are outside, they have those hats on. I'm sure that it has something to do with the blistering Australian sun (Have I mentioned that I have shirt tan lines and I spend a maximum of an hour a day outside? And it's suppose to be fall?).

I've read that Dalby has 5 schools. I don't know how many of these are private (I *think* 3) and what ages they go through, but I haven't seen a single kid on a school day that wasn't in a uniform. So far, I know that we have a royal blue school, a yellow school and a green plaid school.

What makes me happiest about the school children here is that whenever I got out of the house around 8:00 am or 3:00 pm (and even today at 5:15 pm), I see the kids making their way home. And they are all either walking or riding their bikes or moving along on their scooters (very popular here). I'm so glad that (1) our town is SAFE enough for parents to allow their kids to make the at most 2 mile trek home and (2) that the kids do this happily. They seem to love making the trip home with each other. It's such a different experience than in Atlanta where you drive to the grocery store across the street and even LaGrange where the school is too far away so you have to drive (except for my Daddy of course - uphill both ways, snow, rough life). It really is small-town living at it's best.

WINNER!

And the winner is.....Beth....who guessed EXACTLY the correct number of 128 tires. Though I was pretty impressed by Adam (Josh's brother) who did an actual calculation of how much load a standard 18 wheeler can handle to come up with a pretty close guess.

Josh sent me a picture of the whole trailer with the advice to count the chrome and to not forget the ones in between the guy's legs.

It's probably too small to count in this picture, but there are 16 rows of 8 tires each.

Beth - I'll send out your prize early next week after we're back from our weekend away.

Australian is Funny - Part 4

Mmm - extra tasty. What's really funny is that right next to this in the cheese aisle was 'tasty' cheddar cheese. Why on earth would I just get the tasty cheddar cheese when I could have the extra tasty cheddar cheese?

My only reasoning is that Australian for sharp must be tasty, but then why on earth would they need an additional sticker telling you that there is extra bite in this cheese? It all just doesn't make sense to me.


On a semi-related, fairly interesting note - there is no orange cheese in Australia. It is all the white/yellow color that you see above. ALL of it - Colby, Cheddar, they don't have American but I'm sure it would be yellow too. It's very odd to go to the cheese section and only have yellow lying in front of you. I think that it all has to do with the anti-processing of food that they have going on in this country. But we haven't been able to find a single cheese that we really like (we use the stuff above mainly grated on our salads). It's going to be a long year.

Weekend Update - 10.05.2009

As an update to the post yesterday, that was NOT all of the trailer. If I showed you a picture of the entire trailer, then it would be called the 'counting game', not the 'guessing game'. Also, I don't think that he took a picture of the entire picture. Mama and Haley, if y'all want to reguess, you can. Or you can stay with your original guesses. Just try to think about how many tires need to be there to carry a 240 ton object.

As a hint, there were 2 cabs hauling the trailer - one right behind the other.

Also, the winner will get something authentically Australian sent to them so if anyone else wants to play, go ahead and guess. I'll leave it open until Monday 05/11 at 11:59 EST (US).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I took Josh to work this morning. He said that it was to give me something to do, but it's really because he wanted the extra 30 minutes of work. I have told him that he can take the car, but he's not the best with directions (it's 3 right turns with signs marking them) and always feels like we are lost. Also, we don't have a Roo Bar on our Holden so it makes it a little dangerous to be out there (particularly in the hazy dawn and dusk) because it's rumored that kangaroos are dumber than deer. They will see your car coming, pause and then hop right out into the front or side of your car.

Here's an example of a Roo Bar:

It's kind of like a push bar that you would see on trucks out in the country. Well, a push bar with headlights. And not only trucks have these, but cars as well. In fact, we are much in the minority for not having one. My best guess is that Budget Rent-a-Car doesn't want to encourage dangerous bush driving.

But anyway, I did drive Josh to work. Here is the proof (taken from my side of the car while trying not to slow down too much for fear of getting in trouble for taking pictures).

It's a big ol' structure out in the middle of nowhere (except for the OTHER power station right across the street).

And there was no need for the Roo Bar this morning since I only saw 3 dead kangaroos (though Josh did see one live one). But I much appreciated the sign as I left the parking lot reminding me that my mate's families would like me to drive safely.

I worked in the morning, worked out and before I knew it, it was time to pick Josh up from the bus stop (since he gets off at 2:30 on the weekends that he has to work). We have had a good time spending the evening just hanging out and I know that he is looking forward to only 4 more days of work until he gets a break.

Guessing Game

Josh sent home this picture today. The steam turbine arrived at the plant today. It weighs 240 tons. Guess how many tires were on the trailer that hauled it to Dalby?

The safety glasses are part of the uniform. He really should have gotten Lasik before making the trip over. Apparently all the guys without glasses are issued safety glasses that look like Oakley sunglasses.

Also, I'm not sure how much "work" Josh is really doing out at this power station if he has time to pose for photo ops.

Thursday(s) Excitement

On Thursday mornings, we get delivered our local newspaper. That's right - the newspaper only prints once a week. I'm talking SMALL town living here.

Here's what it looks like just after I've picked it up off of our yard.



It's very tightly rolled and then very tightly wrapped up with a saran-wrap like substance. My best guess is that they have some machine that does this though I do like to imagine some worker in the newspaper office rolling all the newspapers and then struggling with the saran wrap to get them securely protected.

And then you get the fun of unwinding it.



That's the newspaper completely unwrapped. And yet it stays curled up at the bottom.

So you have to use whatever you have lying around that's heavy enough to flatten it out.



I'm hoping by this afternoon that it's going to be flat enough to read.

Also THIS Thursday we got delivered our water cooler and our first water supply.

It's not plugged in yet since we seem to have a lack of electrical outlets in our house and thus I need to go by some more multiple-plugin strips. But yay! No more having to buy bottled water to drink.

Also, Thursdays is the day that the ice cream truck comes by. I haven't bought anything from it, but I have heard it is not your typical ice cream truck. Instead of just selling single treats, it sells boxes of treats. So you can go out and buy a whole week's worth of ice cream. I'm going to try it out one of these weeks!

Air Shipment

I have plenty to write about, but they require that I actually get out of the house to take pictures. Which means that I don't take a 2 hour nap in the afternoon in order to make up for the 5 hours of sleep that I got last night. I'm aiming for getting out for some fresh air tomorrow.

But we did receive our air shipment Tuesday morning. Here is what it looked like prior to leaving Smyrna in our basement "apartment" (where I'll be staying if/when I make a trip home):

And here's what it looks like here in one of our spare rooms in Australia:

I've managed to make it into 2 of the 13 boxes (they are pretty well labeled). The first box was opened because I wanted to see how disorganized the boxes had gotten when they were searched in customs. The second box was opened because it had most of the DVDs, the extra DVD player and Josh's mini-mac in it.

In retrospect, we didn't pack very smartly (even though we had 500 lbs air and 5000 lbs sea for our taking). I don't need nearly all the clothes that are packed in those boxes since my outfit of choice lately has either been pajama pants/T-shirt/sweat shirt, workout clothes or jeans/t-shirt. And Josh basically only needs the clothes that we brought in the suitcases - he wears an uniform for 11 out of 14 days! And don't even get me started on the shoes! Oh, how horribly disillusioned I was in thinking that I would need all those heels. I am pretty happy that we packed books (comic books for Josh, novels for me) and brought all of our DVDs. We have a region free DVD provided by CH2M (and the aforementioned extra player that we brought) so we should have plenty to watch over the next year. And I'm glad that somewhere in there, there are extra linens and towels.

We got an email about a week ago when the shipping was finishing up in customs indicating that 2 of our shoes were not fit to make it through customs and that they either had to be treated or destroyed. It was $110 for both choices - the only difference being that if we opted for treated, then we'll have to go to Brisbane to pick them up. Josh choose treatment, but I think that I'm going to get some glares if they are both pairs of heels that could have easily stayed in the States. Maybe when I'm unpacking, I'll try to figure out which ones they are to try to mediate the situation.

Drive To/From Toowoomba

As mentioned before, Saturday we drove to and from Toowoomba to get away from the small town living for a few hours (Toowoomba's population is about 100,000). Toowoomba is almost an hour's drive southeast of Dalby. I didn't take any pictures while in the city because (a) we were in a mall which was pretty close to what we have in the states (well, without any stores with names that I know - i.e. Gap, BR, J. Crew - and the fact that there is a grocery store as an anchor for the "mall") AND (b) I didn't want the punk/eurochick Aussie teenagers to think that I was a total square for taking pictures.

But I was able to take some while we were driving there and back (Josh drove this trip since he hadn't driven in 2 weeks and figured that he might need some practice).

Here's the view:

It's pretty exciting, yeah?

Sporadically there are windmills in the fields and there are naturally houses along the way and I think that we even pass through 2 smaller-than-Dalby "towns" on the trip. But mainly, it's just grass and clouds and blue skies. Perfect reading and napping weather.

Anything to take my mind off of this -

Through Dalby the Warrego "highway" is 4 lanes (for the short 8 blocks), but once you get out of the town limits, it narrows down to 2 lanes. And it basically stays that way all the way into Toowoomba. Normally when Josh drives, I'm asking him politely if he would mind moving the car over just a bit to the right since it very clearly appears to me that we are driving in the dirt (I think that it's just the way that it feels). But when trucks approach, I just keep my fingers crossed that we are far enough to the left and that our side mirror doesn't get nicked and spin us around.

Once you start getting close to Toowoomba, you start entering the hills and mountains. The picture below was probably taken about 13 miles out from Toowoomba. Toowoomba sits right on the crest of the Great Dividing Range and so we go from plainslands to mountains in under an hour. These mountains are kind of like the Appalachians of Australia in the fact that they are more weathered and rolling than you would get with the Rockies. The whole area kind of reminds me of Chattanooga.

Anyway, we made it to Toowoomba safely, ate lunch, saw our movie and walked around the mall a bit (I bought books - I'm going through them like they are out of style), we left and Josh forget to look right first when turning out of the mall exit. He caught it in time, but it was a bit terrifying (it's on repeat in my head when I approach a turn - 'Look Right, look right, look right....).

On the way back to Dalby, we drove almost directly into the sun. I had my sunglasses so you know 'whatevs', but Josh kept having to adjust the visor so that he could see to drive (and avoid the oncoming trucks).

They do know how to put on a good sunset out here.

And then 10 minutes after that, the sun touched the horizon and everything was green and pink and purple.