Kangaroo's, wombats and dingoes- OH MY!

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Melbourne is beautiful from the 14th floor of a posh luxury 5-star corporate suite. And since we weary backpackers have been in youth hostels and really dumpy cheap hotels, we hardly left the luxury so generously provided by our really good friend from Houston- Mike Nash. We were ecstatic to see Mike as we got off our plane from Perth. He is working in Australia for several months on a temporary basis, so the company set him up in a really nice suite overlooking central Melbourne. This is the first familiar face that we have seen since we met up with Fr. Kaska in Rome (in October!).

We only had a few days with Mike, so we spent a lot of time just hanging out in his place and catching up. Besides, the temperature out side was over 100 degrees F so we weren't too motivated to leave the air conditioning. We did take a day trip to go and visit a wildlife reserve NE of Melbourne. We saw our very first duck-billed platypus, a lazy wombat, wallabies and a slightly neurotic Tazmanian Devil. It is hard to look at a Tasmanian Devil and not expect to see it swirl around in a tornado and eat everything in sight like the Warner Brothers cartoon character 'Taz.' I think all kids are universally disappointed that a real Tazmanian Devil just looks like a chunky rat. We learned that this particular devil was a girl, and thought that she needed some red lipstick, a big pink bow and a strand of pearls to be identified as a 'Lady Taz.'

We also got a home cooked meal courtesy of another Houston-friend-working -in-Melbourne, Christina Konvicka. She and her husband Matt have a 2 year old daughter and have been working in Australia for a year and a half. It was really nice to see some old friends!

Speaking of cooking, I had the joy of cooking a couple of meals in Mike's suite and boy it felt good to cook! We really miss some of the simple things in life when you travel. Eating out all the time really gets to be tiresome. It is even better when the cleaning staff comes in and does the dishes for you. Now THAT is posh living!

We sadly had to leave Melbourne and say goodbye to Mike and head for Sydney. We rented a car for four days to make to 12 hour drive. We broke it up into 3 different stops along the coast: Sale, Eden and Kiama. All three towns were pretty small and still had a 1950's feel. In each town, the cheapest accommmodation is above the town bar/casino/bistro/drive through liquor mart. You can imagine some of the characters we met there! Since we had a car, we went wildlife hunting in the evenings. There are quite a few back roads and drives around these towns and we carefully drove around looking for any wildlife. In one very successful night, we saw about 20 kangaroos, 5 wallabies, 2 wombats, and a fox. The coastal town of Kiama was probably our favorite of the three. It has a really cool blowhole in some rocks not far from the town and it was fun to stand there and watch the ocean waves cram through a hole and blow out like a geyser.

We were really busy in Sydney. We had only three full days to see everything we could, and our list was large! We stayed in a really colorful area of town called King's Cross. When we stepped out of the metro, we found ourselves right in the middle of Sydney's red light district. There were neon signs everywhere, and aggressive touts trying to get us in to their particular dance club. But hey, the hostel was good and cheap! We walked all over the central area of Sydney, and we took probably 100 different photos of the Opera House. It is really a beautiful building, much bigger in person than I had imagined. Did you know that the danish designer based the big white curved roofs after orange slices? We learned that tidbit on a really informative tour that we took through the opera house.

The highlight of our trip to Sydney was a free opera performance in the park. We thoroughly lucked out on this one. Once a year, the Sydney Opera Group performs a free outdoor opera. This year was 'The Barber of Seville' and it was awesome! At least this opera had subtitles in English, so we could follow along. The opera was at 8pm and when we got there at 6pm we were astonished at how full the park was already! We thought we were going to have to watch it from the very back of the park, but we blundered into a great spot only 20 feet from the stage. Some really nice lady offered us a corner of her staked-out plot. We learned that everyone around us had camped out for 2-3 days in tents to secure this prime real estate. Wow, the Australians really love their opera!! The people we sat with heard our American accents and took pity on us for having to sit really far way. They even shared some snacks and drinks with us, they had enough to feed 100's! Such wonderful Australian hospitality! The opera was fabulous, and we are still catch ourselves humming 'Figaro'.

Andy and I reunited with some fellow travelers that we had met while in Corfu, Greece. Kate and Moh were now back in Sydney and were able to spend an afternoon with them. They took us to the best fish and chips shop in all of Australia, and then we went back to their place to look at trip photos and compare stories after we split in October. It was really great to see them again, even if it was only for an afternoon.

We did so much more in Sydney, but it would be too much to go into right now. I'll just list a few: the awesome acquarium, the CenterPoint Tower, the ferry boat rides through the harbor, the monorail tour, and Hyde Park. It is a great city, and we'd love to go back someday. Hopefully I can get the chance to post a photo or two sometime soon. I'll just put up a generic one for now, the Sydney Harbor Bridge was really cool.