Jon Visits

The South Melbourne Market Tram 96 stop near our place-here I am sending Jon off at the end of his stay.

Back in September, our friend Jon came out to Australia for a three week trip. Before and after his tours of Sydney, Western Australia, and Tasmania, he stayed with us in Melbourne. I've known Jon for about seven years. He was one of the first people to join the soccer team I started back in Denver, and he keeps the Smurf team going today! The Smurfs used to do a lot of camping, karaoke nights, parties, and BBQs together back in the day. It was good to reconnect with a Colorado friend.

Jon and I biked down to Brighton Beach on the afternoon he arrived, with a stop in St Kilda. We got some takeaway from Bala's and enjoyed our lunch on the beach. Luckily, we had a nice, sunny day for our ride.

The next day, I drove Jon down part of the Great Ocean Road. 

He was lucky enough to get to see several Australian animals all in one day!

I spotted this echidna on the side of the road; it looks like it got its nose stuck in some sort of ring!

We saw plenty of kangaroos on the Anglesea golf course.

Jon has a pretty sweet zoom lens, so I used his camera to get this shot of a guy at Bells Beach.

We didn't go all the way to Cape Otway Road, but we saw plenty of koalas near Kennett River.

And while we were out of the car looking for koalas, I spotted a kookaburra!

So I'd say it was a pretty successful day trip down to the Great Ocean Road and hopefully a good start to Jon's Australian experience. He has some cool pictures of the other parts of his trip (and all his trips-he's quite the world traveler) on his website-check it out: www.sunlightpeak.com/travel/

Thanks for the cool pictures Jon, and I hope you enjoyed your time in Australia!

It wasn't easy, but we found a place in Melbourne that serves kangaroo for dinner!

Rip Curl Pro

On Good Friday, we drove down to Bells Beach to check out the Rip Curl Pro, a major surfing competition. We went on a great day; the weather was beautiful and we got to see Kelly Slater, the amazing 11-time World Champion from the United States. Zack has even read his biography!

First we watched a women's heat...

Then Kelly Slater came in for his semifinal bout, and his first ride scored over 9 points! He had some pretty incredible turns and tricks.

As Kelly Slater was ripping up the waves, Mick Fanning, the Australian who beat Slater in the final later that day (barely!), headed into the water for his semifinal round.

Champion Mick Fanning

Here are Kelly Slater and Jeremy Flores (from France) heading in after their semifinal...

Kelly Slater had a short interview after winning his semifinal, so I was able to get a close-up picture. He is not a bad-looking guy!

After watching some of the other semifinal, Zack and I headed to nearby Torquay eat some fish and chips and then to do some surfing of our own. Though we weren't quite ready for the Rip Curl Pro, we had a fun hour or two before a big hail and rainstorm blew in and we went running for cover!

That night, we drove to Lake Elizabeth to camp. More about that in the next post, but the sunset on our drive there was gorgeous! It felt like we were on an African safari, minus the lions and giraffes of course. We drove straight toward the sunset for awhile, and then the whole sky turned orange. It was a beautiful start to our Easter weekend. More to come soon...