Siamese Bananas

Has anybody ever seen bananas connected like this, or is it just an Australian thing?

Mail From Molly

It's always exciting to get mail that isn't bills or junk, especially when you live abroad and don't get mail from "real" people very often at all. So imagine my delight when we got a card "from" our dog Molly the other day! To catch up any newer readers, our chocolate lab Molly is staying with my brother Justin, my sister-in-law Cindy, and their yellow lab Mascot while we're living in Australia. Here's the front of the card:

No, that is not really a picture of Mascot and Molly on the couch together. But this is:

Ha! These dog cousins love each other-can you tell? Below is the inside of the card. Aunt Cindy may have helped Molly write this just a bit!

We miss Molly like crazy, but at least we know she's having fun in Michigan. And she really does like Mascot. A few months ago, when Mascot swallowed a rock (don't ask!) and had to have surgery, Molly threw up while Mascot was away. Molly only barfs if she's upset about something! The picture below shows the dog friends helping out in the kitchen... 

Molly Brown has her own Facebook page (you can become her friend!), and Justin and Cindy are great about posting pictures and videos and letting us see her on Skype. We miss you Molly-thanks for the card!

Lawn Bowling and a Cool Cake

At the end of March, Zack and I, along with several friends, are doing a ridiculous race called the Tough Mudder. It's a course designed by British Special Forces and involves running basically a half marathon with obstacles along the way. They range from jumping off a plank into ice cold water, running through mud-filled tires, crawling through skinny tubes and under wire, climbing over walls, jumping over fire, carrying a log up a hill, racing through electrified wires (ack!), etc. Peer pressure is the only reason I signed up for it. Anyway, we had a little team get-together this weekend with a BBQ at Adam and Emily's place followed by a game of lawn bowling at a local club. It was an extremely hot day!

This "sport" is pretty popular among the elderly here in Australia. You stand on a mat and then roll this black ball, which is kind of like a smushed sphere and weighted on one side (so you have to account for the curve that happens), toward a white "jack" (small ball) at the other end of the green. The closest ball to the jack wins. For the first few rounds, the girls split from the boys. This picture is of the guys during one of their games.  

Zack ended up being pretty good at lawn bowling. The pictures above show his ball right on the pin; he definitely won that round! Note his extremely Aussie outfit...muscle tee (called a singlet here) and colored shorts. With our Havaiana flip-flops (thongs), we are starting to fit in in this country!

After bowling, we went back to the Lowells for some more food and dessert. Here is the cake I made in honor of the occasion. We are Team AUSsome because most of us are expats or people from other countries. You can see several of the obstacles we'll have to face featured on this cake. More to come about how/if we survive at the end of the month!

Hooray for Scoopon!

This short blog post is just a shout-out to Scoopon. I've bought several coupons through them to use at various restaurants, hotels, etc. We had purchased flights to Thailand through them, but then Air Australia went under. Scoopon refunded our entire purchase price (and everyone else's as well). According to articles I've read, this is going to cost them over a million dollars out-of-pocket. In a time when lots of companies seem to be all about making profit, it was so refreshing to receive the news that we would not be out this money. Hooray for Scoopon! If you're in Australia and haven't checked our their deals before, here's the link: Scoopon. No, I was not paid to do this post, although if Scoopon wants to give me some free deals or something, I'm available! :) Now to figure out when/how we're going to get to Thailand...

Rottnest Island

On Valentine's Day, we took a ferry over to Rottnest Island. It took about half an hour to get there from Fremantle, and it was beautiful! Cars aren't allowed on the island, so we rented bikes and took our snorkeling gear to a place called Parker Point. On the way, we saw some of the native quokkas, marsupials that are only found in certain areas of Western Australia.

Once again, we were quite impressed by the snorkeling. My little camera with its plastic waterproof case doesn't take the best of pictures, but hopefully you can get the idea of some of the fish we saw (more are posted on my Shutterfly site). The farther out we went, the better the coral got, the bigger the fish got (we saw some huge ones), and the more scared we got about encountering a shark!

Zack relaxes at Parker Point.

Covered in the white powdery sand!

Now this is the way to spend Valentine's Day!

A small bluebottle jellyfish on shore.

After hanging out at Parker Point for awhile, we headed to Little Salmon Bay, because I had heard the snorkeling there was good too. We saw a few bluebottle jellyfish on shore, but we took our chances and headed out anyway. By the way, blue bottle jellyfish are called Portuguese man o'wars in other parts of the world. Anyway, we both felt a few small stings on our legs while we were in the water, but the fish and coral were awesome, so we kept swimming. Zack headed back into shore after a bit, but I stayed out there and swam out in the deeper water.

As I was coming back into shore, I saw a jellyfish in the shallow water and swam away from it. Apparently I swam right into one, because suddenly my neck was burning! I stood up and started throwing everything off...the camera that was hanging around my neck, my snorkeling gear, etc. Luckily, Zack was standing on shore watching me (because he was afraid I was going to get attacked by a shark in the deep water!), so he ran out when he saw me sort of freaking out. "My neck!" I yelled, and he saw a jellyfish wrapped around my neck, tangled in my braids and swimsuit! He had to pull it off of me. It must have been around my right shoulder and upper arm, because that was burning as well. After he got it off of me, I ran up on shore and held a towel around me saying "ow, ow, ow" for about five minutes. The pain felt like when you have a really bad sunburn and somebody touches it. Imagine that but constant! The next five minutes felt more like a bee sting, and then it started itching. The next day, it still itched and hurt again when I took a shower. A week later, I still have red marks on the back of my neck and wound around my upper right arm. Fun stuff!

Zack washes off my snorkel equipment at Little Salmon Bay after my jellyfish attack.

Luckily, we needed to return the bikes and catch our ferry back to Perth soon after our time at Little Salmon Bay anyway, so we left after my jellyfish stings. I guess I learned my lesson about going in the water if you see those darn bluebottles on the beach!

Rottnest Island was a beautiful tropical paradise (minus the jellyfish) and a great place to spend Valentine's Day. We had a leisurely ferry ride back to Perth, where we had a nice Italian dinner and walked around the city a bit before heading to the airport for our overnight flight home. A long weekend in Western Australia was a wonderful break in the middle of February!

A view of Perth from our ferry back from Rottnest Island.

Yallingup and Fremantle

On our Monday in Western Australia, we spent the day at Yallingup Beach. There were several surfers, and we rented surfboards, but we weren't good enough to hang with the pros who were surfing on the huge waves over the reef. So we swapped in our surfboards for boogie boards, but the waves that weren't over the reef were crashing right on the beach, which left us basically no room to ride. So we used the boards as beach beds instead. Oh well! Here you can see Zack relaxing on his board trying not to get too much sun.



We did enjoy the snorkeling on the reef at this beach. While nothing will ever compare to the Great Barrier Reef, we were able to see some pretty awesome fish and even some decent coral. Keep in mind that this is shark country. On nearby beaches, four men have been killed in shark attacks in recent months, including one American expat! Yikes-we did get a little scared when we were snorkeling out in the deeper water.

That night, we drove to Fremantle to stay the night at a neat hotel attached to an Irish pub called Rosie O'Grady's. Fremantle is a cute little town right on the ocean and about thirty minutes away from Perth. It had several blocks of fun little shops and restaurants. We ate at a Mexican place, and it was actually pretty good (which is rare for Australian Mexican food). Check back tomorrow for a blog post about our last day in WA!

Margaret River Wine Region

We spent a day touring some wineries in the Margaret River region of Western Australia. For this blog post, I'll take you along on our tour, complete with my pictures of each place. The picture to the right is obviously of some grapes at one of the wineries. It was nice to tour wineries when there was actually something on the vines, as I toured the Yarra Valley region in autumn when the vines were withered and bare!











Our first stop was Cullen Wines. They are known for their organic vineyard and biodynamic agricultural processes. After our wine tasting, we had some bread with delicious dips and olive oil. This was a cute little place with great wine and food; it ended up being one of our favorites of the day.

Next we headed nearby Vasse Felix. This place had several strange sculptures on its grounds. The main building was very pretty, and we enjoyed their wine as well.

I'm giving a thumbs down to the Margaret River Chocolate Company. Their "tastings" consisted of picking out a few of what were basically chocolate chips from a bowl. They had white chocolate and dark chocolate, but no milk chocolate was out on the day we were there. Also, they usually have chocolatiers you can watch making treats, but there were none of those working on this day. Highly disappointing (though my mouth is full of white chocolate chips in the picture!).

We were now in the heart of the Margaret River area, and we headed to Cape Mentelle. By this point, I guess the wine and chocolate had made Zack tired, because he took a nap in the car for a little while before we went inside. I didn't mind; I read a book on the swing and enjoyed the quiet winery.

Our next stop was the extremely impressive Voyager Estate. The grounds of this place were amazing! If you think Domaine Chandon in the Yarra Valley region is pretty, it's got nothing on this place.

This place has the second largest Australian flag in the country (the biggest is in Canberra). The grounds are flawless with perfectly manicured hedges and expansive green lawns.

Here's a picture of me ringing the bell out front. It was quite loud, so this shot shows me running away!

We enjoyed walking around the rose gardens and choosing our favorite (this was mine). There were also rose bushes at the end of each row of vines. This was definitely our other favorite winery for the day.








We tried to go to Leeuwin Estate, but they hold a yearly concert which happened to fall on the weekend we were there, so the line of cars to even get on the grounds was insane. We decided to skip it and instead headed to the Margaret River Cheese Company before it closed. After a delicious tasting, we purchased a bag containing crackers and little portions of some of their cheeses. This made for a great snack over the next few days-I love cheese!

The Margaret River wine region was beautiful, and touring it was a relaxing and delicious way to spend a day in Western Australia.