With a month in Australia under my
belt I thought it best to update this journal.
First things first, the weather.
Everyone has told me that Oz in in a drought at the moment, but I
find it hard to believe with all the rain we've had over the last
couple of weeks. There's even been flooding south of Brisbane just to
make me feel at home and for a couple of nights we've even had to use
a duvet!
The food has been really good, with
barbeques featuring highly. But these BBQ's aren't like their UK
counterparts. They're all (so far) gas fired and huge, with grills,
hot plates, warming racks and other bits I've never seen before. One
even had a sausage-turning gizmo! You could honestly cook for a party
on them, as happened during our first week in country. Not only was
there the welcome home party for Lydia, there was also the welcome
party for me, and then Lydia's birthday followed closely by
christmas. This made for a very good week, but plenty of late nights
and long lie-ins.
With Lydia back at work I've been
trying to keep myself busy, and have started working on my
dissertation. With the help of a friend of the family Lydia has set
me up with access to the local university library. Now all I've got
to do is get out there...
Today is the first day of a road-trip
we've been planning for some time. I say we, but Lyds has been doing
most of the planning for it. We're driving down to Brisbane along the
coast, then heading inland and down to Melbourne to go across to
Tazmania. We have two weeks to explore Tazi before we head back to
the mainland to follow the Great Ocean Road, then up the coast to
Brisbane before going the inland route back to Rockhampton. All in
all that should take around 6 weeks, and we have been given the
family ute' by Greg for the duration.
On that note I'm going to sign off and
get back to the scenery.
