Cooper the awesomely funny guy (our comic relief!)

Here're a few pics of Cooper. I thought you'd like to see them!
The first one is in Mt Isa (yes, I'm only now really uploading my photos onto my computer and the blog!!!)

 The second one is I don't know where, but I had to photograph it, it was soooo funny!!! (actually, it was 13/09, so in Mt Isa. :) )

30th September - to WESTERN AUSTRALIA!!!

Well, last night was fun. :) We stopped at Gregory National Park - Sullivan's Campground last night. There were three other couples in the same general area of the campground too, and would you believe? Two of them were from Brisbane! The other one family was German. (You would not believe how many German's we've met on this trip!!!! It's unbelievable!). (Only two of the three families are in this photo)

We all had a great time talking around the campfire with the other families. They were extremely informative. One guy, Mark, gave us heaps of advice on our fridge (that averages 21°C), Tunnel Creek (apparently a Must-Do), and all sorts of other things. They've been touring Australia since February, and were in Western Australia for 10 months!!! Blog for them is: bakersaway.blogspot.com (can't wait to have a look). Mark's wife, Donna, was also very informative, and she and mum put their heads together with their Camping Australia books and planned routes. :) (That Camping Australia does awesome books! Tells you every single obscure and not-so-obscure camping spot ALL over Australia!!!)

One thing Mark told us about was just how quaranitn-ing the quarantine on the border of WA is!!! You can't take fruit, vegetables, plants, flowers, or even (would you believe!!!) HONEY!!! And we have 3 HUGE JARS OF IT!!!!

Not only that, but we also had a 7 kilogram watermelon to devour! And mum discovered, among many other things, a whole packet of tomatoes! (Wouldn't believe something could hide in our puny little fridge, but there you have it).

So, dinner last night was as many vegetables as Mum could cram in our frypan, mixed with honey, and lentils. Joseph wanted to know where the meat was… :) Afternoon tea and dessert was watermelon.

Breakfast this morning was watermelon and honey on bread. We offered a jar of honey (and the watermelon) round to the other families, but they didn't take much. :( And for lunch, we plan to eat half a cucumber, half a tomato, half a carrot, and half a mango each! :) Hilarious.
Mum asked today, while she was writing her shopping list, what we needed. I said, 'watermelon?' and she replied, 'NO!' :)

We've already gone through two trays of mangoes. We LOVE them! :) Every now and then we come across a little store on the side of the road, and we buy a tray. :)

We just drove past Joe Creek. Mum took a photo of Jo in front of it. :) The big mountains around there are amazing!! They're red and huge and very impressively layered. We took a few photos. :)

Something else we've been informed about this week is that Lake Argylle (no idea how it's spelt...) is a MUST see, so we're going to try and head out that direction as well. :) Nice having all these helpful hints!

Right now we're at a petrol station, which has internet. Every time that happens (there's internet, I mean), it's like, QUICK!!! HURRY!!! POST THE BLOG POSTS!!! CHECK EMAILS!!! QUICK!!!! (It's hilarious! :) )

29th September - from Douglas Daly, to who knows where?

There are two things to explain before I start. Firstly, I didn’t post yesterday because my laptop was out of battery, we didn't have a powered site in Litchfield, we were driving all day yesterday, we didn't have a powered site in Daly Waters, and I couldn't find my charger (which, when all's said and done, is reason enough by itself. :) ) And secondly, I named this post strangely because we've just been in Katherine for 2 hours, it is now 3:27 pm, and we honestly have no idea where we're going tonight… :) Which is fun over here, but isn't that informative for all you guys over there. ;P

Anyway, I have to tell you the funniest thing that happened last night (which was in Douglas Daly Tourist Park):

Joe was on washup duty, and I was on Keeping Joseph Company and Watching Joe's Laptop While It Charges In The Bathroom Because We Don't Have A Powered Site To Charge It Ourselves duty. :)

I was reading my Agatha Christie book ('Lord Edgware Dies', for those of you who are sticklers for details), so I didn't notice Joe's run for the loo. I only looked up when he walked toward me practically cracking up laughing. Then he told me all about his trip to the loo. He went into the first cubicle, lifted the lid, and… saw a big green frog in the loo!!!

He decided his best bet would be to flush it down the S-bend (as you do), but after the waves died down, back crawled the frog! Joseph figured he'd reward that persistence and leave it in peace, so off he goes to the next cubicle.

Would you believe it!?! In the next cubicle (although not in the loo), were TWO HUGE CANE TOADS!!! WHOPPERS!

I think it was then that Joseph decided maybe it wouldn't be so bad to brave the green tree frog, so back he goes to the first loo (there were only two loos for miles around). As he was glaring into the bowl at this bad froggie, he figures he'd rather brave the cane toads than squat on that frog-infested loo and expose his backside to who knows what!?! So back he goes to the second loo, and spends a few seconds glaring at those two fat cane toads, the cause of all his strife (well, most of it, anyway). Then he waves his arms, kick his legs, screams 'hai-yee!!!!!' and somehow scares those toads enough to high-tail it out of there.

With a huge sigh of relief, he sank onto the Seat of Grace. But his troubles were not yet over…

As he was finishing his toilet, a mozzie decided he'd be good pickings (no idea why - everyone knows there's not a skinnier body around), zoned in on his meatiest (and most exposed) section - his backside - and chomped down - hard.

Well, after that experience, I don't think Jo was really keen to go back… Whatever the case, it cracked me up.

There're a few hilarious signs around here, like 'WE LIKE OUR LIZARDS FRILLED, NOT GRILLED' or, a few hundred kilometers out of Mt Isa, 'MACDONALDS MT ISA - 465km. WORTH THE WAIT'. (that really cracked us up). But I think the funniest ever was the one we saw today, complete with a huge red splat:

 'NO BELT, NO BRAINS'.

27th September - to Litchfield National Park

Well, we're really getting around! We've been up to the top of Oz, and now we're heading back down. Tonight's Litchfield (for a night of two). We've got less than two weeks to get across to Broome - we have to be there by ninth October so I can catch my plane home! (I have to go home for school next term)

Anyway, it was quite a job packing up this morning. We got up before 7:00 (a record at the moment), and ended up leaving after 9:00!!! Makes me feel like a reptile - slow to warm up!

We also hosed down the caravan today. You would not believe how much red dust was caked on it! And it doesn't even hose off - you have to scrub every square inch to get it off! It was much easier than scrubbing off fish oil, but I wasn't happy about getting soaking wet again!

We've been getting chips in the back windscreen from rocks bouncing off the caravan front and onto the windscreen. Dad's alternative was to tape a huge piece of carpet (yes, we do carry carpet around!) to the windscreen! I think it's a great alternative, but… Mum just discovered a chip in the front windscreen too! It was tiny, only a few millimetres across, but it's grown now - it's now about a centimetre long.  Mum and dad spent ages on the side of the road ringing people to fix it. Pity carpet couldn't help!

We drove to a repair place, and they had a look at it, and, can you believe it!?!

It had already been repaired! The repair guys said it was a crack, but that someone had already fixed it, and it was okay!

Some may say that the people who owned it before us probably fixed the old crack, and that mum was mistaken in thinking it had grown, but I think God probably fixed it on the way! How cool is that!?!

We also drove through Batchelor today. There's a huge model castle there, made out of concrete, that's a replica of a castle in Bohemia. The guy who made it actually died with the waterwheel for the castle under his bed! I found that weird…

We arrived in Litchfield for lunch. We were going to camp where we had lunch, but it was for tents only. :( There was also a plunge pool nearby, about a kilometre away - our third in about a week! We went swimming there, which was heaps of fun! Dad and I went under the waterfall. It felt like hail, and behind the waterfall was like a snowstorm! :)

I wasn't game enough to wear my glasses under the waterfall (I usually wear them while swimming, otherwise I can't see!), so I had to leave them with mum. I couldn't believe how many rocks I crashed into without my glasses! And I couldn't see a thing half the time. I'll have to get another eye appointment when I get home next month…

By far the funniest thing at the plunge pool today was to do with the fish.

At the plunge pool there were masses (and masses!) of HUGE black fish! There were a few about 10cm long, and HEAPS about 30cm long!! We couldn't believe the number and size of them! Not only that, but although there were a lot of people there, they were still flocking to a particular shallow place near the edge (must be where all the food is…). We'd stand still in the water for a bit, and before you knew it, there'd be a huge school of big black fish around you! Oskar was a bit freaked out, I think…

Anyway, Dini had her goggles with her, and she said it was very cool to see the fish underwater. I took my glasses off and put on her goggles, and had a look. It was very cool! :P But unfortunately, without my glasses, I couldn't see so well… Then Mum suggested I put my glasses on top. And would you believe it!?! it WORKED! I could now not only see underwater, but I could see WELL!!! It was unattractive (and amusing for some), but very practical. :) Almost beats contact lenses and goggles. Almost, but not quite…

Cooper is very demanding at the moment - he'll say, 'turn the tape on!' or, when we got in the car after swimming, demand, 'turn the air-con on!' He gets the lingo from us, adds his own little accent to it, and blasts it back at us with the force of a train. It sounds funny written down, but something like that coming from a three-year-old is a bit disturbing…  :)

We arrived at the campground this afternoon - it's called Wangi Falls (whoever named this place should be shot - what kind of a name is that!?!)

After setting up (which involved the usual, as well as Dad setting up a very long clothesline that is half in the bushes, and unuseable, and also spraying the big green mat with ant-rid to try and reduce the massive number of ants that flocked here the moment we arrived), we headed off to the water hole. I love these things! They're so much better than a swimming pool, because there's so many different nooks and crannies. Also, every day, we're off to a different one!

This one was very much commercialised (is that the right word?)- there were handrails and steps into the water!

We all (except Cooper. :) ) swam over to the other side, which had two waterfalls. There was a small but very deep pool in the side of the rock - it was like a Jacuzzi! The rock there was freakishly weird and amazing - it was like gold! It's hard to describe, but it was REALLY shiny, and silvery-gold, and looked almost like it was made from metal. From the other side, the rock just looked like normal red rock, but up close, it looked like something from a sci-fi film! (Help Grandad! - any idea what it is???)

I was just climbing down the last time to swim back, when I stuck my hand near a crevice, and…

ALMOST TOUCHED A SNAKE!!! I think I actually screamed. It was silvery green on top, with a thin black diamond patter, and light brown on the bottom. I think it was actually very long (no idea how long), but it was all coiled up. Its head was about the size of a marble, and its body was, at thickest, as thick as your fourth finger. Any ideas, anyone???

I wasn't risking it though, even if it looked harmless. Although it wasn't in the water, it looked like there was no other way to where it was but through the water! I stood there a while, then worked my way a-rooouuund it, sloooowwwly…

:)

Cooper stripped off for the walk back to the caravan. All he was wearing was his little rubber Bob the Builder sandals. :) And he's not a walker, he's a runner. He runs EVERYWHERE! And he can run FOREVER too! You can imagine what it was like walking past the massive school camp with him too… (there's a school camp of about 50 people here in Wangi Falls too)

We cam eup with many names for him on the way back:

• Nude Dude (from mum)

• Forest Streaker (dad)
• The Raw Bushwalker (mum and dad) - my fave! :)

We also thought of a few tales to tell:

• He has leeches in the unmentionables (the boys)

• The Forest Streaker strikes again (dad)

• Return of the original Greek Olympics - except for the rubber shoes… (mum)

• Man with the plan ad the big butt span (Joseph)

• The Call of Nude-ture (me)

Then he decided to take off his shoes, so he was starkers!

I thought of making a movie, but I didn't have my camera. It was such a disappointment!

Cooper really is the comic relief for us!!! :)

26th September - in Darwin

We've been here four nights now (well tonight is the 4th night). This is officially an Australia Trip Record - the LONGEST TIME SPENT IN ANY ONE PLACE! We've stayed here twice as long as in any other place! Wow! It's been so good thought. We've slept some, relaced some, and had a great time, and we're ready to get back on the road again tomorrow. :)

I just got back from having a shower - you have no idea how refreshing a shower is after being battered and bruised by the unrelenting heat and evil little sandflies that make huge white lumps on your skin and leave you needing to scratch on every inch of skin, but despairing at your lack of fingernails… :( It's unpleasant.

But the depressing part of a shower is having to get out of it. You see, the very second you turn the cold tap off and start drying yourself off, the heat creeps back and your skin feels like someone just poured honey down your back, it's so slimy.

Not a nice picture, I know, but that's the way it is here in Darwin.

There's a cute little green tree frog jammed in the corner under the sink in the bathrooms here. It's been there about a day. Cooper and I discovered it. He was ecstatic. :)

Before the shower was dinner - pies, potato, veggies, and plenty of tomato sauce. Maryanne (did I mention that we have friends who live up here? Maryanne's the mum) reckoned Joseph needed fattening up (just kidding), so she gave him two meat pies to eat (he LOVES them!), so he ate both of them today, as well as the pies for dinner - three in all!!! Hungry chap. :)

I washed the car today - it really needed it! You wouldn't believe how much dirt, mud, and even rocks and bits of bark were jammed every which way in cracks in the car! Just behind the back window is a little vent, and as I hosed it, big rocks came out! I couldn't believe it!!! Dad had greased the whole car with fish oil before we left (and it stank for weeks! It was even deodorized, and it still stank!). He'd sprayed in so much, it oozed down the sides of the car under the doors!! Eeww!! And I had to clean off the big oily drips on the white paint! Let me tell you, after that, the rag I was using was totally black, slimy, and all stuck together. Gross!

A guy actually walked past as I was washing it and said that, for 5 bucks, I could do his. :)

We've been having a great time with the family up here. The eighteen-year-old girl is in the middle of exam block, so she can't hang around much, poor thing. But Maryanne can.

The first night we were here, Friday, she took me to their youth group. I met heaps of lovely people. They're all super, super nice up here! We played human battleships, which was fun. I met a girl who'se going to India this Wednesday for a few weeks for a mission trip! Wow!

And the best bit about the youth group was… the COLD WATER!!! (nah, just kidding). But really, I think cold water has a taste of its own - and IT-IS-GOOD! I would have drunk the whole water cooler-full, except cold water really burns your mouth...

Saturday, she took us all to the wavepool in the middle of Darwin city. It cracked me up - mum was driving, and we got to the city, and mum said, 'is that it!?!' incredulously! It's tiny compared to Brisbane. :)

The wavepool, a multimillion dollar investment, was heaps of fun - we 'sailed' for several hours in the big donut floaty things over the waves. Dini, Dom, Jo, Oskar and I all sat in one, joined hands in a circle, and rode the roughest waves all the way in! That was heaps of fun, but I think one boy we didn't even know got particularly annoyed… He yelled at us to, 'just go away!' But Mum said to not worry, so we didn't. :)

We had dinner with the other family at their house too. I made the packet mix cheesecake in the icecream box again, but we forgot it. :(

The family took us to the nearby park, where there're two big hills that are GR8 to slide down on cardboard! Even Cooper went down - he was so cute!!! Sadly, every time dad sent him down, he cried, but when mum took over, he was deliriously happy every time he went down the hill!!! Shows mums just have the knack…

Dinner at their place was yum yum for my tum tum - hamburgers! With Kangaroo! (I didn't even know until Dad told me as we were driving home…)

The family introduced us to Roomba, the awesomely cool new gadget that vacuums your home by itself! We were facinated by her artful, sweeping (literally) moves, her graceful turns as she sucked your floor to blissful whiteness…

Except she needs a lot of maintenance - like a baby. You have to change her nappy (the rollers), keep her out of trouble (clear the floor), put up those baby blocks (would you believe they have a 'virtual wall' that comes with the vacuum cleaner!?!), and heaps of other things!

Cool, but too much work for us!

Yesterday we went to their church at Darwin Baptist. I think it has three services a day! (considerably bigger than ours in Brisbane…) We sang some really cool songs - some we knew, and plenty we didn't know! One of them was especially cool - 'All To Us' by Chris Tomlin and three others I can't remember… Grandad, you should look it up! :)

The sermon was about the mission field, and how you don't have to be in central africa to be a missionary. The pastor said there were several important elements - integrity (which I think is almost the most important - to act what you speak), love, compassion, and several others I have trouble remembering…

In the afternoon we went to the museum, which I have to say is considerably better than the one in the city in Brisbane. There was stuff all about sweetheart, the massive crocodile that terrorised many a boat and ended up drowning (even though crocs can hold their breath for up to one and a half hours), Cyclone Tracey (that was freaky), and heaps of aboriginal paintings - some of these looked at first just like a boring pattern, but when you got close, you saw it was a seriously complicated, amazingly done, beautiful pattern repeated over and over again. Some of those paintings must have taken months!

Dad also went to the army museum (no idea what it's called) with Jo and Dom. Did you know that Darwin was bombed 64 times during WWII??? And NOONE EVERY HEARS ABOUT IT!!! WHY!?!?!?!?

I have no idea, but Dad was fascinated. One of the worst, most sick things he found out in the museum was this:

The people of Darwin took the guns they'd used to shoot the Japanese, and sold them to the Japanese as scrap metal!!! Whoa!

Well, This weekend's been great fun, but I think today, Monday, tops them all - we went to see the crocodiles jumping! To tell you the truth, although we went to the original one, and paid a fortune for it, and ended up with an hour's worth of wimpy little, half-warmed up crocs flopping around for their food (okay, it wasn't quite that bad), we had a really good time.  It's quite scary to see those massive crocs up so close! The male crocs fight, so half of them were missing legs. The croc jumping company even has names for all of them! Like Chase, Scarface, and so on. None of them jumped clear out of the water, but we did get a good show. There were a few fights to see, too, because a lot of crocs came into territory that didn't belong to them (for the food), and crocs get very nervous when there's another in the vicinity! We also saw quite a few hungry birds circling around to get the pork the brave woman was feeding the crocs - whistling kites, and another type of kite, and another type of bird as well. :) Apparently the whistling kites are pyromaniacs - they wait at the edge of bushfires to eat all the escaping animals. When that fire burns out, they pick up a burning stick, take it somewhere else, and set that on fire too, to draw out more animals!!!! Scary for the firemen!!!  :)

We're heading in the direction of WA after this - crossing the border will be a first for all of us this time! WOW! Apparently, you're not allowed to take any fresh fruit, etc over the border!

Katie's awesome encyclopaedia of Kakadu

Well, I figured I was going to forget everything I've learnt in Kakadu, so I wrote down a list of all the things I've been learning. I'm still adding to it too! :)

23rd September - to Darwin

Well, it's been a while since I last posted, and HEAPS has happened since then! I haven't posted for several reasons 1) because there have been few chances to charge my laptop, 2) because we've been doing heaps, 30 I've been working hard on my journal, (partially to make it interesting to show people when I fly home in two weeks, mostly to make it rival my germany journal! (for those of you who've seen it, the book practically doubled its original size!)) and 4) sad to say, I've been particularly lazy. Having no internet access or electricity makes me less motivated, it seems...

The saddest part is that I've been lazy at a particularly exciting and interesting time! We've been in Kakadu for about 5 days, or so Dad tells me - I've been having too much fun to note the dates… :)

It took me a while to work out what day today was (Day 14. if you're wondering), so I figured it made much more sense to just put the date!

As I mentioned last post, Sept. 18th - Sunday - marked our entry into Kakadu. We stayed that night and the next in Gunlom, which happened to be very hot - there were'nt many bugs and flying things, but there were enough. As Jo said, 'It's not the drop bears you have to worry about, it's the drop bugs!'

Monday was pretty much spent with Joel, the curly red haired ranger of that area. We went to every one of his talks for two days - and we were the only ones who went! He took us up the mountain to the rock pools up there (absolutely beeYOOtifully refreshing! We LOVED it, but it was a big hike up and down the hill), did a talk and slideshow on Bush tucker (interesting what the aboriginals find to eat! File snakes (which they kill by sticking the heads in their mouths and breaking the necks), turtles (it's disturbing to see those photos - the turtles look very much like little babies), fish, yams, and all sorts of stuff!), and he also took us on a walk to the big water hole about 100m from the campsite on Tuesday. He showed us freshwater and saltwater crocodile skulls (a croc's head is about 1/7th the size of the crocodile), aboriginal baskets, banksia cones (did you know that if you burn these cones and squat in the smoke, it relieves diarrhoea??? That cracked me up), a saltwater croc-chomped buoy (the rangers leave the buoys in the water and gauge the croc by the chomps in it).

Day 9 - to Kakadu

'Some people say turtle tastes like chicken. I say it tastes like turtle.'

'There's a toilet up the back here. It doesn't have a star rating, not even half a star, but it does the job.'

'If you get that sinking feeling, do you know where the exit points are? Over the side.'

'Don't jump over the front of the boat, you'll end up with a bad haircut.'

'You'll feel a bit of a bump as we land be cause I still have my learners and don't know how to drive yet.'

'Don't eat too many white apples, because no matter how fast you run, you'll never make it.'

These are just a few of the hilariously funny things the cruise guide said yesterday on the cruise up the gorges. We were in tears of laughter almost the whole way. :)

Well, although we wanted to stay another night in Nitmiluk, Dad and Mum decided we had to move on again. :( We went swimming again this morning, thought. Cooper's hilarious - you know what happens to your fingers when you swim a long time? They end up looking like an apple that's spent too long in an oven. Cooper loves it when his fingers do that. He looks down at them and says, 'oh, winkly!' (you know how he has trouble pronouncing the 'r'!)/

Talking about the pool and Cooper, yesterday we went swimming, and Cooper had his cute little togs on (little red undies with a dark blue fish long sleeved shirt), and his tog undies were falling down. I said, 'Cooper, your pants are falling down!' He said what?' then looked down at his undies, then said, 'oh, yeah!'

We're off to Kakadu today. On the way to Katherine from Nitmiluk (we needed some more stores), we saw a hospital, nursing home and cemetery all within 100 meters of each other. I guess they've got you covered. :)

We stopped at Woolworths - did you know they've got 8c off per litre at the woolies petrol stations just this weekend? There was a Target. there as well, but it was called 'Target Country', and was about a quarter of the size of the 'normal' ones. :)

We stopped at Edith Falls next. Mum and Dad got us all moving, eating lunch, putting our sneakers on, and heading off on a 2km round walk. None of us were particularly enthusiastic, least of all Joseph, but the walk was a huge success! We went to the Edith Falls Upper Pool. The 1km there seemed more like 2 or 3km - you'd turn a corner, expecting to finally see water, and there'd me more walking track! It was depressing, but finally we got there. The water was cold at first, but amazingly refreshing! There was a huge hole that looked like a 1m diameter yabbie pump went through the rock. It was about 2m deep, and near the bottom was another hole that came out back into the water hole. It was very cool, but I wasn't brave enough (or dumb enough) to risk my life in it. :)

We meta  family of six - mum, dad, two boys and two girls. They have a blog called Lange's on Tour. They've been going around Australia for eighteen months! Wow! They intended to only go for a year, but ended up going for two years.  :)

We also drove through Pine Creek today. There were some really whopper sized light brown ants nests - and by whopper, I mean whopper! We've seem masses about waist-height and thin as my dad, but these are absolutely GINORMOuS! They're amazing too, because of they way they're shaped - they're actually narrow at the bottom, fat in the middle, and spikey up top. And the place's they've 'grown'! There were two or three grown around a wooden fence, and heaps growing in the middle of a fenced field! I mean, do the people round there have any warning one's going to spring up? And how long do the ants take to make them?

Cooper is like the comic relief around here. Every now and then, Mum gets out the bottle of boiled sweets we keep in the car for long trips. The moment Cooper sees it, he starts saying, loudly, very fast, and until he gets one: 'can we have one? Can we have one? Can we have one?' Except from him, it sounds more like, 'cwiveun? Cwievun? And means more like, 'give me one now or I'll shoot you!'

We've been reading the bible as a family together every time we have a day driving in the car (which is most days). Today we read from Esther, the part where Haman goes to ask the king to hang Mordecai (which, funnily enough, mum couldn't pronounce properly. :) ). There were a lot of really interesting parts in there.

For example, it's really interesting how Mordecai wouldn't accept clothes from Esther, but he was happy to be dressed by Haman as a reward for saving the king. Mum reckoned he was probably so gobstoppered surprised he just let him, but who knows? Maybe God gave him some warning! :)

Also, it's quite interesting how both Haman and the king had trouble sleeping/didn't sleep at all the night after Esther's big banquet. I wonder how good the food was?

Another intersting thing is how dramatically Haman's wife, Zeresh, and her friends' opinions changed after Haman paraded Mordecai in the streets. The first night, they were all supportive of Haman hanging Mordecai on the gallows, but the next day, when Haman came home with his head covered in shame, they just shook their heads and said the battle of Haman vs Mordecai would most surely fall in Mordecai's favour. What kind of supportive wife is she!?!

The most amazing thing in the book of Esther is that although God's name is never mentioned, his hand is very visible in the whole story, especially where timing is concerned. Just think, if the king hadn't been unable to sleep, he wouldn't have had the chronicles read to him. If he hadn't had them read, he wouldn't have heard about Mordecai, and asked about his reward, and discovered there had been none. And, if that had happened  maybe half an hour earlier, BEFORE Haman came into the palace to talk to the king… Well, not only would Haman not have had to parade ordecai in the streets (an amazing turning of the tables! Remember, Haman had come to the palace in the first place to ask for Mordecai to be hanged!), but after that, Haman would have come in, asked for Mordecai to be hanged, and who knows what might have happened? It actually says, in Esther 6:4, that 'Haman had just entered the courtyard.' (Holy Bible, emphasis mine). The perfect timing in this book is unbelievable! Who else could have planned it so perfectly?

Day 8 - in Nitmiluk

Today's the same sort of day as the one that commenced the Harry Potter series in book 1 - windows flung wide open to entice a non-existent breeze, women and guys (including the fat ones) wearing bikinis and speedos that aren't big enough to clothe a flea, and every self respecting person staying well in the shade - you look out and you can't even see a single lost, toddling child.

In a caravan park, where your house consists of one room big enough to contain half the people you brought with you, some of these things are slightly impossible, but still, people do the best they can.

Us six kids are just sitting around, waiting for the all clear to go swimming (right now, it's the middle of the day and any swimmer is just asking for a shiny red face that blends in as well as an elephant in a bowl of custard). At least, most of us are. Oskar's rolling around on the floor, treating this inability to swim like a sever case of cramps. Anyone would think, from the amount of noise he's making, that someone's trying to pull his nails out or something.

But he's just voicing what the rest of us feel - that right now, the swimming pool looks like a precious jewel, the one and only in a thousand, that will buy you life, fortune, and anything (and everything) else you could ever dream of.

We just came back from a two hour cruise up the first two gorges of Nitmiluk. It was really interesting, and I took a lot of photos! We even 'cruised' into a cave for a few minutes!

The cruise guide told us about some of the useful trees that the aboriginals use. There's the Mataluka (at least I think that's what it's called…) who's leaves act as an insect repellent, an antiseptic, and good for colds and coughs!

There's also the freshwater mangrove, which I think is very cool. If you take the bark and leaves, stick them in a cloth bag, and let it float in the middle of a billabong (i.e. somewhere where the water doesn't go out or in), the leaves and bark will suck all the oxygen out of the water! Aborigines do this so all the fish float to the top when they can't breathe anymore, then pick off what they need! How amazingly awesome is that! God has pretty cool ideas, I think. :) The aborigines then let their kids play in the water to reoxygenate it, and the fish swim away again as if nothing happened. :) Very cool. What's also very cool is that the aborigines actually worked that out.

It was really nice and cool on the water. We saw a huge cliff named after some guy called Jedda (apparently the cliff that Jedda jumped off in a movie). The cruise guide said he thinks they're making a sequel to that movie, called the Return of the Jedda… :) haha.

Mum and Dad are enjoying this place so much, they're seriously considering staying another night again! Which would make this the longest stay on our trip so far! A whole three nights. :)

Day 7 - to Katherine Gorge (now known as Nitmiluk)

Well, today was (pretty) uneventful, apart from the fact that I woke in the night from the smell of the toilets that had reached into our caravan, and apart from the fact that Dini passed wind in the pool while I was right next to her, and apart from the fact that we met two other coopers at the new caravan park at Nitmiluk, and apart form the fact that there's a tour called Nit Nit tour, or something like that (which happens to be Tin Tin backwards, and we all know who that is… :)

That was just a brief overview of a day in the wonderful life of Us, adventurers of uncharted land (well, uncharted in this family), experiencers of before unexperienced experiences (and trust me, some of those experiences are completely what you would not expect on a trip around Australia, and that you would not experience in any family but ours), and doers of the before undone, and that will continue to be undone by every family except ours until the end of town.

Well, that was  an awesome introduction, and now I will bore you with all the boring facts of our boring old life gallivanting over the (yes, sometimes boring)  countryside (now isn't that boring) (I like repeating myself a lot, a lot) :)

Mum got us all out of bed very well this morning. We were all lounging around, too lazy to even think properly, when Mum said, 'Okay, first person dressed and ready gets real milk. Everyone else has to have UHT. Well, you wouldn't believe how fast we leapt out of bed!

We left quite late today from the campsite - around 8:45 I think, even including the loss of half an hour!). We're getting pretty awesomely good at packing and unpacking. No-one really has a particular job, we just go around and do what we can (well, most of do anyway - Cooper just goes around and does what he can't) :)

We actually only travelled until about midday, or a bit past. We stopped in Katherine for a restock of supplies and important staples like boiled lollies and Samboy chips (mum says you'll all think we eat terribly. I couldn't believe how many aborigines were there, when there's hardly any in Brisbane. I thought it was pretty cool. :) They all hang around in the shade in groups of ten to twenty and chat all day. Reminds me a bit of the Solomon Island people.

It's very hot here in Nitmiluk - Dad checked the forecasted temperatures for the next few days in Katherine, and each successive day has a max temp. 1 degree higher than the last.

The pool is absolutely amazing. For once, it's warm enough to swim in, which is an added bonus (I mean, the worst thing is paying for a pool at a caravan park when you can't even swim in it!). Before we even unpacked, we went to test how warm it was.

It was a great temp. Too warm water is a waste of time to bother swimming in, and too cold water is a waste of good swimming pool. The pool here is just right!

With the promise of lovely water like that, we unpacked like mad, scoffed down lunch (chicken and lettuce and mayonnaise on rolls), squeezed into our almost too tight swimming togs (Dini's are actually pretty much too small for her, but you've got to give us some slack - we haven't used them for about six months!), and pelted for the pool.

We were in there about two hours - Dini is an awesome person to swim with! We did handstands, raced each other (she got a ten second headstart. :) ), made up different ways of throwing her (you know, like make her stand on my shoulders and jump as far as she can while I jump too), and carried Cooper around. He absolutely loved it! He was constantly saying 'go there!' or 'do that!' We worked out a way where he holds on to my chin in a kind of piggy back (when he holds onto my neck, he grips so hard I can't breathe!)  and I swim around.

By the end of it, us girls' hands were as wrinkled as an old prune!

I find it hilarious though, that just last night, I was wearing winter pyjamas and three blankets in bed, and tongight I'll be wearing summer PJs and one sheet at the most!

Day 6 - just south of Katherine (Warloch Rest Area)

We just pulled out of Elliot. Mum went to the shop at the petrol station, and can you believe what she saw!?! They had a break rack, and on the bottom shelf they had a couple of packets of crumpets. Crumpets, as you know, go off very fast, and Mum didn't think they looked particularly fresh. She bent down to look at the packaging, and saw that the packing date was 4 February 2010!

Now that's off!

Just past Elliot, we came across a four carriage road train that had stopped COMPLETELY across the road - and I mean completely! Two carriages on the left, one across the road, and one and the engine on the right. Mum talked to a guy with blood on his face- he was driving with someone who looks like his son, then fell asleep at the wheel (mum and dad assume the truck was behind him and tried to brake…)

The guy's car got completely smashed up. The windscreen is all broken, both sides are bent, the whole car just looks like an expensive piece of scrap metal now! The guy said he was saved by the air bag. Mum and dad think it was lucky he was saved at all. From the amount of burnt rubber pieces and glass strewn across 50m of road, they think he probably rolled over and over a lot.

(Man, this day is eventful!)

We're staying tonight at a place called Warloch Rest Area. There are a few other caravans and a Winnebago here as well. Oh, and there are two eco toilets that stink to high heaven (or 'stink like crazy', as Dini put it!) and have no toilet paper. And we happen to be parked right next to them… Ugh!

Dini and I had washup duty tonight. The itchy bugs combined with the lack of enthusiasm and the exhaustion of the day's driving to make it a thoroughly excruciating experience… :)

Dinner was pumpkin soup, lentils, and peas. Actually really tasty, despite how it sounds… :)

We're off to Katherine Gorge tomorrow. (Finally, a REAL caravan park!! :) )

Anyway, better get off the internet before my laptop battery dies on me… Oh, and it's 10:15 (time is a half hour behind here now!!!).

And, if I needed any more reason to stop, the internet is excruciatingly slow and I am on the verge of chucking my laptop at the wall.

Which, I suppose, would be reason enough all on its own!

Day 5 - Tennant Creek: continued

I'VE REACHED NORTHERN TERRITORY!!!!! WHAT A FIRST!

We stopped just across the border of NT for lunch. There was a pit toilet there. Dini went off to the loo but, as expected, soon came back insisting that someone accompany her.

Well, of course, the person selected to do the job was me, so off we went to the faithful (albeit smelly) loo together.

It took her about half an hour to do the job (okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but it felt like that!). She spent the first five minutes marvelling at how the toilet paper floated form the breeze from the pit toilet (they do that often, you know). Then she spent the next fifteen minutes trying to make the toilet paper stay on the seat long enough for her to sit down on!

The actual time spent on the loo was probably less than the time spent preparing for it!

Needless to say, when we arrived at Barkly Homestead, and mum came back from the loo with Cooper saying that these toilets were good, EVERYBODY went!

note

In case you were wondering why the dates on my posts don't match:
On days we're travelling, we don't always have internet (although we can travel and still have internet, often we're out of range), so I make the blog on microsoft OneNote, then post it later. :)

Day 5 - to Tennant Creek (or somewhere near it anyway)

We've reached Northern Territory! Finally! At last! I've never been here before, so it's exciting. We crossed the border a little before lunch.

We left Nanny and Pa at Mt Isa today. :( it was so sad. I've really enjoyed having them so close all the time.

We went and saw the open cut mine last night, before it got dark. I took heaps of photos with Pa's camera. I learnt that it doesn't like being moved very much, but if you keep it still, it takes amazing photos.

Guess what I made for dessert last night? Packet mix lemon cheesecake! We had it in the cupboard at home in Brisbane, so Mum brought it with us. It doesn't need any cooking, so all I did was line an ice cream container with alfoil and make it in there! It was a huge success.

Because Nanny and Pa lived in t Isa the first few years of their marriage, we went to see the house that Pa built. He was really smart, and built it on the upwind side of town, so one of the lead oxide smokey stuff from the mines would blow into the house and give them all lead poisoning. It was a pity that no-one was home, so we couldn't have a look inside, but can you believe what we saw!? The electrical pole that Pa put up 50 years ago! It's still there and in use! I found that amazing.

One thing my grandparents couldn't believe was how green it all was. All day yesterday Nanny and Pa were saying how weird it was that there were trees everywhere! When they lived here, there was nothing except a few scrub trees and dead grass…

Pa was talking to a few randoms who lived in Mt Isa when he lived there, and they said the mines had been bought up by someone else, and these new people weren't interested in putting money back into the town. They're hiring people from New Zealand who'll work for less, flying them to the Isa for several weeks, and then flying them back.

They're not even using the trains anymore - they're using trucks instead - so the station's going out of business. A bit sad really.

Haha. Mum just yelled out 'hamburgers!' again. :)

Dini's turning into a real book-chomper. Already she's finished off two novel-sized Enid Blyton books while we've been away, and she's just starting another! She's getting fast.

Oh, and in Gobblet yesterday, she actually beat me! She was so excited she didn't stop talking about it for about an hour. It was hilarious.

There were a whole lot of pigeons hanging round our campsite at Mt Isa as well. Both mornings, a whole group of about 10 of them would fly/waddle down to our place, peck around a few minutes, then disappear.  They make a funny sound like a ping pong ball bouncing really fast up and down between a paddle and the ping pong table. :)

Talking about funny sounds, we have a whole pile of foam puzzle pieces that fit together to make a nice floor in front of our caravan. But the thing is, they're full of holes about the size of a twenty cent piece, and whenever you walk over them in thongs or other shoes with a smooth flat bottom, they make a popping sound! They suction on loosely, and make a funny noise when you pull them off! It's hilarious, sitting in the caravan and hearing random popping sounds every now and then.

Jo, Dom and Oskar made a movie yesterday about shooting with nerf guns. It was very good, except Jo can't spell oskar's name right, and the credits took as long as the movie itself! But it's very clever - the climax is sloowwweeeed right down. Dad thought Jo had added sound effects for the nerf gun shots, but that's the actual noise they make!

And, can you believe what we went past today? We were on Rank-en Road (boy, does it stink… :) ), and we actually went past a 13 km/h speet sign! Wow! I think that's the fastest legal speed I've ever seen in Australia. But, unfortunately, our car is too loaded to go any faster than about 90km/h. (Dad said he's averaging about 85km/h because he wants to conserve fuel. :) )

Along the way, we've seen hundreds of huge, tall ants nests (I think they're termites). Every now and then you get a huge clump of them for kilometers at a time. We stopped today at one of them that was especially huge - about 2m across, 1.5-2m high!!). We took photos of us at them.

We couldn't believe how spikey the grass was though, when we were getting the photos. The grass around here is stiff and thick and round, not nice and soft like in Brisbane. On the end of each is a stiff spike, so when you walk past a clump, it really hurts! It feels like thousands of needles being jabbed into you over and over. It's painful, and my legs were still itching an hour after we took the photos! Ouch!

We stopped at the Barkly Homestead for a fillup on the way. Dad looked on the internet (his trusty iPhone again!) and found out that there's no gas (LPG, which is what our Land Cruiser runs on) between Camooweal (I think that's the right spelling!) and Elliot. But, surprise! There was one at the Barkly Homestead. Dad was pretty excited. :)

Day 4 - in Mt Isa: continued

We went and saw the house that Pa built today - it was a pity that the people weren't there and we couldn't really see it. But Dad saw Pa's electrical pole - it's till there after 50 years! Wow!

Dini and I played Gobblet about twenty times today - a fun strategy game that mum got for her 40th from my aunty. I beat Dini every time except one, and I wasn't really concentrating that time… :) haha. Just kidding. Sometimes an incoming thrashing is hard to forsee for an eight-year-old.

Dini and I also mixed up a packet mix lemon cheesecake today. It's in the fridge now, waiting for its early demise at about 6:30 tonight. :)

There's a pool here as well - Dini and I keep on going to check the temp, but it's always MUCH too cold. Last time we went, the sprinklers were on (see, I told you the Mt Isa people like their sprinklers!), and we both ran through the sprinklers and got kinda wet. But because it's pretty warm today, it was nice and refreshing. :)

Mum is cooking the most DELICIOUs dinners. Last night was a sort of spaghetti bolognaise with broccoli and one of the million and one packets of pasta she bought before we left. She said they were cheap - a few dollars for two packets - so off she goes and buys TEN!!! :)

Caravan Parks

Im keeping a record of the caravan parks we stayed in, and a little about them. Check out the page on the left side of my blog, under 'more pages'. :)

Day 4 - In Mt Isa

So, we're where Nanny and Pa spent 7 or 8 years! They hardly recognise a thing. They said when they lived here, NOTHING was green, in September (which is now), it was 35 degrees, and it was so hot, you had trouble breathing.
Well, now it's COMPLETELY different! Everyone has sprinklers everywhere, the whole place is as green as an unripe mango, and instead of 35 degrees, it's 25 degrees, a nice change to the almost (but not quite) sub zero temps we've had since the start of our trip!
Dad got a query as to the seating arrangements in our puny little car... :)
Well, except for yesterday, everyone's sat the same place: The three oldest boys in the back, Dini, Cooper and I in the middle, with Dini in the very middle, Dad driving (awesome), and mum playing cook/waitress, janitor, DJ, navigator, and all the million and one other things required of the person in the passenger seat!
Yesterday, dad migrated to the backseat (which he calls the party seat!), mum started driving (very well, I might add), joseph became first mate in place of mum (much to his excitement, at least until he realised all the responsibilities tied to the seat of honour!!!), and Dini and I swapped seats, so I was now in the very centre of the car. I think that particular swap we realised to be for the better.
Dad's called our little wireless network BRT. Don't even ask. :)
Today is a rest day for us (phew!). After spending 8-10 hours in the car with seven other people three days straight (and some - namely dad - haven't even changed clothes for that amount of time!), this really is a relief!
Mum as looking on the map yesterday, and guess what she saw!!! Farmhouses are marked on our camping refedex as little black squares, and one of the little black squares in the area is called our family's surname!!! Pity it's too far away to reach. :(
I've changed all the settings in my browser so NO pictures show up until I click on them. Dad was impressed with my download saving abilities. :) Oh, and dad and mum got a new camera, so I get to use theirs. And it's pretty good! :)
We couldn't believe yesterday how the landscape changed from Longreach to Mt Isa - it went from dry, brown, dead flat, scrubby plains, to very hilly, green, landscape - with trees!

Day 3 - To Mt Isa

We got a huge fright last night.

We watched Rango (a gr8 movie) in the car on my laptop yesterday. Dad has an FM transmitter that plays sounds through the car speakers (i.e. if we have something on the phone, we can make it louder with the transmitter).

We tried syncing two laptops with the movie, and playing the sound through the speakers, but mine kept stopping, so they'd get out of sync.

In the end, we all watched  the same screen which I had to have perched on my knees. It was kind of uncomfortable…

Anyway, we still hadn't finished it after the trip, so after dinner, we watched some more on mum's bed, which, if you don't know, is one of the expanding double beds - the one that sticks out the back of the caravan.

Dad, curious guy that he is, came to watch too, so all seven of us were on the bed. Then Mum came too. That was our mistake.

Suddenly, the whole place seemed to fall. It must've been funny from the outside, but inside, we got a huge fright.

The caravan had tipped up! All one and a half tonnes of it! Perched on two wheels and a bumper bar!!!!! AAARRRGHHHH!

Boy, the adrenaline that rushed through me! Mum rushed up the other end before our end hit the ground, and the caravan thunked back down. Now we're all really cautious about all being up one end… :)

The roads are rougher than in Brisbane, especially after we've been used to the Tarago for eight years. The 4WD is a rougher ride. Sometimes it gets so your fingers hit two keys instead of one on the laptop, and your underside beats a tattoo on the seat. :) And writing by hand is completely out of the question!

Nanny and Pa stayed in a unit again. Every time they (or dad) cooked toast in there, the fire alarm went off. I, of course, succeeded in cooking six pieces without a sound from the alarm, but when I was back in the caravan, we heard the alarm go off again, and all thought, 'Yep, they're cooking toast again!'

When we were packing up the caravan today, we couldn't get mum and dad's bed to fold up. We got the hugest fright, we were so worried that we'd bent it last night. Thankfully, we realised the caravan never rested on the actual expanding part, only on the bumper bar. Phew!

It's amazing how flat Longreach and the surrounding area is. You can see for miles, and the horizon is what seems like a thousand kilometers away. Mum said when the wet season comes, Longreach is stranded for weeks, or even months. The water doesn't even have to be deep - it just goes for so long that the people can't actually get anywhere.

The cool thing about Longreach is that all (and I mean ALL) its streets are named after birds. There's Ibis st, Kingfisher st, Owl st, and so on. Dom's favourite is Bus-tard. No surprise there.

We've FINALLY got the internet working. Mum's  got the internet laptop at the moment, so I'm writing this on my laptop. Mum, uneducated in basic technology as she is, read 0B to be oh bee, when it actually is zero bytes. :) very funny.

Day 2 - To Longreach

It was ice cold this morning -  0°C! We talked to some people who were staying in a tent, and they said they had ice on the inside, so it got below freezing in the night. It was so cold that Dom warmed his hands in his breakfast milk, and mum warmed her hands in the fridge (I'm not even joking - Dom did actually have his fingers in the milk, and it was colder outside than in the fridge!).

We left at 8:30 this morning, and it's now 9:15, and So far today we've seen two live emus, a circling hawk, one live wallaby, about twenty dead kangaroos, and hundreds of feasting crows. Pa said he's never seen so much roadkill. We just saw a kangaroo, and dad said we should call it Potential Roadkill.

Dom is out official spotter - we'll be driving along and he'll yell 'ROADKILL!' He says he can see it from a mile away, because of the red spots covered in birds. Cooper's now picked up a new word - woad kill! He says it every two or three seconds. It's going to drive us insane before long… I don't think he even knows what it is. :) We tried telling him it's actually roadkill, but all he did was change to wot-kill…

He's actually started speaking a lot. Last night he was climbing walls, shouting the place down, and it was 9:00 in the evening! That's when we began to regret letting him sleep in the car..

We passed an emu farm yesterday - there were masses of emus everywhere.

I've been getting rather serious backside-cramps. I'm hurting down there in places I never thought possible. 8 hours in a car really does it to you…

It's pretty exciting - we're going places I've never been before! Soon we'll be in Northern Territory - more like Unknown Territory for me! We've just stopped at a BP on the Warrego Highway in Morvan, and there's three emus plodding around! Very impressive. But the place stinks - bad - from all the cattle trucks around. It's rather sad - all these cute cows with their own personalities are going to be killed. :(

We've started moving into red-dirt territory… I've heard that red dirt equals red caravan… !!!

...

I would be writing in my journal right now, except the road is as bumpy as a ginormous rocky road. We just stopped for what seemed like hours waiting to go through roadworks for the second time in as many days. (Why do I always seem to write in roadworks???)

Mum counted how many roadkill we passed in half an hour. I think she counted over thirty! (I am talking a lot about roadkill, but then, there's a lot around here!)

It's all starting to look pretty 'Aussie', which is something that I don't think I've seen before now!! For example, there's red dirt, one long, lonely road, low bush and brown scrub, wide, wide blue sky, dust exploding from every car's rear end, and the horizon looking like jelly as he heat rises off the road. It's a novel experience!!

In fact, the whole thing looks rather like what my blog background looks like! Before I picked that pic, I had a smooth, blue sea (I tried to find something Aussie), but I'm glad I picked that one! Much more suitable. :)

Aaarrggh!!! We've reached another roadworks!!!!! Dad's learnt now that he's better off turning off the whole engine, we always wait so long.

We also can't believe how many road trains there are on this road. We've passed so many! One even had four carriages, though most have about three.

Last night we were making up and telling each other really, really (and I mean really!) lame jokes, like when do you have a BBQ? (Friday) and when did dad have a baby? (Sunday), and when do you put something on your feet? (Tuesday (shoes-day), and when do you get married? (Wednesday) and when do you make lemonade? (Thursday) (I think that was the best, made up by mum (no surprise there)). I also mentioned the lamest of all lame jokes, courtesy of Uncle Tim -(also no surprise there) When you're at the pool, you're at the stadium - your at sunk-orb! (Suncorp). Gotta admit, that tops the lot! The worst of the worst!

Oh, and to put us all at ease, mum just mentioned that at this time of year, there might be snakes. Wish us luck!!! (Aaarghhh!)

Day 1 - to Mitchell

We left Brisbane today! I won't be there for four weeks, and the rest of my family won't be there again for four months!!! Wow! We'll be travelling the first week with dad's parents - up to Mt Isa.

We left about 7:30 (1 1/2 hours after the planned 6:00 start!) Our awesome cousins saw us off. My littlest brother was asleep until about 7:15, and mum joked that we’d better not forget him! He was wrapped up in his bed blanket for the first few hours of the trip!

Our first stop was at Toowoomba, which was freezing cold - 6.8 degrees, 2.4 with the chill factor. And to think that it's 13 degrees in Brisbane! Mum got out the first time up there, and was back in the car within two seconds. Anyone would think we’d just landed in Greenland, the way we were dressed (okay, maybe not quite so bad!).

There’s some flower festival in Toowoomba at the moment, so there’s masses of flowers everywhere. It’s really amazing, but we didn’t hang around long – we were quite frozen after a few minutes!

We ate muesli and yoghurt for breakfast (at 9:3 in the morning!), and lost Nanny and Pa. While we were walking around the gardens, we met a lady walking a poodle (with red dyed ears) in a pram, and a puppy on a leash.

The first thing I thought was. ‘how do you walk a poodle in a pram?’

And the second thing I thought, after the lady said the puppy was a terrier cross shitzu, was ‘imagine if he was a bulldog cross shitzu!’

We also saw in Toowoomba what I think is the weirdest name for a school – the Holy Name School. I’ve seen an Our Lady Of The Rosary, and an Our Lady Of The Sacred Heart school, but not a Holy Name school!

Our land cruiser doesn't have a CD player, which makes sense, considering that it's 17 years old - older than me! - but it does have a tape player. So now we have all our old tapes out. It's hilarious how many of the songs I remember - I must have listened to then a LOT when I was little!!!

We drove through Dalby, which I, being uneducated in geography, and educated in technology, thought to be spelt ‘Dolby’…

Our next stop was in Chinchilla. We ate lunch and lost Nanny and Pa again. There was a pioneer cemetery across the road from where we stopped. The cemetery was divided into Methodist, Catholic, Presbyterian, and Anglican religion sections. All the graves were facing the same way: east. It was really sad that some of the people who died were only eighteen fourteen, or even one years old. There were signs explaining what different crosses, flowers, etc meant on a grave – for example, a broken column means a life cut short, and a celtic cross (cross with a circle) means eternity.

We had lunch at a playground that was about two sizes too small for me. There was a little boat seesaw that Dini, Dominic, Oskar and I crammed into (my knees made me feel like a grasshopper), except with all of us on it it ended up feeling more like a pendulum on steroids than a seesaw… Dini fell off, and when my back end slid off, they kept swinging, so I’ve got a few bruises.

Right now, we’re going through a massively long roadworks section. We had to wait so long to go through, dad ended up turning off the engine! It goes for several kilometres. It’s really funny, because dad has a radio, and when he tuned in, we could hear everything the workers were saying!

Oh, and by the way, we’ve been devouring the anzac cookies – thanks Joy! – and the muffins are up for tonight’s dessert! (thanks the Boyless!!!)

We can’t believe how hard it is to get air for the tyres on the way. Good grief! You’d think there was a pipe shortage! We’ve stopped at at least five different petrol stations and none of them have air!!

Dom was learning about the Noble Gases the other day, and mum said, ‘that’s us!’ Especially since there’s eight of them and eight of us. It doesn’t help that our car runs on gas too…

new season, new look!

I figured since we're leaving on a trip around australia in about three days, and since spring has started, it was time for a blog makeover. :)
And, it's got a bit of an aussie theme too!!!
P.S. It took me about an hour to work it all out!!!

For more technical info...

If you want to know the technicals about our trip (or just want to hear another point of view), check out my dad's blog:
http://aroundozwith6kids.blogspot.com/
 - for the actual link (sorry the above adress wont show up as a link) see the 'Other interesting sites' toolbar on the left of my blog.
Mum also hopes to start a blog, so I'll let you know about that one soon too. :)

I can't believe it's less than seven days until we leave on our trip around asutralia!!!!
Because we couldn't work out my grade 11 schoolwork around the trip, I'll fly home after 4 weeks and stay with my wonderfully awesome grandparents for 7 weeks (and do school :( )
Then, I'll fly back to perth and we'll be away another 2 months.
It's exciting, but I have to study for 4 maths exams and a german speaking test before we leave...
Tragic.