Dave & Dana in Australia

Holy crikey dick I’m 30. That’s right - one of those milestones that starts one thinking about what one is doing with one’s life, whether one is on the right track etc. Or at least it would if I was one that made a big deal over birthdays. Now that it’s happened though and I’ve had a chance to think about it I’ll spend some time answering those questions. As for the day itself, I spent it eating Yum cha (dim sum) on Little Bourke Street in Melbourne, followed by some footy at the Telstra Dome, all courtesy a surprise trip from Dana for my birthday. What a gal!

So I was to meet her at Circular Quay station at 5:15pm on Friday. She even hid the luggage behind a tree while she gave me the tickets - totally blindsided. Then we were off to the airport and by 10 pm we were having a late dinner at a really nice restaurant in Melbourne. We were booked into the Hyatt downtown, which was also great. We had a great time walking around Melbourne the next day. It’s a really beautiful city. We made good use of the fancy hotel facilities - had a workout, swim, hot tub. Had a scotch in the hotel bar - Australia has it’s last friendly against Greece in Melbourne this week before heading to Germany for the world cup, and the coaching staff was at the table next to us game planning over cigars and wine (a good sign?). Another nice dinner that night looking over the Yarra River. The next day was my birthday, which we started with a game of tennis on the roof of the hotel, followed by dim sum and the footy. All in all a fantastic weekend.

Boy has it ever been way too long since we’ve updated this blog. In the event anyone out there found this annoying, we’re sorry! If it helps, we’ve been super busy - both work and with getting out and about in Sydney and surrounds. On a positive, we’re getting tons of ideas for things to do for visitors. What have we been doing with our time? We’ve been…

1. Keeping super active. Dana and I have taken up tennis - there are grass courts a block or so away from our place, so we’re there at least once a week. She has taken a couple of lessons and we play, plus I’ve started playing a bit with a buddy from work who also lives in Manly. Dana’s also doing a bunch of yoga - she’s found a few places right near the house as well. I’m alternating running and surfing a few mornings a week. On weekends we’ve been home there’s been more time to surf, although the waves the past couple of weeks have been a bit unpredictable and small. We did a great hike from the Spit bridge back to Manly a couple weeks back - really beautiful views of the entrance to the harbour and cliff-side neighbourhoods.

2. Investigating Sydney’s surrounds - Sydney’s a relatively large city by most standards - 4 million people - but it ’s fairly concentrated. No 50 kilometres of suburbia surrounding the downtown core, more like 30. Once you get outside of that zone, it thins out very quickly. This is good because if you’re willing to drive a couple of hours there’s tons to see and do that isn’t overrun with people, and now we’ve had a couple of great weekends away - over Easter a few hours South on well, the South Coast. We camped for a couple of nights down there while we checked out all the beautiful beaches and did some hiking. Mollymook beach in Ulladulla - South Coast (you can’t make these names up)

We also headed up to the Blue Mountains about 10 days ago, just for the day. We had great weather and did a really cool day hike down the cliffside and into a beautiful valley, and then back up. Really good stuff - we’ll definitely be going back there to do one of the multi-day hikes in the same area as well as some spelunking - also available there. Some Blue Mountains thumbs…

3. We had guests! Glenalan Cameron, a former Mercer colleague of mine in Toronto who’s girlfriend goes to law school on the Gold Coast (an important global legal centre - I have no idea what else they do there), came down to visit for a couple of weeks. We hosted them for a couple of days while they were in Sydney. We went up to the Northern beaches, had a drink overlooking the harbour from North head, and generally had a nice, relaxing time. Here’s a nice shot of Warriewood:

4. Working. The unfortunate but necessary income earning activity has gotten quite a bit busier for both of us, although we’re both still enjoying it. Enough about that.

We’ve been taking tons of pictures of all this, which are posted to the gallery section of the website if you’re interested! I’m about to achieve the grand old age of 30, so I’m sure we’ll have some post about whatever Dana has in store for me!