Happy New Year!
It’s hard to believe how long it’s been since we last posted to the blog - to our two readers out there, we apologise… It’s also hard to believe that its been nearly two years down in Australia for us! It’s really been a great experience and we continue to enjoy ourselves immensely. We do miss our friends and family though and we’re really looking forward to visiting with everyone when we come back for Colin and Joanna’s wedding in September. Hopefully, we also have a few visitors in 2008, as I daresay Australia is a fantastic place to visit.
As for goings on with D&D, we’ve kept ourselves quite busy with work since we arrived back from our trip to Europe in October. The weather has gotten nicer and there’s been the opportunity to go on a camping trip a few hours North of Sydney for a weekend, although it poured rain on us. We attended our first election party, held by my boss at work on the night the federal election results were coming in. There were about 80 or so people there and, while it sounds like a strange sort of party, it was quite an interesting experience.
Just before Christmas Dana’s parents arrived for a weekend in Sydney before heading out to Perth to visit with Dale. The next weekend we joined them for a weekend while out there for Dana’s company Christmas dinner. It was a good weekend despite the very un-Perth-like drizzly weather.
Over the Christmas break Dana and I went to South Australia. We had intended 5 days camping and hiking on Kangaroo Island but our plans were re-routed due to extensive bushfires that closed the island. We had really been looking forward to all the wildlife we were going to see there. We made do however by, after a day in Adelaide, moving ourselves to 4 days in the Grampian mountains in Victoria, again hiking and camping. The weather was beautiful for a two-day hike we did over Christmas and boxing days and we had the entire mountain range to ourselves.
From there we headed back to South Australia for four solid days of wine tasting and general high living. We spent one day in the McLaren Vale on the Fleurieu peninsula and the other three in the Clare and Barossa valleys North of Adelaide. We ate well and stayed in a charming cottage which was a converted church built in the 1800s. It even had a hot tub, not that we needed as the mercury settled above 40 degrees for the three days we were North of Adelaide!
So it’s been busy but not too busy. Back to work now and will await the arrival of Dana’s parents in a couple of weeks for a three week visit, followed closely by Dana’s Aunt Trish for another week. We hope the holiday season treated you all well and wish all of you a happy new year for 2008!