Blog.ca: 2015

Saturday, 30 May 2015

This month has been rather eventful for us. We packed up all of our not-that-many-luckily-for-us things and moved out to a little town just outside the bigger-but-still-little town of Lithgow. We love the city and miss seeing our city-dwelling friends as much, but there are also really great things about living here. In Sydney we lived on a pretty busy road. On most nights we'd at least once hear screeching tires and cringe expectantly as we waited for the potential crunch of plastic and twisting of metal. Out here there aren't really any busy roads. We went for a walk down the road the other day and saw this:

Oh deer. Another great thing about living out here is it feels like there are a bajillion hikes and lookouts and outdoorsy things to do. This is part of the view from Hassan's Walls lookout, just outside Lithgow:

And below is the view of the Capertee Valley - the second largest canyon in the world - from Pearson's Lookout. The mesa-type formation in the middle-right of the picture is called Pantoney's Crown, and apparently you can climb it.

There's also a really nice bunch of garden beds that Bri's looking forward to working on, we've joined a gym where one of the staff who's sort of like our personal trainer was one of the lead roles in the Lithgow theatre company production of Evita that we went to on Fri night, and the ward that we're in now (Leura) has a bunch of really great members. So we're feeling pretty grateful for the opportunity to live here. Life's great.

Sunday, 26 April 2015

This week in Bri and Dan's life:

1. Sydney experienced one of the biggest storms in recent memory, leading to this scene of carnage.

2. Brianna presented at a relief society activity where she made an impressive display about home organisation. Dan was very proud. Shout out to Momma for the great hand-out - Dan thought it looked like it came out of an Ensign.

3. Dan's sister-in-law's mum shouted us at a yum cha restaurant, which is a style of dining where servings of food get brought round on trolleys and you get to choose what you want to eat. Brianna ate chicken feet and cow tendon.

So everything is cruising along fine - life is good.

Sunday, 5 April 2015

Our Trip to the Middle of Australia

by Dan & Bri

The flight to Adelaide was pretty uneventful, just like Adelaide itself*.

Once arrived, we picked up a Toyota Kluger - a big 7-seater that we'd decided to rent because you can fold the seats down and sleep in it. After a quick stop at the shops to stock up on water and food we were off.

First stop was the Arid Lands nature park a few hours north, where we learned about desert flora and fauna and observed some excellent specimens, including an enthusiastic tree.

Next was Lake Hart, an eerily beautiful dried up lake. The layer of salt made a lovely crunching beneath our feet that reminded Brianna of snow. "It's like snow", she said.

Lake Hart, SA

As we continued our journey, we received a lesson in supply and demand. The low supply and high demand for fuel in the outback regions of Australia meant that those who had the fuel could demand that we supply lots of our money so we could get the fuel (see map below, NB prices are per litre, 1 litre is approximately 1/4 of a gallon).

About half-way between Adelaide and our target is a town named Coober Pedy, which means something like "white man's holes" in one of the indigenous languages. The ground is rich in opals, and over the years the residents have dug thousands of holes to look for them. Because it gets so hot here many of the residents have burrowed underground, like large moles. Little ventilation pipes can be seen poking up above the surface of many of the dirt hills around town, suggesting more civilization than is apparent at first glance.

Coober Pedy, SA

After a few days of driving, we finally arrived at the red centre, the spiritual heart of this great land, where we walked on canyon rims, hiked through gorges and awe-inspiring rock formations, swam in a billabong, and circumnavigated what until moments ago was thought by us to be the largest rock in the world (it's actually the second largest). We spotted wild kangaroos, rock wallabies, a family of emus, lots of eagles, lizards, a snake, hundreds of tiny birds, and heard dingoes howling at night. We ate peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches, canned baked beans, trail mix, one delicious buffet that featured cold emu meat, and tried kangaroo steak at an award-winning restaurant (not sure what award it won but it deserved it).