27473 words about Melbourne! Give or take a few.

Melbourne is nice. Look at the pics!

Flinder's Street Station. One of my favorite Jet songs mentions this station. I couldn't get the song out of my head every time we passed by here. Good thing it is an awesome song :)

mmmmmmm Krispy Kreme

The kids had there fair share of sugar on this trip. Your welcome Tooth Fairy... you can pick up their teeth at your earliest convenience. These lollies were from a shop that hand makes all there candy (in view of the public no less). I never knew until I saw it first hand. They put sugar in candy!

We were all very impressed with the Melbourne Zoo. The kids thought these were pretty neat. A Meerkat just like Timone from the Lion King? No Pumba though :(

Shamus corrected Stace (very "matter of factly") when she had the nerve to call one of these Lemurs... a Coati. In Stacey's defense we did see a Coati in Tikal, Guatemala and they do have stripes on their tails.

Ninja Pig. You would be standing there one minute and then, out of no where, the pig would just materialize underneath you in a puff of smoke! Imagine that! Thank God he was friendly.

Akidnas... Australia's version of the porcupine I suppose.

It was a long day at the Zoo but at least there was a playground to break up the walking.

Yeah! Playground! WoooHoooo! .... yeah... wooo.... heh... ooooooo..... whew. Good times.

I am in awe of big animals especially cats. It is really sad that these beautiful creatures are endangered. I also got some pics of Snow Leopards, Lions, Puma and a Mountain Leopard. I won't bore you with all the pictures.

This guy was putting on quite a show!

The primate exhibit was awesome!

He looks comfy!

This is what I paid my admission for. This silver back was so cool. He climbed, effortlessly, up to the top of this 13meter tree stump. You can't tell from the picture but man was he high of the ground.

Then he stood up straight as if saying "that's right... this is my house, beeeatch!" Amazing creatures.

The city from the St. Kilda Pier. We went out to watch the penguins.

Our wonderful hosts.

This was on our trip along the Great Ocean Road.

Loch Ard Gorge. This was my favorite place on the Great Ocean Road.

There were lots of sheep farms along the way. The lambs are so cute...and tasty :P

The Twelve Apostles. Well, really there are only seven now. Eight when we were there but another one crumbled just a few days ago.

That is one wet family. It rained the whole day as we traveled the ocean road.

This reminded me of the occasional time you would see a group of white tail deer in the fall in Nova Scotia. Except this was Kangaroos in the spring in Victoria. Close though.

More to come... Maybe. This post took forever.

RiverFire - Fireworks Video...Thanks Rej

Just FYI for anyone who wants to see how great the fireworks are here during the Riverfire Festival. Rej did a video so click on the below link and you can see some pics and then the video.

http://clo-and-rej.blogspot.com/

Great job Rej. Your camera does great videos!

We do promise to post our Melbourne pics next. Really!

Hope everyone had a great week and enjoy your weekend. The kids are back to swimming class tomorrow morning and then I start a sewing class in the afternoon. Should be fun. I'm going to attempt a skirt. I need to make my Mama pride so wish me luck!

I bet you thought this post was going to be about Melbourne!

Sorry... but really, Melbourne is a city. It has buildings, cars, streets, people, crazy people and noise. Now you know all about it. Just kidding... we had a great time and I would have posted about it tonight but something pretty neat happened here today. The lower part of Queensland State (where Brisbane is located) and the State of New South Wales was blanketed with a dust storm from the interior. It grounded flights and caused havoc with public transport, especially in Sydney where it was at its worst. Check out the pictures below. These were taken by a coworker of mine at lunch today.

I must say thought it was cool to go outside. It seemed as if your were stepping into a sci-fi film or onto Mars. We will post some Melbourne stuff next.

Back in Brissie!

Well we just arrived home from Melbourne safe and sound. We had a wonderful trip. Our hosts were fantastic... Thanks so much Steve, Cari and Jesse. The weather was, overall, pretty good. We got a bit wet on the Great Ocean Road but it was well worth it.

We will post a more in depth post in a couple of days. I'm going to soak in the last couple of hours of my holidays... and probably call my mom.

cheers

D

The river on fire!

What's this? Two posts in one day. Well it may have to do for another week. We leave for Melbourne tomorrow morning so there might not be another post for a week or so.

We went to see our second River Fire last night. Rej, Clo, Nick and Mariana all came over to our place and we walked down to the pier to stake or claim for the ultimate viewing spot. Like prospectors of old we set forth with nothing more than some camping chairs, finger food, blankets, cameras, clothing, drinks, mobile phones, iPods, tripods and seed pods. Oh yes, just like the prospectors of old.

We were curious to see how the kids would do this year. Last year we were further from the action but this year we were in the thick of things. A fireworks barge was directly in front of us. No more than one hundred meters and the Story bridge was just off to our left.

No nap takes it's toll. Don't worry though, the second and third wind came shortly after this picture was taken.

This was the pre-fireworks show. The kids loved these planes. Mostly because they are nowhere near as loud as the F111 jets that fly over later.

The fireworks took Breagha by surprise. After the jet flew past she kept her ears covered and her head buried in Stace's shoulder. It couldn't have bothered her that much because she ended up falling asleep. I couldn't believe it because it was really loud.

Bam! Pop! Pow! Pow! Snap! Crack! I bet it feels like you are there in person!

The fireworks fall from the bridge. I stopped taking pictures about a third of the way through the show. It's far better to experience something than to try to capture it.

cheers!

Oh yeah... that's right... we still have a blog!

G'day mates!

So it's been a while since we last posted something. Sometimes you just need a break from blogging. But we're back.

I would love our first post back to be about something out of this world. Like, for instance, last week when Shamus wrestled a helpless surfer from the jaws of a 20 foot great white shark. Then swam the victim 2km to shore, only to have to perform CPR on him while rescuing a kitten from a tree. Or say, the other day, when Breagha single handily landed a 747 full of passengers after the crew had mysteriously vanished ... in a small farmers field no less! Those selfless acts were really something to see! But I feel if I start posting stuff like that I would just sound like a boastful father. And how cheesy is that... right? I suppose I will just have to stick with the more subdued day to day activities. I hope that will be fine with you guys.

Well the weather is getting better. What is the Aussie thing to do when the weather gets nice. The Beach! The group decided to do another beach day a couple of weekends ago. We headed to Woorim beach on Bribie Island. It was really windy and sadly it was a offshore wind so the water was just chop. No decent waves for body boarding. But that didn't stop us from trying.

Our two little Aussies! I love this pic. It really felt like a snapshot of the lifestyle here.

Breagha loves to dig in the sand. We buried the kids in the sand on the beach trip prior to this one ... so now that is a standard practice on a beach day.

This time we upped the ante. We decided to dig a spa down in the sand to shelter us from the wind. This is the initial excavation. In my opinion there were too many foremen and not enough labourers :)

What is a spa without a slide. The kids loved sliding into the hole and being thrown out by Rej. Rej is the highlight of any outing for the kids. He is like a walking amusement park! Thanks Rej.

The spa doubled as a race track later in the day. It was the envy of all the little boys. It constantly drew a crowd.

Look out! Shamus has entered the extreme sports world with his new Ben10 scooter. His first "death defying" stunt was the push and balance. Aaaaaahhhhh SNAP!

Unlike North America, fathers day is in September here. Shamus and Breagha both made me wonderful presents Then they and Mommy took me out for a wonderful breakfast on the waterfront.

Stacey and I laughed about this picture thinking that we are starting to look old(er)! So now I'm going to airbrush all pictures of us. Take that super models... I too can have beautiful skin like you!

I didn't want to say anything but I think the fame is going to Shamus' head. What 4 year old has an entourage?

This year Father's Day fell on Brisbane's 150th birthday. I was kind of upset with Brisbane. Us, hard working, dads get one day a year but, oh no, Brisbane had to steal our thunder... "ooooo look at me I'm 150 years old ... I'm a beautiful city".... bla bla bla. Whatever, I could turn 150 if I wanted to... but I just don't want to show off. The city had a celebration with people dressed in period costumes from long ago.

I wasn't going to let Brisbane show me up! I organised a little fathers day party of my own. What better way to shove it in the face of a pompous city than a bit of highland dancing. That's right ... East Coast Canada represent!

I must say though the city fought back admirably with their Tai Chi. Well played Brisbane. Well played indeed.

Take care everyone!