Byron Bay

Duncan and I were fortunate enough to spend a long weekend in Byron Bay, northern New South Wales, just near the Queensland border. Byron Bay the town is a bustling little place filled with hippies, a few yuppies, and in the summer swarms of European backpackers. Luckily it is winter here and it was very quiet. Ducan's friends Lucy and Wayne (and dog Jackie) have a place nearby in Ocean Shores. Byron Bay lighthouse in the distance.

Lucy, Wayne and Jackie checking out some sea creature "artwork".

Birds at Lake Eildon

Eric and Maria have a bird feeder in their back yard which attracts lots of beautiful native birds. These two are king parrots. I think a male and a female.

These multi-colored beauties are called Rosellas.

Lake Eildon

Duncs' friends of 20 years, Eric and Maria, were nice enough to have us to their house at Lake Eildon for the Queen's Birthday long weekend. It was a little chilly. These next two photos are from their backyard, one at about 9am, and one a few hours later once the fog had rolled away. Note all the trees growing out of the middle of the lake--they grew there during the 10 years drought when there was no water in this part of the lake! When Eric and Maria bought their house a year ago they had to walk 10 mintues to the lake--now it is back up to their yard!

The boys doing some fishin'. Maria and I drank bubby from our lawn chairs.

Eric smoked some of the trout--delicious!

Port Phillip Bay

Duncs' family gave us a sea and dolphin swim in Port Phillip Bay for Christmas, which is the bay Melbourne is on. And naturally we waited till summer was over to swimming in a vast, cold body of water. Luckily we had these very flattering wet suits to wear.

Seals! We swam around this little gazebo-like structure and the seals jumped off and swam around us. Unfortunatly we didn't see any dolphins, boo!

Duncs, after a snorkel . . .

Flying Foxes or Bats?

I'm not sure which they are, but they are all over Melbourne, and were hanging out in vast numbers in this city park the other day . . . .

Another footy season rolls around . . .

Aussie Rules Football started again in May and Duncs and I headed down to Skilled Stadium in Geelong to watch the Cats crush the Port Adelaide Power!

Nice shorts, boys!

Australian Open!

So I have been very slack in my blog postings lately, and just realized it is now MARCH and I took these photos in JANUARY! Duncs and I got tickets for the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, held every year in Melbourne. It usually is a very hot summer day for this tennis, but it happened to be unseasonably cool and rainy (actually it has been raining pretty much since I moved here--the decade long drought is definitely over). Many of the matches are at the Rod Laver Arena, famous Aussie tennis star.

We didn't see Nadal or Federer, as we had hoped, but did see the eventual champion, Djokovic. He defeated Berdych (see jumbo-tron photo above). And I also learned that the Aussies LOVE Jim Courier--he announced every match on the main court and conducted all the post-match interviews.