Olive Oil Atomic Bomb (Almost)

Hello Again,

So we've spent the past two days bottling Olive Oil. We learnt that the Farm has two types of oil, Mild &  fruity and the Moore River Blend. This was a good job for yesterday (Tuesday) as it rained crazy all day. The rain rattled and the wind rocked the shed while we listened to Ballad CD's and the Corrs. Holly spent most of her day filling and twisting the caps onto the bottles, she told me to say she had very sore hands, but she's not complaining. I however spent my day between the shed and the farmyard. Making boxes filling them with Oil bottles and stacking them in the shed.

After doing the boxes Daryll and I were outsideto herd the farms sheep. They were being given some medicine so I had to usher them towards him while trying to avoid any of them deciding to make a run for it. One did escape by jumping a barbed fence so we left the herd in a gated area to chase the escapee.

We had more WWOOF-ers arrive yetserday. Erni and Chris, a more mature couple. They're travelling around Australia, they're from Melbourne and have just arrived from visiting Northern Australia  and are planning their southern Australia adventure.

So we spent today doing some pruning of the Olive Trees. They need to look like vases we keep getting told. We're given little hand saws and instructed to put our topiary skills top the test and shape the mis-shapen bushes into beautiful fruit bearing masterpieces. What we seem to be doing is hacking away at the bushes with no certainty that we are doing the right thing.

So after our day of pruning, and some weeding we all sat around the outside fire with some other people from nearby and had a really nice evening. Chats about politics, yes even Canadian Politics, Australia and about a mini mount rushmore in England somewhere. Even I (David) have no idea where it is. We had a vegetarian curry cooked by Chris which was outstanding, some beers and kicked back for the evening.

We are heading to Perth tomorrow with Catherine and Hitting the Royal Perth show. It's gonna be Awesome!!! Chain saw Ice sculptures and heaps of fun and random things to see. But No rides that spin round too fast or go upside down for David. The carousel is my limit I think. Cotton candy too!! Fun Fun Fun...

Ok, Holly is alseep on the couch with Abbys replacement and I am in need to some ZZzzz's people. Thanks for reading,

Blog Soon.

David & Holly

Kanga-Roadkill

Ok, Here we go again.

So we had two days off over the week-end, and I guess monday too as it was a public holiday, and all we did was sit in a truck all day.

Saturday we headed to Lancelin, the closest town to the farm to see what it had to offer. The town is a seaside town. It has everything you'd need to survive and no more. A pharmacy, Grocery store and LJ's burgers, best steak burger ever! We of course had to look at the clothes shops while we were there, so David was watching the AFL final on any tv that was available in these stores. Naturally.

We headed to the beach and were not prepared for what we saw. I guess we had the idea of Sydney beaches in mind, packed and rocky. We were pleasantly greeted with the sight of white sandy beaches, turquoise water and not a sole insight. We far prefer these beaches to those on the East coast.
We walked up and down the beach both at Lancelin and the other nearest town Ledge Point taking in the sights, sounds and washed up coral. We stopped in at Ledge point and hit the beach there were more people here.

By Lancelin there is an area where the dunes are crawling with 4x4's, quad bikes and heaps of little kids on annoying little baby quads. You can hear them from the beach and all over town looks like a crazy good time!

We went to Daryll's house to take him up on the offer of a BBQ and some beers after our trip to the beach, we were sure it was number 12. When we arrived at his house however we were not so sure. We couldn't see his car anywhere and the friends he said he was having over to watch the game didn't seem to be making any noise. Daryll's place really is what I imagined a typical Australian outback house to be. Sparse, heaps of out buildings and surrounded by bush, we looked around and couldn't hear or find anyone. So we started to wonder whether we had the right house, scary thought...So we drove home. Later we discovered it was his house but they'd gone to see the cows when we came to visit.

Having forgotten our bathing suits and sun tan lotion on saturday, we decided on sunday to do a beach day in style. Bathing suits, lotion hats even a picnic!! We decided on our way back from the Beach on sunday to take a gander at the Moore park Nature reserve, which is not so much a reserve as it is an area of vast bush. We drove along the fire breaks stopping at the crest of a hill overlooking the sea of green scrub to watch the sun set. It was immensely fun ploughing through nature in a huge vehicle though we must have brought half a tree back with us, along with a smouldering break pad :/

So monday...We weren't sure if we were working today so we played it lazy. Watched tv and had a late breakfast. Daryll turned up around noon and asked if we wanted to take the sheep to market. We helped separate the sheep and load them onto a truck, Len who is Daryll's friend was driving the lambs to the market in Perth so we hitched a ride. Len is such a nice guy! He had so may jokes about how slow his truck was, Like if the headwind was too strong, we'd have to turn back and try again next year. Aahh Len...

We had an entertaining and informative trip to Midland, Just east of Perth, where we dropped off the sheep and had a look at how the market was run. Holly particularly Enjoyed watching the sheep dog running on top of the sheep and jumping big fences to herd them all in the right direction. We watched the dogs for a good half hour  before deciding to leave.

So we jumped back in the truck and drove the 1.5h journey back to the farm. It's a very long way when you have drunk around 1.5 litres of water. Due to the holiday traffic during the week end, our trip back was littered with Fresh Roadkill. Gutted Kangaroo littered the roads, it really wasn't a nice sight. So after we got back we had a beer (Holly a Port & Lemonade) with Len & Daryll and heard some great stories about Roadkill, some moaning about tourists (us...Uncomfortable..) City dwellers and prices of land (fyi...the man who owns the most land in this area is a man from Texas). Then got told about some Emu's that were living on the property which we will scope out tomorrow. They left, we made burgers and are now writing this for you.

Ciao For Now,

David & Holly

Abby's Replacement

I joke, hehe

So yeah. Today...

We had a lazy morning waiting for Catherine to arrive she had gone shopping for food for us before she came out to the farm, after putting all the food away Holly spent the morning with Catherine labelling the bottles of olive oil. I was tasked with spraying the Mango trees with a copper solution to prevent a pest from feasting on the young trees.

After we finished our working day we came back to the house and met the boss's daughter AND her maltese/shitsu dog, Prince. Now Holly was thinking that it would be a cute little white fluffy puppy. But not only was it that it was a spitting image of Abby, smaller of course. It didn't have Abby's personality but it definitely looked like her.

Daryll came back after his time in the groves and over a beer we decided that we would go with him to take a look at his cows to make sure they were all happy as they are calving. So we drove into the sunset and along a few km's of road and off onto this small country lane which turned into an off road track, this tested the 4x4's off roading capabilities. After some time we saw a field full of black cows and as we drove towards them some ran and some walked towards the vehicles. We got out and the cows came to greet us before being terrorised by Daryll's huskies.

We watched the sunset from the field before setting back to the farm, after nearly running into a kangaroo we pulled into the farm and settled down for the evening.

We have tomorrow off along with monday as it's a long week end here. There's a big AFL game happening too which should be a fun watch

Bye for now

Olives, Olives, Olives

If you are a faithful reader to the blog you are pretty lucky to find a blog everyday! Right now I am sitting down for breakfast with some olives. I am hoping that by the end of this 3 month stint I will be an olive enjoyer. Catherine makes different kinds of olive concoctions, Basil and tomato, chilli and garlic, etc. I really like those ones. At the moment I pick out the little olives with lots of seed so I just get a little bit at time. We also drench all our cooking in olive oil. Seems to be the thing to do.

When Daryll eats lunch here, whatever he is eating, gets about 5 seconds of olive oil poured on it. So we have olives (or oil) for breakfast, lunch, and dinner here. Our snack is home-made bread (that I make in the bread maker) with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Yummmmy.

Yesterday was a day of labelling and packing. We put labels on the jars and then packed them in boxes. I am hoping that helped a bit in getting rid of my chicken wing arms. haha. (Check it out, the finished product) I have taken lots of pictures but the internet here is sattelite and it barely loads the internet sometimes. I think we will go in the city on the weekend and get a mobile internet so we can skype and load pictures. Ah, big news, maybe you have heard, but there was a huge dust storm in Sydney yesterday! Shucks that we missed out on it. Jonathan said that he was at Circular Quay and he couldn't even see the Sydney Opera House from it. Usually when you see our picture of the Bridge and the Opera house they were taking from Circular Quay (in between both of them). That sounds pretty crazy, and it was all over the news here. So sucks that we had to miss out on that experience. Oh well.

After we were done 5 hours of labelling we decided to take a tour around the farm. So we hopped on the quad and drove around. She has a lot of land, I will have to ask Daryll for directions, I have forgotten. We took a visit to the staring cow and lamby and visited the baby lambs. We thought one was dead because it was just laying there and it let us go right up to it without moving...which is unlike sheep. Then all of a sudden it jumped up, freaked out and almost rammed right into the quad. It repositioned itself and ran to the rest of the herd. Poor lamb, we probably gave it a heart attack! We also saw many kangaroos and joey's hopping around and I think that there is every variety of cockatoo out here. So we hear the annoying squawking all day but also get to see the beauty of all the colours!

We are to put chook poo (chicken manure) around the mango trees this morning. Daryll is a late starter so he usually doesn't get here till about 11:00. It is 9 now and we are awake and ready! It is supposed to rain today so hopefully we can get everything done before then.

Holly

We Live Among the Gumtrees

We've finally made it into a popular Australian Folk song. Where he sings of living among the gumtrees. We have four just outside the door...Living the dream.

So today...We slept in. Watched some tv, and were then told we weren't starting untill the afternoon. So we decided to take a stroll along the Olive Groves and to the river that borders the property. Or creek as it is known here.

As we arrived, and found the river to be little more than a trickle, we decided to walk up it trying to find a more substantial area. We met a cow...a scary cow.
The cow stared at us from a distance. It was like a horror movie, only with a cow. As we walked, trees would block its view of us, so it shifted and moved closer, so we backed off to a safe distance. We decied to give it another go and couldn't see the cow, untill Holly jumped and said it's on the other side of the creek.

The cow was staring at us from the other side of the fence and creek. Scary!!! Horror movie material.
So to get away from the cow, we walked up a hill to the Olive groves and were excited to see Kangaroos hopping around among the trees. We began discussing this movie we had seen about killer sheep and how the cow reminded us of the movie. Then a sheep starts running towards us from nowhere, stops right in front of us, breathing heavily and butting David. We decide to walk away and the sheep starts to follow us, bucking and butting as we go. Holly decides that the sheep needs to be petted and gives him a little pat on the head. So the sheep comes over to David, and decides that his butt needs to pet him. Needless to say we were both pretty scared of this crazy friendly sheep, and jumped over a barbed wire fence to escape the poor friendly sheep.

We then decided to go see the horses. They ran over to greet us and allowed us to pet them before running off to the other side of their enclosure.

We then got back to the farm to see Daryll who showed us some work that needed doing for the day. Weeding!!! We weeded the gardens around the house for the rest of the day. Daryll took us out and showed where we could go for a walk, or ride on the quad. We asked him if any of his animals were missing as we'd had an encounter with two of them in the morning. He said aaaahh, wild cows. They're fine. And Laamby, he's my pet. Thanks Daryll!

So we saw some beautiful yellow fields and dense bush forests, saw some lambs. One had been born the night before Daryll said. Very cute. Then as we drove on, we saw tons of Kangaroos all hopping around in the trees and trying to get away from the quad. One of the Kangaroos got himself stuck in the barbed wire and fell as he was trying to get away but shot off quickly.

After our exciting day we had some drinks on the veranda with Daryll while swapping stories and eating some freshly made bread with oil, and wished Daryll a good night.

Untill next time,

Holly & David

Regan's Ridge

I guess we're now officially farmers.

We got picked up just after 10 this morning and were driven around an hour into the West Australian Bush by the owner of the farm, Catherine. She drove us to the Shire of GinGin, Sounds like Lord of The Rings. Gin Gin I think is the name of the nearest town which is about 20 minutes away.

We arrive at the house which has 4 rooms and a Bath!!! Finally a bath!! A huge lounge and really sweet veranda area that overlooks 23,000 olive trees. And a back garden that overlooks a bush forest. This place is stunning. Except for it rained all day. Poo...

So we started work after some lunch. We went to the 'cold room' which is a stones throw from the house and transferred a container of fermented Olives to another container to rinse them. The olives are fermented for around 10 months in Brine, then jarred with Olive Oil. We sorted the Olives, and put them into jars which also had some garlic and chilli in them. We did this for around 3 or 4 hours listening to a fantastic medley of Abba, Sting and Delta Goodrem songs.

So after our afternoon of work Catherine thanked us for our help and left to go back to Perth, so we headed back to the house to get settled. I thought It'd be a good Idea to get a fire going as the house was freezing. Holly made the coffee while I attempted to retain my basic manly instincts by trying to create a small fire. I failed...MISERABLY...so I retreated to a corner with some chocolate while Holly also attempted to make a fire. She belted out demands for KINDLING...I NEED MORE KINDLING..I had no idea where to find it, or what it was, then Daryll arrived, showed us where the kindling was.

Daryll is the farm manager. A great Ozzy Bloke if you ever saw one. We will be spending a lot of our time with him over the next few months, he seems like great fun. After helping us with the fire he showed us where all the olive products were in the house. Oil, table olives, Olive Tapanade...so many olive products! All very good with cheese too :)

So we're going to settle down for the evening now. We just ate some pasta with Mint Peas that Holly made (With Olive Oil of Course) Very Nice and will watch the Pursuit of Happiness.

Take Care,

Holly & David

Perth

Hey Guys,

This is David. I've Hi-Jacked (with permission) Holly's blog.

Though I don't really have much more to say on the matter of our mammoth journey accross the country, other than my bum was flat and I couldn't stand sitting down for the whole of yesterday. It was amazing!!

Ok, so Perth. For all of you not in the know, it's Australia's third largest city I think. Maybe even fourth. But nothing here is on the scale of Sydney. Sydney is to Australia, what Toronto is for you Canadian's. Huge...

Perth Sits as one of the worlds most isolated cities and very different from what we have already seen here in Australia so far. The streets are very wide and the city has a far more welcoming feel than Sydney did.

So yesterday we arrived at our friend Juli's cousins house. It's in a small complex with a pool at the centre. I think we'd have both been excited to sleep on a couch after our ordeal on the train. Sleeping upright on a chair for 3 days, but she gave up her and her cousins beds for us along with their en suite bathroom. I have never been so excited to see a shower and soft toilet paper.

We stayed around the house most of the day. Relaxed on the balcony and waited for the computer as Holly uploaded a lifetime of photos to facebook, to check on my family and friends. My sister had a baby back in May and I get weekly updates from them.

So we had a trip around the city yesterday. Did some shopping, good shopping. Not the bad expensive kind. Came back to the house, talked to our old house mate Jon over Skype and while the girls did their girlie things all night, I snuck on to my bed and woke up at 7a.m.

So today we had the intentions of being up and snappy making the most of our last day in the house and in Perth. But it rained, and rained....and rained. So we mooched around, talked to some friends and finally left to see Freemantle. So, I heard that Freemantle was this haven of a place, with glorious beaches and something very similar to the Bondi area. What a Scam! This place looked like a cheap British Seaside town, smelt like it too.

And where was the Beach?! We could not find it anywhere.

A guy we met on the train travelled to Perth purely to see the Beach at Fremantle before travelling the coast. He didn't find it either.

So after this, we hit a chocolate bar called San Churros. Had some Churro's and chocolate strawberries to hide our disappointment.

So now, I'm sat on a lovely couch, nice and warm and drifting off to sleep with the joys of an early morning ahead. I'm hoping for us both that the trip will be good, and that we get everything out of it that we need. Though, I may be sick of Olives in a few months.

So that's the other side of the story for you.
Until Holly lets me on the computer again, thanks for reading :)

David

(P.s from Holly)
I have caught up on the photos a little bit. But still have a bit more. Our last week in Sydney and our train trip. Hopefully we will get those up sometime this week. But enjoy these for now.

Japanese Supper, City2Surf, Etc...

Touring Sydney and some...

Day Three & Arrival - Indian Pacific

After a much better sleep we wake up to a beautiful sunrise over the red flat land what we foreigners would know as the proper outback. The train slowed down so we could all take pictures of a random house near the tracks the was built by a man named Iggy made out of tin sheeting and wood. After 12 hours of travelling from Adelaide we entered the Nullabor Plains. It is an area in Australia that is flat and red with random bushes but trees cannot grow in this area. So like Saskatchewan but Saskatchewan is more colourful….well different colours I guess. We stopped in one of the only towns around. The town of Cook. It is pretty much a ghost town. It has a row of houses, a school, bathrooms, two little sheds known as the gaols, and a souvenir shop. Most of these buildings are not in use anymore. There are 5 people, 2 dogs, 1 cat, 30 dingos and 20 CHICKS, pet goanna. I am assuming one of their only incomes is their souvenir shop for the people that come off for a rest stop from the train. It used to have 130 people back in 1975 when one of the ladies lived there as a child. It used to have a post office, hospital, tradesmen and the main thing in the town, the railway. It is approx. 1000 kms from Adelaide, approx 1300 kms from Perth, 875kms from Kalgoorie. The outback is north of them for many kilometres and 200 kms south is the Ocean. This small little ghost town has had telestra come and set up internet, fax, phone, and mobile. So even though they are in the middle of nowhere they are pretty in tune with the rest of the world. In the summer time it can get as hot as 50 degrees, cooling down 20 degrees at night time.

In the 1850’s 10,000 camels were shipped over to Australia from the Arabic Nation. It ended up being perfect desert living conditions for them. When men wanted to discover the rest of Australia or build rainways or towns in this area they would use camels instead of horses because they could handle the hot weather and the workload better. Apparently camels can go for many days without water and have long eyelashes to protect their eyes from the sand. We saw a couple camels randomly in the Plains. They had a little information playing about them as we saw them. Apparently they have populated so much that they are starting to ship them back.

Around 8:30 pm (but with the time change it ended up being 6:30 pm) we arrived in a city called Kalgoorie (Aussies pronounce it without the R, of course.). This city is a mining city. For years they have been mining gold. It has Australia’s biggest open cast mine. We got to go up to the Super Pit and see them working. It is 1 ½ km wide, 4 km long and 500 meters deep. It was a pretty cool site (sight) haha. The towns history is a pretty dirty one. It was a mining city full of single men so it had many brothels and the bars used to attract the men with their topless bar maids. Today they actually still have 3 brothels running. They are on the same street the police station so that they can be monitored. We actually drove by the brothels and girls came to the door to wave. And the bars still have women, not topless, but scantily clad. There is one bar that has four pictures of the top skimpy bar maids on the outside. Each month it changes. On a more nicer note, the city is much more family oriented. It has one of the best schools in the world for mining and there are about 30,000 people that live there. They also have one of the biggest races in Australia (that is actually going on at this moment.) Sounds like it as a typical western town back in the day.

Last night was a very good sleep! We woke up at 5:30, watched the sunrise and got excited to finally arrive in Perth in 4 hours. I finished reading My Sister's Keeper. Good book. I also tried knitting and messed up horrible and now I have to undo everything I did...grrr. Now, David and I are finally with Juli. We will spend the next two days with her and her cousin. Then on Monday we leave to go to the farm for three months! Nice time for change!! David and I blogged everyday of the trip and I seperated the days into their own blogs. So look at the blogs previous to this.

Anyways, time to upload photos and catch up with Juli!

Day Two - Indian Pacific

After the worst sleep ever, we arrived in Broken Hill at 6:55 am. The ground is red with green bushes everywhere. It reminds me of a red Saskatchewan. It is very flat with random hilly areas. Just before we got to Broken Hill it started raining. Apparently, it never rains here. The outback is supposed to be really dry and our first experience of it is pouring rain. David and I hopped off the train and got on a coach to get a tour around the town. It reminded me a lot of Moose Jaw. The size of it and the buildings and their history. The town has a lot of history with the war and mining. They mine silver and zinc. They have two high schools here. One is called Broken Hill High School and by it they had fields of different plants and cows. The students are taught agriculture and how to take care of cows. It seemed random that there were 3 cows just sitting in a school ground in the middle of the town. I had a little giggle at that. Then we got to the other high school in Broken Hill nicknamed “Alcatraz.” It started off as being built as a correctional center and then when they were half way done they decided they didn’t need another one in the city and turned it into a high school. So, you can imagine what the school looks like. It has no windows. Apparently, they have the top marks in the state, though.

Our last stop of the trip was at the Art Gallery that is the home of “The Big Picture.” It is the largest acrylic painting in the world. It took up the walls of a huge building. Krisin got a painting for her birthday of a town by Broken Hill called Silverton. We found the painting in this gallery. I would have liked to get one of the paintings in that gallery. Very beautiful.

Until it got to dark to look outside we saw a few kangaroos hopping a long, LOTS of sheep, cows and crops. Very much like Saskatchewan minus the sheep and kangaroos. Took a few picture to show the similarities but I didn’t go overboard because I thought I would get teased. “Holly, you don’t take pictures of the scenery like this back home.” There have also been some proper outback houses along the way. Unfortunately, I never got good pictures of them.

After what felt like forever we made it into a sunny Adelaide at 3 pm. I realized that this was only a hiccup in the journey that is yet to come. We got off the train and hopped onto our tour bus. The tour guide told us it never rains but like Broken Hill had been raining all day! Luckily, we got some sun, otherwise we would have seen this area like it’s really supposed to be. Adelaide is beautiful and full of parks. I remember going by one park and seeing that it was Park 14. I am sure it had more than that though. When Adelaide was first built they made lots of parkland around the city so that during the war it would be hard to get to and people would get caught before they actually got there. It is interesting to me how war has shaped the history of all of the towns and cities in Australia. The past two towns had huge histories built on war. Adelaide is a lot more friendlier than Sydney. You can actually smile at people on the street and they will smile back. We saw the Adelaide Oval - largest cricket oval in Australia. I would like to come back here and see it some more. When we got back to the train station ( a bit outside of Adelaide) David got a taxi ride to go grab some food quick. Because he nor the taxi driver knew where to go for food the taxi driver gave him a free taxi ride to where they found a store. Another thing we noticed would never happen in Sydney. While waiting for our train to be ready to board we chatted to an older couple who made the train lively the night before with their jokes and laughter with fellow men. They were a really nice couple. Everyone on the train stops at their seats for a quick chat when they walk by. Apparently they have done this trip a few times as they enjoy the scenery. I do not know how people older than me can sleep three nights on a train. My body definitely feels it!

Day One - Indian Pacific

So, I had meant to tell you all about my past week. But the internet went down again and I was unable to. I ended up teaching 3 days of the week at Ultimo Public School. That is the school that I did my overseas training at. Made more in 3 days then I was working a week and some changing nappies everyday! It was so exciting to be teaching again. The teachers were sad to see me leave so soon but were excited to hear about my upcoming journeys. I am looking forward to coming back and teaching some more. David and I had a few barbecues, and a sunday roast on a Tuesday night...all going away parties with all of our friends!

David and I got on the Indian Pacific train today. Exactly 9 months since I got to Australia. The seats are comfy and spacious which is good because this will be our home for the next four days. Most of the people on this train are 60+ with a few families and then fellow backpackers. It took about 2 hours to properly be out of Sydney. It is so huge! We haven’t seen any Kangaroos hopping about yet, hopefully tomorrow. We saw the most beautiful sunset over the hills. We were travelling past an area that was green and full of trees. Nothing was in the way of watching the sun go down! As we watched it with the rest of our carriage some of the older proper Aussie gents started chatting with David about the outback and a bit of its history while I entertained the 2 year old that was sitting in front of us while his parents watched a movie together. He was cute at first until he asked to sit on my lap and kept trying to kiss me, he then kept trying to get me to go somewhere with him. When David came back the boy telling him to “go” and then he would say “come here” to me as he held my hands. It was borderline creepy. Haha. I heard the family mention they will be getting off at Broken Hill….phew.

Tomorrow morning we will be arriving in Broken Hill where we will be doing a 1 ½ hour tour of the area. Pretty exciting. Later on in the evening we will be stopping in Adelaide and doing another tour.

Man in Central Station

So everyday when we go through Central Station tunnel there is usually a man there drawing aboriginal artwork. We have walked by many times hearing business people walking through the tunnels saying really rude things to this man. One day when I walked by him I noticed that his artwork was actually really good! I decided that if I was going to have proper Aboriginal Artwork it was going to be from the artist himself. So David and I said that before we left Sydney we would by some work from him. So on Sunday night as we were walking past him David noticed a sign that said it was his last day. So we walked over to him and he told us that his mother was very sick so he had to head back home to take care of her. So we went and got out some money to buy some of his paintings. He explained each painting to us and then told us a little bit about where he came from and his people. He also told us that they have a connection with a couple of the tribes in Canada and that he and a aboriginal dance team were going to make their way over to Canada in the new year and do a bit of touring.
It was a nice little sit down with him in the tunnel and it was soo cool to learn about where he was from and his culture.

Watson's Bay

Yesterday was a wonderful day, yet again! We planned to go to the Sydney Market at 6:30 in the morning but Juli had a going away barbecue the night before and so we stayed up pretty late. It is about a 25 minute walk from our house so we arrived there around 10:30. I cannot describe it but I took lots of pictures. It is this big building full of many different market areas with people selling all sorts of sea food. I took lots of pictures of octopus and squid. I had no idea how little octopus were. I also never realized how big a tuna could be. After seeing all of the different fish, lobsters and crab, Juli, David and I sat down to eat some Blue Swimmer Crab, Smooth Dory (from New Zealand) and . It was my first time eating crab properly and I actually really liked it. I have also become a lover of fish. I don't think I will be able to eat fish when I go back home though. Not after having fresh fish all the time here. We got back home around noon, packed our bathing suits, picked up Jon and headed to Circular Quay to take a ferry over to Watson's Bay. Jenny vespa'd over there on her scooter and met us there. It was so beautiful. We hung out at the bay for a bit and the walked up to the headland where you could see the ocean. You could go to a lookout point where you could see the Bay (and the city in behind) and then on the other side was the ocean. You could walk around the headland to see the Gap between where we were could see North Head (stephanie we went there with Kristin)and Manly across the water. We went back to the Bay and played some games (bang bang who did I shoot...Jon did not like this game) and then had fresh fish from supper. We sat on a dock and watched the sun set over the water, eating scallops, fish and calamari. MMMMmmm.

I could never get sick of how beautiful it is here. My pictures do not even do justice to how beautiful it is. But our internet sucks lately so you will end up getting an overload of photos when I finally have the proper internet connection.