First Night Market and Sunday Brekky

This past weekend marked the first full weekend of summer holiday. The caravan parks fill up and so do the beaches and the streets. We walked down to the Friday night market at Lake Pertobe, and it was definitely the most traffic we've seen in Warrnambool in the five months we've been here.

Our once vacant field is now home to hundreds.

Unprecedented traffic...

 The market stalls are set up along Lake Pertobe and the kids activities seemed endless.

Rental boats on Lake Pertobe

We checked out all the vendors and some great musicians, but as you might guess, we especially appreciated the food booths. I consumed nearly the whole bag of kettle corn in about 10 minutes. We had the traditional sausage on white bread with onions, some greek nibbles, a felafel pita, and a slice of Persian love cake - best cake ever!

Andy and his kettle corn addict

As we left the market, we walked through the summer carnival grounds next to the beach. There are about 7 or 8 rides and about as many games. The rides look pretty similar to ones at home.

Andy is contemplating the Hangover ride in the background. Not.

As we made our way home the long way, we happened upon some camels in a clearing. Yes, camels. We surmised that they are available for camel rides, but they looked displaced and sad. (Apparently there is an overpopulation of feral camels in the Northern Territory.)

On Sunday, we met our good friends Bernie and Kristian for breakfast at our favorite place on the beach called Simon's. Andy and I had our Christmas Eve dinner there also.

From our table we could watch the swim racers finish. They all walked down to the end of the beach, swam out and around for a total of 1.4 km. They also had a shorter junior race. No sharks in sight. Most of the swimmers were in wet suits, but a few brave souls wore only their Speedos.

On our walk home, we watched what appeared to be a sailboat regatta. The spinnakers were brightly colored and provided a whole new landscape for us. Although there are a few boats moored over by the breakwater, there isn't really a marina here so this many boats at one time is a real treat.

You can see 8 or 9 surfers in the foreground

Summer activities are in full swing down here, but we're headed north for a little over a week. First we'll stop in to visit our landlords up near Daylesford for a couple days over New Year's (we wrote about our first trip up there here). Then, on January 2nd we're off to Sydney and Canberra for a few days each.

A Christmas Swim

Heading up the hill

Down the path, over the railroad tracks, and through the caravan park

Between the dune bushes

On the promenade

Down to the sand

Into the water

Through the wave

Wading

Christmas Eve

 Sending our love from the summer side of the planet on what is our Christmas Eve.

It's true, we are having a fantastic time on our adventure down under, but we're feeling the absence of our family and friends back home this week. Thinking of you all and wishing you a love-filled Christmas.

Season's greetings - get it? It's summer here and winter there.

Good Tidings!

Elf on a shell-f

Our gift to each other

 Don't worry, we use protection. Sunscreen every day!

Tis the Season

Christmas is the thing. There is no Thanksgiving, no black Friday, not even any references to Hanukkah to distract from the fact that Christmas is coming! It has been a bit odd to walk by Santa and snowflake decorations while wearing short sleeves. “Dashing through the snow” just doesn’t compute in my brain. Maybe this Aussie version of Jingle Bells will help.  

Last week we were invited to the Warrnambool city staff and councilor Christmas party at the art gallery. Andy and I were publicly welcomed by the Mayor (“His Worship” according to his holiday card - it's a constitutional monarchy thing). Andy was “in the zone” talking with planners and councilors about new urban development, asking about zoning issues, and comparing green line notes. He even got to chat in French for a little while with one of the councilor’s husband! I enjoyed being in the company of people who were involved with city politics; it felt familiar and comforting. As Andy would say, there would be a lot of votes in that room.

It doesn’t totally feel like the holiday season to me, in part because it’s summer, but also because our family is on the other side of the planet. It occurred to me on December 21^st that it was not the winter solstice, but in fact the summer solstice - the longest day of the year. And we’re going to get three of those in a row, so I’m trying to stay focused on that perk!

In the U.S. it feels as though the energy of the season intensifies right up until Christmas and after the frenzy of food and presents, people relax into a quiet and restful week until the first of the year when schools begin and people return to regularly scheduled life. It feels just the opposite in Warrnambool. Just as the school year ends and people have toasted at their last Kris Kringle party, the caravan parks fill up with tourists and the carnival sets up shop for the summer down at Lake Pertobe. Woot! New Years Eve rides on the tilt-o-whirl! The downtown green is scheduled with activities throughout the next two months, entertaining the thousands who come to the coast to ease into the new year with their feet firmly planted in the sand.

Le Mistral

 It was a hot wind from the interior.

Wet and windy Warrnambool was transformed over night to hot and dry.

And windy of course.

The breezes here touch the full range of one’s senses.

The typical ocean wind from the south brings the cool taste of Antarctica.

At the end of the day it becomes an evening breeze that calms what remains of the heat of the day.

The physicality of wind is at times striking.  Lane ways and alleys often hide a blast of air. Turning a corner can lead to a head on collision with unseen but lurking forces.

Walking home from the Aquazone (gym), I crest a hill overlooking the ocean about a kilometer away. I can almost always lean into the wind there and find a balance point of equilibrium with the world. 

I love to be slowed by the wind, be brought to a stop, and listen to the tales it whispers in passing.

My evening wallaby spotting walks with Ann are teased by memories of the Wind in the Willows, as little breezes dance through the grasses, and tug on bushes. Is it a wallaby moving about, or just the wind…?

Yesterday there was a new kid in town. Forty plus degrees of blast furnace blowing in from that mysterious hot interior landscape to the north.

The whole town warmed up to this new guest. Everyone was talking about him. Air conditioning turned on and waved a welcome. Even the birds were open mouthed in awe as he passed by.

And just like the wind he was gone. After a hot and sweaty one-night stand, a slight blush of sunburn on my previously fevered brow was the only clue left behind. 

The tease of summer is gone, no doubt to soon return and heat up and bring to life the memories it left behind.

Today, the unassuming but trustworthy local lad is back.  A comfortable, mid twenties spring day covered by a grey sky with patches of blue is gently fluttering through the curtains.

The occasional chill of being away during the holiday season is tempered by new familiarities.

The greetings of folks across the road, neighbors dropping off a card, and dinner out with new special friends melts the absence of family and home in a wonderfully warming way.

A View from the Street

 I thought I'd give you a 360 degree view from our street corner.  I realized after I took the pictures that mostly what you see are the trees, but I'll tell you a bit about where these roads lead.

First, you should know that every direction we go is uphill. We live in what has been referred to in the old days as "the gully." This hill, which is steeper than it appears in the picture, leads us to the ocean. At the top of this hill, we walk 2 more blocks and then over some train tracks and through a caravan park (campground) where we will arrive at the beach boardwalk and then the sand. We try to go down to look at the ocean at least every other day; some are long leisurely walks down to the river mouth to the east, or west to the breakwater, and other walks are just to say hello to the sea and check the surfer count. Our neighbor's lawn, pictured on the left, is a good example of the neat landscaping. Someone comes by every week or so and mows or trims the edging so it is perfectly clean and straight. Occasionally the two young boys who live there part-time with their dad play cricket out on the nature strip (that's what Australians call the piece of grass between the side walk and the street).

The road below is the road most traveled. There is a gradual ascent going west, but uphill nonetheless. This road takes us downtown where we can get just about everything we need. There is a butcher, a baker, and probably a candle stick maker. They have a Target and two grocery stores, a fruit and veg stand, numerous restaurants and milk bars, specialty gift stores, Horseland, multiple thrift stores, hardware and paint, at least two natural food stores, a community theater, an art gallery, at least three $2/bargain stores, and just today alone I went into six of the many clothing stores. The downtown is huge. You can also see in the photo below that it is fairly common for people to park on their nature strips.

This is the road least traveled and points east. This street is lined with Norfolk Pine trees which are very grand and full of crows and magpies. Occasionally you will see one has been eaten bare by corellas, leaving just a tree skeleton. We could walk to Fletcher Jones this way, turning left at the top of the hill. We could also get to the beach this way if we turned right at the top, but there is not sidewalk for a block or two which means we end up walking across someone's finely manicured nature strip, so we avoid that route.

This view looks north and our house is just to the right of that "give way" (yield) sign. At the top of this hill the street dead ends at the Reid Oval. That is where we have watched the neighbor kids play footy and netball. Most recently we watched cricket. I'm sure Andy will write more about his new found interest in the game of cricket, but you can watch a bit of the game we watched that day at this link. We also walked this way the other night to get to the community garden where we participated in a garden trivia night/Christmas party with some friends. Sometimes Andy heads this direction on his way to the Aquazone where he has a gym membership. The major highway that runs through town is just two blocks in that direction.

So there's a little view of our life from the corner of Japan and Koroit Streets.

Views from the Coast

Back in July, we shared our views along the The Great Ocean Road which is part of the coastline to the east of Warrnambool (see A on the map). These are some views of the  Southern (or Antarctic) Ocean from points west. The map will give you a sense of where we were along the coast.

B. The Crags Coastal Reserve is an indigenous cultural site registered on the National Estate. The area features ancient aboriginal middens, cultural burial sites and important dream-time stories. Six kilometers off the coast is Lady Julia Percy Island. It is Australia's only offshore volcano. The Koori term for it is Deen Mar. The Aboriginal people of the region believe that the spirits of the dead were conveyed across the sea to the island from a cave called Tarnwirring ("the flowing of the wind") at the top of a rocky sea cliff. It contains an important seal breeding colony and has a long history of human exploitation, which has drastically affected its vegetation communities, though it is now protected as a State Faunal Reserve.

C. Portland is the oldest European settlement in the state of Victoria, but the Gunditjmara are the original custodians of the land. There is a deep water port and aluminum (or as they say here aluminium) and timber are major industries. On the second picture you can see the local tourism trolley rolling by the marina with the lumber mill in the background.

D. The Beachport Jetty, created after a number of ship wrecks, was originally 4000 feet long but part of it was not constructed adequately, and it is now only 2536 feet. Construction was completed in 1882 and it took 4 years to build. The aquamarine colors here were just spectacular. The picnic tables were old re-purposed rail carts used to unload cargo back in the day.

E. During the Victoria gold rush around 1857, over 16,000 Chinese immigrants landed at Robe and then walked the 200 miles "up country" to Ballarat and Bendigo to work. The red and white obelisk was erected in 1852 and was used to navigate the entrance to Guichen Bay, as well as to store lifesaving equipment. The land beneath the obelisk is eroding, hence all of the protective fencing, and it is unknown how long it will continue to stand.

It's a long way down...

F. The Coorong is a national park and lagoon ecosystem that is a sanctuary for many birds, animals, and fish. The name is thought to come from the local indigenous people's word kurangh, meaning "long neck"; a reference to the shape of the lagoon system. The name is also thought to be from the Aboriginal word Coorang, "sand dune," a reference to the sand dunes that can be seen in the bay. The body of water in these pictures is the bay that is between a 130 km long peninsula and the coast. On the other side of that land in the distance is the ocean. We had hoped to see many pelicans here as it is a regular roost, but we only saw a few fly overhead. In 2008, biologists banded 1500 pelicans and they learned that pelicans eat approximately 5 kilos of fish a day - according to Andy's maths, that's 7,500 kilos of fish a day!

G. The Glenelg Beaches in Adelaide are the white sandy beaches of travel brochures. There was thunder and lightning around us but we only experienced a few raindrops and it made for a dramatic beach walk. The coast is built up quite a bit with high rise hotels and many people were swimming despite the somewhat inclement weather.

Surveying the Landscape

 Just as in New Zealand, Andy and I are often captivated by the landscape of Australia. It doesn't change nearly as quickly as it did in NZ, but it is definitely an interesting variety. I've become well practiced at taking pictures out of windows while riding the train or while Andy is driving. Here is a selection of photos to give you a sense of the land.

In the dairy farm area of Victoria where we live, we see a lot of this:

They call it "Wet and Windy Warrnambool." Windy it is. This is confirmed by two separate large wind farms within 45 minutes of us. This is a picture of some turbines just near the coast:

 In some places we have seen fox pelts hanging from fences indicating how many the farmer has killed to keep them away from his sheep. Here are fence hangings of another type. We don't know much about the story of this shoe fence line, but I think we've both agreed it is art:

 

 Getting non-blurry pictures of the stone fences out the window was a real challenge for me. In certain parts of Victoria, there are long stretches of stone walls similar to those outside of Chico. You can read more about their history:

We have been told that when the English came to Australia, they brought with them their traditions of using a non-native evergreen tree to create their windbreaks. The result is what appears to be very tidy boundary lines throughout parts of the farmland:

Much of the area is built on extinct volcanoes. On a very cloudy day, we drove to Camperdown and to the top of Mt. Leura where we had a view of Mt. Sugarloaf. Both mountains are part of the third largest volcanic plain in the world. This particular volcanic complex is known as the Leura Maar which was formed more than 20,000 years ago by a series of major volcanic eruptions:

Mount Leura & Mount Sugarloaf are part of a large volcanic complex known as the Leura Maar which was formed more than 20,000 years ago by a series of major volcanic eruptions. - See more at: http://www.mtleura.org.au/#sthash.aevZpFHT.dpuf

Mount Leura & Mount Sugarloaf are part of a large volcanic complex known as the Leura Maar which was formed more than 20,000 years ago by a series of major volcanic eruptions. - See more at: http://www.mtleura.org.au/#sthash.aevZpFHT.dpuf

Tower Hill, a nature reserve where we can visit the emus, the kangaroos, and the koalas, is located about 20 km outside of Warrnambool. It is also a volcano remnant with a lake in the center:

I haven't included any views of the ocean, but I liked this view, coming back from what was a spectacular view of the ocean. I like the way the trees dot the fields and the layers of colors:

The views in South Australia, on our drive to Adelaide, were decidedly browner. The hills reminded me of the blonde buttes outside Chico. Notice the lone chimney where presumably a farmhouse once stood:

These are our views of the land as we see them. It's tempting to just post pictures of the ocean and the beaches, but these panoramas are evocative in different ways.