Australia! - Part 2

After a harried escape from Sydney thanks to huge traffic delays caused by a the crowd going to a rugby game, we headed down the coast to Merimbula in a tiny little plane - one couldn't stand fully upright. After the 747 it was a bit of a shock. I wasn't entirely sure that the thing could fly. The seats did have fuzzy sheepskin covers, though. Merimbula is a lovely, sleepy little coastal town that is full of surfers in the summer. In the autumn it was pretty quiet. Like all coastal towns it had guns pointed out to sea leftover from WWII. There was a ton of birdlife, including a treeful of cockatoos happily (and noisily!) decimating the strange pods growing on the tree. We saw many coloured parrots, galahs and pelicans.

We spent fairly quiet days visiting with my Aunt and Nanny (my Dad's mum, not my childhood caretaker). Nanny is 91 and takes great pleasure telling everyone that fact on a regular basis. My aunt regularly threatens to kill her for it. They bicker a lot which normally makes me super-tense but they do it in a very loving way. I think they love the banter. Nanny told some neat stories about my dad but kept forgetting that he was my dad and would tell me like I was a stranger. Sometimes she was so with it but her sense of time was definitely distorted. Theo was very charmed by her. I was sad I hadn't had a chance to get to know her better over the years.

My aunt is a hoot and kept us busy during the days - often to make Theo dash out of the car to pick wildflowers by the side of the road. She has a very fat cat named Shelley, who wasn't entirely sure about these strangers staying in her house, but seemed to like being called "Princess" by me instead of "Fatso" by Aunt Maggie. We had expected to be able to enjoy the beaches in the area but it rained almost every day. The day we all went on a boat cruise, Theo and I sat upstairs in the fresh air. We got soaked despite being bundled up. We returned without seeing any of the promised dolphins but did see a harbour seal who did jumps in and out of the water like a performing dolphin. The cruise captains must bribe him with fish. We ate the best fish and chips in Australia - with enough chips to feed 5 people. Aunt Maggie fed many of the leftover chips to the seagulls and magpie, much to the dismay of nearby diners. The beaches we drove to were beautiful, even though it was too rainy to sit and read. The spectacular rock formations made up for it, though.

Eventually we said our goodbyes, which was tough, although we were glad not to be sharing a single mattress on the floor anymore, and flew back to Sydney to change planes to go to Adelaide. Most people we spoke to in Sydney and Merimbula didn't have anything nice to say about Adelaide but we thought it was a very beautiful city. It certainly wasn't at cosmopolitan as Sydney but there was great food all along Gouger street (pronounced Goo-jer) and the YHA Hostel we stayed at was the nicest of all we stayed in. We saw "Attack of the Clones" on opening night 18 hours before most people saw it here - except for the uber-keeners who'd seen it at midnight. It was there I discovered the "Chai Charger" which is a chai latte with a shot of espresso. Heaven! though Theo made fun of how strong my Canadian accent sounded when I said the word "charger". We went to an awesome photo exhibit at the museum in Adelaide then toured the rest of the facility and found out about the nuclear tests the British did on Australian soil in the 50s and 60s. In the usual shocking manner of those days they didn't even bother clearing out the Aboriginal people from the areas they bombed. Gah! And the fallout from all the various tests would have covered all of Australia except for the southern corner of Western Australia. To restore our faith in people we looked at pretty buildings and churches.