Kakadu National Park

Three days in Kakadu National Park with 4 young Europeans, us and a guide, Max (yes, he got his nickname from mad Max and no, he didn't look in the least like Mel Gibson). Actually, he was the spitting image of Mark, Zoe's boyfriend! Same mannerisms, same bald head (and he used to have a long ponytail too), same beard, same shorts, same love of the outdoors, different accent and a few more years. Kakadu is huge and I'm not sure where to start. Unfortunately, we are still not able to put photos up, but hope to do so when we get to Alice Springs in a day or so. Kakadu was about a 3 hour drive out of Darwin in Max's Landcruiser with a trailer on the back that seemed to have been made by the Sorcerer - it spewed a constant stream of ice cold water, food, towels, sheets, more ice cold water, books on local geology, history, etc. etc. etc.
We drove first to Ubirr where we saw aboriginal rock art thousands of years old. There are many different styles - lots of handprints as well as "x-ray art" where you can see the bones and internal organs of fish, lots of local animals and spirit people. Max exlained the implications of one little man which looked like the kind of person I would draw. Think something a little better than a stick figure, obviously wearing trousers and a shirt, with no hands and feet sticking out sideways. He had no hands because the Aboriginals were fascinated with western dress - he obviously had his hands in his pockets so you coudn't see them - and the big feet indicated his shoes, another strange phenomenon.
Northern Australia at this time of year is VERY HOT AND HUMID. We drank more water (and peed less) than we have ever done before. Walking under the hot sun is taxing, but getting to the rock art pictures was definitely worth it, as was the steep climb up to the top of an outcrop to see an amazing view of the flood plane. By the end of October, Northern Australia is usually in "the wet" - when there is tons of rain and everything floods. But the rains are late this year which was both good and bad for us - good because we had gorgeous views (but had to puff and pant to get them!) and bad because of course with no water, the famous Jim Mim and Twin Falls were not running. However, Max took us to two other falls (Maguk and Gulom for those of you with an extra urge to find them) which were absolutely gorgeous. Both involved a hot walk so it was incredible to tear off your clothes and leap into a cool pool surrounded by amazing scenery. There were lots of "Beware Crocodile" signs everywhere but it would be a pretty hardy crocodile that could make its way up to those pools (more about crocodiles later!)
Our campsite was by the Jim Jim Billa and was only used by the tour company that we went with which has an arrangement with some local people to use their land. It's a permanent campsite with very comfortable "tents" - more like open-sided, hard floored strucures with beds, chairs and there was A SHOWER!! Composting toilets too - all the amenities of home. Max did all the cooking and we pitched in with doing dishes and clean up. A billa , by the way, is a body of water that is left when a river dries up in bits during "the dry", leaving deeper parts still filled with water - so pretty soon it will be running again. Our tent had a deck with chairs so we could sit and watch the sun come up and all the birds come in - tons of magpie geese (must be cousins of Canada geese as they look much the same but markings are more like a magpie), so many water birtds that we couldn't keep up with them in the bird book and many species of atoo. We also saw wallabies, dingos and brumbies (wild horses) as well as Cane toads which came out at night and have been responsible for wiping out many local species as they are very poisonous when eaten. We heard crocodiles roaring but didn't actually see any. We visited a local family and met a delightful Aboriginal woman called Mandy who taught us to weave bracelets and told us about their way of life as we all (yes, John did too!) made our bracelets. A Actually, John tok quite a shine to Mandy so we had a very good afternoon! We tried some cooked magpie goose which was very good, but I'm not a great fan of animal fat, so I dropped a small piece of the ground which was immediately discovered by abaout 8 million ants, so I had to 'fess up!
Mandy's daughter turned up in our lives the next day when we had stopped by the side of the road to look at a huge termite mound. The mounds are EVERYWHERE and the one we stopped at was about 4 meters tall. We were gathered around oohing and aahing when another vehicle pulled up with a whole bunch of trainee Aboriginal kids (one of them being Mandy's daughter) with their instrucotr, so we learned a lot about termites (they are very small and extremely busy), what they do (gather vegetable matter from underground) and why their mounds look like castles (so that different sides of the "pinnacles" get the sun at different times of day to keep the temperature inside constant). The mound we stopped at was about 100 years old. We also learned a bit about "bush tucker" - one of the very shy kids showed us a growth on a tree that looked like a small apple. With lots of encouragement from his friends, he opened it and showed us the grub inside - bright green caterpillar-type thing. With even more encouragement, he ate it! Luckily there was no suggestion that the tourists might like to try one. The local accent is very attractive - they use "yes" at the end of a sentence to indicate either "do you understand?" (He is really going to eat that thing, yes?) or like punctuation (We're leaving now, yes) - pretty much like the Canadian "eh".
On our last day, we went on a river cruise in the Yellow Waters region where we had been promised lots of crocodiles - and we certainly saw lots, including an amazing show which John managed to get on his camera on video. One of the large crocs had caught a huge barramundi (local fish) and one of his buddies wanted to share. Croc #1 took off with the fish which was way too big for him to swallow. So he took it to the shallows where he reared up and smashed the fish on the bank to break it up. He managed to break the head off and took it off to eat it, leaving most of the fish on the bank for croc #2 to pick up. He also did the "smash the fish" thing which was very scary to watch! Apart from the action, we also saw tons of birds, including a very rare little kingfisher called imaginatively the small kingfisher, and the Jesus bird which walks on water (very long toes and very light-weight bird).
John has taken some wonderful photographs (please set aside about a week when we get home to see them all) including some lovely pictures of us in our sunglasses and fetching hats, covered with fly nets! The title of most of these photos will be "These people are TOURISTS"!
We are off to Alice Springs tomorrow and have 3 days there before we set off on another camping trip to Uluru.

England and Darwin

No pictures - sorry! We are having HUGE problems with getting onto a wireless connection here in Darwin. Apparently the Northern Territories internet service is not good and we have put many $2 coins into a slot to check our e-mail. We did manage to get a Skype call through to Zoe, but that was the extent of the wireless connection, so we can't put up any pictures. Too bad - so I'll have to describe what we WERE going to put up!
We had a really good time (in brief) in England (I hope I've already posted something about that - if I didn't, a highlight was going to Hampton Court (Henry VIII's pad) with my brother and sister-in-law and only just managing to stop myself buying royal underwear for my kids - Henry for him and Anne Boleyn for her! We had another really good day with my ex-brother and sister-in-law and their s - haven't laughed so much for ages! And thanks, Diny, for an amazing desert! (There's a story there concerning a pavlova, an over-heated oven and John's propensity to eat anything put in front of him!) We had a quick trip to my nephew's new house in Hertfordshire - 15th Century cottage complete with beams and thatched roof. Unfortunately, renovations in the 1980's meant that the outside beams were covered over which is too bad (there will be a photo in due course).
We arrived in Darwin at 3 a.m. on Friday (or was it Saturday? - all depends where you started and ended up!) after a very long journey (I STILL don't really want to know how long it took us - at least 2 movies, 2 meals and several dozes plus the odd su doku and trying to finish a really bad book) to find that the booking that I had so carefully done in May had mysteriously disappeared into internet heaven. Luckily the lovely young 'bloke' on the desk coud see that he had two tired and likely explodable Canadians on his doorstep, so he moved heaven and earth (and gave us early check-in so we could collapse into bed) and somehow got us registered. The second night we were here, we both woke up about midnight. I thought John was thrashing around in his sleep, but actually the whole hotel was thrashing around, we were feeling the aftershock of a magnitude 7 earthquake in Indonesia? It was quite alarming since I've never been in an earthquake before (and deliberately didn't move to California in about 1983 because I had no desire to live anywhere near an earthquake zone!) but there was only the one tremor.
Darwin is not a big city, seeming to have 3 main streets - the one we are on (conservative), the one parallel (commercial) and the next one parallel (backpacker heaven). We don't have any transport other than our feet and luckily our hotel is pretty much downtown. We did take a cab out to the local yacht club where there were (according to the guidebook) lots of restaurants, shops etc. but hadn't reckoned on it being a Sunday out of season. There was one restaurant open where we had a wonderful lamb shank pie, but when we tried to call the cab company to take us home, the line was and we had visions of walking back in the heat (yes, it's very hot and humid - we did say we wanted to miss winter!) But there IS a God - just as we were about to start walking, a cab came along. We have another 2 days here (I had allowed a few days for us to get our internal clocks re-set and to acclimatize) so we'll see what there is to see. On Wednesday, we're off on the first of our camping trips to Kakadu (someone at work please tell Chris we're on our way there, thanks to her) and I'm not sure when the next blog entry will be. Keep checking! We're having a great time, but keep forgetting that usually we can quite well share a meal. We also have to get into the habit of leaving home with a bottle of water - it's incredibly hot (did I mention that already?!) and humid and we're drinking like fish.

We're back!

It's OK - we didn't drop off the edge of the world! We were out of internet reach for quite a while and then we couldn't find anywhere with a wireless connection and we couldn't remember our password to get on and so forth and so on! Anyway, we are alive and doing well and hopefully I will be able to be a bit more regular with postings from now on.
After Edinburgh, I went to Dorset for 4 days with Jane (old school friend). She had rented a lovely old cottage by the sea and we walked, talked, ate, drank and talked some more! One memorable walk had us following footpaths that didn't exist. "I think it's that way..." so off we went, only for me to fall headfirst into a blackberry bush while Jane was ploughing through a hedge! We also inadvertently frightened a herd of young, very frisk bullocks and one of them broke through a barb wire fence. Where one went, so did all the others. Jane assured me that if you put your hands high above your head, cows are frightened and run away. So please picture two middle aged ladies, running TOWARDS a group of excitied bullocks, our arms above our heads, yelling our heads off! No wonder they stampeded the other way! We kept going, turning round often to see if we were being followed. We had JUST got to the gate, when the galloping hoards appeared over the ridge - kind of like the Allamo (sp?) We ate vaste amounts of fish and chips, pork pies and ploughman's lunches (I'll explain if you ask) and drank large amounts of cider. Jane drives a vintage Morris Minor (Google it - they are cute!) with a soft top and the weather was good enough for us to roar around the incredibly narrow Dorset lanes with the top down, singing Beatles songs at full volume (no radio in the car!)
While I was doing that, John was in Manchester visiting friends and family and we met up in London at Jill's (my middle sister). We had a big family "thing" with brother John, his wife Alison, niece Kerry and her two girls Aisling and Kiera. I went to Hampton Court with br. John and Alison while husband John (gets very confusing in my family - too many Johns, Marks and Bills!) wandered around London. I want my children to know that I managed to avoid the temptation to buy them a memorable gift from Hampton Court - Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn underwear! Henry and Anne appear (looking very regal) on the back of the underwear! Very classy!
We had a day with my ex-brother and sister-in-law and their family which was great fun. Much wine was consumed (Andy and Zoe will know what that means!)
We are off to nephew Guy's new thatched cottage today. It's in an old village which HenryVIII gave to one of the Katherine's for a wedding present.
And tomorrow we're headed for Heathrow and Australia. So no posts for a day or so, but we'll try to get back on track (with photos) in a little while.

Freedom

Well Ginnie finally left me. I guess it was just a matter of time. I saw her off on the train this morning. Actually, she was off to spend a wild week down in Devon with her friend Jane. They both had their 60th this year so I guess it’s allowed. They are Residential School survivors and have a lot to share. No money in this one it was in England. Parents actually sent their children to Residential School here. Where did we in Canada go wrong? You had to be wealthy to do that. They made a pact to do this again when they got together on their 40th . Both were single then and no change in sight. Ginnie didn’t think she could go through this married stuff again. Neither did I!!! Who was it that said “Free at last thank God I‘m free at last”? I guess it was Martin before Memphis and me after my first. Really I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Back to my wild adventures. I wanted to see Rosslyn Chapel because of Dan Brown and other things. A 3 pound (that’s money here) pass gets you anywhere you want to go for the day. Roslin is at one end of the # 15 buss route. Yes Ginnie (my spelling coach) the town is spelled one way and the chapel the other. The trip was super, there was a fantastic tour guide! Where do they get all of these great, knowledgeable and entertaining volunteers? The Chapel was amazing. I have seen a great many old churches but this one is definitely very different and highly ornate with very interesting history. I was disappointed by two aspects however. The church is undergoing some very extensive restoration so you couldn‘t see everything. It was constructed with sandstone which was weathering quite a bit, they tried to protect it by coating it. This captured the moisture and made matters very much worse by retaining the moisture and destroying the sandstone. Now they are trying to dry the whole church out so it’s totally covered with a separate roof and scaffolding. They are also removing the “protective“ coating. On the whole it’s a very expensive proposition. Disappointment number two. You cannot take pictures inside. Why you might ask? Could it be because of copyright, or flash being harmful, or we want to sell our books? No it is because of an American tourist who was taking pictures of the ceiling and tripped on the uneven floor and as the Americans typically will do at even slightest opportunity regardless what it might cause, sued. So now nobody takes pictures. What Hollywood and the Yanks don’t buy, destroy or shoot up, they will destroy with the legal system. Speaking of Hollywood and I was, it also left it’s mark on the chapel. Things the movie crews left behind, and quite a few, make that lots of add on’s or more commonly BS about things related to the Chapel, and history.
Thanks to Dan Brown the tourist rate climbed from 10,000 per year to 100,000 so they are having to change a lot of things to cope. One was a coffee shop which held 5 people. Hopefully it may help them cover some of the restoration costs. It’s really worth the trip though!
A chance meeting in a pub last night had me standing next to a fellow from Czechoslovakia who is a Blacksmith. He is working at the P. Johnson & Company an Artist Blacksmith company in Ratho. Ratho is a small town at the end of the #48 bus route. This it happens to be is where a friend of mine, Craig Campbell came to study Blacksmithing in August of this year. I thought Craig said this so he wouldn’t have to work on “CanIron VII” , a Blacksmith convention which we put on in August. I guess he actually was here. Small world. Sorry Craig, how could I doubt you.
The P. Johnson & Company really have a fantastic site. It’s out in the country and the work they do is very impressive. They treated me royally. By the way Ginnie it means more people who might arrive at our doorstep. On second thought she may want to make that journey to Jane a permanent trip.

Edinburgh

Lesson number 1 - make sure you speak the language! We've been on the road for a while and decided tht we needed our jeans and sweat shirts washed. The hotel offered "Laundry service" so off went the offending articles, to return later that day, beautifully dry cleaned for the price of about 25 pounds - nearly $50!!! Things are incredibly expensive here - cup of tea for 3 pounds in some places.
Day 1 - two rather jet-lagged Canadians arrived early in the morning and left their bags at the hotel to wander around Edinburgh. The hotel is very well placed - only a short walk to the Castle and the "Royal Mile" which goes from the Castle down to Holyrood House, with many kilt shops on the way, all playing bagpipe music. We went into St. Giles Cathedral which was had beautiful stained glass windows and a side chapel called The Thistle Chapel (note to any speech pathologists reading this - if this had been the sixth chapel we had seen that day, it would be a really good tongue twister!)
Day 2 - My sister Pat came in last night to see us and she took us to the Castle today. It's built on a volcano and is VERY OLD! John of course took many pictures of guns and carvings. We have chosen a good time to come to Edinburgh as it's really out of the tourist season so there are not that many people around. Pat took us to a wonderful French restaurant for lunch - see picture of us with the wine waiter, Joel.
Day 3 - Royal Yacht Britannia complete with Rolls Royce and military band. I have now requested a band for our boat and of course a 12 piece bone china dinner service. We felt that we had to have a cream tea (scones with butter, jam and tons of clotted cream! see photo). Britannia is no longer the Queen's yacht and I can't imagine what Prince Phillip's comments would be if he could see us commoners tramping through his beautiful ship!
John is trying to fix our blog so people can leave comments - but it isn't working yet. I'm deliberately keeping the postings short so you just get a taste of what we're doing and where we're going. I'm off down south tomorrow to spend 5 days with my old school friend Jane, leaving John here in Edinburgh for a couple of days. He's planning to go to see Rosslyn Chapel tomorrow (of Da Vinci Code fame) and then he's off to Manchester to seek out lost relatives. We'll meet back in London next weekend. He assures me that he will be fine on his own, but I must confess to some anxiety leaving him along with his new bionic heart......

Vermont day 3

Last day in Vermont - more rain, more leaves! Too bad the weather didn't co-operate a bit better as the leaves really sing when the sun catches them. We had one little window that we could see in the clouds and the camera battery was almost dead - it was a race to see whether the battery would wake up before the sun went away again! The result is the leaf picture here - all those different colours! We went to the Shelburne Museum on our last day here. I had no idea it was such an enormous collection of "stuff" collected by a somewhat eccentric (and rich) American woman called Electra Havemeyer Webb. I think, deep down, I've always wanted to be called Electra! It sounds like a James Bond woman (or an eccentric rich American one!) Anyway, she collected everything that could be collected and when we were there, there were special exhibits of motor bikes, quilts and Tiffany lamps (so something for both of us!) Each exhibit had its own building, set in gorgeous gardens. Besides the special collections, there was a whole building devoted to circus "stuff", amongst other things. I was all set to pass it by, but we went in anyway and it was quite amazing - beautiful old carousel horses and two amazing circus miniatures - both hand made - one of an entire circus parade which stretched the entire length of the building and the other carved by a man for his children - a 3 ring circus comlete with enormous audience. There were over 3,500 pieces in all - imagine the patience it would have taken. We also took in the old carriages, an old paddle-wheel steamship, dolls, silver and on and on and on. It was like a glorified Western Development Museum. One couple we met on our way round were just starting month 3 of a 5 month trip around the US and the wife had had enough already - gulp! We are holding up well so far on day 4! Off to Scotland next .....

Vermont

Vermont Day 2 - more leaves and boats - and we've figured out (I hope) how to put pictures on the blog - so we'll try. John has so far taken about 400 pictures (and I'm NOT exaggerating!) and after he had weeded through them, I pruned excessively so we are down to 4 - a beautiful old covered bridge (that was for sale!), a replica of a gunboat on Lake Champlain and 2 leaf pictures. We've put the leaf pictures on this post and will (try!) to put the other two on yesterday's. We are learning as we go - and when I say we, I really mean John - I just push the buttons he tells m
me to. What amazes me about the leaves is how one tree can be completely green in places, but have patches of crimson, yellow and orange. Sometimes the trees look as though they have hats on when only the top has started to turn. The hillsides are amazing to see and the photographs don't do them justice - plus the fact that the weather hasn't been great. We had lots of rain yesterday - not so much today but still cloudy and not much sun. When the sun does come out, the colours just sing. And as you'll see from one picture, not only does a tree change in clumps, but individual leaves are also a mixture of colours.
We went to the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum today - lots of interesting stuff about Benedict Arnold who I really knew nothing about before - as well as general boaty things. Mark - there were all kinds of canoes with sails that you might want to invest in!
We are getting into the swing of this travelling thing. We went down to the exercise room this morning to check out the stair master etc. We are already eating far too much so felt that we needed to work some of it off. We are really enjoying ourselves and have discovered the joys of wearing the same clothes for many consecutive days rather than unpack a beautifully ordered suitcase! And this message is for my kids - Mr. Tilley lied - his famous overnight-drying underwear DOESN'T!!!
I'll be back tomorrow and then there will be a hiatus as we leave for Edinburgh on Thursday morning.

Vermont

Leaves, leaves, leaves! Amazing colours - whole hillsides vivid with reds, yellows, oranges, greens - sometimes just one lonely, blazing red tree in amongst its friends who still have their oranges and yellows on board. We spent this morning wandering around Burlington which is on Lake Champlaine ergo lots of boats which must be inspected. There's a charming pedestrians-only market which runs for about 4 blocks with lots of original stores and tons of places to eat (and people-watch!). We started on our resolution to share a meal for lunch, which turned out to be a good plan - we would have been hard-put to finish one each. This afternoon we drove to Stowe (north-east of Burlington) where we had been told we would see lots of colour. We drove to Stowe on the Interstate - yes there was lots of colour, but you couldn't stop to enjoy it. So once we were in Stowe, we struck off the beaten track and found some wonderful "photographic opportunities". I'm sure we pulled way more than our fair share of 180s as we turned around to get just the right shot. We stopped at the obligatory covered bridge (I'd never seen one before) and at a wonderful old mill where there was a display of photographs taken by "Snowflake Bentley" (I'm not sure I have the name right - but it's close). He was a rather weird duck in the early 1900s who spent vast amounts of time collecting snowflakes and taking photographs of them. They really are quite beautiful. I have to tell my kids that we have used the GPS lady a lot already (they gave it to John for Christmas last year and I thought she was going to drive me crazy while he practiced using her to direct us to Elbow all summer ......!!) Anyway, she certainly knows her way around and it really is great to be able to put the name of the hotel in and tell her to take it on home. I'll get John to post some of his "leaf" photos tomorrow - he's sleeping right now!

Here we go!

In 24 hours we'll be on our way! Bags are packed, we're ready to go etc. etc. As you know, it was hit and miss for a while as to whether we would make it at all, but John's pacemaker checked out well (yes, he DOES have a heart!) and although the technician was a little leery of the whole proceding, we are in fact on our way tomorrow. The house is clean (wouldn't want my daughter to meet any dust bunnies!), sprinklers are blown out, all my lists have been checked off and John is just bursting with excitement!! It actually seems a little unreal - we've been planning this trip for about 2 years and the fact that it is turning into a reality is a bit un-nerving. Are we REALLY going round the world in 180 days? Iguess we are, and I hope you'll enjoy the trip with us. I'm going to do my best to keep this up to date, because as many of you know, I have absolutely no memory at all, so without this blog, I won't be able to tell anyone anything about the trip! People have asked me what I'm looking forward to most - don't really know but I am going to try to listen to Heather's dictum - "Live in the moment!" (thanks, Heather, for that and many other things.)