The Townsville Show

Back while we were still in Townsville, we headed to the showgrounds to take in "The Show" - Australia's equivalent to the fair. These shows seem to be a big deal around the country, and at least in Queensland, there is a floating state holiday that each town dedicates to make a long weekend when the show is on.

The first event we watched was wood chopping, and it became clear very quickly that these guys are serious. Handicapped start times, humongous axes, singlets for their wood chopping teams... 

The Alice

Like many, we started our travels to Uluru and surrounds in Alice Springs. "The Alice" is one of the biggest towns in the Northern Territory, and truly qualifies as a metropolis compared to the sparsely-populated, dusty red cattle country surrounding it. And yet, it still has the feel of a place that serves mostly to stock up the surrounding cattle stations, fuel passing road trains and tourists, and provide  major medical services to folks living in the remote areas all around it.

Medical Cabinet circa 1958

On to Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon

Kata Tjuta lies a short distance away from Uluru, yet is seems miles away geologically. Uluru looks very much like a huge mass of singular rock. Kata Tjuta is a formed from composite, so it has the appearance of all different types of pebbles cemented together. The valleys around the formations were filled with green foliage that was startling in contrast to the color of the rocks - a result of a better-than-usual rainfall in the area. We took a short hike at Kata Tjuta, but not nearly enough to fully explore the area.

Kata Tjuta

Uluru

If there is one place within Australia that has reached pilgrimage status amongst the citizenry, it is Uluru. The sacred status of this place amongst the local Aboriginal people, the Anangu, is easy to understand - Uluru springs out of the flattest of flat land in the middle of Australia, a giant sandstone monolith that glows with rich color at sunrise and sunset. Uluru also has dual status as a World Heritage site for both cultural and natural significance.

The Red Center

We were very fortunate to travel to Australia's Red Center with Chris's parents while they visited us recently. Most people have heard of Uluru (Ayer's Rock), but there is far more to see in the hot, sandy middle of Australia than I had imagined. Given the distances between sights, we chose to join a bus tour that stopped at three distinctly and gorgeously different areas of central Australia. There are something like eight cattle stations between Alice and Uluru, which sounds like it should be a short trip - until you factor in that it's five hours drive and about 460 km, and each of those cattle stations cover a lot of ground.

Our driver and tour guide, Peter, was fabulous at sharing stories from the outback as we passed through this area. I can't begin to fit it all into one blog post, as we packed a tremendous lot into six days, so I'm hoping to write a few more posts about it while we're fixed in Townsville over the next week or so.

Postie, Postie, Have You Got A Letter?

In Australia, our post (mail) has been arriving by motorbike, delivered by the "postie". Erin's preschool class at Flinders Uni played a game in which the children take turns walking around a circle of seated children and "delivering" a parcel. All the seated children sing "Postie, Postie, Have You Got A Letter?". Posties drive up and down the sidewalks, slipping envelopes into the slots of post boxes in front yards (as was our case in Brighton) or through the slot in the fence.

In Aussie lingo, a postie should not be confused with a "bikie". Bikies seem to be the Aussie equivalent of Hell's Angels folk, members of motorcycle gangs. The news from Brisbane seems to be rife with reports of them, though we've not seen any mention of them around genteel Adelaide.

Erin and I met one of our local posties, who was very kind in allowing us to take his photo and then invited her to try out his bike. Pretty awesome for a 4 yr old!

Goodbye Brighton, Hello Townsville

Greeting the Coral Sea

Our last few weeks have been filled to the brim with goodbyes to classrooms, colleagues and friends, travels with Chris's parents and the move to Townsville where Chris will be teaching his Emory study abroad course for 3 weeks. Our sadness at leaving Brighton was tempered by knowing that we were headed north - which meant leaving the cold winter behind us. This is a lovely time of year to be in Townsville, where the days are sunny and warm with temperatures cooling at night.