April 7 Update

Hi All-

We hope that you had a great Easter weekend, we certainly did.  We left on the Thursday and drove 3 hours south to a town called Nowra and then headed east to the coast and ended up in this sleepy little beach community named Culburra Beach.  It reminded us of a central coast California beach town.

We rented a house and were pleasantly surprised with how much more space we had compared to our place in Sydney.  You have never seen 5 people so happy to have a dishwasher--I think all of us volunteered to do the dishes.  We could stand at the kitchen window and see and hear the ocean.  We all woke up after the first night there commenting how quiet it was compared to the hustle and bustle (and jets flying overhead) of Sydney.

We were definitely not in the Outback.  The drive down was nice--once we got out of the Sydney traffic. We were amused by the animal crossing signs--luckily we didn't have any on-road meetings with the roos!
For those of you that have spent some time driving on the opposite side of the road--I think you will appreciate the regular mix-ups.  Even before getting in the car, we often are walking to the wrong side of the car--even if we are the driver. Whenever either Anna or I are driving in a situation where we have revert back to automatic actions --we end up turning on the wind shield wipers (everything is a mirror image in the cars here).


We did get to see our first kangaroo in the wild.  We were at a National Park named Booderee on the beach when this fellow just hopped out onto the beach.









Culburra Beach was at least 2 km end to end.  The panoramic picture from the iPhone doesn't do it justice but it was a great walking beach with some dolphins that would cruise along just off shore--sorry we weren't fast enough with the camera to get a good picture of them.

Gavin turned 11 while we were down at the beach.  We made him an ice cream cake / pie with Tim Tams on top (If you haven't ever had Tim Tams, they are a great Aussie treat--much better than Vegamite).  We thought the picture on the rock reflected him contemplating what it meant to be 11.

We spent one day at the mouth of Jervis Bay which is where we saw the kangaroo and then on our way back stopped by a beach called Hyam's beach (this is the one that is supposed to have the whitest sand in the world).  We thought the sand was pretty white, but were also impressed by the tide pools.  Gavin had fun trying to catch crabs and fish in one of the pools.

We were able to get out surfing again and once again proved that we need more practice.  Gavin and Anna appear to be the best in the family although the waves that any of us try to take are really pretty small--and they still give us trouble.  Anna decided the water was a bit too chilly and was able to rent a spring suit to keep herself warm.

So the kids have one more week of school before the term ends.  Then they have a 2 week break before classes start again on April 29th.  Since we knew that their schedule would allow some travel, we decided to go to New Zealand for two weeks.  We leave on Friday the 13th of April fly to Auckland where we will meet up with Anna's dad.  After a day in Auckland, we fly to Christchurch and meet up with our tour group.  The tour we are taking has us on a 12 day itinerary where we follow a counter clock wise route around the South Island.  We are very excited.

I'm falling asleep writing this and therefore, I think it is time to finish off this post.  We may not have the opportunity to post again before we leave for NZ.  If we don't, we hope that the rest of your April is a good one and then we will plan on a large post with lots of pictures to share our NZ adventures with you.  Take care.

Love,

Lee, Anna, and the kids