Aussie Roadtrip: Seeing the Sydney Siders

Last time we saw Tim and Sal (a mere 3 weeks ago), they foolishly invited us to visit.  Little did they know we'd be taking them up on it during their first week in their new home.  But before getting there, we had some old friends to catch up with, Allan, a former colleague of Kat's from her days at Deakin met us in Darling Harbour for a drink.  We traded travel stories, hearing about his lighting visit to Kuala Lumpur, booked on a whim, and telling him about our adventures in both Malaysia and Mongolia.  We also heard from him what it was like to shift from Melbourne to Sydney, a culture shock as big as they probably come!

Allan at Darling Harbour

And then the rain came, and it did not stop for the next 2 days!  We made it to Tim and Sal's although I swear it would have been impossible without Google Maps.  I've never been in a place with such confusing road signs, tolls or extreme lane change requirements.  It is also possible that we realised we now know Vienna better than we know Sydney! On arrival we spent time catching up with Tim, but also getting a full picture of the tragic attacks that occurred overnight in France.

Ged, a long time family friend of the Dashwoods joined us all for a takeaway dinner on the couch, and we spent the evening merrily talking away. Portman and Cooper, the lovely resident pet turtles also shared in the games.

Fun and games in Sydney

Catching up

On Sunday we caught up with Kat's long-time friend Courtney who, like Allan, also endured the trauma of a shift from Melbourne to Sydney (although at a younger age) and swears that it only takes 10 years to learn how to navigate Sydney in a car! 

It was fantastic to catch-up with everyone and also fit in some mario kart, monopoly and other fun and games with Tim and Sal. At some stage we will try and be tourists in Sydney but it was just the weekend for us this time and on Monday we hit the road again...

Aussie Roadtrip: Canberra

The Snowy Mountains eventually gave way to the ACT, and before meeting up with Kat's aunty Joan, we paid a visit to Mr Turnbull and co at Parliament House. Unfortunately, Mr Turnbull was occupied (in Indonesia, sweating it out with President Widodo in the local markets), so instead of chatting with him, we went on a free tour. Hosted by a crazy and talkative Danish-Australian, Michael, who oozed passion for the building and its workers we whizzed through parliament house. We saw the events hall which recently hosted a Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian and New Zealand table tennis tournament and houses the second largest tapestry in the world, and through the House of Representatives and the Senate and waving in the general direction of the Magna Carta.

Let this be a lesson to never wear branded t-shirts

Michael mid-story in the House of Reps

The House of Representatives

The Senate (the school kids on the other side answered one of Michael's questions about how many seats were needed for the balance of power!)

All along, Michael made witty jokes, incorporated baby's screams and exclamations into his stories and shared his love of our political institutions.  It was a shame that we couldn't have come through Canberra on any day other than Friday, because it would have been great to sit in on Question Time, but that will have to wait for next time. 

We had a lovely afternoon, evening and morning with our generous host Joan, who fed us till we were fit to bursting, shared her recent travel stories and told us of plans for the upcoming McDermot Christmas party.

During our whirlwind Canberra tour we also made a quick pit-stop up Black Mountain for a peek of Canberra from greater heights!

View from Black Mountain

Lovely to see Australian flowers :)

A footnote about our stop at the Big Merino in Goulburn, post-Canberra stay.  Fun facts about Australia's wool industry and the opportunity to look out of the big guy's eyes!

En route, we stopped at the Big Merino, Goulburn

Adding an Australian component to our 2015 adventure!

Tomorrow we head off on the Australian component of our 2015 adventure. We have plotted our route, re-registered Percy (our car) and packed our (luxury) camping gear. It is going to be great!!

We are most excited that we will be visiting family and seeing friends all up the east coast. Well, when I say east coast, I meant only the southern half of it. The top half will be saved for another time. Beaches and reading are also at the top of our list!

Here's our route:

Life as in-betweeners 2

Many moons ago we were living as in-betweeners anticipating our 2015 adventures. Now we are back in that space again, albeit early, and enjoying what it brings! This time we are post-overseas adventures and, unexpectedly, back home in Melbourne. Since our last country (island city-state!), Singapore, we have had a bizarre but enjoyable time back in Australia. After a warm welcome from my Mum and Sarah and a short recovery program, we realised we were in Australia for two important birthdays and hot-footed it to Brisbane.

In Brissy and Toowoomba we caught up with family and friends and attended Tim's ALL-STAR MARIO KART BIRTHDAY BASH at BOUNCE! It was also Rob's great aunt's 95th birthday. On top of all that, we were able to catch Tim's latest play The Odd Couple. Our return home was certainly nicely timed in some ways!

Brothers!

Ahhhh!

Bouncing fun times

Dodgeball

Star of the show! 

Luigi in action

Flying high

It's a me Luigi!

Joining the revolution!

Chasing Cooper Trooper 

Yoshi bouncing along

Scaling new heights!

Jumping for joy

While looking elated, Tim was a little deflated

Moments after this photo was taken, Yoshi lost all his air and Rob took a break from the trampolines

Brothers (x2) on a tight-trope 

Tim & Sal...always performing

Post 30th birthday celebration

Back in Melbourne I soon realised we would be staying in the one spot for more than a week, something that we did infrequently on our overseas adventure. It felt odd not to be on the move and we were (a tad) in denial. It was however fantastic to be catching up with family and friends again. We caught some key events that we would have otherwise missed: David and Kelly's BBQ at their new house, Marita's Halloween party, meeting a special 3 month old, attending my cousin's first solo art exhibition and welcoming visitors we met via Airbnb in Glasgow. 

David in his new home

Kelly in her new home!

Uncle Pete full of advice for our upcoming roadtrip

Favourite sisters

Zip-lady and Drop Bear

Survey says "3 in 4 Australians don't know what a Drop Bear is"

This is what happens when you mix Darth Sidious, a Drop Bear, a Whoopee Cushion and a character from a Tim Burton story

Tim Burton was popular this year

Tony always has the best costumes (he's at the back right)

Catching up with Ben & Jenny

Even with so much going on, it wasn't long before we were plotting an Australian road trip around my health appointments. That's right, we decided Australia, the lovely, amazing country that it is, should certainly be included in our big adventure. After all, plenty of other travellers include it in their Round-The-World trip, Gap year or world jaunt. There sure is a lot of it we haven't seen too. Anyway, we began plotting...WATCH THIS SPACE...

Family in Rambouillet!

In Rambouillet, we were going to meet family, quite a bit of it actually.  We saw 2 of my 3 cousins and spent a lovely (but unfortunately short) week with my aunt and uncle, Eliane and Geoff.  On top of this, I got to meet Sophie's youngest Alix for the first time, and Virgil for the first time since I was able to cradle him in my arm. Kat got to meet them all!

First of all, we had to get to Sophie's place in Paris, which proved hard without a SIM card.  But lucky a good samaritan came to our rescue, and Sophie came to meet us at the station, before taking us home to a lovely home-cooked meal where we spent the evening talking and catching up.  Of course, Sophie noticed that we were acting a little weird, but couldn't work out why.  We were desperately trying to get in touch with Tim & David to share the news of our engagement before sharing it with anyone else but those two somehow prove a little more elusive that other members of the family.

It was so nice getting to know the boys and have an extremely personalised tour of the gardens at Versailles.  Sophie and the boys must have been there dozens of times, but they don't seem to tire of the history.

Next up was the short drive to Geoff and Eliane's place (slightly modified since I last saw it in 1999), joined after work by Phillippe every now and again by Monique, a close family friend. Dad had preceded our visit by a few weeks, having come to Rambouillet after leaving us in Turku, Finland, back in the days where I had a respectable beard. If they were sick of Australian Dashwoods they gave no sign of it, they wined and dined us so well, we were fit to bursting.  

Sophie, Phillippe, Virgil and Alix spent the weekend with us in Rambouillet where we rode through the forest spying deer and boar (yes! the Asterix and Obelix kind) and paid a visit to the remarkable Espace Rambouillet where we saw a show on the birds of prey they are restoring back to health.

http://www.asterix.com/

Le Tour de France

During the show, the birds fly right over your head.  Luckily the trainers/keepers have yummier food than us, so the closest we came to being dinner was when one of the vulture's cracked Geoff over the head - probably because he's so tall!

Alix took the lead on the bikes

Monique looks like she's not entirely convinced 

Too much for one weekend?  Not for us, we returned to Versailles to revisit the gardens, but this time with the fountains turned on.  We had ninety minutes to get around.  With our guides increasing from 3 to 7, a lot of shouting and only occasionally a bit of running I think we got to see just about everything, except the obelisk!

The King of the Titans who lost a battle with Jupiter, by being crushed by rocks was probably our favourite - Alex's too, I think.

It's a good impression

Virgil - a highly recommended Versailles tour guide.  Look him up on Tripadvisor.  Tours in English, French & German.

The icing sugar on the crepe, was a dinner out with the whole crew, before Sophie, Phillippe, Virgil and Alex returned home.

A sneaky night out for crepes!
Geoff, Kat, Alix, Sophie, Virgil, Phillippe, Rob & Eliane

We took a day to go out to visit my other cousin Annabel, and meet her partner Antoine at their place near Le Mans where they run a 'free angling' fishing farm - I can't pretend to know all about the types of fish and the enjoyment that people get from catching fish and putting them back, but there's enough people out there who do, so they've got a pretty good business going!  They live on a beautiful lake, and as we were walking around it, one of the fisherman was weighing his catch.  A whopping 23kg!  Here you can fish and be amongst nature while camping out under the stars...but mainly fish!

Looking back at the house from the far side of the lake

Antoine, Eliane, Annabel, Kat & Rob

Such a wonderful time and only a few days, it really makes one wish that France and Australia were a little closer together.