Bill III's Blog » Australia

Crashing Waves

Bill — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:11:35 +0000

Just to the side of squeaky beach there are some rocks that really take the brunt of the incoming waves. It was fun to sit and watch them roll in and crash against the rocks.

Click to watch some sweet wave action!!

Tractor Pull

Bill — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:01:59 +0000

A truck drove down onto Norman Beach in Wilsons Promontory to get a boat out of the ocean. When it was pulling away it sunk into the sand. The local forest service had to get a tractor out there to pull it free. I grabbed a video of the process.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2009/06/wilsons_tractor_pull.mov 640 500]

Wilsons Promontory

Bill — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:48:10 +0000

After leaving halls gap we spent a couple nights in Melbourne so we could check out the Queen Victoria Market. Its a huge open market where you can get everything from fresh food and produce to kangaroo hides and small electronics. We had some tasty hot out of the oil bath jelly filled sugar covered doughnuts and enjoyed walking around.

From Melbourne we headed south east to Phillip island where we saw the koalas and penguins and on to Wilsons Promontory. This is a national park full of animals and amazing beaches. Here are some photos of our time there….

Blue Ribbons for Sleeping = Koalas

Bill — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:57:31 +0000

Koala Bears sleep on average 20 hours a day. They spend the other 4 eating euqualyptus leaves and doing fancy tricks for the plethra of spectators gazing up at them from below.

Here is a video of a koala showing off his sweet skills and taking care of a little itch while hes at it….

Click to Watch Koala Magic

The Grampians

Bill — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:30:01 +0000

After our wine tasting adventures in Adelaide, we headed inland in search of a few rugged hikes in the Grampians Natinoal Park. We stayed at a caravan park in Halls Gap which is located in the middle of the park. The cool thinkg about this camping area is the abundance of kangaroos lounging right next to your camper. One was even brave enough to atempt to take his share of our neighbors’ food. He was jumping up into them a bit and they were forced to defend themselves with a broom. We watched all this from the comfort of our sweet ride “The Maui Mobile”.

The next morning we got up and headed on a couple hour hike up to the Pinnacle which is a rock outcrop protruding from the top of a mountain. Its a beautiful hike up through a narrow rocky canyon.

Here are some pictures from our time in the Grampians….

Footy and Wine

Bill — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:27:16 +0000

Those two words aren’t really synomonous, but thats what we’ve done in the last 48 hours. On Sunday we took a bus down to the Adelaide city center and walked around a little killing time before hopping a free bus to the footy game. Footy is short for Australian Football. Its kind of a mix between rugby, football, and a game you might see elementary kids playing during recess. Its a full contact sport but the players don’t wear any pads. There aer some vicious hits out there on the field. They use a ball much like an american football, but a little more round on the ends. The game is started with a toss up at center field. When a team has the ball, they can run with it only a few paces before either dribbling the ball once on the ground, passing it to another teammate by bumping the ball in an underhand volleyball style serve fashion, or kicking the ball in hopes that a teammate will be able to recieve it. If they do kick the ball and someone else catches it without it being tipped by another player or touching the ground then the person catching it gets a free chance to kick the ball on without being tackled. If the ball touches the ground its anyones ball. Also if they bump the ball to a teammate then they are fair game as well. The goal is to get the ball to the end of the field where there are 4 upright posts. If you get the ball between the outer posts you get 1 point. If you can kick it through the middle posts its worth 6 points. There are many more rules, but that is the basis for the game. The reson I say its like a school yard game is that the game never really stops. Substitutions are done durring game play, people are running out giving water to the players during the match and if the ball goes out of bounce, one of the refs turnes his back to the field and throws the ball up over his head back into play. Its really a fun game to watch. The fans are really into it and its a great atmosphere.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2009/06/footy.mov 640 500]

Yesterday we drove north out of Adelaide to Barossa Valley which is chock full of vineyards. It took us a while, but we finally found Jacob’s Creek winery appropriately located on Jacob’s Creek. We did a little wine tasting there and picked up a couple of bottles not sold in the states. Then headed on to “Two Hands Wine” where we tasted and talked with the lady helping us with the samples. She was very nice. I liked there “Gnarly Dude” wine. Its kinda hard to say if I’ll like it the next time I have it. When you are trying a bunch of different wines I find that my tast buds get a little over loaded and I at times end up liking someting that when I buy a bottle a while later I’m not a big fan of it. We went to one more winery and then headed back to Adelaide.