AFL (Sian)

Steve and I rushed back from the Gym yesterday to watch an Australian Football League game. It was great, but very different from football as I know it. Firstly each team has 18 muscly players, the pitch is round, and they have 4 goal posts!
We watched Adelaide Crows versus North Melbourne Kangaroos. As our friend is from Adelaide we supported them, and guess what - They won!
Goals are scored when the ball goes beteen any of the 4 goal posts, however the points vary, if the ball goes in either of the outer sections the team gets one point and if the ball goes between the middle 2 posts they get 6 points. If and own goal is scored the other team only gets 1 point.
It was most bizare. They are aloud to tackle and push each other which was rather funny at times.
The match lasted 2.5 hours with 30 minutes of breaks.
It got rather close towards the end when the Kangaroos scored 4 goals when I was in the loo!
Come on Crows!

17/7/05- Loxton's historical village. Bit quiet really with no nightlife. 

17/7/05- The Murray River, no crocs sadly. 

17/7/05- Sian was locked up for crimes against tractors. 

17/7/05- Sian and Mick enjoy Loxton's historical town 

16/7/05- A thirsty Wombat. 

16/7/05- A troublesome local monkey knew the way into Sian's bag worringly well...... 

A long Drive (Sian)

Steve in his car, aptly named the Beast, drove me to visit my Uncle Mick who lives just over in South Australia. We knew this would be a long drive but were told varying amounts of time between 4-6 hours for the journey. We did not come across any traffic jams on the way, only rain storms. Anyway, it took us 8 hours to get there! I have a much greater appreciation of Australia now we have made this journey. To look at a map we only went through one tenth of the whole country... It is huge. What is even more bizarre is the sparseness of Australia. We drove for miles and miles through nothing but eucalyptus trees. We passed cars about once every 30 minutes!
It was lovely to meet Mick, my grandfathers brother, who has been living in Australia for many years. He lives in a lovely little township in the middle of the Australian countryside.
One thing we didn't count on was the cold! Luckily Mick has many heaters and a great foot warmer because it got down to -2 degrees at night.
Mick took us to an animal sanctuary in Berri, it was so cute! I let a monkey climb on my back and it opened my bag looking for delicious treats. Also at the sanctuary were hundreds of little Guinea Pigs - I really want one!
We visited a Historic Village in Loxton too. It was really interesting to see what the old buildings and cars looked like. One that moved me most was the immigrants houses. After the second world war many families migrated to Australia, unfortunately there was not enough housing here and they were forced to like in corregated housing - it looked like a large size bomb shelter! I am glad times have moved on.

This week we having been relaxing, we are in between jobs at the moment, and have a new placement starting on Wednesday. We will be working together again, bizarre.

16/7/05- A yellow Anaconda working his way towards me, luckily he had just eaten a mouse, and no, no fences or anything. 

10/7/05- More rocks, trees and things..... 

10/7/05- The aliens landed at hanging rock. 

10/7/05- 'The Camels Hump' on Mt Macdeon from Hanging Rock. 

10/7/05- Hanging Rock, aboriginies consider this place to be mysterious, faces in the rocks might help to explain why..... 

10/7/05- Awwww.......theres even a little Joey in her pouch! 

10/7/05- Melbourne from Mt Macedon (about 55km's out of the city). 

Spa's Bands and Mountains (Sian)

After a rather stressful week of leaving our jobs and then re starting the same job a day later (Long story), Steve drove Emma, Viv, Dee and myself in the beast (Steve's huge new car) to the Mornington Penninsula on Saturday for a relaxing day at a natural spa. We spent the day pool hopping and playing who could stay the longest in the sauna whilst a Japanese lady made the room go to temperatures of nearly 100 degrees! I think Dee won that one! It was such a beautiful day. It was raining which made the pools seem even warmer. The spa was in set in a beautiful garden with views of the valleys.
On Saturday night we went to see a band which were great, infact the best and craziest drummer played in a band called Ninety nine, It was the best band that I have seen in live in a pub! The music was great and the Jack Daniels flowed nicely.
On Sunday we went to Mount Macedon... It was freezing! Although it did warm up in the afternoon and we got to climb around hanging rock and managed to snap some great pics of the valley. All around it was a great weekend!