KRISTY -- Down Under!

Friday, 7 December 2012

MARGARET RIVER WEEKEND

Last weekend I had the pleasure of heading "down south" with a few friends from work for a weekend away. "Down south" is about a three hour drive south of Perth to the town of Margaret River. It is famous for its wineries, beaches, and gorgeous scenery and it definitely did not disappoint!

We rented a fabulous five bedroom, two story villa overlooking the coast. It had this amazing wrap around balcony on the second story with the best view. The five of us were quite impressed!

Our first night there (Friday) was plenty of fun. We made a yummy meal and sat down for family dinner. We had a visit from some high school students who were on summer holidays and had rented the place next door. We played some fun drinking games (of course!). We made a great fire. And had a lovely evening.

Myself, Steve, Craig, Phoebe, and James

Kings Cup with giant cards!

Hex - credit to Maggie for teaching me this game back home :)

Winning! ... obviously ;)

On Saturday we went on a wine tour of the region. We piled into a car with 8 other people from all over the world (some from the states, some from other parts of Australia) and ended up going to 7 wineries. All of the wineries allow you to taste their wine, in hopes that you will buy some, so at each location we got to taste a selection of their wines. Halfway through we had lunch at one of the locations and after the last wine stop we hit up the Margaret River chocolate factory and the cheese store. There are many many pictures of the gorgeous wineries and some of the fun we had on the way, but here is a small selection. There is a link at the bottom of this post to the rest of the pictures if you want to browse through more.

After the wine tour we went back to our villa, sat on the balcony with a glass of wine and enjoyed the gorgeous sunset. It was gorgeous and the perfect end to the day!

The next day we packed up our villa and headed to the beach! The water was pretty cold but okay once you got it. It was so clear and pretty. And as seems to be the case here, I saw some really neat wildlife. Again, I've only added a small selection of the pictures below but there are much more on the link at the bottom.

The orange/yellow creature in the water is a crab!

There were about five black cockatoos which are quite rare I'm told!

As I mentioned before, here is the link to the rest of the pictures (you don't need Facebook to click on it): http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100909639911701.2798169.58014772&type=1&l=2e3626ade2

That's all for now! I have a few visitors over the next few weeks - Devin is arriving on Monday and Scott is arriving a week Sunday so I'm really looking forward to those! I'm sure we will get up to some fun stuff while they are around as well, so look for those posts over the next two or three weeks.

LOVE KRISTY xox
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Friday, 30 November 2012

KANGAROOS!

So last Saturday was my halfway point... I can't believe that I've been living in Australia for 8 weeks already. The time really has been going by quickly and I've been having just the best time.

Now, would you believe that I've been in Australia for EIGHT WEEKS, and the only kangaroo I've seen was in the form of roadkill?! I really thought I would have seen so many by now that they wouldn't even interest me anymore... not the case. In order to rectify this situation, two of my friends from work took me Kangaroo Hunting! We were determined to find me a kangaroo...

The trip started off with a stop off at the corner store for Fanta slushies and candies, it really was a necessary part of the trip :)

We then headed off to Pinaroo, which is a memorial park (aka a cemetary). There aren't any gravestones or anything, only plaques in the ground and it has plenty of kangaroos just grazing.

The one in the front right has a joey!

The one on the right has a joey in its pouch too!

This one is for Bec, the kanga just lazing around like a human!

There was also a kangaroo fight! Two ones of similar size started going at it, they lean back on their tails and hit each other with their back legs since their front legs/arms are quite short.

A bigger kangaroo came to try and join in the fight but the two smaller ones didn't want anything to do with him! Here he is standing tall (on the right).

Finally, one day past my halfway point did I get to see some kangaroos. Hopefully, these aren't the only ones I will see in my time here!

LOVE KRISTY

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Sunday, 18 November 2012

ROTTNEST ISLAND TRIP!!

Hi Everyone,

I know its been a little while since I posted, work was a little busy this week! But I'm back with lots of pictures and stories from a trip that my team at work took last weekend to Rottnest Island, which is an island off the coast of Perth (similar to, but cooler than, the Toronto Islands).

It is a tradition on the team to take the Canadian secondee to Rotto for one weekend of drinking, dancing, quokkas, and just general chaotic fun. So off we headed! To get there you have to take about a 30 minutes ferry ride (about 25kms).

ROTTNEST ISLAND FERRY

To get to Rottnest you need to take about a 30 minute ferry ride (25kms), similar to the ferry to Toronto Island in all but the following ways:
a) It goes 3x faster
b) It is 2x smaller
c) The waves at 5x bigger
c) They serve beer!

Rebecca, James, Rachael, Peter, and Esther -- waiting for the ferry

Michelle, Bec, and Rachael on the ferry

Craig and Steve on the ferry

Rachael, James, and me on the ferry

Steve on the ferry and the sunset!

ROTTNEST ISLAND SCENERY

Rottnest Island is literally gorgeous, the water is so clear and blue, the sand is so white, and the whole island is so pretty!

The next few were taken on our walk from the ferry to our rented cottages

This is the view from our balcony onto the beach

A few people from my team swimming in the ocean - no sharks here!

Bec and me on the beach!

ROTTNEST ISLAND WILDLIFE

One of the cool things about Rottnest Island is the wildlife that they have. I saw a few unique animals that were pretty neat to experience!

First of all, the quokkas. They are these cute little animals, kind of like miniature kangaroos. They can only be found on Rottnest and are very domesticated, they come up to your outdoor tables and scurry around your feet.

There was a little incident with one of the quokkas on the way to the restaurant. It was in the middle of the path as we were walking through, and in its haste to get away from the people at the front of our group, it hopped right into my feet. In a knee jerk reaction I accidentally kicked it! It was okay and hopped off just fine, but I was quite upset about this and then scared of them for the rest of the night!

There were also some pretty birds hanging around the beach... this one we weren't exactly sure what it was but it had a huge long orange beak that it stuck into the sand, we assume to eat its food.

Another snake! In the middle of the day on Saturday we were walking towards the beach and saw a snake scurrying across the road. It was a small one, and had just eaten something so it had a huge lump in the middle of its body. Everyone was pretty shocked by seeing the snake as most of them hadn't seen one before, so I was pretty lucky!

And finally, the best part of the wildlife sighting, TWO STINGRAYS! They were so calm and smooth in the water, just swimming back and forth along the shore. They seem to be used to people as they came quite close to us and didn't seem phased by our presence at all.

Yes - that is my foot and how close I was to it!

Another close shot!

The sting ray swimming around as seen from our balcony.

THE TEAM

And finally, the trip wouldn't have been nearly as good without the amazing people who came along. A big thank you to everyone who helped organize, cook, laugh, smile, swim, anything! It was a lot of fun :)