We've been so fortunate through the years to have made several trip exchanges with our Australian friends! Here, in May of '97, we'd flown to Sydney to attend the wedding of Melinda, the first of the family members to have visited us and started the vacation exchanges rolling!
WHile she and her new husband went on a honeymoon, we toured to the south with our friends. Our favourite stopover was Bateman's Bay and here, Pebbly Beach. All the local "wild animals" were anything but wild! The roos would come up for a pet, and the mothers even allowed me to put my hand into the pouch to pet a joey! Unheard of! I was over the moon!!!
Even as we had stepped out of the car and began to have a snack break, the birds landed on our heads looking for us to share! Nothing could have been more magical!
We stayed in cabins along the beach, and in the morning, we hear a "ka-thump...ka-thump" and I kid you not, a roo was traversing the two steps to the porch and came right inside!!! (We'd been told NOT to feed them any bread stuffs as they don't digest that, but left over spaghetti was OK! ...why do I think Annie
@annied has something to say about this!)
I'd be hard-pressed to name a favorite day in Australia; we've done a lot there from the Great Barrier reef (where, diving, I ran my hand over "the fleshy mantle" of giant clams) to Tasmania, where our cottage was surrounded by frosty sheep on a June morning!) We've also visited Ularu (Ayres Rock) where I'm not an adept climber, but stayed below sharing cookies with a Emu! Ken and our girls did climb, but I've heard it's now closed and wisely so, I think! How incredibly Dangerous on one hand, and disrespectful the the indigenous people who count it as sacred.
I'm forever grateful for those amazing adventures with our friends who were incredible and knowledgeable tour guides for us! (And we'd do the same for them when they visited our country! Only last summer, David, Melinda's father, was here for a week to visit with his new bride,
https://365project.org/Weezilou/365/2023-06-05 his wife Joy, having passed away in recent years.)
