White Cliff

The drive to White Cliff from Dubbo was nearly 8 hours west…pretty much a straight shot towards the middle of Australia. The scenery went from big trees and rivers, to dry dusty terrain.  Stan almost ran over a family of emu’s…a couple of times!  We probably saw over 20 Emu’s during this drive. I was surprised how big their family groups were, I think I saw up to 6 baby emu’s with a mother emu.  We also saw a few wallabies, tons of goats, cows, and of course rabbits!

If you click on the picture to zoom in you can see all the baby emu's crossing the road!

The pictures do not due the outback justice. It was HOT!

See the wallabie jumping across the road? Hard not to hit them!

 And we made it to White Cliff! White cliff is famous for mining Australian opals...hence the opal mining truck!

Opals are fossilized shells or bones from the Jurassic period. White Cliff's is famous for finding an entire opalized dinosaur skeletal system, which is now in a museum in Sydney! Australia mines 85% of the world’s opals and white cliff is basically sitting on one giant opal mine. There are less than 60 people who live there and the town is 2 hours away from the closest grocery store. The houses, hotels and shops are underground. This keeps them cool in the summer and warm in the winter. We got in around 7:00pm and stayed in an underground hotel. I have to admit, it was such a cool experience!

Inside the hotel!

 A frog in our shower!

 Getting ready for bed

 A little skylight, we were almost two stories underground!

  The next morning we went up to the old mine shafts and dug around. Mary found an opal in a rock 3 minutes after getting out of the car. It was about the size of her finger nail and could easily be put into a necklace.

 I was excited to find opals and keep them until I realized the abandoned mine shafts were not filled in and that there were holes everywhere...Thomas likes to run and jump so I was freaking out!

 Case and point...

 See bits of opal in the corner? We are still picking away the rock but it is all together!

 It should be noted that we were out digging for opals in heat over 100 F....

 Some of the holes....they just kept going...

 Taking a break from the heat!

 After our treasure hunt, we toured the white cliff grave yard….pretty amazing, and kind of creepy how many children die out here! It's like a perfect ghost town!

 The town cemetery....

Here we are touring a local’s house (Jock), which is open for tourists to see for a $2.00 donation.

 The kids and Jock

 his house

 Tunnels to the other rooms

and the bathroom

 Stan bought me my first piece of jewellery since my wedding ring, an opal necklace! It is beautiful and since the store was underground in the middle of Australia, I will cherish this opal necklace forever!  The store owners were so happy we bought something that they let the girls dig around in their rock pile and keep whatever they could find. The girls found some more opals—opals really are all over the ground—you just have to look and get used to recognizing them as they are mixed in white and red rock!

 Thank you Stan, I love it!

Dubbo

Something about living in Australia has made Stan and I rather adventurous when it comes to sightseeing.  Melbourne is an 8 hour drive south, and we have done this drive a couple of times. Although Bain gave us the option to fly we declined and decided to drive ourselves down.  Since Stan didn’t have to be back to work until the 8^th we figured we could do a pretty cool road trip around the outback of Australia on our way down!  Our first stop was Dubbo (6 hours North West) pretty much the opposite direction of Melbourne, but famous for two things (1) The Parks radio telescope which took pictures of the moon when Neil Armstrong walked on it for the first time. That ‘one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind’ was transmitted from Australia to American TV’s because America was facing the wrong direction to transmit photo’s during that time of year-- BUT Australia was on the opposite hemisphere and had a clear shot and had no problem helping out with the American’s space effort! If you really want to see a cool movie about it watch (The Dish).  

We didn’t make it to the Telescope until late (nearly midnight) and I was pretty sure if a UFO was going to be spotted it would be spotted on our drive out to the telescope. We were driving through deserted farm land, the stars and moon were unusually bright, and we would occasionally see a silhouette of a tree or two but not much more.  The telescope had a small fence around it but other than that no security… just a sign telling  us to turn off our cell phones.  Here is the best picture I could get of Stan and the kids with the telescope…Can you see how huge it was?

The second thing Dubbo is famous for is a giant zoo with no fences. The animals are separated by bodies of water and unlike other zoo’s the animals are quite visible to the kids! The zoo is so big you drive from one animal to the next in your car. The kids loved it!  From there we set off for White cliff....(an underground mining opal mining town in the middle of Australia)!

Christmas Day!

Merry Christmas! Christmas morning was beautiful. The kids woke up around 7:00am to this!

I have to say all the kids were very good this year and Santa Clause thought so too. Both Stan & I were a little bit shocked at the size of the doll house but Santa told Mary is was because she was extra good this year.

 The kids were so excited!

 As always we were so happy and shocked with what friends and family mailed us all the way in Australia! My little sister who is a student even mailed something; which I was really touched by since I know how expensive it is to mail things. Thank you everyone!

 

 Mary asked Santa for Rollar Blades

 Olivia has been getting a lot of boy barbie dolls to go with her girl collection! Everyone needs a pirate!

 Clothes from Grandma!

 Olivia in her new Christmas dress

 All the presents are unwrapped!

 After unwrapping gifts, eating Christmas breakfast, and going to church we had our adopted Grandpa over (John) for Christmas day and dinner! He has been flying helicopters for the Aussie military as an independent contractor and I was sure he was going to die (since the last time he did anything was in Vietnam) but he has survived with many stories to tell.  We have been his friend for a long time now and will miss him when we go Melbourne!

 I love this one of Stan playing with the kids!

The following day (Boxing Day) we celebrated by getting out all our boxes and packing up Christmas! A few days later we had more boxes delivered and we were packed up in 48 hours just in time for the movers to come get our stuff at 8:00am. We cleaned for the next two days and finished at 5:00pm on New Year’s Eve. We turned in our keys, saw the fireworks off the harbor bridge, slept over at a friend’s house (since all the hotels were booked up for the holidays), and then drove off the next day for Melbourne! Happy New Year and here is to new beginnings!

Christmas Eve!

The holidays were a huge blur thanks to our move. Friday we found out we were moving, and said good-bye to our friends on the last day at school.

On Tuesday, Bain had a small family Christmas party for all the employees.  I was surprised to see that Santa had a gift for each child by name under the tree. There was also face painting, a magician and lots of yummy food! 

Thanks Bain!

The next day (Wednesday), Stan and I flew down to Melbourne to get a feel for the suburbs.  We were given a relocation consultant who was significantly better than the one we got when we moved to Sydney from England. She took us around to see some houses and neighborhoods.  Due to the holidays everything was starting to close down so we had a very tight schedule with lots of people making special accommodations for us! All in all everything was a success—we really liked quite a few suburbs and saw several little starter houses to lease (this is a big deal because we have been in an apartment for almost 10 years now!) I am so excited for a little bungalow!

We got home late Friday night and woke up to 3 kids and Christmas Eve festivities ready to be celebrated Saturday morning.  Stan made sugar cookies for us to decorate and the Christmas dinner, which due to the summer heat; we ate outside on the patio.

 Near bed time, we read the Christmas story with the kids, let them stay up and watch Christmas movies and then put everyone to bed around 10:00! Even with a busy week both Stan and I were very excited for Christmas morning!!