country to camping

although it's a bit overdue, i have a few pictures that i haven't had a chance to put up yet from our trip a few weeks ago to sydney and various other places north of there. this first selection is from easter weekend. we met up with jason's mom (& co.) on friday near the little town of gresford - it was a very wet day, but we were still able to get a tour of the farm that they have (they just bought 100 more acres to add to it!) and we met their seven very friendly horses. it was too wet to go riding this time, but hopefully next time, we'll get a chance. the area was absolutely beautiful with its green rolling hills, valleys and rivers. the horses sure seem to love it!

easter saturday brightened up and we checked out the gresford easter fair. it was small town culture at its finest with various stands for bake sales, crafts, local food/wine products and so on. we even entered our names into the cow pie drop contest - whoever's number the cow drops its pie on wins! the billy cart derby races were by far the highlight for everyone to watch. every kid had their own creation, but obviously some worked better than others! the race started at the top of this hill and had to make it down the hill to the flags first (without going off course or tipping!).


from gresford, we drove to pumpkin point and met up with jason's dad's side of the family where all kinds of friends and relatives were gathering to celebrate corynne's (jase's stepmom's) 50th birthday. we had a great party that night complete with lots of great food, drinks and dancing (and only a few minor accidents). the "block" as they call it is a peaceful piece of land on the karuah river, owned by about 5 couples (including jase's dad and corynne). from all the stories i heard over the weekend, they sure do have lots of fun when they're there.

easter sunday was a bit of a shock after the wild night all the grown-ups had, but the kiddies were up at about 4:30am, ready for the easter festivities to start. jason made a delicious easter breakfast for us on the campfire and the kids had a great time doing an egg hunt in the woods. here are j's cousins kids after the hunt, showing their excitement for the number of chocolate eggs they now have! little ruby (front, in pink) collected all the red ones - how cute is that?!

i was well aware that there would perhaps be some wildlife around us at pumpkin point, since it is a very rural area. i don't know if i was quite prepared for a lizard of this size to pay us a visit, though! it's body was about 3 feet long, with a tail just as long! i was told that goannas are pretty common to the "block" and aren't too dangerous, so my curiosity and fascination made me follow this one around for a while until it finally escaped up a tree.

later, we had the opportunity to feed a kookaburra (unfortunately it wasn't sitting in an old gum tree)! i quickly found that it was a pretty picky eater, and would only nibble on fresh fish (as opposed to the stale crackers i initially offered it).

to complete my little australian wildlife safari, i decided to take a walk on our last night there at sunset to see if i would come across any kangaroos. i didn't get a chance to catch any of them on camera (they move so fast!), but i saw several of them when they stopped to look at me, and i heard even more as the ground made a strong thumping sound when they hopped away from me!

as i'm writing this now, i'm nursing a cold that seemed to come out of nowhere this past week. actually, i just finished taking an intensive one-week course on qualititative research methods - when told my mom that they compressed a whole semester's worth of class into a week, she says, "well, no wonder you're sick!" i guess it has been a crazy couple of weeks here. so, i will attempt to get some more pics up here tomorrow from our time in sydney, but for now, it's back to the couch!