My Australian Trip (Sept 19-Oct 4)


Peter and I just returned from a trip to Australia. We visited Sydney, Cairns, Darwin and Melbourne areas. This seemed like a good experience to share with you so here goes the first installment!

The week before the trip was spent deciding what to pack and how to pack it.  We decided to take a carry-on and a personal bag and not check any baggage.  Neither of us like waiting in lines or waiting for lost luggage.   We made a list of clothes and personal items, laid them on the guest bed and re-evaluated.  I found Rick Steve’s Packing list for Women extremely helpful.  www.ricksteves.com

In those bags in the above photo are clothes, personal items, cameras, lenses, binoculars, iPad, phone, notebook, collapsible cane and my sleep bi-pap machine. I’m planning on doing laundry once and air drying my hair when necessary!  (By the way.. this plan worked!)

The news before we left was about the attempted plot by ISIS to behead a bystander in Sydney and about the Phoenix airport being closed due to a drug raid.  The good news was that the Australian dollar hit a 6 month low!  Interesting beginning to the trip!

We took the AZ Shuttle to Phoenix (2 hours) and US Air from Phoenix to LAX (2 hours).  We boarded Qantas 10:05 p.m. for the 13+ hour trip.  The flight was packed and we did sleep some.  The food was good.  I can’t remember the last time the airline served meals without collecting money on the spot! 

The International Date Line messes with my head!  Arrived in Sydney 6:10 a.m. and picked up our car at Thrifty. Fortunately Peter likes driving a shift and adapted well to driving on the left side of the road while shifting with his left hand.  I was the designated navigator.  I wished for larger letters on the maps many times!


We found our way to The Blue Mountains stopping along the way to enjoy the scenery and birds.  The first bird we saw was the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo.


This is a beautiful large white bird with yellow crest that can lay flat against its head or stand up like a crest depending on its message!  They are everywhere and they are many in number!  We saw them on wires, in picnic areas, flying in flocks and pecking for food on the ground. They have yellow under the wings and under the tail and a raucous call.  Hard to miss these guys!



Labels:
Location: Australia

Comments

  1. Caron MichelleOctober 10, 2014 at 5:28 PM

    I'm going to enjoy this - I love hearing what others think of my country!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Linda Britt DesignOctober 10, 2014 at 10:37 PM

      I love your country! And the people we met were so friendly. Hope you enjoy the rest of the trip!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning As We Go!

Image
Viking knit is the oldest method of chain making and I've become fascinated by it.  Once I conquered the single knit, I decided to add beads.  I could have googled or asked how it was done but it seemed like something I could just figure out.  And I've learned a lot as I proceeded first with tumbled turquoise beads and then with pearls.  I thought I'd share a few of the things I've learned.   Iif you want a great tutorial on viking knit technique, Trina Ann at http://blog.trinaann.com/  has written a clear concise easy to understand tutorial.  I highly recommend it.    Tumbled tuquoise beads in viking knit  I used tumbled turquoise beads in the first viking knit chain and I did not really know what I was doing.  But I went right ahead and as it turned out, I liked the end result.  Since the beads were irregular in shape there was a random quality to the finished product. During that process, I beg...
Read more

Polymer Clay Conversation

Image
One of the polymer clay groups on FaceBook is 'Polymer Clay Collective'.  This is a group of artists working in polymer clay who share ideas and support each other.  I'm so glad to be a part.  A new feature of this group is the 'Polymer Clay Collective Conversations' where a different member answers a set  of questions.  I get to be first - the trailblazer! I hope you enjoy learning a little more about me and in two weeks I get to learn more about someone else. • Tell us a bit about where you live. I live in Prescott AZ right next to the national forest.   When I look out my studio windows, I often see large black ravens swooping between the pine trees.   Binoculars are always available for close viewing of our smaller forest birds.   You’ve probably read about the forest fires we have had in our area this summer.   The monsoon rains we are having are so welcome. • What do you do when you're not polymer claying? As of 2010, I...
Read more

I'm Back with New Pieces of Art Jewelry

Image
It’s been a while since my last post and while I missed writing them, I hope you also missed sharing my adventures!  Between a road trip to Berkeley and having painful (very painful) shoulder tendonitis my activities really slowed down.  Now I’M BACK!  Ready to explore new techniques and have fun. When I see a good tutorial about something new that catches my fancy, I buy it and eventually the day comes when I just have to try it.  Staci Louise Smith wrote a tutorial “Gold Rush: The Rustic Crackle Technique” for Craft Art Edu.  I loved the pictures of her necklaces and wanted to see what I could do.  If you like the crackle effect  on my pieces or want to try something new, check out her tutorial on   www.CraftArtEdu.com    They have good classes on many subjects. When I started following tutorials, I expected my pieces to look like the instructors.  That just did not happen and it is not the fault of the tutorial or ...
Read more