A Weekend of Adventure!

It's Monday morning and I am back at the office. The weekend has been a lot of fun and I have the pictures to prove it.

On Friday we eventually made our way to Cleland Wildlife Park with Helen and Helene.
The park is almost a Zoo, but there are lots of areas within it where you can meander among the animals and even feed them. Sadly, we only had time to get through about half of the park, but I was excited to get to see all that I did.

The first animal we saw was the Tasmanian Devil. It was really hard for us to understand how Warner Brothers got from The animal pictured above to Taz.

We stumbled upon our first Kangaroos who were lazing about randomly. They really weren't very interested in anything except our little pellets we'd bought to feed them. It also doesn't help that it was a warm day out. Interesting looking animals aren't they? (No, the one on his back isn't dead, just lazy.)

We went on to the Koala exhibit next. There is a place where you can stand with the Koala and take your own pictures, which is what we chose to do. There was also and option to pay $25 and hold the Koala and have your picture taken professionally. We decided that we didn't want to fork over that much money to do it. I actually probably would have liked to do it, just because its not something you can do just anywhere.

The Koalas made their home in this neat hut thing. They bring out a new Koala to the petting/holding exhibits every half hour. When we approached this one we saw quite the spectacle. A keeper was approaching the area and one of the Koalas came down and quickly came to the gate where the keeper would enter. As soon as the keeper was through the gate the Koala was trying to crawl up his legs. So much for the vicious creatures that some people have been making Koalas out to be. However, their claws do look like they could be real painful.

Next we went on to see the Dingos. It was hard to see them as anything dangerous. They really seem like beautiful dogs when seen like this. They are endangered, but a huge pest to sheep farmers and such.


Next came the birds. The Pelicans were a big deal. We watched this one swim around for a bit. He was definitely looking for something to eat, but all he could really find was a rock. He kept getting it out of the water and then throwing it up in the air to catch it but then dropping it again. It was quite interesting to watch. I would have liked a chance to see how big their pouches can get though. The black bird is actually a type of duck. I thought the most interesting part about their appearance was their feet.

These little guys are Bandacoots. Not at all like the character from the Crash Bandacoot video game at all. They scurried around all over like tame squirrels. I finally got them to stay still enough for a photo by feeding them.

This guy is a yellow tail rock wallaby. Its the only kind of wallaby we got to see. They stayed really well hidden in the rocks, but we were able to see a few if we looked hard enough.

The next area was a huge open area with emus and smaller grey kangaroos. The first one that we came upon was a mum with a joey in her pouch. The only way we could really tell at first was an extra foot that was sticking out. Eventually though she moved away from us and we could see the head start to wiggle out of the pouch. One could tell that the Kangaroos were used to people because as soon as they noticed that you had food they came right up and were happy to be fed. They're actually pretty cute.

On our way out we saw this last big guy lazing about. He was practically posing for us. Interesting looking creatures, aren't they?

We headed home after that because the park was closing. The park is up in the hills so we drove through some beautiful scenic roads and made our way back to the office to drop Helene off. As we made our way back home Helen decided that we could go to the beach to have tea and see the sunset. We stopped to change and pick up Peter and then made our way to Brighton.


We arrived and found a parking spot just in time to get some great photos of the sun setting. It really was beautiful. I can definitely say that I would love to live somewhere that I could even just occasionally go to the beach to see this happen.

We picked a nicer looking restaurant on the corner to eat at so that we could continue to watch the sunset. It made for a couple more great pictures. I was excited I had Little Blue Swimmer Crab Cakes for supper with a Thai sauce that were really yummy. Afterwards we got ice cream cones and walked down on the beach. The woman who sold us the ice cream was kind enough to take a photo for us.

After our walk we decided it was time to head home. Luckily for me, there were public toilets that I could use before our ride home. It is hard to explain how crazy these toilets were. Everything was button or timing automated. You pushed a button for the door to open, similar to an elevator. When you entered the door it was a one stall. As you did your business you noticed a sign above the door that said "If this light begins to flash at any point, leave immediately - the wash cycle is about to commence". There were little sprayer things that came out of the wall that presumably cleaned the room after one was finished. Thankfully it didn't come on during my time there. It was a futuristic experience. Helen and Peter explained that they allowed for a safer experience that could still be utilized by the public.

On the car ride home at the end of the night our group had a really interesting discussion about religion in Australia. We've learned that it is not an overwhelmingly Christian continent, but that there are quite a few established churches. Adelaide is actually considered the city of churches. One thing, though, is that they are generally not big churches, there are rather lots of smaller churches/congregations. We've been starting to talk about how we can diversify our religious experience here since thus far it has been almost ALL Lutheran Christian. We've discovered that there is a Jewish group, orthodox and progressive, a Baha'i group (actually fairly popular) and there is definitely a Muslim group. Now we just need to explore the ways that we can find out more first hand about these groups and their practices as a part of the Australian culture.

Back to our conversation in the car....

Peter was telling us about the Lutheran heritage in Hahndorf. Hahndorf is a very German town which has held fast to its heritage. It was mostly settled by Germans during the reformation. About half of the people who settled there came to escape religious persecution, while the other half came because of financial gain and finding greener pastures. For a long time there were two churches, both Lutheran, that existed reflecting these different values. One was considered to be similar/relative to the Missouri synod and the other was called the Australian Lutheran Church (ALC). However, in 1968, after about 40 years of deliberation and discussion, the Lutheran church of Australia became one body. There are still many different styles of worship within that, but they are united throughout the country. I find this intriguing.

Now, on to Saturday.

Saturday morning Jazz picked us up and brought us to Equip, which is a camp training for Ypout, a large youth gathering. The three of us have been signed up to be small group leaders as a part of it. Our first conflict came in that we have not completed either of the 2 requirements. One of these is a child safe training that we have not done and the other is an Australian police check. This isn't the first time we've talked about police checks, but we still are confused about it. We're not even actually sure if we can get them since we're not citizens... we'll have to see. The training was meant to last from 9am to 4:30pm. We were actually able to leave after lunch, which was incredibly exciting.

In the afternoon we spent some time relaxing and Hilary and I went to the video rental place to look for a new set of Australian movies. We found a couple, one being the Rabbit Proof Fence, which we are excited to see. When we got back, though, we didn't even watch them because we got wrapped up in a movie that was on TV and then were too tired to stay up.

When I think about this point I am feeling like I've been a bit lazy and as a result haven't gotten to do much even when I've had free time. But then I think about how tired I am even after having this time to relax and have to admit I don't think I'd change my choices to spend time at the house trying to rest up.

On Sunday we had a little bit of a sleep in, and I had my first Sunday without a morning church service. We went into the city and caught a train to visit Yvonne for the day. Yvonne and her husband picked us up at the train station and we headed out for a visit to the wineries. There are 60 different wineries in their area, and there are many more throughout South Australia. Wine is a big thing here. Our first stop was Coriole where we spent time trying many different wines and then found a huge sale on some of the older stock. I think this was my favorite stop because the woman that helped us through our tasting was very helpful and talked us through a lot of what we tasted. Our second stop was Lloyd's Olive Grove (which is actually owned by the same family). I thoroughly enjoyed the olives they had to sample. I bought a jar of their garlic Kalmata olives, which were my favorite (even over the Chili ones) and a bottle of their lemon cold pressed olive oil (big surprise that I loved that one). This shop also had Alpaca products as they farm them as well. I almost bought my mom a scarf that I thought she'd love, but I didn't know if she'd like it enough for it to be worth $70. I may be back there on another day of adventure and be able to rethink it. It was very soft.

This is a picture of the olive groves. I don't really know that I'd ever thought about how Olives grew before this, and I certainly didn't realize that they grew on trees. Silly me.

Our final stop was to Settlement Winery. We had a bit of lunch here after tasting some of their options. This one had a few more liquers to try in addition to their wines. I also had a wonderful glass of sparkling brut (champagne-esque) with my lunch.

On our way to our 4th and final spot Morgan began to not feel well and got a bit sick. We decided that we should maybe make our way home to rest rather than to another winery. I think this was probably a good idea and it gave Morgan a chance to rest before heading to Reality.

Reality is a young adult contempory service at Yvonne's church. It was a good experience. The music was good, and the band was definitely talented. Unfortunately I can't say the message did much for me. I was glad to have seen and had the experience. We also got to see some of the people we met at Fuel. I feel bad because by the end of the service I wasn't feeling to great, but I couldn't decide if it was just me being a hypochondriac. We had tea at Yvonne's and met a couple of their friends before heading back to train to get back to the city and then a bus to go home.

In the city and on the trip home we saw lots of the "petrolheads" that had spent the day at the races here. Its definitely a different cultural dimension, probably equivalent to those Nascar lovers in the US. We made it safely home with out anymore sickness.

Unfortunately Morgan still isn't feeling well and needed to take the day off. I'm glad that she has though and know that she needs to take care of herself. I just hope that neither Hilary nor I catch whatever she's got.