Meat pies and rugby thighs

This blog is full of Swenson's adventures around Australia.

The last weekend in October Andrew and I took a long weekend so we could drive out to Mildura for Rod's 30th birthday. The 9 hours wasn't too bad, it went by pretty quickly with a few stops along the way, when you're making the drive you certainly can't miss the dog on the tuckerbox:

 Another time Andrew forced us to pull over to the side of the road as we were entering a 'fruit fly free' zone and the signs told us we must 'EAT FRUIT NOW'. The signs are pretty entertaining because they make the fruit flies look so mean and scary. We're not 100% sure what it is all about but it has something to do with the fact that there are large citrus and fruit areas where they don't currently have any fruit flies so they are doing their best to make sure they don't get any, it's a pretty large fine if you get caught with fruit and Andrew didn't want to take any risks.

They make the fruit flies look as scary as possible

Lovely view to our right while we were eating our fruit

Our next stop was to see the Big Playable Guitar, almost impressive.

Big Playable Guitar

Just before we stopped to see the guitar Andrew broke our cruise control, this is his happy expression when he got it working again about 30 minutes later.

Soon after we crossed over into the Outback (there was an official sign welcoming us) we noticed a few instances where a trail of very little pebbles went from one side of the road to the other in a large group almost as if a truck had driven across the road dropping dirt as it went. When we went over the second group of pebbles I noticed that some of the 'pebbles' were jumping, that's when we realized that they weren't pebbles but baby locust. A big plague of locust is supposed to be hitting the crops this year and apparently we were driving through some of it.

The rest of the drive was quick and easy. By a happy accident the place we picked to stay was only a few blocks down the road from Liv and Rod's house. The weekend was full of dinners, chatting and a giant pig roast for Rod's birthday. The party was on Saturday so on Sunday while people were recovering Andrew and I took a tourist drive over to the next town, Wentworth. While we were there we went out to see the Perry Red Sandhills, they are these gorgeous sand dunes that are randomly outside of the town, they look really cool. I have photographs of the dunes on my photography blog.

From there we decided to stop into the old gaol (that was not a mistake, jail was spelled that way back when it was built), very small but kind of neat.

The tree was said to be the original jail in town where the sheriff would just chain people to the tree, weird

Sadly the stocks were old so they weren't strong enough to hold Andrew so I had to keep him

After that we saw, wait for it, the place where two rivers become one river, absolutely riveting, made my weekend :) We were told we should go there by the woman at the information centre and she made it seem like it was going to be lovely scenery and all that, it was not. On our way back to Mildura we stopped to see the Big Wine Cask before going into the Mildura Brewery for a drink and lunch, I forgot how much I love eating at breweries. We rounded out our final day with dinner with Liv and Rod trying to get the last of the catching up in before we headed off. The ride back was again uneventful and relatively quick.

Big Wine Cask

The long road home

I found the gate the Hell and it's in the Outback, no real surprise there

The week flew by and before we knew it it was time to pick cousin Karin and her friend Molly up from the airport (this weeks title is courtesy of Karin's idea of what Australia is made of). As a special treat we took a detour on the way home, the detour showed them a few fields full of kangaroos, it was a good start to their weekend. The first night we all crashed out. Friday I took a half day so I could spend time with them, it was more relaxing and a bit of laundry followed by a bbq and the first Indian Jones on tv.

Saturday morning Kate picked us girls up and drove to one of the local 'mountians', Mt. Taylor, to see some kangaroos up close and personal. We found a herd of about 30 kangaroos, not including the joeys, in one of the lower paddocks so after climbing through a fence Karin and I headed up the hill to see how close we could get and if any of them would fall for our treats of bread. None of them went for the bread but we got fairly close and got some great photos. Molly was a bit unnerved by them so she stayed down the bottom of the hill with Kate. When you look at the photos and realized that all the kangaroos are staring at us I can understand why Molly was a bit freaked out.

Saturday night I made the girls meat pies, in true Swenson style Karin has fallen instantly in love with meat pies and has had one every day. After dinner we headed into the city for some drinks and karaoke. Karin is a karaoke queen, she sang twice and had the whole crowd singing along. After singing we went to the casino because I promised Karin we'd go gamble a bit. Bonnie and Andrew stayed behind to play pool during which time my phone died, much drama later he found us and we all headed home.

Sunday was our last actual day with the girls so I took them out to meet Kate at one of my favourite places Tilly's. After scarfing down some food on our first warm sunny day since they arrived we headed to the Kingston Market to explore. The day ended with a big family dinner over at Paul and  Judy's house. Since the girls were heading to New Zealand in mid-November Paul put them in contact with his brother Dennis who lives in Christchurch to give them a tour of the city. All in all I think they had a nice time staying here with us, I know they were glad to be in a home where they could relax a bit, an essential part of all travels.

Now that our guestroom has official been broken in we are ready for the descent of the rest of our coming American company.