Christmas eve

As every other year our family comes together to celebrate Jesus' birth on Christmas-eve. The nativity scene has been set up with the annual addition of more angels. The Christmas-tree all done up. We are waiting for 16 people to arrive: our children and grandchildren and Amrit, our daughter in laws family visiting from Singapore. Vicki has been preparing enough food for at least 50 people, just hoping that everyone is very hungry.
After the meal it is present giving time. The adults do the kris kringel way of giving but the children will get something from each family, it took appr. 2 hours to unwrap all the presents from under the Christmas-tree.
All the presents are unwrapped seperately and here is Kiran the centre of attention watched by Anjali her sister, Tim her dad and cousin Rachel.
Among the presents were also some new outfits, which had to be modelled, of course.
We all had a lovely evening and at the end of it we had enough food left to feed another 20 people at least.

Family dinner at Annemarie and Otto's

Our brothers and sisters get together for a meal once every 3 months. We went to Leongatha this time and enjoyed an afternoon together. From l.to r.:Frank, Ellie, Annemarie, Anne. Hank, Wilma, Chris and John. The others are strolling in Annemarie's beautiful cottage garden.
Anne and Ellie discussing all the different vegies and flowers growing together in the garden.
The true gardeners of the Dubbeld clan :Wilma Bill and Annemarie.

Time with Michelle and Jenna

Jenna and Michelle spent 2 nights with us during the school holidays. It was great to have them and we went to the playground at Lilydale lake. Michelle gave us a bit of a dramatic display. The ducks and waterhens are always after a feed. Jenna attracted them even with nothing in her hands.
Opa was kept on his toes
Jenna is growing up - she will be going to kindergarten next year. Isn't she a picture!

Port Fairy

Of course you will find warning signs along the road to protect the wildlife. So at first you drive very carefully to miss all those kangaroos, emus, camels and koala's. Alas too late for many as you'll see many dead ones lying on the roadside most likely hit when dark. What we did see a lot of were snakes, bluetongue-lizards and.....cattle, which seem to have right of way as there are no fences.

At last we entered our homestate of Victoria, almost home. We stayed at Port Fairy, a historic town close to the start of the Great Ocean road. A very nice settlement, but the weather started to cool off. To keep warm we did quite a bit of walking.
Walking around Griffith Island, a sanctuary for the Muttonbird, had a look at the lighthouse and then back to the warm caravan.
Another look at the small fishing-harbor with mainly pleasure yachts, and tomorrow off to SILVAN, that beautiful spot on the edge of the Dandenongs, which happens to be our home. We live in a beautiful country of which we were able to see just another small area. So we are home now after having driven 15000 kms. Thank you for following us on our trip and for your comments.

Every now and then we shall add some news on this blogspot. Until then may it go well with thee. Vicki and Hank.

Adelaide

So from WA. back home across the Nullabor again. We stayed at the Flinders'Range overnight, a station with thousands of sheep on a property of appr.160 by 80 kms. We also stopped at the Head of Bight, a bay where we counted between 25 and 30 whales some with calves, always a great experience.
We had a tailwind this time and so we sailed nicely across the Nullabor getting 7.5 kms. to the litre of petrol. So we arrived in Adelaide the capital of SouthAustralia, built along a creek of appr. 2 metres wide called the Torrens River. Adelaide is a city with still some country-atmosphere. They have some interesting artwork in the shopping mall in Adelaide. These pigs don't seem to attract much attention but they do add something special to the place. These grass trees are doing well in the middle of the city.They are on the square outside the Festival complex.

We travelled around the city on public transport so neither of us got stressed and we could have a good look around.A fellow traveller took this shot for us while we were on the tram.
This bus is going along the "Obahn" -a specially constructed track on which busses travel very fast.There were lots of people using it because you can get to the city from the suburbs in about 15 minutes.

Esperance -Cape le Grande

Our next stop was Cape le Grande National Park or a replica of the Garden of Eden. It is appr. 50 kms east of Esperance. The water is absolutely blue, no matter whether the sky is blue or grey and the sand on the beach is white. The wildflowers are every where and the weather perfect appr.30 degr.
You just cannot believe your eyes when you see the beauty of this place. We did lots of walking from one bay to the other.
Narrow tracks with snakes sunbaking here and there, we just loved this place. When visiting WA. make sure to visit this beautiful park with great facilities.

Wave Rock

We made a detour of 300 km to see this place and really enjoyed it. You might have seen tourist photos of the actual Wave Rock and been suitably impressed but we climbed onto the rock and found more interesting formations.





Here I am trying to look like I'm surfing -it was quite hard to stay on the slippery granite!

We found lots of wildflowers in this area.I tried to take photos of little orchids but haven't mastered that well enough to share. This creeper is very pretty don't you think?