Vacation!

Been awhile since I've posted I know - and merry Christmas to everyone out there! It really doesn't feel too much like the holidays in the traditional sense down here since it's 30 (Celsius) and summery, but we're making the best of it. We haven't come across a live Christmas tree and my have to wait until next year since we're leaving for our Great Ocean Road trip tomorrow morning. One great thing about the Australian Defence Forces is their respect for the holidays - I've been off since last Friday and don't have to be back to work until the 12th of January. Not a bad free summer vacation - the only downside is that it's also the public school holidays for the kiddies so everyone else and their mother is on vacation too. Hopefully the roads won't be too packed tomorrow, but we should be able to leisurely make it to each stayover spot on our itinerary - we'll keep you all updated along the way. We're already well into our vacation motivation as we went up to Port Stephens for some quality beachtime up at Zenith Beach (our favorite local beach) yesterday and happened to see a fairy penguin (I don't think it has anything to do with orientation) while we were swimming around in the surf. Pretty random, huh?

In other news the new house is coming along and we're finally getting the air conditioning saga finalized (the electrician is here right now). The grill and patio furniture are fully functional and we've been putting those to use each of the past few nights. Unfortunately we did burn through one of our transformers in preparation of one of those meals (damn pesto) as we tried to mince some garlic in a $10 chopping device. The resulting bang and pop fried both the chopper and the transformer. Oh well, no more pesto for a few weeks. We're still in search of kangaroo meat at the butchers and grocery stores, but we're 0-for-everywhere and are eager to see if any of the restaurants on our trip will have any Roo-burgers for sale.

That's really about the sum of it from Australia, folks - Nina mentioned our little spider disaster, and I had to spend about $30 to buy some industrial strength insecticide at Bunnings the other day (we make daily trips to that store). Apparently those spiders can maim you with one bite but fortunately they don't hop off their webs too much so unless you poke your fingers into their home they won't mess with ya too much. We're taking no precautions though and the "Kill em All" mantra is in full effect. Hopefully all the insecticide I'm inhaling won't have too many follow-on consequences.

All righty - off to brekky (breakfast). We'll keep you posted throughout the journey. Expect a lot of nice beach reports and road trip stories to come!