Do you know what a quokka is? & The biggest leprechaun you've ever seen!

Hi everybody - Happy February!

All here is good. Melbourne experienced a record-breaking heat wave last week, recording temps as high as 45.1 degrees Celsius (that's about 113 degrees Fahrenheit) on Friday. Luckily, we were on a 5-day trip to explore Western Australia - we somehow managed to fly out of Melbourne on the day the heat wave started & fly back into Melbourne on the day it ended. We weren't sad to miss it. Instead, we spent a day exploring the city of Perth, 2 days exploring Rottnest Island, and a day exploring the Perth harbour suburb of Fremantle.
Rottnest Island is a small (11 x 4.5 km) island just 19kms off the west coast of Australia. There are no cars allowed on the island, so most people are either leisurely walking or biking around, which is refreshing. And it is stunningly gorgeous - whomever counts these sorts of things declares that there are 63 beaches and 20 bays, all on this tiny little island that you can bike around in about 3 hours! Which we did on rental bikes and with rented snorkel gear for 1 day - it was really great! But, the island is also a little weird. For starters, it was an Aboriginal Prison for many years, and many of today's accommodation options are old military cottages and barracks. In addition to that, and just when Andy and I had started thinking we had seen nearly everything that Australia has to offer, the island is home to an estimated 8,000-12,000 quokkas. Do you know what a quokka is? Well, we now do, so let me tell you - a quokka is a small marsupial, which has the appearance of an itty-bitty kangaroo, or an extremely large rat, depending on how you look at it. Also let me tell you that Rottnest translates to "Rat's Nest," the name given to the island by Dutch explorers way back in the day. So, check them out in our pictures and you can decide for yourself. After 2 days on this island, Andy and I both agreed, "That was pretty cool, but also very weird." Sometimes I think this could be the blanket statement for our entire time in Australia in general.
From there we took the ferry back to the mainland and spent our last night in WA at an Irish Pub, even going so far as to spend the night in one of the pub's heritage rooms right upstairs, and right next to possibly the biggest leprechaun in the entire world. It was a memorable night to say the least! Here's some recent pictures:




Now we're home, we're working (Andy's in the red for paid-time-off at work), & we're pretty busy getting organized for Stacy's upcoming visit and our departure from Melbourne. Here's a brief rundown of some upcoming big dates:
*Stacy's here Feb. 14-23. We'll be in Melbourne, Cairns, & Sydney all within 8 days!
*We move out of our apartment here in Melbourne on March 8.
*We'll be in New Zealand March 9-30. We're booked to do 2 pretty excellent backpack trips, so we're kinda "in training" right now in preparation.
*We'll be back in Melbourne March 30-April 4.
*We'll be in Honolulu April 4-10.
*We'll land in Portland April 10! We plan to spend about a week reorganizing and repacking in Portland.
*We'll spend about 3 weeks driving to Anchorage and back to reunite with Buddy and hang out with friends in Anchorage.
*We gain access to our house in Portland on May 12, so hope to be back in Portland (permanently!) right around that time.

Somewhere in there we're expecting the arrival of a little Senske and a little Sweany (niece or nephew Sweany) which we're very excited to hear news about.

So, this is probably one of the last few Sweany Australia Thoughts and Happenings entries. From here it will be NZ, HI, and AK if everything goes as planned.

In closing this entry, I'd like to share the following experience. Andy and I attended an all-day music festival called Big Day Out here in Melbourne on Jan. 26. We saw a ton of great music, met some great people, and even threw in a Bungee-Shot ride at the end of the night! Neil Young was the headlining act, and as he sang the song Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere that night, you could find Andy and I glancing at each other and smiling, both thinking about home, even in the midst of such an amazing scene, in another very amazing country. Read the lyrics and then listen to a version of the song if you like - I think you'll find that the lyrics could not be more perfect for our situation down here:

"Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere"

I think I'd like to go
back home
And take it easy
There's a woman that
I'd like to get to know
Living there

Everybody seems to wonder
What it's like down here
I gotta get away
from this day-to-day
running around,
Everybody knows
this is nowhere.

Everybody, everybody knows
Everybody knows.

Every time I think about
back home
It's cool and breezy
I wish that I could be there
right now
Just passing time.

Everybody seems to wonder
What it's like down here
I gotta get away
from this day-to-day
running around,
Everybody knows
this is nowhere.

Everybody, everybody knows
Everybody knows.






Cheers! Love and miss you all.

Love, Christy

p.s. How's that for weak, Steve F.? :)