Australia. January 17 – 29, 2012.

This is our annual visit to Australia for the Chinese New Year.

1/17 Tuesday.  Henry picked us up and brought us to the airport in good time.  Check in was a breeze, the airport being quite empty.  Security was slow considering how short the lines were.  Ate something at the terminal.  Flight was a bit late taking off, and will be 6:12 hours in duration – relatively long.  The 737-800 is quite empty, though.  Anne and I each have a row to ourselves.  This relatively primitive plane has no audio or video, and there are no outlets in the coach section so I need to watch out how I use the various electrical equipment I have with me.  Hopefully the stopover at LAX gives us a chance to charge up the batteries.

Not much time at LAX at all, between trying to get network access at the Red Carpet Club, grabbing some cheese and crackers, and buying See’s candy for my Australian relatives, we had to rush to get to the plane.  Considering the flight was full, the 13.5 hour flight was (close to bearable).  Ruth and Stephen picked us up.

1/19 Thurday.  Landed at around 7:15 am.  Immigration and customs relatively straightforward.  Ruth showed up just as I was completing the SIM card purchase at Vodafone.  Spent most of the day resting.  Anne and I took the bus to East Gardens to have lunch, and we went out with Ruth & Stephen to a Chinese restaurant in Maroubra for dinner.

1/20 Friday.  Jogged to cemetery to visit father’s grave, took a while to find it.  Lunch at Ding Tai Fung in Star City, then coffee.  Went to Australia Art Gallery to try to get tickets for the Picasso exhibition tomorrow, but they won’t sell them until the day of the event.  Ruth cooked dinner (rack of lamb and a couple of Chinese dishes.)

Anne spent quite a few hours on line for her coursework.

1/21 Saturday.  Jogged on Franklin then ANZAC Parade to Little Bay chapel and back, covering a distance of 5 miles.  Lunch at Peking Dumpling in Chinatown with Ruth & Stephen and Wally & Ling.  Stephen picked up the tab.  Then we drove to Opera House Parking in time to catch a performance of Turandot.  Afterwards Ruth dropped us off at Art Gallery and we bought tickets to see the Picasso Exhibit on loan from the Paris Picasso Museum.  They wouldn’t recognize Anne’s student ID so we had to pay for two full price tickets (A$7 difference).  There is certainly a huge number of Picasso's work, but the ones I am familiar with are missing, including the Guernica.  Despite my best attempts, I can perhaps intellectually understand what Picasso was trying to do but have difficulty mapping that into his actual work.  This exhibit didn’t help even though it is very well organized.

Anne & I took Bus 392 to come back to Matraville, and we ate the huge amount of leftovers from last night as dinner.

1/22 Sunday.  Tim got in this morning.  Morning church service at Praise Church.  Lunch at Westfield Food Court.  We then went to Susanna’s house.  Tim and I walked for about 5 km before dinner.

Trying to get organized for a group photo at Susanna's place.

1/23 Monday.  Today is Chinese New Year.  Anne and I got a ride from Ruth to Chinatown and we caught the free bus to Wendy Wu Tours to see what they had to offer.  Then to Circular Quay to catch a Ferry to Mosman Bay.  Anne and I walked for about 40 minutes and caught the Ferry from Cremone Point back to Circular Quay, and then bus to Matraville.  Time and I walked for about 8 km before we headed out to No. 8 Chinese Restaurant for New Year’s dinner – total of 18 people.

 The kids (Ryan and Peter) are more interested in their toys than the food, or anything else, for that matter.

Ling, Anne, and Ruth in the back.  Wally, I, Stephen and Tim in the front.

1/24 Tuesday.  We will be traveling to a couple of places north of Sydney for the next few days.  Tim went and got a couple of fishing licenses at A$12 each, and we bought a couple of fishing rods from K mart.  Total investment of about A$70, the fish are in trouble.

After lunch at Zilver, Tim drove the three or so hours to Salamander Bay in the Port Stephens area.  I have been here twice before; Anne once; and it is a first for Tim.  The modern apartment is right next to a beach, with a gorgeous view towards Port Nelson, and after settling down, Tim and I grabbed the fishing gear and went fishing at the Natural Preserve nearby.  All we caught was a small flounder.

 View from the Salamander Bay house.

 Modern kitchen with all the appliances.

Group photo on the deck.

Dinner was prepared by Anne and Ruth: salted eggs, Chinese sausage, Pok Choy, steak, lamb, and yams.

1/25 Wednesday.  We again went fishing, but didn’t catch anything.  Instead we got rained on; and the rain lasted most the day, at times quite heavy. 

We had lunch at Hog’s Breath in Port Nelson.  We brought back some fried fish for Anne as she had to attend class.  She ended up spending a lot of time on her classes, good thing the timing worked out reasonably well for her: if one considers a start of midnight a reasonable one.

We bought two dozen oysters at Holbert’s Farm which was a short drive from the apartment.  Tim wolfed down a dozen, I had three, Anne had one, and Stephen ate the rest – Ruth not being a raw oyster eater.  Dinner again at Glamour on The Bay – name given by the owners of the apartment.

1/26 Thursday.  Stopped by sand dunes before heading down to Coal Point at Lake Macquarie for our second stay.  Ruth’s minivan had a tire low on air, easily fixed at a local gas station (with the help of a bunch of young kids.)  346 Skye Point Road is a smaller place.  Anne and I basically have a walk-out basement.  The views are great, though.

You are excused thinking this is somewhere in the middle east.  But it is actually in the Port Stephens area.

 Coal Point house.

 Our basement room.

 View from the basement room.

 Enjoying the view of Lake Macquarie from the living room.

 House pier.

Fishermen will do anything to catch something.  Wilson and Tim.

Today being Australian day, and the area being suburban/rural, there were very few restaurants open.  We ended up eating at an Indian/Kebab place.  We also shopped at Coles for a cooked dinner, joined by Ruth’s children and their families.  Tim joined the young people to fish and returned with about 12 fishes, all on the small side.

I managed to jog for about 4 miles before dinner.  The hilly terrain was quite a challenge since I mostly jog around my house on level ground.  Good thing that it was a cool day in the mid 70s.

We did manage to see fireworks at a distance.  Peter – Susanna’s son – was all excited about them.

1/27 Friday.  Went fishing with Tim at the Reserve.  He caught several; I caught none.  We then drove over to where Ruth’s children are staying, Sealand Road in Fishing Point.  Lunch was sandwiches prepared from bread and cold cuts.  People in Australia have this habit of putting pineapple and sugar beet slices in their sandwiches.  Mine with beet tasted quite good.

Anne again stayed at Skye Point so I brought her a sandwich.  We drove back to Fishing point and some spent the rest of the afternoon fishing.  Tim and Wilson thought they would have better luck going further out into the lake with a dinghy, they didn’t catch anything either, but managed to get awfully sunburned.

Dinner was home-cooked at Coal Point again.  We had fish soup (made from our catch) and chicken.  Weather got quite nasty later in the day, but we got a good day’s activities in before the rains came.

1/28 Saturday.  We left Coal Point at around 10 am in the morning.  We first drove to Hornsby.  After lunch at a small café in Westfield Mall, we visited the house Alfred recently bought, and today was the move-in day.

After we got back to Jennings Street, the immediate excitement was the leech that attached itself to Tim’s ankle.  We estimate it sucked about 5 ml of Tim’s blood.  Indeed the bleeding was difficult to stop, and (Tim claims) the wound itched for quite a while after that.

Dinner at Olivo at Harbourside.  Reasonable prices ($39 for entrée and main) but food was just so-so.  Coffee and cake at Gloria Jeans.  We found out they have fireworks every Saturday, so we stayed around for that.  We are quite sure someone stays on the barge as the fireworks go off, can’t imagine the noise, to say nothing of the danger.  Not great, but adequate.  An appropriate punctuation for our trip.

1/29 Sunday.  After Church service, we had lunch at Westfield East Gardens.  It was then home to pack and shower.  We had to rush a bit as Tim’s flight was at 3:45 pm and we didn’t want to make Ruth drive twice.  Our flight ended up being late by more than an hour (it should arrive about one hour late.)  Since we still have two hours before the Newark flight, we should be okay.  Anne and I are in Seats 24D and G, with two empty seats between us; so we are happy.  The same can’t be said of the SFO-EWR flight, somehow my pre-assigned seat was given away, after multiple enquires I got an Economy Plus middle seat which was preferable to a window seat in the back.  Ellie brought our car to the airport.  It was about 11 pm when we got home.