Australia

April, 1995

Before we were married, my husband spent a year in Australia as a youth pastor.

We spent a lot of money keeping in touch, with phone calls, mail, and packages. Partway through I visited him.

I went with my 14 month old daughter, which was interesting, but it went well, even the flight.

The area we stayed at was near Avondale, a couple hours from Sydney.

I visited for about 3 weeks, and while there my husband and I got engaged. The wonderful people there threw us a huge engagement party that even included an excellant local band who cheerfully sang songs like, “Tie Me Kangaroo down” and “Waltzing Matilda”.

I had a nice tour of parts of Australia, visiting places like Sydney and Canberra, and the Snowy River. I loved the diversity of the place. Australia even has its own smell, which I can still remember and miss. We spent several days with friends backpacking in the Blue Mountains and getting extra mudd. That was a great experience!

While in Sydney, we walked around for a while and heard some beautiful violin music. We followed the sound to an Irish pub that was packed with people watching live Irish music. Afterwards, we walked down to a park that had a platform just there in the middle of a walkway/plaza. We got on top of it and slow danced for a while (with a baby in a backpack). We got a lot of smiles from passerby.

We have always said that out of all the places we have visited, Australia is on the top of the list for wanting to revisit. The land and people are lovely and they draw us back to themselves.