Ambrosia1

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.

My grandfather immigrated from Croatia in the 40’s. I have always been fascinated with Croatia because of him.

Papa lived with us as he got older, and died when I was 2 from complications from a simple routine surgery when he was in his 70’s. Up until his death, he was a strong healthy man. He loved me very much, and I wish that I had had more years with him.

My father can understand a lot of Croatian when he hears people speak it, or when he reads it, but cannot speak Croatian very well. He’s been trying to learn a bit more on his own. When he was 12, his dad took him to Croatia to visit family.

When I was around 14, we had a chance to visit Croatia with a local group of Croatians, but did not take it. We have always regretted that.

From the pictures that I see, it is a very beautiful place.

This is a small area to go through, but what I found interesting were the welcome signs on either end of the community on the highway.

The signs are made of cement with an iron cut out facade extended out from the cement base. There are multicolored moving lights under the facade that glow through the cut out.

Must be pretty at night!