Taking a squiz, Aboriginal children, and Baroomba Rocks!

[Note to reader - check out my very long previous post on all my travels to Sydney and Melbourne! Pictures to come later...]

So, a few things I learned from my time with Nick and Phoebe. Everything is expensive here. Books - paperback books - are like $30 here where they are $7 at home. Appliances are super expensive - a nice vaccuum in the states that is say $500 is like 3-4 times that here. It's crazy. Most food here is grown locally - they try to only sell things locally grown. Apparently a hurricane destroyed a very large crop of bananas 2-3 years back, and bananas were so expensive, people just didn't eat them for a year :-). There were news reports of them being stolen from fruit trucks! How funny :-). One odd thing is almost all toilets (and they don't say bathroom here - just "where's the toilet?") have 2 buttons on the back. One for 1/2 flush and one for full - you can guess when to use them :-). And some new words that I learned - fanny here actually means a girl's private parts. And I told you "rooting" like cheering for a team actually means having sex. So Phoebe when she first got here said "I'm just rooting around in my fanny pack trying to find something" and Nick bust out laughing :-). Bingle is a small accident. Anyone, even strangers, can be called "mate". I told you about "Good on ya" and "No worries". "Ta" is a short form of thanks. "Hooning" is apparently driving crazily - weaving in and out of traffic. I love this one - "squiz" - "taking a squiz" means looking around - like checking out a store. Awesome, eh? :-). And I'm "keen" on travel, I "reckon" :-). Little different turns of phrase for words. I told you about capsicums, and rocket is the word for arugula here. Very entertaining :-).

So - the rest of the week - Met my friend Nancy after work on Friday to watch another Australian movie at her place - "Rabbit Proof Fence". It's about the 1930s Australian government project to "help" the Aborigines - basically they took half-caste (half white) kids from their Aboriginal parents and shipped them to a home where they were raised to be good white kids - going to church, only speaking English, forgetting their Aboriginal roots. And then they are encouraged to marry white to breed out the Aborigine, or dark skin, out of them. Can you believe this? The Aborigines basically had no rights... Scary. So anyway, this particular story is about a girl who was taken to this camp with her cousin and younger sister, and they ran away and walked 1200 miles back to where she grew up - avoiding trackers and people searching for them the whole way. Amazing story. Neat :-). And Nancy and I caught up some and showed each other pictures of our adventures :-).

Saturday afternoon Nancy and I were picked up by Steve and we went hiking down south! Steve's Dad (who's birthday it was) joined us as well as Steve's 4 year old son Kyler. We all hiked up a mountain - Barroomba Rocks! It said the hike was 2.5km round trip, but it felt longer - look over an hour and a half. But of course we had a photo shoot at the top :-). Nancy loved playing with Steve's kids, and I loved talking history and ancestry and living in different countries with Steve's Dad who's an economist/statistician. He's lived in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Philipinnes at least. And Steve's hiked around the base of Everest and runs everyday, so I talk about outdoor adventures with him. Great fun :-). Good company, good conversation. We were really impressed with Kyler who hiked the whole way by himself on his little legs! So it was great fun. We hiked in the shade of this mountain - actually saw dusts of frost on plants. And then got to the top and had a great sunny view of green valleys below and Canberra in the distance. And there were huge boulders at the top - apparently it's a great climbing area. So it was great. We took many pictures with the view in the background - almost every combination of people :-). And had snacks - Steve had made his Dad a very decadent dense chocolate cake, so we had that :-). And fruit. Yum. Apparently fruit cake is loved here - they use it as their cake for special occassions - every weddings! They think it's tasty... interesting. So by the time we got back to the car, the sun had gone down, and we drove back in the dark. I made myself some rissoles for dinner - sort of mini balls of meat - like hamburgers - but rolled with some vegies and breadcrumbs usually. Made them in the grill :-). Today (Sunday) was a lazy day - and rainy day too. Nice to be able to have lazy days! I did walk around the mall for a couple of hours - that was fun.

Another week starts tomorrow - and I get to be in Canberra, home, for weeks. Yay!