After jumping into the waves in the Bass Strait I realized that most of you don’t even know where we are. Haha, allow me to catch you up on our latest adventures. Since the last post we have been to two new territories, up to the top of the tallest “mountain in Australia”, the very south coast of mainland Australia, to the capital of Australia and to the most famous river, well at least in my mind.

We left Wollongong, after Brett’s birthday celebration ended and headed for the capital of Australia, Canberra. We visited all the major monuments as well as the Parliament House and the War Memorial. At each monument and museum we decided to get in on the free tours and it made all the difference in the world. We learned so much and got a great explanation of each thing we saw! Canberra was a nice city and we managed to find a free street to sleep on right across the street from the most beautiful park which had restrooms and bbqs for us to use! We treated ourselves to a coffee from a café in the morning with a buy-one-get-one-free coupon on the back of our grocery receipt. On the way out of Canberra we stopped at the Australian Deep Space Communication Center where we got to see real moon rocks, hear all about the latest expeditions to Saturn and also see the largest satellite dish in the southern hemisphere. The communication center works directly with NASA and the different satellites in space. It was an awesome experience, not to mention everything in Canberra was free for us to visit!

From Canberra we decided to head to the famous Snowy Mountains to get our own slice of The Man From Snowy River. Not only is this place beautiful but my favorite movie of all time is based here. If you have not seen The Man From Snowy River you should rent it immediately and see exactly what we saw in the mountains! While in the national park we spent two nights around a camp fire where we made all our meals over the flame!!! It was so much fun. We also spent most of Saturday hiking to the top of Mount Kosciusko (2228m) where we got to be some of the few in the world to stand in the highest place in Australia! It was beautiful and such a great hike up! We also got the see the headwaters for the great Snowy River and experience a bit of Snowy River country while in each town. Brett also got to kite one day on Lake Jindabyne which made him a very happy camper!

We have been on the road for most of today (Monday) driving out of the national forests back to the coast. We have made it into Victoria and Melbourne is on the horizon however we are going to continue to take it slow and enjoy our time here. It is hard to believe it is already February 1^st and we have plans to leave Australia on March 1^st. So today we made it to a place called The Entrance. It is a small town on the Bass Strait which is also the entrance to the Gipps Saltwater Lakes. We will stay here tonight and enjoy the free amenities!

One other thing I wanted to post on is Hillsong. We attended a Sunday night 7pm service at the Sydney campus and wow is all I can say. It was everything from amazing, overwhelming, welcoming, and fun! We caught a Hillsong shuttle from the central train station and were dropped off right in front of the warehouse that doubles as a church. Once inside we were greeted by information booths, a coffee shop, a bookstore, a bbq with dinner cooking and tons of people. It was totally overwhelming at this point so Brett and I just wandered around until the service started. We stumbled into a place labeled welcome center and were immediately greeted by a man who wanted to chat with us and take our coffee order. Apparently new people and or visitors get a free coffee and a volunteer to chat with. The volunteers are there to answer any questions, get to know you and make you feel welcome! At 7pm we all filed into the hall where the rock concert started. I don’t know if the music is always like that or if we were just at the younger crowd service but it was crazy. The music was loud, people were dancing and everyone was just plain living God. It was pretty cool! The message was also amazing and we quickly realized you would have to be a very confident and interesting speaker to be asked to deliver a message. While our service only had about 2000 people other services are known to have 10,000 in a single sitting. It was quite the experience and I am really glad we went.

Well, as you can see all is going great here. We are seeing so much and enjoying every moment of being on the road. I think reality is going to hurt when we get home but it has all been worth it so far. We have a few more months and I will do my best to be diligent about posting! Thanks for reading.

Love,

B and K8

Pictures to follow!