I thought I would give you a little update while we are driving! Brett is rocking out to AC/DC in preparation for the concert he recently bought tickets to. We are going to a final farewell AC/DC concert in the bands hometown on Monday the 15th! It costing us an arm and a leg but Brett felt totally obligated to attend and I am actually quite excited to see something so rare and exciting for my husband!

We are currently driving to a smaller town outside of Melbourne to show the van to an interested buyer. We are meeting a ladies son who is going to look at it for her. She is looking for a van to take to Tasmania for a little while. Brett and I were recently talking about going to the island of Tassie but unfortunately the time is not allowing us to do everything we want so we are going to instead continue with our plans of the Great Ocean Road, NZ and Asia before returning home! The people calling seem very interested in the van which is bittersweet. We are excited that it seems like the chance of it selling is really good but we are also sad because it means we are leaving soon.

Some fun things we have done lately are:

We got to see the world smallest penguins, Fiery Penguins, make their daily trek across the beach on Phillip Island to their burrows in the sand dunes. We watched about 1000 penguins cross the beach and than we got to follow them up to their burrows. It was incredible and so crazy! It is amazing that they are wild and we didn't disrupt their daily commute from water to burrows. Many of the penguins had chicks waiting for them with hungry tummies and some were simply returning for a sleep, a mating session and even some didn't even leave their burrows because they are stuck on land for 3 weeks without food and water because they are in the molting process. Every year the Fairy Penguins grow a new layer of feathers and during this process they cannot go in the water because they are not waterproof. It was well worth the $20 admission price per person! The penguins were so cute and watching them walk/waddle makes you wonder if their flippers are really there for help or just flapping aimlessly! :) Unfortunately no camera were allowed so we had to simple look and we don't have anything to share with you. However, I am sure there are pictures on google if you are dying to see them!

We also have been to the Mornington Peninsula which had two major attractions for us. I really wanted to go to Sorrento, which is my favorite city in Italy and this town is doing its best to mimic the sleepy Italian town. We, of course, got a cappuccino, window shopped, browsed a few stores and took it all in! Second on the list while on the peninsula was the wineries. The Mornington Peninsula is very well known for being the Pinot Noir capital of Australia and if you know my husband's wine taste he is a pinot man so a trip there was a must! We purchased a bottle from a winery there and thoroughly enjoyed it while eating dinner at an impossible place to describe!

We are spending the next few days meeting people for the van and seeing more and more before we leave! We have lots on the list and once we cross them off we will inform you!!

Love,
B and K8

Pictures From Our Australian Adventure!

Apparently I don't mind camping if I can pick the location and cook the dinner- Snowy River Natl. Park

A fairly common occurrence especially while driving at dusk-Jindabyne

Instead of paying for a tour of the area we just rode the ferry around and around with our all-day all-access public transport pass- Sydney Harbor Bridge and Opera House from the ferry on our last night

Largest satellite in the southern hemisphere- Canberra Deep Space Communication Center

On top of the TALLEST mountain on Australia- Mount Kosciusko

The amazing and beautiful Sydney Opera House

Wild kangaroos at Pebbly Beach- NSW

Brett has become an even more amazing kiter- Port Welshpool
(The latest picture I plan to frame!)

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!

Brett's birthday has come and gone again to make him another year older. He got to celebrate his 26th birthday on the 26th! He was also lucky enough to share his birthday with Australia Day so once again one of our holidays involves fireworks!! Australia day is HUGE here. People totally get into it by wearing anything and everything Australian from flag capes, hats, shirts, swimming suits, stickers, temporary tattoos and much more! It was fun to be part of the festivities. We hung out all day in a town called Wollongong. The town set up a fair with rides, food and booths as well as beach competitions and a firework show to end the day! It was a great day for Brett's birthday!

We are currently in a town called Huskisson where we have posted up in a caravan park for the night. We are doing massive amounts of laundry and charging all of our stuff. We have fallen right back into life on the road and we have come to realize we are getting pretty good at it! We only pay for somewhere to sleep about every third night and our expenses are very low! We have slowly started to plan for a our exit out of Australia aka our plans for NZ and Asia!

We hope everyone at home is happy and healthy!

Love,
B and K8

Sydney

Brett, Casey and I made it to Sydney and instantly fell in love with the big city. I never though I would say that but seriously of all the cities I have ever been to Syndey is the best. We spent all of Friday exploring the city and our legs, feet and abundance of pictures can attest to that! We literally spent from 7am until 10pm walking, seeing and looking. We saw all the big icons as well as lots of other awesome things. We decided to spend $18 on an all-access public transport pass which allowed us to use the trains, buses and ferries to get all over the place. Let me tell you, we got our 18 dollars worth. We decided to simply ride the ferries instead of paying for a harbour cruise. This turned out to be a great idea. Sydney is a beautiful city that feels very large but compact due to the ease of public transportation.

We spent Saturday with our old friend from home, Katy. She lives in Manly with her partner and it was a lot of fun to catch up! She took us all around Manly where we went swimming, walked around, layed out and watch an iron man life-saving competition with competators of all ages. It was a true way to see Manly and some authentic Australians at the beach! We stayed at Katy's flat, in the van of course, but she was nice enough to host dinner and breakfast for us! She even took us out to her secret chocolate place in Manly where we got a chocolate souffle and vanilla ice cream for dessert! It was amazing!

We are dropping Casey off at the airport tonight and headed to a service at Hillsong tonight. We are excited to experience a service with thousands of people and music that influences church music around the world. '

Brett and I will be spending the next 5 weeks on the road enroute to Melbourne. We plan to get there around February 20th so we can sell the van, do a small weekend trip to Uluru and get ready for NZ and Asia!

We miss you all and love you! Thanks for reading and we will post some more pictures soon!
Love,
B and K8

We just woke up in the Napa of Australia. We spent all day yesterday wine tasting in the Hunter Valley Wine Country. Hunter Valley is just 2 hours outside of Sydney and it seems to be the best weekend getaway for anyone interested in food and wine. The rolling hills are beautiful, the wine is delicious and the weather is warm and sunny! We are planning to head back to the coast today and search some for some waterfalls in the Blue Mountains. Casey is with us until Sunday so between now and than we will do some exploring in the Blue Mountain and see as much as we can in Sydney. We hope to walk around a lot to see the sights, go on a harbor boat tour, attend a church service at Hill Song and get Casey on a safe flight home.

All is continuing to be well in Australia. We LOVE the van and seriously wish we could send it home when we leave. If it was up to Brett we probably would. We are getting bummed that we only have about 5 week left in Australia so we plan to do it very wisely. After Casey departs we plan to head along the coast to Melbourne. One major attraction is the Great Ocean Road.

We met up with out friends Ted and Heidi for a night, which was so much fun! It was great to see them and catch up on both of our travels. They have been our lifeline while in Australia and they always give us such great advice and we learn a lot from them! We did have to face the fact that we may not be seeing them again. However, her parents do live in Vegas so you never know! :)

Since the last post we have been having , of course, so much fun! The boys have tried to kite once but there was not enough wind. Instead they flew the kite around and played for a bit. I was a little nervous only because their kite flying was preceded by a huge lightening and thunder storm. Thankfully, I know for a fact that Brett is always very safe so we sat in the van and watched while the storm passed before they headed out. This was all in Stockton.

I killed the boys at poison last night which was a huge victory. This is suppose to be a game of strategy but I just offer my hand of cards up to the gods and pray for some luck! Somehow I always end up doing pretty well and last night I won 4 games to 3!!

Well, our trip is very slowly, thankfully, drawing to an end. It makes us excited to see everyone and prepare for our next journey, aka nursing school, but it is also sad because we love it here so much! Hope everyone is safe and happy!

Love,

B and K8Kiting in Stockton

Saying Goodbye to Ted and Heidi

Hunter Valley (below)

Alright, well it has been a bit since I have posted and it seems like a lot has happened. We picked Casey up at the airport and we have slowly been making our way south. We have hit all the major spots and a few smaller hidden gems. So far we have...

1. Shown Casey the ropes in Brisbane
2. Played in the pristine waters at Surfer's Paradise
3. Surfed at Byron Bay
4. Camped every night
5. Kited in Valla (right outside of Nambucca Heads)
6. Made fantastic dinners and breakfasts
7. Played a few games of poison (A card game Casey taught us)
8. Slipped down rock water slides in Springbrook National Forest

We are all safe and enjoying Australia. The van is a little tight but we are making due and Casey is sleeping just fine in the one-man tent.

A bit of bad news on the home front unfortunately. Our beloved horse, Wilbur, recently got sick and my mom and aunt had to make the decision to put him down. It has been really difficult and sad. He was an amazing horse and an awesome friend to everyone. My aunt would always comment on how he was more like a human than a horse. Hopefully he will be in your hearts and we are all hoping he is in a better place.

We hope everyone is happy and safe at home. We are off from Nambucca Heads today headed for Port Macquarie.

Thanks to everyone who has been reading!



At the Most Easterly point in Australia!













Brett sliding down the rock water slide








Hiking south of Surfer's Paradise










Love,
B and K8