January 26th is Australia Day and, what a difference a year makes! Last year we were living in our caravan not really knowing anybody and Australia Day passed us by a bit but this year we had a great time.
We got down to the marina early to hear the opening address from our local Worimi Elder. Australia Day has moved on a bit even from when Ian was living here ten years ago, at that time the Aboriginal people called it Invasion Day for obvious reasons and it was met with some animosity but now, at least here, it is a joint celebration. In his speech the Elder talked about the positive impact immigration has had on Australia and it was refreshing to see a country celebrating its national pride for the right reasons. He then went on to sing a couple of songs then all citizens stood and re-pledged their allegiance to Australia, everyone sang the National Anthem, except me who has yet to learn the words, then a general party took off and lasted all morning. 
The next band on stage featured the man in the photo with the umbrella hat, a few days later I was told that he was our postman, we didn't recognise him because the posties here ride little motorbikes and are covered from head to toe in high viz. There was a barbecue, a stall selling damper (bread bushmen would make for themselves), face painting and, we could tell it was a big do because there were two bouncy castles (or jumping pillows, I now speak the language).
This all went on until midday when people dispersed to go to their own parties. We had been invited to a friend's house with about twenty other people so Ian had baked one of his famous Tunis Cakes and iced an Australian flag on the top. We cycled over there and I thoroughly enjoyed my first proper Australia Day party, we drank champagne, had a barbecue, sang along to Peter Allen songs then Ian's cake came out with a sparkler in it while everyone sang the National Anthem (I must learn the words before next year).

Yesterday saw us travelling down to Sydney to go on a tall ship champagne brunch trip around Sydney Harbour, our Christmas present from Zoe and Shaun. We left home at the crack of dawn to catch the train from Newcastle to Central Station in Sydney. Train travel is so cheap here, it cost $2.50 each (just over £1) to travel the same sort of distance as London to Birmingham so we have got into the habit of using the trains instead of driving whenever we can.
We arrived in plenty of time to poke around The Rocks Market, which is excellent at weekends, and to grab a cup of coffee before settling in Campbell Cove to wait for our ship to come in. When it sailed into view it was a beautiful Danish built cargo ship which was used in the Onedin Line and led the re-enactment fleet commemorating the arrival of the first fleet in the 1988 Sydney bicentennial celebrations.
On we all hopped and were wined and dined with oysters and all sorts of other goodies as we sailed around the harbour. Some brave souls (fools) opted to take the offer of a climb up the rigging to stand in the crow's nest for a bird's eye view of the sights. Not us, our feet stayed firmly on the deck besides, they were not allowed any of the champers until after they had completed their climb.

It was a bit of a grey day but that was quite handy as not much of the deck was under cover and we were out for a couple of hours, long enough to get well and truly baked. It really was a wonderful experience and a great way to get a different view of the harbour which is an incredibly busy place. Apart from the pleasure trips like ours there are the ferries across to other areas in the harbour (my sister Gill used to catch a ferry from Neutral Bay to Circular Quay every day as part of her commute when she lived in Australia) a couple of massive cruise liners were setting off, there was a Hobie Cat race taking place alongside a race for 18ft skiffs, jetboats to frighten the living daylights out of tourists, kayakers dodging in and out of the larger vessels, water taxis, private yachts, superyachts and motor launches and the occasional person fishing all topped off with sea planes flying above on sightseeing trips! Powered vessels are meant to give way to those driven by sail but, as far as I could see, size seemed to be the determining factor, if one of the ferries or a cruise liner saw something in its path, sail or no sail, it sounded its horn and expected all other harbour users to scatter. I suppose there must be some order to it but it looks like chaos.
After the trip we took the ferry over to Manly to see if it had changed in the ten years since we last saw it. When we got there we found Manly and neighbouring Shelly beaches closed although you would not know it. In spite of signs on both beaches saying SHARK SIGHTED TODAY, ENTER WATER AT YOUR OWN RISK, there were loads of people swimming and surfing, many allowing their children to swim!

Our holiday was over and we arrived home the day before Christmas Eve full of resolve to make it a tradition to have a pre-Christmas vacation with Zoe in a different part of Australia every year. 
It was a very different Christmas to last year when we had completed the purchase of our rental house on Christmas Eve and moved into the front garden in the caravan. This year we are in our own house and we have got to know plenty of people so we had a jolly evening at the club the night before and woke up feeling very much at home.
I had decided to do turkey and all the trimmings this year - well, I won't be doing that again! It was not even a particularly sweltering day but it was way too hot for cooking (or eating) a roast dinner, I will be quite happy throwing a couple of prawns on the barbie next time and I realised it would not feel strange like last year as we have now settled in.
A couple of days later we decided to go and have a drive round to look at the lights on the local houses. At our end of the Tilligerry Peninsula there are three small townships, Tanilba Bay, Mallabula then us at Lemon Tree Passage at the very tip. The local paper run a competition for the best lights in each town and there in a prize for the overall winner too. Ian had heard about a couple of houses worth a look in Tanilba Bay so off we went. 
The first was incredible but the second was just astonishing. The two women who own the house had moved here from Perth last year and chosen a house to specifically suit their Christmas light extravaganza, they collect for charity and certainly give value for money. The house was relatively tame from the outside but signs and lights guided visitors through Santa's workshop which took up the whole of the garage into the back garden where there was a glass fronted shed housing the reindeer stables. As if this wasn't enough, we were then led up steps to a window where we looked in to see the whole front room was turned over to a Christmas model village. It goes without saying they won the overall prize, I'm a bit worried Ian was taking notes and maybe planning to raise his game next year.
We have had funny weather so far in 2016, a few days very hot followed by a couple of torrential rain then back to extreme heat again. Our little resident koala Ella looked very sorry for herself after one storm but has dried out now. Unfortunately the koala rescue people are concerned she is not growing as she should which is probably because she does not move about from tree to tree. Koalas are supposed to have around 200 trees that they visit because they can only digest new leaves and need to eat the equivalent of about two carrier bags per day so, although it is nice for us to have a koala always present to show visitors, it is not very good for her. The koala society are waiting for her to come further down the tree when they will catch her and feed her up a bit although it is hard to imagine they can release her again if she doesn't know what to do, we fear she may be destined for life in the zoo.

After spending the night at our campsite, Shaun went off to work while Zoe, Ian and I set off to visit the Healesville Sanctuary about forty minutes away. Healesville is in the Yarra Valley wine region and a very smart, prosperous looking place, we had all been there before but not had time to visit the sanctuary. So we dropped Monty at doggy day care in a kennels nearby and in we went.
It turned out to be a great place to visit, all native Australian animals, many extremely rare and endangered (mind you, you can never be too sure in Australia, the place is so vast it is not unknown for entire species to be hiding for decades). The Healesville Sanctuary is one of several animal institutions working on a project to save the Tasmanian Devil. In the wild in Tasmania, the Devils have developed a form of cancerous mouth tumor which is incurable and contagious. It started in a small area but is rapidly spreading across the whole of Tasmania and nothing can be done to stop it so several breeding communities, like the one at the Healesville Sanctuary, have been set up away from Tasmania using some of the remaining healthy Devils before the disease reaches them. The breeding programmes have all been successful but the operation becomes more complicated as time goes on. They obviously need to avoid inbreeding so every couple of months the keepers consult a massive Tasmanian Devil database to see which Devils can be bred with which and a mass swapping of Tasmanian Devils takes place. The plan is to eventually repopulate Tasmania with healthy Devils once the current wild residents have completely died out so the disease cannot be passed on, they are ugly little critters but it is awful to think, without this programme, they would be completely wiped out.
The birds in Australia take your breath away with their beauty and the most gorgeous were on show here, there was also my absolute favourite spectacle to watch, a birds of prey show. So we left here very satisfied and Zoe took us off to a Chocolate Factory she knew where we all did a little bit of last minute Christmas shopping and a lot of eating before we picked Monty up and headed back to the campsite.
We said goodbye to Zoe the following morning as she went off to look at Montsalvat, because we had not stopped talking about how fabulous it was, and we set off for home.
We took the Hume Highway this time because we needed to be back to work at the Tilligerry Habitat on Christmas Eve, so we stopped overnight in a road side rest area near Goulburn. We popped into the town for gas before we headed off in the morning and there it was... a proper Big Thing! Goulburn is home of The Big Merino and it is fantastic, dominating the skyline as you drive into the town. Ian insisted on posing beside it for a size comparison and, I'm guessing to point out how anatomically correct it is.

Our journey down to Melbourne continued through the Murray Valley, which is a very beautiful part of Australia, as we headed for Wodonga. Albury and Wodonga are quite large towns next door to each other that straddle the New South Wales/Victoria border, if you are in NSW you talk about Albury being the border and if in Victoria, all signs point to Wodonga as the crossing point. These are not terribly exciting towns but they serve as 'the big smoke' for outlying farming communities. On a Friday night the young men and women from these far flung spots come into town all dressed up and often stay for the weekend to get their fill of nights out and to meet potential partners. This can be a problem for young people living on remote farms and our latest reality TV show here is called, 'The Farmer Wants A Wife' you can guess what happens.
Anyway, Wodonga was a good spot for cheap diesel and the more we travel, the better we get at taking advantage of these opportunities. We have three jerry cans on the back of the caravan which almost hold a second tank of fuel so whenever we see it cheap we fill them as well as the car so are never forced into an expensive petrol station out of desperation.
From Wodonga we passed through pine forests grown for logging and more towns with interesting snippets of information on their signs - Shelley (Pure trains and timber), Tullangatta (The town that moved in the 1950s) (?). As Tullangatta disappeared into the distance a series of huge lakes skirted the road so I'm guessing they moved when they found their town was in danger of being at the bottom of a lake.
The temperature was gradually going up and reached 41 degrees as we arrived in Warrandyte, the fire warning signs changed from Very High to Extreme, there is only on more category - Catastrophic - and the radio gave out reports of bush fires springing up in various parts of the state. We found the campsite and set up the caravan then went to explore. When it reaches 40+ in Victoria it is because the wind is blowing south across the centre of Australia so it is like having a hot hairdryer trained on you, the weather here can also change in minutes because if the wind direction alters so it is blowing north, it is coming straight from the South Pole  which is why Melbourne is famous for having four seasons in one day. We walked through Warrandyte, spurred on by the sight of a big ice cream on the front of a shop at the end of this pretty little town. When we got there it was shut with a notice on the door saying 'closed because of extreme heat' a bit of a poor business decision for an ice cream shop on the hottest day of the year so far.
Next morning it was still hot and we decided to squeeze in a visit to Montsalvat before Zoe and Shaun arrived. Montsalvat is fascinating, it was built in the 1950s in the grounds of a 19th century house by an artist and his family. He used mud bricks, wattle and daub and various reclaimed materials and the result is something that looks like a medieval village. It is still an artist community with the unique buildings occupied by goldsmiths, a flute maker, a guitar maker, silversmiths and sculpters. The interior of the Great Hall was like Hogwarts.
Back at the campsite, the temperature plummeted and it started to rain. The power went off as Zoe and Shaun arrived and the complete fire ban was still in place leaving us no way to cook our Christmas dinner, so we went out to eat instead.