Tidbinbilla and Deep Space Complex

No trip to Australia is complete without a visit to see some Kangaroos, so we took Greg's mom and stepfather out to Tidbinbilla. Tidbinbilla is a large nature reserve and is located about 30 minutes south of Canberra. Extreme cuteness alert coming up- look at that little guy!

While it's a nature reserve, and thus all the animals are wild, they are fairly used to people coming around and taking pictures of them. Just a regular part of the day, really. However, we got a little too close to this one and he hopped away.

There are tons of hikes you can do. All of the major ones we definitely weren't up for, since we had Immy with us who still less than a month old at that time. We did do a couple of the little ones, though. We were particularly interested in the hike over to the lake to see the platypuses that live there. Everyone who has ever been here tells us that it is a guaranteed place to see them, and yet, somehow every time we go there- no platypuses. We're beginning to think they don't like us.

After Tidbinbilla, we stopped at the Canberra Deep Space Listening Complex which is right down the road. It's pretty serious, check out this sign.

Yes. Greg can already tell this place is awesome. Any place with giant planet models hanging from the ceiling is alright in his book.

That is a huge 70-meter dish. It's the largest of several dishes they have here, and they are in the process of building two more. This is one of three sites in the world (the others are in Spain and California) responsible for communications with every satellite and probe we currently have in deep space- Voyager, Cassini, everything. This is the place flying them. Awesome.

Australia has several large space complexes that it runs in conjunction with both national and international programs. Australia's location in the southern hemisphere makes it an ideal location to complement sites in the US and Europe allowing for 24/7 coverage. Additionally, it's a pretty empty country, without a large population emitting radio signals to muck with the dishes' reception.

Immy doesn't know it yet, but she is going to be visiting a lot of space and rocketship related places. And she will love ever minute of it.

We were there! Go NASA!

New Parliament and the Australian War Memorial

Greg's mom and stepfather visited in October to help out with the baby. We used the opportunity to visit some Canberra landmarks we had just never gotten around to visiting. This is Parliament. The wind was really picking up that afternoon, so we got a nice shot of the flag. That's one pretty sweet flagpole.

This is actually new Parliament. It openned in the 1980's but was part of the original design of the city. In 1913 they couldn't afford to do it the way they wanted, so they built a smaller, more ordinary structure to serve as a temporary Parliament. That "temporary" turned into 60 years. That building is called old Parliament, and now houses a museum, a very nice restaurant (we ate their for Valentine's Day one year), and some office spaces.

Now, back to new Parliament! Below are a couple pictures from the receiving hall, which can be used for hosting official functions. The mural along the back wall is pretty spectacular.

Like the US, Australia's Parliament is split into two houses- the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each chamber has a very strong color scheme. The Senate is red. Unfortunately, it wasn't in session so we couldn't watch any of the hot legislative action, but it was a pretty nice tour nonetheless.

After our tour of Parliament we headed over to what is probably the biggest tourist draw in Canberra- the Australian War Memorial. It's kind of a Smithsonian museum and national monument rolled into one. Very impressive. This picture is taken from the entrance way into the memorial section. The structure in the back houses The Tomb of the Unknown Solider, paying tribute to all Australians killed in combat.

On the second floor, running along both walls are the names of all those soldiers who died, in what conflict they were fighting, and what unit they belonged to. Flowers are regularly placed along the walls.

This is inside the tomb itself. Check out that quintessential Aussie bloke admiring the awesomeness. Nice shorts.

And here is us on the front steps. Immy was passed out. It had been a busy day.

After the War Memorial, we did the most Aussie thing possible- the pub! Here is our baby girl, at about four weeks getting her first Aussie pub experience. Now, before you call us out for stellar parenting, remember this is a pub, not a bar, and no one looked at us funny at all. It's a family place.

 

She's not a happy camper in this picture. It had been a long day and she was sleepy. At 6pm it was time for bed- wild and crazy times!

Last Thanksgiving in Australia

This year was a bittersweet Thanksgiving. It was our last one in Australia, and this has been our favorite tradition the last three years- sharing a quintessentially American holiday with our Aussie friends. It's been a huge hit, and we're a little bummed that we won't be doing this again. On the other hand though, it's Immy's first Thanksgiving and that is super exciting. She even put on a fancy dress and everything for the occasion.

Mmmmmmm, look at that bird. It doesn't get much better than that. As always, we cooked ours on the grill. Poultry on barbeques is a specialty of ours.

The masses started circling . . .

The feast! This year we had turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, green bean casserole, Helena's Potato Salad (a recipe which Greg is totally stealing), cranberry sauce, and gravy.

A nice of perk of it being summer is that you can eat outdoors which is pretty great. Look at those happy post-turkey faces.

One of the things we have made for a long time now is the pumpkin roll. It's Laurel's preferred alternative to pumpkin pie. However, the ovens here aren't long enough to fit the long pan necessary to produce a thin enough cake to roll without breaking. Instead, we have created a kind of pumpkin cake oreo. It's two layers of pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting in between, and powdered sugar sprinkled on top. It's not going to win any awards for presentation, but man it is delicious.

This year everyone was particularly excited by the idea of dessert, because our turkey feast was followed by a second sweet-feast. Not that anyone was complaining. Just extra full of sugary goodness.

Immy has learned the first lesson of Thanksgiving. There is no escaping the Turkey Coma, even when it's diluted in breastmilk. Fortunately mom's shoulder makes an excellent napping spot!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Spooky Cupcakes II!

Sorry for yet another long delay guys. As you are no doubt aware, we've had a bit of change in our life lately, and blogging has just fallen way down the list of daily priorities. Stupid life, always getting in the way of things (just kidding Immy!).

 

Now, let's go into the wayback machine to October 2012. It was time for Year Two of our new Halloween tradition- making spooky cupcackes! Once again, Greg was on the sidelines (hangin out with his visiting Mom instead of playing cricket), while Laurel and her friend Helena got down to some serious baking.  Here they are hard at work preparing the raspberry blood drippings to go on the zombie braaaaaaaaaaaains.

 

 

That is some professional looking application. It's probably good they didn't let Greg help, he would have just tried to glob in on with a spoon.

Last year's batch of Spooky Cupcakes was such a hit, we decided to make three of the four kinds again. Sorry, eyeballs and worms, you didn't make the cut this year. You were a little too spooky. At both our offices, those were the last ones to get eaten. So here are the completed mummies and brains, just as delicious looking as last year.

Later, some angry ghosts got called in to protect the brains. One thing is certain at Halloween from now on- if there are no other cupackes there will be ghost cupcakes. They are Laurel's favorite.

 

 

Here is the new one we made this year- gingerbread graveyards! If they weren't so ghastly they'd be adorable.

 

All four, for your viewing pleasure. In case you were wondering, they were even better tasting than they look, and that's saying something. Greg supports any tradition that includes delicious things to eat.

This year we've started what will probably be a lifelong, non-seasonal tradition: taking pictures of our daughter in situations she's probably not totally cool with. Thus, creating memories that she will be incredibly embarressed about when she's a teenager. But whatever, look how cute she is as a spooky pumpkin! She even tolerated it for a few minutes!

 . . . and then it was no longer okay. Happy Halloween everyone!

Blue Mountains



The Blue Mountains are about a 45 minute drive west of Sydney, and are absolutely beautiful. The best known attraction is the Three Sisters. Scenic World is the main tourist park in the area. We decided to spend most of our day there since Laurel was pretty pregnant. We chose one of the relatively low-key walks, instead of taking one of the longer, self-guided bushwalks. We were not having a baby in the woods. Although, if we had, there are far worse things to be the first thing the baby sees.

The selling point for Scenic World is that they have a system of trains and cable cars to get you around and see all the views. The first one we rode was the SkyRail. At it's highest point, the SkyRail is 270 metres above the ground. In the middle of the "vehicle" is a glass floor. Greg was not a fan. Once we made it to solid ground again, we started a thirty minute hike around the canyon rim towards the Three Sisters taking in some amazing views along the way.

It's a dangerous hike though, and you have to keep your wits about you. Cave and rock gremlins lurk everywhere. Even very pregnant gremlins.

Like we said, beautiful right?

The Three Sisters! They think at one time there might have been as many as seven, but the other four eroded away thousands of years ago. Geology is incredible.

One of the many perks of being the Queen is that anytime you go anywhere they make a plaque to commemorate it.

They probably won't put a plaque there but in August of 2012, Laurel and Greg Otey were also there.

Next, we took a cable car down into the valley to check out the old mining areas. This is a view looking up from our decent. Seriously steep. We had a spot at the front of the glass-walled cable car, which as soon as it started to tip over the edge, Greg realized what a terrible, terrible mistake we had made. At least when we fell to our death, we would be able to see what was coming and not just the back of someone's head.

Amazingly, we did not fall to our deaths. The cable car took us down into the forest canopy, to an area that was originally mined for coal. We had a nice walk, although it was much, much colder now that we were out of the sun. At one point in out walk, we came across this rusted out piece of metal. A sign told us that it was the counterweight for the original cable car. Now, it was just laying in the middle of the trees along with a very long length of cable and various other bits of metal. It doesn't make sense for anyone to have put it there, so we're thinking they just left it where it fell. Which begs the question, "What happened, exactly, to the first cable car?"

They had some mock-ups and informational signs on the coal industry in the area. We took this picture more for the magpie just hanging out about the coal. Note his evil red eye. We think he may be a friend of the evil swan that tried to get Laurel at Lake Burley-Griffen last year.

To get back up to the top, where the Scenic World entrance/exit was located, we took the train. Generally, you do cable car one direction and train back the other since they're at each end of the mining area down in the valley. The train ride is a 52 degree ascent/descent, which makes it the steepest cable-driven train in the world.

The interior of the train feels more like a caged rollercoaster car, rather than a traditional train car. Here's Greg showing off the modest interior.

And here's a view from the top looking back down the tracks. The photos really don't do the severity of the angle justice. We were both glad we chose to take the train back up, rather than down.

After Scenic World, we did a bit more exploring around the cities of Leura and Katoomba. We did a little shopping and enjoyed a delicious high tea which featured a generous assortment of fancy sandwiches, scones, and treats. One of the shops we stopped in made the most incredible assortments of chocolates and truffles. Clearly, we were too busy tasting and buying the truffles to remember to take any pictures. It was a really great trip!