The four days I've been here in the Blue Mountains in OZ , I can't help comparing them to the Blue Ridge Mountains I love in North Carolina. Both have a beautiful blue hue to them - light refraction (and from the ecalyptus trees, here), wonderful vistas for miles (kilometers, here), small quaint towns (called villages, here) along the ridge. Both 'blues' were formed by uplifted earth. Both also have friendly go out of their way for you people. My hostess Therese, pronounced Te-REEZ', is an example. She is a do-it-all strong woman, a retired principal who designed and sewed her daughter's wedding dress, makes intricate quilts and knitting garments, has driven and cooked me up a storm, and has become a dear friend in a very short time. The Friendship Force chapter here has also planned some fabulous days out for us. We went to the Jenolan (Jen-OH-lan) caves, to to the plains on the other side of the mountains, Scenic Mountain in Katoomba today and Sydney yesterday. I guess I'm a city mouse and a country mouse because I liked the pastoral vistas and viewing the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House in Sydney, too. Sydney has a HUGE harbour (ozzie spelling). We took a half hour ferry ride to Manley, a beach town, not unlike Fernandina. The weather was 'fine', as they say, and since it was Sunday, all of Sydney was headed to the Pacific Ocean! Very crowded, but as I was standing at the front of the ferry catching the wind hoping motion sickness wouldn't catch me, I asked one of the passengers if he would take my photo with the Opera House in the background and he graciously did so! At Manley, GiGi and I ate al fresco and watched two boys about 11 years old open up their instrument cases and play Band 1 songs for money. It was just too cute. We giggled our way through our fish and chips lunch and then dropped some coins in their case for their chutzpa! At the beach, ten or so teams of grade school children were in lifeguard competitions. I told GiGi (who was raised in Belgium) that the front crawl was called the Australian crawl when I learned to swim as a kid in Iowa. With the surf I saw that day, lifeguarding skills would come in handy!
OZ is a BIG continent to be sure! We've ridden in buses, cars, trains, ferries and catamarans. The bus ride on Friday went on and on and on and on until I was sure we were in the middle of nowhere because there'd been nothing except farmland to see for hours and then... we were at a little town for a lunch stop, or (after riding on and on again) at the caves in the middle of 'nowhere'. Graham, one of the FF club men here said that he thinks nothing of driving over 250 KM just to have lunch with a friend! It's all perspective, I guess, but sorry, my friends, I can't imagine driving that long or far to just have lunch with you as much as I love you all!
So, why did the kangaroo cross the road? On the long, winding, uphill (read, 'I almost got sick again') road, our bus driver, Richard, called out, "Kangaroo!" and it crossed right in front of the bus! I figured that the hopping fur with the long tail just wanted to give some of us time to get our cameras out to get a picture to prove we'd actually seen one in the wild. And just after that, a wallabee, popped up out of the bush, too, and some of us got photos of that, also. So I now know why the wallabee crosses the road, too. I wasn't the camera Wizard of Oz, though. The 'why' photos will have to be posted later because another lucky passenger on the other side of the bus got the 'roo and 'bee pics. Other pics will be posted later, too.
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