Aussies on the Island

Spring has sprung on Vancouver Island and the Australians are here to take it all in. If you have enjoyed our correspondence, you might be interested in their own blog, Rotary District 9780 GSE Team.

Back to reality!!!

Back to the reality of work!! The jetlag on Friday was bad for me, I felt totally discombobulated!! I think part of my body stayed over the Pacific for a couple of days.
The weather here is cold, windy and rainy but I know spring is just around the corner.

The Inbound Team should be in our District today, so hopefully they will have as great a time here as we did down under.

All just memories now...

Hello All!
We arrived back at the Seattle Airport a little after 2 pm on Wednesday...nearly 24 hours of travel (even though we left Melbourne Wednesday morning!). See...we even got to expereince "time travel" on this trip!

As I hope you've seen from the blog, the expereince was incredible. To spend 35 days of doing 4-8 new & exciting things every day, meeting new people and learning something from everyone, is an adventure I truly wish everyone could have. So, for those of you who are NOT involved with the Rotary Club, or not family members of anyone who is, and are between 25 and 40 years old, I encourage you to research your local Rotary Clubs & District to see if you can apply for a Group Study Exchange trip. Rotary International has other great travel programs as well, including Youth Exchange for kids in high school, and Friendship Exchanges (I think for older adults, but I don't know the specifics). This is in addition to the community and international service projects they organize and make happen. The amount of goodwill we encountered from Rotarians along the way was impressive.

I haven't downloaded pictures yet from the last stop on our trip, Ballarat. For folks who may not be seeing any of us for a while, I will still try to do that in the next few days and upload some with captions. While in Ballarat, we:

• Attended a welcome reception for Rotarians at City Hall.
• Went to the sound & light show "Blood on the Southern Cross", depicting an uprising of miners in Ballarat in the 1850s. It was a very unique depiction of the story, with recorded voices and narration simultaneous with the selective lighting of historical buildings and miner's tents at Sovereign Hill (more to come about that on Tuesday).
• Explored the city including the art museum, historic buildings, and shopping,
• Enjoyed a leisurely BBQ lunch at a host's home, since it was still raining (!)
• Toured the Botanic Gardens, including viewing their sculptures & begonia display.
• Attended the Rotary 9780 District Conference Dinner; Dave, Ben, & Koshare went out dancing afterwards with outgoing GSE team members Shana & Jane.
• Gave our presentation at the District Conference Sunday morning.
• Went to the "Trash & Trivia" market, a Rotary Fundraiser of the South Ballarat Club.
• Lunched at the District Conference, with the opportunity to re-connect with "families" from along the trip & say good-byes.
• Went to the Ballarat "Wild Animal Park", where we saw and, in some cases - touched, local animals such as kangaroos, emus, koalas, tasmanian devils, crocodiles, snakes, and more. There is a HILARIOUS story that goes along with this about Dave finding the pouch on the kangaroo...but words on paper won't do the story justice!
• Monday was our last vocational day. We went to the Mt. Cole State Forest with 2 professors from the local Forestry School at Creswick and discussed native ecosystems, native forest management, and forest roads. It was still drizzly, so the short hike did not have a view from the top, but felt more like home to us.
• In the afternoon we went to the Creswick School of Forestry and toured their facilities, and talked with one of the coordinators of the program.
• Monday evening was our last presentation to a Rotary Club - the Wendouree Club, and guests.
• Tuesday we spent the day at Sovereign Hill, a re-creation of the historical mining town that became Ballarat. The "town" includes schools, bakeries, blacksmiths, candle-making, wheelwrights, etc. We got our picture taken together in old-time clothes, went on mine tours, watched wheel-making demonstration, saw gold-pouring, watched school kids in their 1850s environment, went bowling, watched candle-making, had a drink at the pub, saw a special tug-of-war between the Catholics & the Protestants in honor of St. Patrick's Day, and did some gold panning (Jill was the only one who had the technique down and found a few flakes).
• The end of the trip was a BBQ at Kim's hosts' home, with our host families joining us. We all had a good time - good food, good drinks, and fun conversations!

Thanks so much to all the families who hosted us and drove us around during the trip, to the people who coordinated the schedules, and especially to Rotary International for providing the funds for such an incredible program. The personal and professional growth has been tremendous for all of us, and I believe we have created some contacts (and learned some phrases!) which I reckon will remain throughout our lives!

Where we have been hosted

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It's raining!

Ballarat, Saturday, 9:30 am...it's been raining for nearly half an hour!

Pictures from Horsham

As Ben mentioned, we left Horsham yesterday & are now in Ballarat, on the last leg of our journey. I think we each had some moments of being tired last week, but the energy level seems revived now. We were taken on a 4-wheel drive tour by "Lockie", which included a nice hike to the top of the cliffs (Dave has the best picutre from the top of there, hopefully he'll be able to post it), had a lunch cooked on an open fire (very carefully watched and put out!), and drove around in the sand on a dry lakebed. We had a presentation on the pipeline being constructed to deliver water to areas north of Horsham, and the environmental mitigation they do.

short on time now, but here are some photos.
sampling wine...

Lockie making "bush tea"...you have to swing it around!

near the top...Ben & Dave

Dave & Ben pretending to waterski in the bottom of Green Lake, which I mentioned when we first got into Horsham.

Our team at the top of Mt. Williams. It was our first hike the day we transferred from Hamilton to Horsham. from left: Koshare, Jill, Kim, Ben, Dave.

Ballarat tomorrow

I just wanted to let you all know that we're moving to our last host location tomorrow.

Goodnight y'all.

now in Horsham

We arrived in Horsham this evening, after getting an early start from Hamilton this morning so we could fit in an extra hike. Our first stop in Horsham gave a glimpse of what the next few days will be like: the lake where the locals used to recreate (swimming, boating, water-skiing) is COMPLETELY drydand has been for several years. There are weeds throughout the lakebed, and a dozer firebreak has been cleared where several meters of water once stood. It is quite scary, and made all of us feel that even though we live where the water feels plentiful, as individuals and as a society we need to be much better at conserving and managing water use.
Earlier in the day we hiked to the top of Mt. Williams in the Grampiens (not Gambier, thanks Naomi, I was tired...!) Mountain Range, and experienced the first big scenic vistas of the trip...we could see for many miles (ok, kilometers) in every direction. On our journey between Hamilton and Horsham we made stopped several times to hike to scenic overlooks...it was great to get in quite a bit of exercise.
For me, the vocational highlights from Hamilton were the Arborline nursery, where around 50-100 different tree species are grown for outplanting in both commercial forests and restoration projects, and an afternoon with Ron "Yonda" Elliot, a one-man red gum sawmilling operation. He was quite a character! We also had an informative morning with the local Catchement Management Authority (CMA), and went to several alternative farming sites as well as an ITC blue gum plantation and a joint venture restoration project they did with Greening Australia. Once again, we saw wetlands that were no longer wet. An interesting note from the restoration project was that they actually seeded the tree species in 2002...and now they are 6-10 meters high. They did some overplanting as well, but the vast majority of the site had been machine-sown directly onto the site.

a few from Hamilton...

Our final picnic along the Glenelg River with the Hamilton Rotary club...a peaceful end to a fun day. I will post pics of Yonda Elliot, the redgum one-man-milling-operation, later.


The red gum trees are more than gorgeous...they are enchanting, intricate, unique, splendid, elegant, statuesque, magnificient...each one individually.

(I might not have gone on so much, but Dave gave me grief about using the same word over & over again, so I tried to come up with a few more.)

It is quite scary how low the reservoir levels are. This one is just under 4% of full capacity.

Jill enjoying the eucalypt scent at the Arborline nursery....

here is one picture of a trick from the band Dave raved about in the last post - unfortunately several of the others I thought would be great are actually blurry. They were incredibly talented kids!

later, mates!

Yesterday I had the finest cultural experience yet! That is partially what this trip is about. Our hosts figured that we should be experience the Port Fairy Folk Festival. And yes it was here that the hippies were out in droves and as we say came out of the wood work. I was particullarly impressed by this 1972 VW Van with the Roo Bar and lights. I guess if you are to travel this country as a Nomad the bar becomes a nesscessity. Additionally the van had the manditory dashboard filled with shells and spiritual pieces of wood and of course the tie dyed curtains and bongo drums.

The crowd was sizable and we saw only a prtion of the event. We saw only the 'Fringe'. There is a primary Festival Grounds where another 5 stages and over 10 000 more paying folkies spent there weekend. The smell of 'Nag Champa' incense was in the air and the venders were out in force with the usual assortment of stuff. Venders are known as Spella's here (I.E giving you the speel on there goods and wares)

We (Koshare and I) had no idea who any of the band were so our plan was to 'giver' in the classic sence and see as much as we could. There was a good selection of musicains and much talent. Our favourites were AlMack'nJack. Three teens who made us laugh with their stage act and talent. They switched instruments constantly and never ended up playing the same one by the end of the song. The music went from rock to folk to rap and spoken work. There was even the techno dance beats throw to keep lively. they were so good i bought the shirt and had it signed. All in all a fantastic day in the sun - great food, good people, beautiful setting and enjoyable music. maybe Koshare can add a pcture of the shoulder stand stunts of the band. Rock on. till later - Dave

a few pics from Mt. Gambier

Here are a few pics from our stay in Mt. Gambier. Tonight we are headed to a picnic in the park in Hamilton, and we are going to attempt to play cricket! Had a great day today...I think 7 stops total on our tour today...!
The GSE team playing dress-up with the kids at our last BBQ in Mt. Gambier!
from left: Koshare, Jill, Kim, Ben, & Dave.

Jill had the chance to practice her trampolining skills, and said the next morning she felt more limber than she has in two weeks!

Regardless of the hemisphere we're from, all foresters love to look at maps & landscapes. This is from Mt. Burr, which we kept accidentally referring to as "Burr hill", much to the dismay of the locals!

The amazing "crusher-roller" that they use for site preparation - it crushes the slash & rolls it into the ground

Looking at a TimberCorp blue gum plantation with Shana, who is a member of the Aussie GSE team headed to our district on March 23rd.

Cheers, mates!

Eat-and-run GSE

As you may have gathered, we've been here, there, and everywhere. We pulled into Hamilton today after some very busy (as Jill in part describes below) days in Mt Gambier. I would like to stand up and say that many places we've been and people we've met I would love to spend an entire day exploring or an afternoon chatting with. That goes for the entire trip. Thank you for having us and excusing my eat-and-run, surface-scratching modus operandi.

Goodnight.


The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

- Robert Frost, Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Vocational Days in South Australia

G'day from the state of South Australia!

We made it to the city of Mount Gambier on Sunday night (March 1st) and have been so busy touring the local forest operations that this is the first time we've had a chance to post! Mt. Gambier is a hub for forest activity in this region. We are in the heart of what's known as "The Green Triangle"- a vast expanse of radiata pine and blue gum (eucalypt) plantations. Here is a list of what we have seen and done since Sunday:

Monday

• Employees of Forestry South Australia delivered presentations to us on the topics of Yield Regulation, Management Systems, Forest Health, and Fire Management in this region;
• A representative of Southern Cross University spoke to us about forest education at Australian universities;
• Tour the operations of seedEnergy's Seed Production facility (included a tour of their seed orchard);
• View a Tree Breeding site and become educated by a representative of the Seed & Tree Breeding Association;
• View the landscape of plantations from Mount Burr (which is not really a mountain by our definition, but somewhat of a hill compared to the rest of the landscape here) and discuss operational mapping;
• Visit a native forest site (similar to what we refer to as old growth) and discuss native forest management as well as water management with a representative from the South Australia Department of Water, Land and Biodiversity Conservation; then
  
• Deliver our presentation about BC/Washington Forestry at a dinner of 4 Rotary Clubs.

Tuesday

• Three members of the upcoming inbound Australian GSE team (who are also foresters) took us out to show us their field work of operational forestry;
• Visit a cultivation site where a blue gum plantation was about to be established;
• Visit a site to view active blue gum harvesting and in-field chipping;
• Visit a blue gum site that had just been harvested in December. Blue gum coppices at the stump and the new saplings were already 1m tall! (How's that for regen!);
• Visit a 5 year old blue gum plantation of Timbercorp's and discuss thinning and mid-rotation fertilization as well as forest health management. This plantation was being attacked by the cadmus beetle and would need to be aerially sprayed with insecticide soon;
• View active harvesting of radiata pine as well as the work of a "chopper roller" machine for site preparation- pretty neat!
  
• Winds up to 90 km/hr shut down harvest operations mid-day and blew the power out of the nearby town of Dartmoor. Everything shut down- even the schools- because of the wind and its associated fire risk;
• RAIN is delivered to this landscape! It hadn't rained here since December- we told them we brought it with us!
• As the rain clears up and sun comes, several kangaroo emerge from the woods and jump around as we head back to Mt. Gambier at the end of the day; then
  
• Deliver a presentation about BC/Washington forestry at a dinner meeting of the Institute of Foresters of Australia. Entertain several questions from a group of approximately 40 people.
  

Forestry here is SO different than coastal forestry where we come from. We look forward to sharing information with everyone about the details of these differences. We also look forward to showing the Australian GSE team of foresters what forestry in district 5020 is all about!

That's all for now. Tomorrow we transfer to Hamilton via Casterton.

We'll keep you "posted",
Jill

Gettin to Know Some of the Local Lingo

G'day Mates,

After going hammer and tongs for the past fortnight, our team was quite ready to enjoy one day off in the city of Portland. Today was the first day we had to each do whatever we wanted on our own schedules. This morning, Dave and Koshare grabbed their bathers and hit the beach to do some surfing. Jill treated herself to a massage while Kim went to check out the "Wine, Wood, and Roses" festival up in Heywood. Kim almost bought a pottery chook, but decided it might break in her suitccase on the way home. Ben caught up on downloading his many photos of the trip so far. This afternoon, Koshare hit the bitumen and went for a nice bike ride out to the local enchanted forest site.

Other points to pass along about my Australian observations during this exchange:

• Australia has so many roundabouts! They're great! I reckon that Canada needs more of these!
• Pedestrians don't have the right of way here at roundabout intersections- only if it's a marked crosswalk.
• I never knew there were so many types of eucalyptus trees! Someone stated there were 650 different types.
• Australia has far tastier edible wild plants than our homeland does. So far we've snacked on bush mint, sheoak, water celery, kangaroo apples (taste like papaya), sea berries (like pomegranate), and sea lettuce (salty, nutty tasting)!
• The state of Victoria is fighting some of the same invasive plants/noxious weeds as we are at home- weeds like blackberry bushes and Canada thistle (what they call Scotch thistle).
• All school kids here wear uniforms.
• Talking on a cell phone while driving in the state of Victoria is illegal.
• Trading hours for businesses are Monday to Friday 9-5 and Saturday 9-1. Then the town shuts down for the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday for a rest- what a concept!
• Many Australians have been to Canada and comment on how beautiful our country is and how friendly the people are. Many have been to the tourist destinations like Banff, Jasper, Lake Louise, Whistler, Victoria, and Niagara Falls.

We venture out of the state of Victoria tomorrow morning and into the state of South Australia. We'll be staying in the city of Mount Gambier. Then we head inland toward Hamilton (where it was 30 degrees Celsius yesterday morning at 9 am!).

Well, I reckon I should sign off for now- it's suppertime- time to go find some fair dinkum tucker to eat.

Until the next post,
Jill

Where we have been hosted thus far

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Now in Portland...

Hello All,
We are now in Portland, the first white settlement in the state of Victoria, and for us, the fourth set of host families. On the way here today, we toured a wind farm in Codrington, and then when we got here we were driven to several sites along the Discovery Coast. Stunning views, breathtaking color in the ocean, and plenty of wind to clear anything from the last 2 weeks out of our brains for the next leg of our journey. Tomorrow we tour the timber processing infrastructure in and around the Port of Portland. While we were in Warrnambool, we went to the CFA (Country Fire Authority, equivalent to our Rural Fire Districts in the US) training facility, and to the Warrnambool Timber Company, which produced finger-jointed lumber and glue-lam beams. The utilization of timber here is pretty impressive.

Suspenders versus Braces

Our Forestry Presentation to the Rotary Clubs of Warrnambool. Left to right are Dave, Jill, Koshare, Kim, and Ben. We start each presentation wearing our uniform jackets. Then, part way through the presentation, we take off our jackets to reveal our westcoast logger's attire that we've brought along with us! After our first presentation, we quickly learned not to refer to these as our "suspenders" because that is the term that Australians use to describe the devices that hold up ladies' stockings! For the remainder of our trip, we are now referring to them as "braces" because that is the Australian term for what we call suspenders!

Link to newspaper article

Here's the article that appeared in the Colac newspaper about our visit:
http://colacherald.com/2009/02/20/visitors-learn-about-industry/

Colac pics 3

Geoff and Graham, local forest & botanical experts who accompanied us on our hikes and provided a wealth of information.







Jill, Kim, Geoff and Peter, discussing forest and farm land at the back end of Laurie & Jan Shaw's property.

our legs as we rode in the back of the "yute" around the farm! I discovered my inner child again along the ride!

Dave and Jill viewing the upper end of of the farm area.

the tower of the Otway Fly! Even though it is 47 meters high, some of the trees are already taller.

Colac pics 2

the Otway Fly canopy walk














Jill among the treetops














the dinosaur caught Ben!!!












a map from the interpretive board...helps show where we were.

the Aussie version of springboard holes...from the first time the area was logged in the 1930s

Pictures from Colac

Triplet Falls in the Otways

















Kim's usual stance












the Forestry GSE team "hugging" a tree





A gorgeous meal at the Otway Estates Vineyards....the meat in the middle is kangaroo!








Dave, Jill, and Ben and the AKD Softwood Mill. The local paper reporter & photographer also came & there was a nice article about us in the paper the next day.

Catching Up

Would you believe the forest workers here wear shorts?!

We are now in Warrnambool, a beautiful little town along the Great Ocean Road. Since Dave last posted to the site, we had our best day yet (or at least it was for me!). We started a bit earlier than previous days, so we could fit in a hike/walk to Triplet Falls. It was so worth it! We were astounded by the size of the trees, by the tree ferns, by the cool air; it was as peaceful beautiful as any of our parks. Then we headed to the Otway Fly...a steel walkway in the tree canopy of the Otways. After experiencing the forest floor in the morning, we got to walk 25-47 meters in the air, among the upper reaches of the trees. Anyone who was afraid of heights would NOT have enjoyed it! I wish we had similar canopy walks in area! Ben's favorite part was the portion of the trail with the dinosaur sculptures, as you'll see in the pictures.
From there, we headed to the private farm of Rotarians Laurie (male) and Jan Shaw. They fed us a delicious lunch of quiche, homemade bread, roasted vegetables and potatoes, and by far the most heavenly dessert we've had: berries, shortcake, and ice cream (perhaps Ben will post his pictures of that later?).
Yesterday we left Colac, where we'd already gotten attached to the people. The Camperdown Rotarians hosted a BBQ lunch for us in the Camperdown Botanic Garden, and then Brian and Bill drove us along the Great Ocean Road, stopping at all the viewpoints along the way and giving us time to take lots of pictures, stretch our legs, and enjoy the sand on our bare feet in one place where there was a famous shipwrech survival story.
Today we had lunch at the Timboon Distillery and a few of us sampled their spirits, then went cheese tasting, then strawberry picking. The evening was our presentation to a few of the local Rotary members, and I believe the others are all out enjoying a drink at the pub, while I came home with Anne (she lives a way out of town...too far to walk home!).
Hope you are all doing well. Enjoy the few pictures!

Highlights From Our First 3 Presentations

Wow, what a whirlwind the past 10 days has been! We're now in the city of Warrnambool and just finished delivering our third PowerPoint presentation about forest management in BC and northwest Washington. I thought I'd share some highlights from our experiences in delivering these presentations:

Presentation #1
City: Geelong
# of Rotary Clubs in Geelong: 9
# people attending our presentation: 100+
Location: Ballroom of a heritage building

This was our first presentation and everything went quite well. The District Governor was in attendance and complimented us on a job well done. Everyone was quite impressed at how professional our presentation was! Our hard work paid off. (We had met over 5 weekends as a team throughout this past winter to put this presentation together). I enjoyed the Q & A period that followed our presentation as we each took turns answering various questions.

Presentation #2
City: Colac
# of Rotary Clubs in Colac: 2
# of people attending our presentation: 70
Location: Dining hall of a hotel restaurant

Our second presentation was delivered during a very hot evening (it was 34 degrees C at 5 pm that day). Dave and Ben were pretty hot in their suits and ties (hot like temperature hot, although they did look pretty sharp). During the Q & A period, one Rotarian stood up and asked if I knew how many teats a cow moose has! Since I've only ever hunted bull moose, I really didn't know! It's now my mission to find out and let him know. (I had brushed up on some of my Canadian trivia before embarking on this trip and I can tell you this wasn't one of the facts I encountered!)

Presentation #3
City: Warrnambool
# of Rotary Clubs in Warrnambool: 4
# of people attending our presentation: 30+
Location: Art Gallery

We delivered our third presentation tonight in the open hall of an art gallery. To our surprise, surrounding us as we delivered our presentation were large paintings of nude people! (a little awkward!). Every day is a new adventure here for us!

It was during the Q & A of tonight's presentation that I started to realize some common trends in the questions that Australians are asking our GSE forestry team. These questions are on the following topics:

• Mountain Pine Beetle
• Fire Management- incidence of fire in our forests and the politics around fire management.
• Forest Land Base- questions about who owns our forests and the challenges of managing for all users (preservation, conservation, industrial uses).
• Aboriginal Peoples- cultural considerations.
• Old Growth- questions about the age of our OG and where it grows (public vs. private land).
• Silviculture- questions about how exactly we re-establish our forests and the species that we plant.

Well, that's all for now...looks like we deliver our next presentation this upcoming Wednesday. According to our schedule, by then we will have toured the Penshurst CFA fire centre, a Warrnambool timber facility, Preston Windows (which uses our very own Western Red Cedar for manufacturing window frames!), the Codrington Wind Farm, CEMPAC timber processors, Heywood timber facility and associated forests! We're covering a lot of ground on this tour! It's been phenomenal!

PS- We made the Colac Herald newspaper! During a tour of AKD Softwoods' Mill in Colac, a photographer and reporter photographed and interviewed us about our group study exchange and then published our photo and story in their newspaper!

All the best until my next opportunity to post,
~Jill

9 days and two homes

Hi All

It has been a very busy 9 days. In some ways it feels like I have been here for weeks as we have been given a crash course on everything Australian. From surfing, to footy and cricket, museums and music, forestry and saw mill tours with a healthy balance of meaty BBQs including the rare Kangaroo. We have been going non stop! I have had two home stays so far and both have been absolutely wonderful. John my first host, a retired surgeon, made sure we saw Melbourne the best we could by train and trolley. Graham "me" present host (everything here is me vs. my) that I am leaving today has taught me everything about the Australian cattle industry including calving and milking. He has kept me busy with chores after our already full days.

We have had three vocational days so far. We have seen a chip plant (for pulping), discussed land tenure and regulations, visited conventional and cable harvesting blocks, walked among the 80m tall gum and ash trees, avoided the fires but watch plenty of new stories, viewed a nursery producing millions of radiata pine and eucalyptus (blue gum) trees. It has been amazing to see the industry down under. It is great to see the investment in mills to make specialty products such as finger jointed and laminated beams for there mainly domestic market.

The growth rates are staggering 5 or 6m tall blue gums that are 3yrs old. For the foresters out there growth rates that have a MAI (mean annual increment) of 20m3/ha compared to BC’s average of say 2.5. Crazy growth rates – trees like weeds. Lots of talk about the “greenies”, the environment, natural forest harvesting, plantation management and global warming. For all the differences we have found lots of common ground to discuss and new friends in the process.

I love a sunburnt country
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding plains

We look forward to more.
Cheers Dave

Koshare

Hey what can we say. This is just Koshare being beautiful.

Geelong Botanical Gardens

We had a wonderful evening at the Geelong Botanical Gardens and a jaz concert in the gardens. Here is Koshare just being beautiful.

Surfing at Ocean Grove

Okay so Koshare has had enough, but look in the background. Dave is up and surfing. We know it is Dave as everyone else has wetsuits on. The water is cold.

Ocean Gove

Koshare & Dave tried surfing

Maritime Museum Swan Bay

Dave was checking out the gear

Lonsdale Lighthouse tree

Okay someone please tell us what type of tree this is. It was at the front entrance to the Lonsdale Light house.

John Williams

John was a fabulous guide for us on our tour of Melbourne. The day started at the train station in Geelong at 9:30. After a half hour on the train we were transferred to a bus due to a fatality on the line. So we had the cooks tour on the bus, then back on a train to Southern Cross Station.
Once in Melbourne we went to the top of the Rialto building to get a view of the city. Due to the smoke from the fires the view was limited. Then on to Victoria Market....more to come.
Needless to say John wore us out.
Thank you so much. It was a fabulous day.

Koshare shopping for a purse

Downtown Melbourne

Melbourne Sat Feb 14 Happy Valentines Day

PDG Alf Swan

Alf & Helen Swan were my first hosts. Their hospitality and warmth were very much appreciated. And Alf if you had the internet to read this, I will not forget you.

Aussie Footie

Pictures Geelong

Pics 2

Pics

Pictures

Some of the pictures of the last few days

Monday already?

I've been told today is Monday...is that true??!!! We left our Highton Rotary Club host families this morning...it was actually surprisingly difficult to leave after only a few days! The Colac and Colac West Rotarians picked us up this morning. We had a lovely drive along part of the Great Ocean Road, a fabulous lunch in an open-air restaurant in Lorne, and then got to swim in the ocean for about an hour! It felt cool getting in, but once in, it was wonderful. Kim has been taking amazing pictures and is hoping to be able to add some to our blog, but I don't know if she has internet service at the Gorgeous country Bed & Breakfast where she is staying. As for me, I haven't been able to connect to the internet from my own computer, so I haven't figured out the adding pictures yet.
Last night we went to an outdoor jazz concert at the Botanical Gardens in Geelong. Is there anything better than outdoor music in the summertime, while enjoying picnic foods and local wines?
Jill is still stiff after taking a fall from a horse on Saturday...for her friends & family, she is really OK, just stiff! Ben has avoided any major sunburns except for a small bit on his cheek...he is diligent with his sunscreen. Dave is always up for a new adventure. Koshare has avoided any major sunburns, but seems to have lost the sunhat she was so excited about. Did I mention Kim has been taking amazing photos?
Today we also went to dairy farm! WOW!!! Jill was even brave enough to try to hook up the milking machine.
Computer is losing battery....will write more when I can!

Amazing Day Friday

We started out the morning with a tour of the Midway Chip Mill here in Geelong...got to hear from Rowan Eyre about their company operations and tour the chipping facility. They are located right on the water in the industrial area and are able to load ships directly from the facility...the chips are headed to Japan.
We had lunch & spent the afternoon at the Aboriginal Cultural Museum called "Narana Creations". Norm Stanley (not his Aboriginal Name) had a lunch prepared for us, took us around the garden area they've created, and demonstrated boomerang-throwing. Then we all got a chance to try it! He did a wonderful job of explaining their culture, showed us traditional tools used for hunting, and finished by playing the digeri-doo (sp?). As an extra, we were driven to view the famous surfing beaches (Bell's Beach), but no one was out surfing because it was so windy.
Last night was our first presenation...to the Highton Rotary Club. It seemed very well-received, and the Rotarians asked excellent questions. Gifts were exchanged and a good time was had by all!
Many of you have asked about the fires. It is devasting news in the area, and there is a national campaign encouraging people to donate to the victims & survivors. Last I heard, AUS$ 70 million had been raised already. I have not heard how the money will be distributed. The news here has included how much other countries, including Canada and the US, have sent goodwill and assistance. We have not yet travelled to areas directly affected by the fires, and the towns hardest hit are not on our itinerary, but a couple of the towns we will get to later in our tour have had fires in the area, also. As we learn more about how we might help, we will certainly share that news with you.
Tomorrow, Jill has the opportunity to go horseback riding, and the rest of us are being escorted into Melbourne by Dave's host Rotarian, John. We are heading in on the train in the morning, and will return in time to have a BBQ dinner with Jill's host family.
We have taken hundreds of pictures already, and I will try to figure out how to post one soon!

Arrived safely at our destination!

Hello All!
Just wanted to let you know that we have arrived safely with our host families in Geelong! It was ~ 56 hours of travelling for the Canadians; Koshare had a little less at ~34 hours. Fortunately, our excitement at having arrived is still keeping us going this evening...though I suspect all of us will try to make up tonight for the fact that we slept on an airplane last night!

Group Study Exchange

The Rotary Foundation’s Group Study Exchange (GSE) program is a unique cultural and vocational exchange opportunity for businesspeople and professionals between the ages of 25 and 40 who are in the early stages of their careers. The program provides travel grants for teams to exchange visits in paired areas of different countries. For four to six weeks, team members experience the host country's culture and institutions, observe how their vocations are practiced abroad, develop personal and professional relationships, and exchange ideas.

In a typical four-week tour, applicants participate in five full days of vocational visits, 15 to 20 club presentations, 10 to 15 formal visits and social events, two to three days at the district conference, three to four hours per day of cultural and site tours, and three to four hours per day of free time with host families.

For each team member, the Foundation provides the most economical round-trip airline ticket between the home and host countries. Rotarians in the host area provide for meals, lodging, and group travel within their district.