Our Final Presentation!

Hard to believe, but Thursday was the last transfer day of the trip. It came quick because we only had two nights with the Yarraville RC, a bit of a shame, considering how much fun we had with them. These last two days will go quick as well, because Footscray RC only gets two nights with us and they have a full schedule to boot.

It was pouring down rain to start the day. I told our group it was because the Australian skies were weeping with the thought of our departure. Probably a bit dramatic, but the rain was serving our moods well, since we aren’t ready to leave.

John Davis, our District Governor, and Evan, another Footscray member picked us an our ever-increasing amount of luggage and schlepped us over to the Scienceworks, part of the Melbourne Museum. We were given a very thorough tour and even saw a presentation over coffee about the museum’s marketing efforts.

There was definitely a feeling of celebration as we headed towards our last Rotary Meeting of the trip. We joined the Footscray RC for lunch and made a small, informal presentation – the last of the trip! We’ve lost count of how many presentations we’ve given, so this was the one positive bout the trip coming to an end.

To complete the day, we spent a couple of hours with the Western Bulldogs AFL team and had the chance to learn about their advanced efforts to provide services within the community. Their efforts are quite different from their AFL counterparts, and are in fact very different from community relations efforts provided by American professional teams.

We wrapped up the day with a quiet evening with our host families. In a different twist, Matt and Aaron stayed with Roger and Margaret, while Jen and Christine were hosted by Eugene and Paulyne. Judy had the chance to stay with District Governor John and Joan.

Footy, Nibbles, Rainbows, Sunsets & Pubs

Aaron here –

Wednesday was an absolutely incredible day! Where do I start?

We had our final vocational appointments of the trip and Jen and I had a superb visit to the Carlton Football Club. Carlton is one of the AFL footy teams and Visy Advisor Tony DeBolfo and Director of Communications Steve Wilson were incredibly generous with their time. As if the conversation was entertaining enough, Tony hooked the two of us up with a bunch of free gear. Carlton, which has been competing since the late 1800s, has some good-looking merchandise and is one of the most historic clubs in the world.

Christine had her final visit by visiting Victoria University (Vic Uni – as the Aussies call it), while Matt got a final visit to the Victoria Supreme Court Library.

The rain continued to follow us Americans throughout the day and actually required a change in plans for the evening. We were slated to take a cruise down the Maribyrnong River, but got rained out. So we decided to slum it over at Matt’s families house at the 11th floor penthouse for some nibbles (or appetizers in the states). And by slum it, I mean overlook the beach from one balcony and downtown Melbourne from another. And if that wasn’t good enough, we were treated to a magnificent rainbow, which was promptly followed by the most gorgeous sunset you could imagine. The colors on the water in the sky changed every two minutes, so, as you can see, we had some spectacular photos.

A number of our new VERY entertaining friends from the Yarraville Rotary Club wanted to keep us entertained, so we finished off the evening at one of the local pubs.

A Night for Farewells

Christine here –

Tuesday was a crazy busy day! We visited the Eureka Museum in Ballarat in the morning. The Eureka Museum is a diorama museum…but not like those little tiny dioramas you built in the 3rd grade for geography class. Nooooo…these were gigantic, dioramas that were designed to make a statement and boy, did it ever. Over lunch at a local pizza joint, we were handed off to our new club, Yarraville, and sent back to the city.

The Tuesday event to report on, of course, was the Farewell Dinner in Altona. We, along with the outbound GSE team, the US Consul General (Earl Michael Irving) and DG John Davis were announced one-by-one and descended down the curved staircase to greet the awaiting crowd of 200 Rotarians who came to bid us good-bye.

It was an evening of fun and, I admit, a few tears. Up until now, our team presentation is a 15-20 minute Powerpoint that shares a bit about each of us and a bit about Nebraska (sounds a bit boring, but it’s actually quite good, if I do say so myself). Anyhow, for the Farewell Dinner, Aaron, our most favorite, most talented, most dedicated GSE photographer and computer nerd, came through with a 7 minute slide show of Aussie photos set to music (look up Peter Allen’s “I Still Call Australia Home”). Seriously, the first time he showed it to us back in Bendigo, I sobbed like a little girl who had my puppy stolen. I’m proud to report that at the farewell dinner, I managed to hold it together during the photo presentation (unlike some of the Rotarians). We do love that Aaron! (If it were up to Jen and I, we would have passed around paper photos, I’m sure).

Anyhow, it was a great evening. We had the chance to catch up one final time with some of our new Australian friends and share our experiences.

P.S. – if anybody has any good pictures from the night, send them our way. We were busy working the room, so our library is a bit short!

Parades and Rain in Bendigo

Monday was our turn to get some culture in our lives. As we’ve mentioned the city of Bendigo pretty much shut down for a four-day Easter weekend. Bendigo has a strong Chinese heritage, as the Chinese played a key role in the labor force during the gold rush in the 1850s. As a tribute to that heritage, Bendigo hosts a lengthy parade on Easter Monday that includes the longest parade dragon in the world. It was quite the scene to see a dragon winding through the street, manned by no less than 85 people. It’s quite the attraction and people jammed the sidewalks to witness the attraction. Almost equally impressive were the lion dancers – manned by some very athletic acrobats.

To ensure we tasted the full flavor of the day’s festivities, we stopped by Jen’s host family, Phil and Deb, for a lunch barbeque. Their house is the perfect location for a parade party, as a majority of the floats stage in their front yard.

Following the parade, we had an appointment for a viewing at the Bendigo Art Museum, courtesy of Judy’s “host mom” Julie. We actually haven’t spent much time visiting art in Victoria, so it was quite interesting. Despite being a city of just 100,000 people, Bendigo has an amazing collection of historic art. The fact that we had a guided tour really gave us an understanding and appreciation for the gallery’s collection.

We were whisked off to a quick tour of the Chinese Museum and managed to squeeze an entire hour of free time before we headed to Peter and Julie house for some stir fry dinner – evidently there are “red meat free” meals here! Christine couldn’t attend as she was hanging with her host Penny, but the rest of us had quite the entertainment as a serious thunderstorm rocked the area.

Being from Nebraska, we have seen more than our share of thunderstorms, but Bendigo (and the majority of the state of Victoria) has been decimated by a 10-year drought. So the locals were literally dancing in the back yard with the serious rainfall. We of course took credit for it!

Crazy Stretch

Just a quick note to let you know we haven’t forgot about the blog. We’re on a crazy stretch during the final week and had limited internet access the past week. We’ll get you caught up as soon as possible! In the mean time, I have uploaded a bunch of new pics, so you can check those out until we write some entertaining content. Aussie Pictures

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! We’re proud to report that we all managed to get our butts up and to the Sacred Heart Cathedral for 8:30 a.m. Mass. We’re also proud to report that Jen’s plan to wake up at 6 a.m. for a run didn’t quite work out…makes the rest of us non-worky-outy people feel so much better!! Matt, of course, managed to wake up early for a long walk (every time we get together at a pool, Matt is the only one who swims while the rest of us “wade” and work on our tans.) After a somber Easter service, we went home to our host families for Easter lunch.

We met up again at 1 p.m. to go to the Bendigo Winemakers Festival in Castelmaine. You’re not new, so you know how this team “sampled” the local wines. We also got a cheese fix with more blue vein cheese, soft white cheese, quince paste and bikkies. We love Australia!!

So, here we are again, sitting around a table as a team, reviewing the schedule for the next couple of days…again. What are we going to do once we return to Nebraska? How are we going to manage to get through our day-to-day lives withour our team leader, Judy, to review our schedules with us? We refuse to think about life after Australia…we’ve got less than a week left and we’re planning to make the most of it! We’ll start tonight with a gathering at the local pub…nothing says Happy Easter like pub food and drinks!

Are you going to eat that?

We started our first day of the Easter Weekend by meeting up at Sacred Heart Cathedral (except Matt, who ditched us for breakfast with his host family). It was transfer day AGAIN, so we thought we’d start the day with a little religious observation – not really. We wanted to visit Sacred Heart Cathedral, because it’s an amazingly beautiful building and we were scoping out a location for Easter Sunday service (by the way, it’s the last Gothic Church built in the world).

After our cultural moment, we went to the Bendigo Art Gallery Café (not for the art…for the food and drink, of course) and had the best Lemon Tart in OUR LIVES!!!! FYI – we’ve tried lemon desserts at every single eating opportunity, so WE KNOW our lemon tart.

We then transferred from RC Bendigo to RC Kangaroo Flat over lunch at the Hole In One Park – and according to Trevor (who’s driving our car right now as we write this blog), they’re the best hosts we’ve ever had (he’s Matt’s current host dad).

It can’t always be fun and games, so the five of us had to get together for some real work. After all, we have a presentation on Tuesday in front of 200 of our newest friends at our farewell dinner, so we rallied to decide how to summarize our amazing trip in a whopping 15 minutes. Stay tuned – we’re going to rock the place!

Once again, Matt had to steal the show with how much better he is than the rest of us at the Bendigo Easter Weekend Carnival. He jumped on one of those crazy whirly rides (after a monster dinner, no less), with Jen’s host mom, Deb. Why do we continue to be surprised by The Amazing Matt!?

Dinner at The Match café was uber-yum, but the one thing that’s happened on this trip is that Matt and Aaron have lost all privileges on ordering their own food. It’s not so much that they’re making bad choices, but Jen and I can never decide what we want, so we choose for everyone…then we don’t have to make a decision (we’re so clever!!). In our defense, we haven’t heard the guys complain (but who would really care if they did).

Afterwards, we gathered at Jen’s host family’s house and, lo and behold, they had a hot tub and pool that needed to be broken in. So us, being the kind and polite Americans that we are, couldn’t refuse the offer to chill out in the pool. It was another late night and the 8:30 a.m. Easter Sunday Mass will be here sooner than we’d like…..

Stinky Friday

Bendigo on Friday was a day filled with local experiences, delicious food (of course) and stinky cheese. We started the day at Bendigo Pottery where it took every ounce of willpower to NOT purchase all of the great pottery that was available. I’m proud to report that I managed to talk both Aaron and Jen off of the ledge…Aaron was eying a gigantic red vase made by a local artist (beautiful, but really, how is he going to get that home) and Jen was considering the purchase of a large white tray (she eats cake mix…need I say more?!).

Most of us walked away with a few small purchases…after all, pottery can be heavy and two of us have already paid the overweight charge on luggage on the way out here. Shopping always brings on an appetite, so our next obvious stop was at Big Hill Winery where we sampled (drank) our fair share of Shiraz (the regional recommendation) and had one of the best lunches to date. With some time to spare, we visited the Central Deborah Mine for a bit of culture and history. After such an exhausting morning, we all returned to our host families for a little nap prior to the evening gathering in Sutton Grange.

Jen’s host family lives on a working sheep farm in the valley of Mt Alexander. Imagine a small cluster of granite buildings (built in the 1870s) in the middle of the open range with the mountain as your backyard. Picturesque is an understatement. After we all had a chance to tour the property and learn about the history of the buildings and the farmstead, we settled in for a relaxing evening of great food, amazing local wine (provided by a fellow Rotarian who owns a vineyard) and the stinkiest cheese we’ve ever had in our lives!

It was the night when Matt again surprised all of us by eating this cheese not just once, but TWICE. The cheese was a source of delight for the cheese conisseures among us, but also served as entertainment for those of us who couldn’t appreciate such a pungent treat. So the biggest question is, “why did Matt eat it twice if it was so bad?

According to Matt, he doubted his taste buds and seriously doubted something could taste so bad. We have some photos if you want to see the real reaction. No offense, Heather and Andrew – your party was PHENOMENAL, but the cheese was not a hit with the Americans. We can appreciate fine wine, but our palette has yet to learn cheese.

P.S. – to our American Friends – all of us have now managed to see kangaroos in the wild…. So quit asking – it’s like seeing a wild deer in Nebraska.

Shock, Horror and Relief in Bendigo

Please forgive the tardiness and formatting… we’re having a hard time with internet access and not working from our own computers. You may want to scroll down and work your way back up as we’ve loaded several posts at once and the most current post is always at the top.

 

***

 

I think I woke the city of Bendigo Thursday morning with cries of terror

 

As you are probably aware my entire purpose on this trip revolves around electronic gadgetry. Every night I have to charge two batteries for my laptop, two batteries for my camera, my iPhone, not to mention the occasion battery charge for my teammates

 

So imagine my horror when I found that my charger, which had worked perfectly the night before, was dead this morning. Not to bore you with the technicalities, but because the charger has an Australian converter on one side and a U.S. converter on the other – it would be next to impossible to find one over here.

 

Unfortunately, there wouldn’t be time to address the issue, as we were scheduled for a vocational day on Thursday. With Good Friday and Easter quickly approaching, Thursday marked our only chance for a vocational visit before the long weekend. Good Friday is a national holiday, so all the businesses will be closed tomorrow. Easter weekend is a huge weekend here in Australia, marking a weekend of family get-togethers. It is one of the biggest travel days of the year in Australia.

 

So for our vocational day, Jen visited the Bendigo Bank, while Matt, Christine and Aaron all visited the campus at Latrobe University. Our visits finished up around 12:30 p.m., so we all joined up for lunch in downtown Bendigo. We had such good luck at the Beechworth Bakery in Echuca, we thought we could see if lightning would strike twice. Day two might have been better than day one.

 

Our plans changed at the last moment, so the group had an afternoon of free time. Christine had a commitment to spend the day with her host family at the water park, so the rest of us trotted our way down to the Australian version of Radio Shack/Best Buy, known as Dick Smith’s to try and right our electronic ship.

 

We got the a huge break, because the charger needed a new fuse, which came in packs of six for $2. Hard to believe a 33-cent part almost brought this trip to a grinding hault.

 

Judy, Jen, Matt and I explored downtown before stopping a glass of wine to relax and catch our breath.

 

Tonight the plan is to spend a quiet night with our host families.

Meeting the Mayor

Another transfer day – this time to the city of Bendigo, about an hour and a half south of Echuca-Moama. Hopefully by this point you can visualize what these transfer days are like – usually a couple of large four-wheel drive vehicles jammed to the roof with suitcases, duffle bags and carry-on bags for five people.

 

Our transfer actually took place in the tiny town of Elmore, about half way between the two cities. We had a late breakfast/early lunch with a couple of our newest Rotary friends, Collin, Ian and Rosalie.

 

We were on a bit of a tight schedule as we discovered we had a reception with the Mayor of Bendigo. So we all cleaned up with our nicest Rotary digs and met up downtown with some more Rotarians and some of Bendigo’s council members. The Mayor was a gracious host and was quite generous with his time.

 

The majority of our host families were there to pick us up after the reception, so we were carted off to our new homes. As usual, we have great families and terrific accommodations. However, Jen has the most interesting arrangement of the trip, as she is staying on a 400-acre farm, complete with wild kangaroos and wallabies roaming the land.

 

The Bendigo Rotary Club is hosting their annual art show over the Easter Weekend, so we had the opportunity to head down to Town Hall and catch the opening night. The showing was quite impressive and must have included a few hundred pieces of art. We of course enjoyed some free appetizers and wine during the opening and headed home for the night.