Country Club Boy

CLUB TAREE

I always did want to belong to a country club. Just could never afford it - or at least justify it... Well, I got the opportunity in Taree, New South Wales, Australia of all places. There is no golf course in Old Bar, but Taree has one. It's 15 minutes from our house and about five minutes from where I work. There is a group of current and retired teachers that play every Monday and Friday after work. I also try to get out early on Sunday mornings on the weekends when we aren't bopping about the countryside.

Remarkably, to me, is that there is rarely anyone on the course at any of the 3 times a week I get to play. There is a huge split in Australia between "competitive golf" and "social golf". The 'competitors' play on Tues., Thurs., and Sat. and have mini tournaments. They look waaaay down their noses at those that play for recreation and fun. In fact there is a club rule that all 'social' players must play from the yellow (forward) tees. Of course, no one obeys that stupid rule... None of these players come to the course on the other 4 days a week. This leaves it beautifully open for the rest of us.

The course is beautiful. It's long and crooked with small elevated greens. Nearly every hole bends from left to right so I've become a bit of a hooker wishing to be a draw-er. The greens are slower than I'm used to, but are smooth - probably due to the lack of play. I took Karen out this past Sunday to play and take some photos. We teed off at 7:15 and didn't see another soul till we had played 8 holes. Nirvana for a fast player.

The golf members also belong to the attached social club complete with a restaurant, bar, and casino. The whopping charge for this is $198 (Aus) or about $160 (US) every 6 months. It costs me about 3 dollars a round if I play 2 times a week. It is truly the best deal in town for me. I plan to take advantage of it all year. The problem is that as we are now heading into winter the sunlight keeps decreasing for the after work golfers, but we'll still get in 7-8 holes in June according to my partners.

Just thought some of you might want to take a look at the course. Looking forward to teeing it up with some of you next spring. Hit 'em long and straight.

The Great Ocean Road

THE GREAT OCEAN ROAD

After we left Melbourne, we headed south than east to the Great Ocean Road. We were really looking forward to this part of the trip as we had heard so much about this area. The Great Ocean Road hugs the coastline, winding around excellent surf beaches (which Bell's Beach was my favorite...I wonder why?), past rugged cliffs, limestone formations, rainforests, waterfalls and holiday towns. We camped 4 nights along this breathtaking course.

The most famous attraction along the road is the 12 Apostles. They are limestones formations more than 70 meters high. They use to be part of the mainland but nature has done its damage. There are only 10 Apostles left due to rain, wind and tide. Two apostles have fallen. I wonder what their vices were??? As you can see by the pictures we had wonderful weather. We had zero days of rain and only 2 cool/cloudy ones out of 16 total days. A bit drier than our NZ trip.

We also went into the Otway Range Rainforest. We did a hike on the Otway Fly Tree Top Walk. This is a 600 meter long steel walkway, 25 meters (80-85 feet) above the forest ground. It gave us a bird eye's view of the gum trees and the rest of the rainforest flora. The structure was designed to sway like the trees in the wind.

It was our first time camping in Australia. We used 2 three-man tents. The kids slept in one and Mike and I used the other. To be honest, I was nervous to camp. There are so many "nasties" here that I thought something would crawl into our tent or we would wake up to a huge spiderweb around the door to our tent. It all ended up being just fine...at least for this trip.

We headed next to the gold fields and mountains. Kyle and Mariah will handle those topics...

The Janolan Caves BY MARIAH

From Ballarat we spent the night at Echuca on our way to the Jenolan Caves and the Blue Mountains. From Echuca we drove 7 1/2 hours to Bathurst and stayed at the Great Western Motel. We got up early and drove down a switch back road to the Jenolan Caves. There are 11 different caves. Each one has a 1-2 hour tour. The cave that we toured is the main, and most popular cave called Lucas Cave. Our tour was 1 1/2 hour long. We walked for a little while then came to cathedrals, big openings. Our guide then showed us formations and told us when that part of the cave was found. You could see where people from a long time ago sat and slid down. ( back then they were given a potato sack) people a long time ago only used candle light to see the caves. Now there are some lights, although still dark so it has the cave effect. After the guided cave tour we did a self guided tour through a more open cave. We held these black phone type things in our ear so we could hear all the information, it was like having a tour guide. When we finished the caves we hiked around a bight blue lake.

Cheers,

Mariah

The Gold Fields BY MARIAH

We left Warrnambool and made our way down to Ballarat. Ballarat was the centre (center) of the Australian Gold Rush in the 1850s. My mum (mom) bought tickets that included all the gold attractions. They were the gold museum, The Blood On The Southern Cross light show, and the Sovereign Hill 60 acre re-creation of a mining town in that time period. The museum was full of interesting facts about gold. It had replicas of gold, the biggest nugget ever found and all that jazz. After the museum, in the evening, we went to The Blood On The Southern Cross light show. The show told the story of how miners got in fights with the British soldiers because they didn't want to pay their gold mining taxes. They got taxed whether they found any gold or not. The show was a 1 1/2 hour outdoor play without any actresses or actors. The special effects were great.

The next morning we went to Sovereign Hill. We went under ground on a hunted gold mine tour, we saw them pour liquid gold into a gold bar that costs $80, 000, but was only a 9 x 5 x 4 inch block. We saw a wagon wheel be built, lollies (candy) of that time be made, we watched them spin metal, watched the stage coaches go by, we saw musket firing and much more. There were many people dressed up in clothes that people in that era would wear. Sovereign Hill was voted the #1 Australian attraction, by Australians.

The pictures are of us panning for gold in the creek, us in the town, the town from a birds eye view, my dad in the haunted chamber, a stage coach, and the red coats musket firing.