Australia : Getting ready for the Outback.

Here we are, with Captain Ken from SY Moonbeam (just to the right of Jens) together Rob Riley, a regular on the Moonbeam crew list, having a farewell dinner at the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron as Rob was flying back to the US in the morning.  Jens sailed on Moonbeam with Ken, Rob and one other crew from Opua, New Zealand to Brisbane, Australia completing the 1200 nautical mile journey in 10 days.  They arrived in Brisbane a few days before I was scheduled to fly back from my short stint in Canada.  Ken will continue North this week, sailing up to Cairns where we hope to meet up with him before he continues on his Pacific Circuit sail to Thailand.

It was important for me to get to Canada this Spring as it seemed they needed someone to come in and take control of the weather.  When I arrived there was still nearly 3 feet of snow on the ground up in Muskoka.  I had to wrestle with Mother Nature, a battle she fought well, dumping a further six inches of snow the week after I arrived, but in the end I managed to get the upper hand and Spring was well in place.  

And now we are looking at maps and travel brochures, putting the framework of a plan in place hoping to see as much of Australia as we can during the next 11 weeks.  We have a few "must sees" but Australia is a big country and we know there will be some great sights we will have to miss.  In fact, we have already resigned ourselves to the fact that we won't get to West Australia, missing Perth and the beautiful West Coast.  

We bought a car when we arrived here last year and our little KiaRoo as we call her has been patiently waiting for us at the Yacht Club.  Today we outfitted her with a nifty awning which pulls out for shade onto which we attach a tent. How cool is that.  Easy to put up, easy to pull down and fold away.  The awning will give us a shady place for lunch and the tent will save us loads on hotels.  We're just about ready to go. A few more days to get sorted out and we'll be on the road exploring the outback.  

Oh, yes.  A few Aussie words to keep in mind.  Here hiking is called trekking, not tramping.  And a chicken is a 'chuk', flip flops are 'thongs', a pick up truck or SUV is a 'ute' (short for utulity) and a cooler is an 'esky' (I guess short for Eskimo which was a popular brand of coolers once upon a time).

So we can say we also bought an esky to keep our chuks cool in our ute while we go trekking in our thongs.  Got that?