keeping up with Ellen: February Vacation in Australia et la Nouvelle Caledonie!!!

Life's a beach!

I've been away from my blog for the past month enjoying the sun and sandy beaches of Australia and New Caledonia. I'm going to keep the typing to a minimum and post mostly pictures as they will be a better testimony to what I saw and experienced than what my words can probably describe.

In brief though, the trip was FANTASTIC! We started off with a week in Mt Martha outside of Melbourne (like Guelph to Toronto in size and distance) where and met up with Scott and Emma at the airport and stayed with Allyce, Alan, Riley and Carly. We spent the week at the beach and also popped into the city for some exploring. That week we experience one of the hottest days on record for the last 100 years -- about 42 degrees where we were and 46 in Melbourne!

Our second week we took off with Scott and Emma on a coastal drive from Melbourne to Sydney. Some of the major fires started breaking out that we and we had to dodge a few along the way, but weren't detoured too much. We stayed in Lakes Entrance, where we got out to Raymond's Island to see the koalas, Merimbula, Bateman's Bay, where we saw the kangaroos at Pebbly Beach, a night in Kiama with a trip to the Minnamura rainforest, spent Valentine's Day in Bondi beach and ended our week at the Rocks in Sydney .

Emma and Scott Flew back to Canada from Sydney and Milton and I got on a plane to New Caledonia where we spent 10 great days exploring the "Paris of the Pacific". We stayed in Noumea for the first 5 nights and then spent a weekend on Ile des Pins, and finished our stay at Anse Vata. We had great luck and only had one day spoiled by rain even though they are in rainy season this time of year.

We got back to Australia for 4 last days of vacation which we spent back in Mt Martha with the fam. We did a bit more exploring in the city and in Mornington and ended on a lovely last evening out at a really nice Indian restaurant taking advantage of the variety of foods that exist outside of Korea!

Now it's back to reality - official vacation is over and the new school year started today. It's not so rough though, I have no classes to teach this week until they work out a schedule for the school.

So enjoy the photo journal and feel free to leave comments (following the link just at the bottom of this posting).