Reflections from Sydney.

We have been in Sydney since Monday, and as I (Jon) sit here this Saturday morning getting ready to fly to Melbourne for our final 4 or so days, I wanted to share some of our thoughts over this past week. Less of a play-by-play than other posts.

Our time in Sydney has been completely different from the rest of our trip. We have had space to just stop. No more moving from place to place every day, no more self-sufficiency, no more need to persevere through damp and cramped spaces. While none of this had been bad and while we loved our time in our campervan, we were ready for the change. We are well and rested in so many ways, but we are also tired from seeing and doing so much every day.

As we walked around Sydney our first couple of days here, we had moments of feeling restless or overwhelmed.  We talked and prayed a lot, wrestling with why we were feeling the way we were - was it because we were ready to go home? Was it because we were wrestling with ideas of how, as Chistians surrounded by need, we are spending all this time and money on us? Or was it because we were missing community? We were led to great conversations and times of prayer through this over our Tuesday and Wednesday in Sydney, and we realized that the most fundamental reason for what we were feeling was that we were simply unable to take in more beauty and newness at the rate we had been keeping. Wednesday afternoon (after already seeing great parts of the heart of Sydney with Circular Quay, the Harbour bridge, the Opera house, beautiful gardens and walks on the coast), when we arrived to the beautiful coast of Bondi and finally just stopped and sat and rested, we realized this need to slow down and we felt a lot of peace.  Sydney has not needed to be a place for us to run around and capture as much of it as possible. It is moreso a place for us to rest within aspects of its beauty and only do what we feel we have space for - with no needs.  Because of this, we have had great space to reflect with each other and with those we are spending time with here.  We have had space to reflect on our trip so far, but also on other things - on the next steps God is calling us to, the ways God is shaping our lives and worldviews, or our thoughts on home and family.

One thing I have been reflecting on is how my soul is eased when I am near the ocean. I found comfort in the ocean during my year in England, and on this trip so far the ocean has been a great meeting place with God for me.  I think that the open ocean is one example within creation where God's character is intrinsically reflected. Standing on the edge of a cliff looking out over the sea, I cannot help but feel the incredible power, danger and mystery of the sea.  This is paired perfectly with its beauty, goodness and wonder.  I want to jump in and have the ocean pour over me but there's also fear in how it cannot be controlled. It reminds me of how Narnians speak of Aslan in how he is so good but never safe.

With Cam at the Blue Mountains

As Aimee and I talked at the beginning of this week, we have realized how great of an opportunity this has been, but also that it would not be a sustainable lifestyle for us - with out much community, without great purpose in our days. We have both felt so blessed to have this time of rest and time away, but we both also were feeling a strong desire to engage with people here in Sydney.  These thoughts led to Thursday being a great day.  We began our day having breakfast out over one of dozens of beautiful headlands in Sydney with Bec, who has been such a wonderful host. We then wet up with an old OPC friend, Cam Patrick, who is going to Uni here in Sydney. He took us up to the Blue Mountains (beautiful) where we walked all over and spent a great afternoon together. We then ended up going back with Cam to his University Christian group's convention taking place this past week.  There were over 600 students from one university all energized by studying scripture and worshiping together. We had dinner with them and then joined them in worship and in their final talk with their keynote speaker. What a joy to engage in the universality of the gospel with students excited to spread the word and love of Jesus. A really cool night. Cam then graciously drove us back to our homebase in Bondi (about an hour and a half drive), stopping to show us the University of Sydney's campus. The end of a great day.

To briefly finish a long post, yesterday was also a good day. We had a slow start - Aimee made me a lovely breakfast - and then we headed to Manly where we rented kayaks and paddled around the harbour. It was a great change to how we saw Sydney. We found a beach sheltered by the wind where we were able to get in a great swim in the middle of Sydney's winter.  The trip even included having a Kookaburra stalk me and my food, and after a couple of close attempts coming at me, the bird actually grabbed my sandwich right out of my hand when I wasn't looking leaving a nick in my hand to boot. Of all of the dangerous animals in Australia, we did not expect it to be a Kookaburra that finally attacked. Needless to say, I was ready to get off the beach. After this, I found a great game of pick-up basketball in the city, and we had a nice night in together.

Today, we pack up and get ready to finish our Australian travels with a trip to Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road. We are really excited that Beth is going to join us down there to see us (yes, mostly Aimee) before we leave. Should be a great finish.


We leave you with likely one (maybe two) more posts to go. Thanks for reading my ramblings.

the spaceship has landed.

After 19 days on the road and well over 4000 kms travelled (See our updated map here), we have dropped off our van - our home for the past weeks - and are on foot for our last 10 days in Australia.  What a 19 days they have been.  Before we reflect, let us catch you up on our trek from Brisbane to Sydney.

A view of Lamington

We left Brissy early afternoon on Friday after enjoying a night in a real bed and nice hot showers in the morning.  Although I (Jon) started to feel a bit sick Friday, we were still able to visit Lamington National Park and go for a couple of great walks to see caves, cliff tops and incredible views.  As a final stop in Queensland, it was well worth it.

A large tree we came across on the road

We decided not to drive too far Friday evening, and so stopped in a small wet rest area of the kind that we have grown quite fond of over our time here.  We woke up early on Saturday knowing that we had a lot of ground we wanted to cover, and so we made only very brief stops in the morning in quaint surf towns of Yamba and Woolgoolga - both of which we could have stayed longer if time and weather permitted.  In the afternoon, we did take a small detour that at first did not seem worth it as we drove on a dirt road that seemed destined to end in a popped tire, but then took us past a few beautiful waterfalls and a great little town called Bellingen - Aimee again fell in love with the markets here, and the shops made her want to stay for days.

The view from our campsite 

After around 8 hours of driving and considering this was our second last night in our van, we decided to pay to stay at a campsite on a small peninsula (near South West Rocks) looking over the ocean and the beautiful coastline.  After a battle with strong winds, we were able to have dinner and spend a great evening around a roaring fire.  It was great to sit outdoors, listening to the ocean, seeing the stars above us, talking and even singing around a fire. A great end to a long day.

As we hit the road Sunday morning

Sunday, we made our way to Hunter Valley, taking a detour through the Australian "Great Lake" region.  Hunter Valley, for those unfamiliar with Australia, is the Australian wine country - and they take their wine very seriously here.  We had not planned on stopping here as we knew nothing about it but decided it would be an appropriate transition into more civilized city life.  We showed up late Sunday afternoon and fell upon vineyard after vineyard, along with enough cheese, olive and chocolate sampling to make anyone's palate content.  We sampled several wines, pretending to know more than we know, and had a nice dinner to finish off the day.  We then camped in our usual style (free rest area on the side of the highway), except this night was different because we were entertained for several hours by a local travelling surfer/construction worker.

Our new friend, Dextre, who shares his home with us

This (Monday) morning, we woke up to a bit more of Hunter Valley's luxuries and then headed down south to Sydney.  We cleaned up the van along the way before parting ways near King's Cross in Sydney.  We then made our way to where Bec Kimpton is staying in Bondi, where we will be staying the next few days.  Bec is graciously hosting us and we enjoyed a great dinner on the town this evening.

As we move into this next phase of our travels, its been great to look back over our past few weeks. Despite the weather, its been great. We both feel that God has richly blessed us as we have seen and done so much in a short amount of time, had moment after moment of sunshine just when we needed it, and as we have had great time and space together that has proved to be rare over our first two years of marriage. We are both deeply rested, which is really important.

Now that we are in Sydney, we are so excited to be here. We have no set plans yet but already love the city after a great couple of walks to Bondi Beach. We will be here for most of the week before heading to Melbourne for our last few days. We find it hard to believe that after all we've done, we still have so much more to experience here. We'll be excited to fill you in on what we find.

A shot of Bondi Beach here in Sydney

Back in Brissy

It's sunny!!!

Back down south now, we are enjoying clear blue skies today.  We want to post quickly to update from  this week our travel from Noosa to Brisbane.  It was nice to take things at a slower pace and enjoy the beach when we found a sunny patch at a moment's notice.

As we have already said, Noosa was beautiful!  We spent our first time on the beach since we were in Cairns and enjoyed the sun immensely.

From Noosa we travelled about a half hour to our campsite outside of Yandina where we were positioned nicely for Wednesday's tour of the Blackall Range.  First thing Wednesday morning, we went to the Eumundi markets, a small rural town that transforms to a sprawling center for hundreds and hundreds of stall-owners to set up shop.  It was unbelievable to walk through row after row of artisans, food vendors, clothing distributors and designers as well as people selling knick-knacks, jewellery and many other random products.  I was in my element!!  Sadly, I did not purchase anything other than food because there wasn't a lot selling that I was willing to pay money for at that point.  Jon and I are keeping in mind that once we drop off the van on Monday, we'll have to be way more conscious of how much "stuff" we have cause we'll be carrying it with us everywhere!  So I'm hoping to find other markets further south towards the end of our trip if we are going to be doing some purchasing.

After Eumundi, we went to the Australia Zoo because the weather was crummy.  We had been debating whether we'd actually do it, but the grey weather helped us decide to embrace being tourists.  :)  I personally really wanted to see a cassowary since we'd been all over cassowary territory up north and never once saw them.  And so we did.  Not much to report about the zoo, other than we finally saw our cassowaries and all the venomous snakes that live in Australia.  We have yet to see a platypus.  Did I mention that we saw a koala in the wild up in Noosa?  Yes, so that one had been checked off before the zoo.

This is Jon impersonating a Kangaroo.  The animal is not impressed.

This is me impersonating a wombat.  Weird creature.  Its rear end looks like it needs to pull up its pants.  

That evening we decided not to push things in the rain and just settle into a movie theatre for Spiderman 4.  :)

Yesterday morning we woke up early and got in Mapleton and Kondalilla Falls before noon.  Kondalilla was spectacular.  We swam in the rock pool - frigid but worth it.  Then we headed off to the Maroochy area in search of a beach.

The walk through the rainforest at Mapleton Falls.

  The view at Mapleton of the Blackall Range and the Sunshine Coast.

The rock pool at Kondalilla falls.  

The view of Kondalilla Falls from partway down the mountain.  Breath-taking.

We found it!  It was amazing - and we spent the whole afternoon on the beach in Mooloolaba.  We tried some body surfing, played some frisbee, I went for a run, we played sudoku... it was wonderful.

And then we both took cold public showers (with shampoo in hand) and jumped back into the van to make it to dinner at 6:30 with some of our new friends from Brisbane.  Our lovely hosts were Debbie and Carl Gustafson, who generously offered their place for a night of reconnection with some of our friends from Beth and Luke's wedding.  It was a lot of fun to see them again and we enjoyed being in good community.

After a night in a real bed at Beth and Luke's (they aren't yet back from their European honeymoon!!), we are off to get as close to Coff's Harbour as we can.  It's another sunny day and practically cloudless, so may get sidetracked and go to a beach on the way.  But we're now in the homestretch with the van and will be in Sydney on Monday.  Will update you then.  Thanks everyone!

Southward bound.

Following our trip out to the Whitsunday Islands and the Reef, we had a bit of a day of rest in Airlie Beach and then began our trek down South.  We left Airlie Beach the night of Friday, July 13th and we will arrive in Sydney to drop off our van on Monday, July 23rd.

Click on the following link to see a map of where we have travelled since we flew into Cairns on July 5th:
Jon and Aimee's travels - Cairns to Noosa

On our drive, we have now seen a number of kangaroos. I (Jon) was able to walk within 6 feet of this one with out it budging.

Our first real stop of significance after Airlie Beach was at Koorana's Croc farm down by Emu Park on the coast, where the owner is actively practicing conservation by consumerism.

We saw massive crocs (biggest one at the farm was 850kg and around 6m) and each got to hold a baby croc before having croc steak and kebabs for lunch!

After a weekend of driving in still more rainy weather, on Sunday evening, we finally saw the SUN, marking the end of our time in the tropical sunny north of Queensland.  We were so overjoyed to see the sun that we had to share a picture with you all.  We spent that night sleeping under the stars in our van.

Monday morning, we woke up early to catch the sunrise on the coast at Rainbow Beach (we were still excited to see the sun). We then headed into town to catch a 7:40 pick-up for our day trip to Fraser Island.  Fraser Island (known by the aboriginals as N'Gara) is part of the Great Sandy National Park, includes the only rainforest to grow in sand, and is covered in sand dunes and a continuous stretch of perfect ocean beach - only accessible by 4WD vehicles.

 The day included bumpy drives along the beach and stops at the Maheno shipwreck and Eli creek - one of many freshwater creeks that seep out of the water table on the island.

 One of our stops was at Lake Mackenzie - considered to be one of the best swimming lakes in the world, with its white sand beach and perfectly clear water.  Because of all of the rainwater of late, the picture above shows what was left of the beach for us to enjoy.

After a rollercoaster ride (aka 4WD tourist bus barely beating out the tide) back to the mainland late in the afternoon, we decided to finish off our day with a walk to Carlo Sandblow.

With no expectations of what we would see, we discovered a stunning vantage point that is perched naturally above the town of Rainbow Beach and surrounding area. We watched the sunset, jumped around a bit and headed on our way. A wonderful day in the sun.

Today (Tuesday), we have just finished a day in Noosa, relaxing on the beach (finally), enjoying some fish 'n chips and catching our breath. After another couple days around here, we then pass back through Brisbane and will update you then.

Thanks to all of you following our trip. We're excited for our last 2 weeks.

Our Sailing Adventure! - The Whitsundays and Great Barrier Reef

 The highlight of our time traveling in Aussie has been this sailing trip.  We met some great people, spent two and a half days (three nights) on a sailboat, and had our first go at scuba diving on the famous Great Barrier Reef!  Above is a picture of our "Dream Team" scuba group.  Matthias (Germany) and Asta (Finland) joined us headed up by Richie Rich, our instructor. 

 Do you recognize that guy?  What a dude.  (This is Aimee)

 A view of the front of our catamaran and the Whitsundays in the distance.

Our whole team minus the crew.  Behind us is Whitehaven Beach, BBC's top rated beach for the past four years.  Let me clarify.  Top beach IN THE WORLD.  It was our only sunny sky for the two hours we spent here.  This was my birthday (Aimee) and it was an amazing way to spend it!

 We look a little bit different underwater, eh?  Richie took our picture.  Jon's got his signature gesture going on.

Lots of Nemos!

Yes, we did swim with sharks!  This was an amazing overcoming of fear for me (Aimee).  These reef sharks were harmless to us.  This is a white-tipped reef shark.

We could add pictures of the aqualife all day!  But here was one of our favs.  The sea turtle, so beautiful and majestic.

So much beauty under the surface.

The clouds finally broke up on our trip back home

All in all, it was an amazing experience. It was a new experience for us to be living at sea. We even anchored at the GB Reef for a night, no land in sight! We passed through the infamous Whitsunday Islands and landed once to go to Whitehaven beach. Apparently a night's stay on one of the islands is $9000. We definitely got the better deal! The four crew members helped us stay positive about the grey weather and the sea-sickness.  They were great. The week we were at sea, it rained and rained.  It was probably one of the best ways we could have spent that rainy week... under the water.  We ended up each diving four times, more than we had planned on.  It was that good - one of the most memorable experiences of our lives.  When we got back, tourists and locals alike were complaining about the weather.  Dry season?  Climate change.

We stayed at Airlie Beach when we returned for dinner with some of the other passengers we had met on the boat, from all over the world.  It was a good end to the week.

Very briefly...Magnetic Island

Before we get you to our big stuff with the Whitsundays and the Great Barrier Reef, I will quick post about our morning trip to Magnetic Island.

On the Monday morning before we headed out of Townsville to Airlie Beach, we hopped on a ferry and headed to Magnetic Island for a few hours.  "Maggie" is known for being the island that supposedly threw Captain Cook's compass off as he sailed past on his trek to the new land.  It is now known for its military base remains from WWII, as well as its great walks, quaint villages, and koala inhabitants.  We were there for only a few hours and had a couple of great walks that gave some nice views - no koalas though.

The tropical north: Part 2 (pictures)

Just briefly, before updating on our time over the past week, we wanted to post some pictures to go along with our previous post on the tropical north of Queensland.

   

A shot from when we picked up our campervan as well as a shot through our back window our first night in the van up in the rainforest.

 At every turn on the trail of our rainforest hike was another breathtaking view and steep climb.

The Daintree Rainforest has two massive fig trees with cultural and spiritual significance at each. On top, we are in front of the Curtain Fig, and underneath, we are inside the Cathedral Fig.

 Millaa Millaa Falls - one of the several waterfalls we visited in the Atherton Tablelands. Gave a "Take that!" to the weather and jumped in for a quick dip.

 We have not yet told you the story of Paronella Park, where these two pictures above are from.            Jose Paronella was a Spanish immigrant at the beginning of the 20th century.  In the 1930's, after saving some money, he decided to build a Spanish estate (castles, gardens, walkways, waterfalls) by hand where he could host and entertain. Since he was not a builder, the estate today looks like ruins from hundreds of years ago. The park has been reopened for tourism in the past 20 years and presents a dreamlike setting to explore.

On our way down south to Townsville, we found an off-road detour to the top of Australia's (supposedly) largest and most magnificent waterfall. After our trusty van fought through the potholes, we were left with this view and a dead car battery (I, Jon, left the lights on again...).  We put this here because it captures a little bit of the weather we have faced so far this trip.  While we heard the power of the falls, we saw nothing.

Two more posts to come on all we have done since our time up north!