Everybody's gone surfing....

After another week at work Sarah drove to pick me up from Rochester on friday afternoon (16th February) for a long drive down to Gippsland, a region south east of Melbourne. Sarah had to buy a weekend pass at the post office in Echuca for the toll road that runs through Melbourne, as there were no alternative routes, unless we wanted to be driving for hours. At about 6pm we hit Melbourne and we felt at home, driving on the A14 on a friday night, as we were stuck in rush hour traffic. Unlike the UK's transport infrastructure we got moving pretty quickly though. We arrived in the small town of Leongatha after a 4 and a bit hour journey. The weekend was organised by the International Teachers Association (an organisation that we had joined at the conference at the end of January in Melbourne). The ITA is run by Australians who have participated in previous exchanges in countries like UK, USA and Canada. We were due to stay at a host family for the weekend in Leongatha. In the evening we drove to a party in the town organised by a member of the ITA, and even though I was driving and we arrived late (due to our long journey) we still had a good time.

The following morning we got up early and went on a tour of Gippsland by bus, stopping off at various points on the way. It was a sweltering hot day and our first port of call was at some interesting rock formations and tide pool location. Afterwards we set off to Phillip Island where we had lunch on the beach followed by a game of international beach cricket in the scorchingly hot sand. In the afternoon we visited an exposed area of the island where seals breed and sleep, as well as different types of penguin who were nestled away hiding under rocks to avoid the afternoon sun. Later we visited a koala sanctuary where we saw numerous koalas all suffering because of the weather. We then went to have late afternoon tea (or beer in my case). Finally we returned to Inverloch (where we had started in the morning) to have a meal and get together in a hut on the beach. More cricket and beer followed before we ate dinner (again kindly organised by the ITA) watching the setting sun over the sea. Sarah and I were one of the last to leave after nightfall to head back to Leongatha, which was about a 30km drive inland.

On the sunday morning we left Leongatha, on an empty stomach, to head back to Inverloch, where Sarah and I had a bite to eat for breakfast before heading for the beach once again. We had booked a surfing lesson along with most of the other exchangees. After getting into our wetsuits, receiving our boards, listening to safety instructions and practising some manoeuvres on the sand, we finally hit the waves. They seemed to come in groups of 3 or 4 with a few minutes wait in between. We must of been in the water for around an hour and a half and it was great fun. I fell off many many times, as did Sarah, but managed to surf a few waves too before finally succumbing to the sea. When I managed to ride a wave it was a great feeling riding through towards the beach. Afterwards we said our goodbyes, had some lunch and headed back to Echuca, which again took us just over four hours. When we went to bed that evening we were both in pain. It felt like we had been hit in the ribs a good few times, presumably due to the fact that we kept jumping up onto the surfboards lots of times. We have only just recovered now! The pictures of me show me firstly riding the waves, then me hitting the waves and finally me smiling at the waves!

Cracking Cricket and Possums in the Park

Reality dawned on 30 January when I realised the main reason I was out here was to do a school exchange as I drove to Rochester Primary School that morning. It was a teacher training day and the children came in the following day, 31 January, after their long summer holiday (which I still find it strange to think about, summer in the sweltering months of January and February). The vast majority of the 21 children in my class are great with one very notable exception, although I don't think I should go into any further detail there!
I initially found some of the staff and pupils difficult to understand with their strange antipodean accents and words. For example they all looked at me strangely when I asked them to get out their felt tips and rubbers (and thoughts of a famous 1970's glam rock singer who likes to frequent certain south-eastern Asian nations sprang to mind here) before I was told that they are called 'texters' and 'erasers'. I certainly wasn't asking any of them to be in my gang! All the pupils have to wear wide brimmed hats too, to keep off the baking midday sun. This is an essential part of school wear here.
Australians all seem to say as little as possible and speak from the back of the throat without moving their lips much. I now realise that this is because if the do say a lot then they get a gobful of blowies. Poor Sarah has a full three course meal at least three times a day here! You don't need any industrial strength stuff here, the blowies are incentive enough. I'm thinking of getting some imported specially!
It has been particularly pleasant being an Englishman out here in the past couple of weeks. The amount of stick I have taken from the first moment I touched down onto Australian soil about the English cricket team has all back fired in a cloud of fallen Aussie wickets. England have turned from being no-hopers to world-beaters and have thoroughly beaten the Australians on the last three occasions (and the Kiwis too for good measure). And as all the cricket is on live terrestrial television here I have been watching it with glee. Some people still say to me that the English were lucky although some have been noble in defeat. Roll on the cricket world cup next month. With the cricket on television (a commercial channel) I have had to endure the mind-boggling annoying adverts that they have here. Firstly there only seem to be about 10 adverts here which they keep rotating. Also they seem to think by playing so-called 'catchy' themes and by shouting very loudly they will attract peoples attention. Apparently buying a patio will change my quality of life forever and ever and if Harvey Norman tells me to 'go' one more time I will tell him exactly where to go! Saying that there are a couple of cricket based adverts that are funny. One in particular takes the mick out of both the English and Australians and a certain ex female British Prime Minister and men with moustaches!
Sarah and I also went to Melbourne for a couple of days last weekend. We drove up and went to the Immigration Museum and shopping at the large market. In the evening we met a couple of possums in a park. They were both very tame and we managed to stroke their very soft fluffy fur for a while. The next day we again went to the beach (Brighton incidentally, although we didn't see Matt or Bough) where it was too cold and wavy to swim again. It is typical that when we go there seems to be a cold front coming through and in Echuca in the working week the temperature is in the thirties or even low forties!

Baby Kangaroos and Canadian Cricket

On 22 January Jenni and Rob drove us to Melbourne as they were going to do a few things down there too. We were due to attend a conference for international teachers who were going to teach in Victoria for the year. That afternoon Jenni and Rob took us to their friends for a barbecue. One of them, who is a teacher, had recently started to look after orphaned Aussie wildlife and she had an owl, a possum and two kangaroos in her care. One of the kangaroos had her mother killed by a car and she was found still alive in her mother's pouch. The other joey's mother had been killed when she ran into a fence when being chased by dogs. The carer had to feed both about five times a day and had designed her own pouch for them to snuggle into. The eldest of the two hopped around with us when we were being shown around the house and garden and she seemed ok about this, although a little nervous. The carer did a marvellous job and was very dedicated to looking after them all. Later on in the evening we were invited to stay at another of Jenni and Rob's friends chalets that they had almost finished refurbishing in readiness to be used as holiday homes for the following weekend. They were in the Yarra valley just outside Melbourne and the setting was spectacular. Herds of kangaroos patrolled at night and when we awoke the next morning we saw them just outside our chalet bounding around!
The following day Sarah and I went into Melbourne and got Sarah's tax file number so that she could begin to look for employment. In the afternoon we spent around 4 hours in the Melbourne Museum, which contained, amongst other things, an interesting collection of dinosaur fossils and information and a part on the Aboriginal tribe that live close to Echuca. In the evening we enjoyed a Turkish meal and stayed with more of Jenni and Rob's friends in the centre of Melbourne.
We took the tram to the conference the next day which was based in the heart of the city. Sarah and I formed a small group of just three English people. We were joined by a Scottish woman (who is married to a Dutchman), a Yank and the vast majority of people there were Canadians. We had lectures, question and answer sessions and discussions about both personal and professional issues for the exchange in the forthcoming year. Sarah managed to skive some of the stuff that was irrelevant to her and went shopping with one of the Canadian women. The most interesting lecture concerned driving which was a worrying issue for the Canadians and indeed all the women in attendance. They were mostly concerned about driving on the right and driving a manual car. Also round-a-bouts are apparently a rare sighting in Canada so they wanted to know about how to approach them. The Victorian policeman who was giving this talk gave a very confusing account of how to approach these which even had me thinking what? The only difference to driving in the UK is that in Melbourne you can do a 'hook turn' which means when you are turning right you have to go over to the extreme left of the road and wait for the lights you have just passed through to turn red before turning across the road.
In the afternoon we went for a picnic in the park where we mingled and chatted and ate and drank. I then taught some of the Canadian teenagers and children how to play cricket the English way and not this nonsense winning stuff that our hosts play! Sarah and I enjoyed a Chinese meal in the evening and we found our James Squire pub which serves English bitter afterwards before retiring to our hotel for the night. The next day we attended the conference in the morning and wondered around the market in the afternoon before heading back to Echuca with Jenni and Rob.