ANZAC Day

Today (April 25th) was ANZAC Day in Australia. ANZAC stands for Australia-New Zealand Army Corps. The holiday originated on the anniversary of the battle of Gallipoli in World War I to honor the veterans, or "diggers" as the Aussies call them, and is now a national day of remembrance for all troops lost in the wars since. Very similar to our Memorial Day.

Gallipoli was a milestone battle for the Australians, as only 13 years had passed since the island had become a federal commonwealth. The ANZACs were given the lofty task, along with other Allied Forces, of capturing Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey. Due to high number of casualties, the ANZACs and Allied Forces retreated without completing the task at hand.

Many Australians start the day with a dawn service to honor the fallen and veterans and then spend the remainder of the day with their families barbequeing. They finish up the day with tea and ANZAC biscuits (cookies). They are sold in the stores year round, but most Aussies make a homemade batch on this day. My friend, Colleen, made me a few, and they are delicious! I'll put the recipe below if you are interested. You must like coconut!

So, what did I do on my ANZAC day? I took a drive out the Great Ocean Road and made a few stops at some of the beach towns along the way. Appropriately the Great Ocean Road is kind of a war memorial in its own right. Veterans of WWI were actually commissioned to build the road in an effort to provide them employment after the war. So there.....I was involved in a patriotic act today!

Saw my first kangaroo at the infamous Anglesea Golf Course.....The roos literally hang out on the golf course while people tee off beside them! Supposedly you can always see a group regardless of when you visit.

Also stopped off at Bells Beach where the World Surfing Championships were held over Easter weekend. Kelly Slater from the U.S. competed. Apparently he found the time to pry himself away from Gisele Bundchen and Cameron Diaz.

Pictures from Bells Beach today (not Kelly Slater caliber, and quite boring to watch them flail about in the water, not that I could do any better :) )

ANZAC Biscuits:

1 cup plain flour

1 cup sugar, 1 cup rolled oats

1 cup coconut

4 oz. butter

1 tbsp golden syrup

2 tbsp boiling water

1 tsp baking soda

Melt butter and add syrup, water, and soda. Pour into the dry ingredients and drop in teaspoonfulls onto greased tray. Bake at 400 degrees (electric) or 350 degrees (gas) for 12 to 15 minutes.

Link to more pictures from today:

http://picasaweb.google.com/schoen.julie/AngleseaAndANZACDay

Footy Frenzy

In the absence of Mark's nightly Braves games and in anticipation of missed college and NFL football in the fall, we are trying with all of our might to embrace Australian Rules Football. Affectionately known as "Footy" the sport combines soccer (kicking the ball to advance the team down the field), basketball (dribbling the ball with a hand at least every 10 meters), rugby (players kick the crap out of each other wearing no pads), and football (kicking the ball through a goal). Make sense? We would not be surprised if it doesn't.

We watched the Geelong Cats take on the Melbourne Demons on Sunday at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and we are still trying to grasp the concept. Although the Cats did whoop up on the Demons and climbed to the number 2 spot in the Premier League after this week's game.

Mark has even joined a tipping (betting) pool where he is 25 out of 48 in the third week. Not bad for an American that doesn't really know anything about the game.

Back in the Bosom of His Family

Cash is home from quarantine and back to his princely ways!

Tasmanian Devils Do Exist

The week before Easter was a period of firsts for us:
1. Mark completed his first triathalon on the continent of Australia, the Geelong Triathalon. Not only did he finish 19th in the individual race, he also gets major props for swimming in the stinky Geelong Eastern Beach Bay!

2. We visited Tasmania for the first time. As many of you know, Tasmania is an Australian state southeast of the mainland. Roughly the same size as West Virginia, Tasmania only has a population of 480,000. Aside from the Aborigines 140,000 years ago and a Dutch explorer from the 1600's, Abel Tasman, for which the island was named, the largest settlement was of European convicts in the early 1800's.

* Of course we were compelled to find the wine route along the Tamar River just north of Launceston where wineries produce cool-climate wines like chardonnays, pinot noirs, and sparkling wines particularly from 2005. With the goal of visiting the smaller guys, we made our way through about four wineries and were lucky enough to be the only folks at most of the Cellar Doors. The small, family winery is an intriguing story, as many of their Cellar Doors are small rooms in their homes or sheds out back. The proprietors have colorful stories about their beginnings and certain vintages. We were even privy to the owner's Easter lamb recipe at the Dalyrimple Winery. Not to be upstaged were the winery dogs, Chili (Jack Russell Terrier) at the Brook Eden Winery and a name-unknown boxer at Ninth Island Winery. What a great life to live in such beautiful scenery and have a dog that has his run of the place. Poor Cash would never make a good ambassador, and we would go out of business quickly if he was the sole member of our greeting committee!

* Mikey will eat it, and Mark did as well. Pickled wallaby. Enough said.

* Already in agreement that Tasmania is the most beautiful place that we have visited, the Freycinet National Park on Tasmania's eastern coast only augmented the argument. Deciding on a 4.5 hour hiking route through the park, our first stop was one of the world's top 10 beaches, Wineglass Bay. The sand was fabulously white, the water was crystal clear, and we enjoyed our snack on the beach while being entertained by a school of six dolphins swimming just 30 to 40 feet off the beach.

3. Tasmanian Devils do exist outside of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and we think we actually saw our first one as we drove back to our cottage one night. The population has drastically decreased due to an ailment called the "devil facial tumour disease". Good thing we didn't come too close to one, for they can be mean little suckers. The locals say that they do not release their bite once they have hold.

4. We saw our first, live wallaby. This was in addition to the wallabies previously seen dead on the side of the road and on Mark's plate at lunch (yuck). Admittedly, we believed these were just a breed of small kangaroos until Wikipedia (and good friend Jodie) proved us wrong. You would never think that wallabies were scary creatures, but the sudden rustling of bushes during our hike through Freycinet almost sent me into coronary arrest. Mark screamed like a little girl too. Luckily it was only a wallaby feeding on some brush. That encounter then gave us the courage to go directly up to a wallaby in the car park. He became much less interested in us when he sniffed our hands and found that we had no food to offer him.

5. We made it to the southernmost point either of us have ever reached! Hobart, Tasmania!

More pictures from the triathalon, Tasmania, and Cash's homecoming:

http://picasaweb.google.com/schoen.julie/GeelongTriathalonTasmaniaAndCashSFirstVisitToTheBeach