Quality family time

Our trip up north was long, event less and boring. It took us almost 12 hours to get from door to door and even though  that seems like a long time with a lot of "happening potential" I can not recall one thing that is worth remembering. Oh yeah... we made rice-cracker sandwiches with butter and salt and mine was super awesome(!!!), but that was pretty much the highlight of the trip. These Australian trains are so unbelievably slow. A lot of people we talked to actually said it would be nice to catch the train, because you get to see a lot of stuff on your way, but it does get boring after a while and the further inland you get, the more everything starts to look alike.
Never mind. We survived it alright and I had sworn never to insult the Australian logistic system again, after I've been to Indonesia.
We changed from the train to a bus for the last 30 min. from Armidale to Guyra and got picked up there from Gran.
It was really lovely to see my family again.
We stayed at Sal's place, so we could be there to help with the kids any time.... it didn't work out in the morning though, we always slept in too long. It wasn't really sleeping in though because I used to wake up at 8 o'clock but Bekki called it a sleep in.
We spent about two weeks in Guyra and enjoyed every moment maybe because it was so relaxing and we could always do fun stuff like riding the buggy. That was so much fun and you could do doughnuts on the paddock and the kids loved it when we took them for fast rides. We spend most of our mornings organizing things for our travels such as booking a hostel in Nadi and looking for contacts or hosts in CA, which didn't work out in the end :(
We often went to Gran and Pa for lunch had a chat and they helped me a lot with my passport renewal form... The second day on the farm Pa called to say that the little ducklings hatched, they were soo damn cute and reminded me a lot of our goose last summer. We helped Gran raking the leftover leafs from winter one day which was good for her and for us because my body needed some physical activity.
The kids usually got back from school in the afternoon and we played with them outside, did some drawing and helped with homework for the rest of the day. Sally worked a few days a week and got back late.It felt great to help and to take some work off her. We baked a lot and made ice cream when we didn't know what to do.

It was Amelia's 21st Birthday the first weekend and we all went to Armidale for a lovely family get-together. The food was beautiful, thanks to Ann, and we had three cakes for desert, one of them our first proudly self made ice-cream cake and definitely not our last one( A self made cookie-base, vanilla-malteser-crunch ice cream, raspberry ice cream and chocolate, chocolate-chip ice cream, garnished with fresh strawberries and chocolate) yummmm.
The whole evening was very harmonic. It felt so good to see how well everyone gets along with each other, which is a rare gift in such a big family, and the Birthday speeches for Amelia were literally eye-watering.

One day (it was hard to keep track which day of the week it was) we drove to the Wollomombi Falls about 40km from Armidale. They fall into a huge gorge that was formed hundreds of thousands of years ago and are with a height of approx 220m Australia's second highest waterfall. The view into the gorge was enormous. It is 200-300m deep and the track runs right along the edge. It was a very nice day, warm and clear but we couldn't get down to the water because the steep slopes down the hill were closed which was the only unfortunate thing about that day.

Ann invited us to her place over the weekend and so we drove there in her old car which we used while we were there. Saturday was sunny and warm and we decided to go swimming at "Bluehole", a series of rapids and waterholes flowing between huge rocks. We took Elly and her friend Maddie with us. It wasn't the best place to swim because the water wasn't very deep but we had a fun time climbing on the rocks, looking for rapids we could slide down and having a swim when the water was deep enough. Tim found a very long and wild rapid which he and Maddie slid down from half way because the top end was quite bumpy. Tim and the girls had an awesome game of Trouble (by the sound of it) and we made a pumpkin soup with too much garlic and pastries with too much salt for dinner.
Ann had to work late on Saturday and early Sunday so we took Elly out to Dumeresq dam to meet some friends. We took a little kayak which turned out to be a good decision and we had a lot of fun paddling, swimming and sunbathing, even though the water was a bit muddy.
In the evening and over the next day we spent some time with Ann which was great. We had lunch together and went through Armidale's book shops on the search for a good traveling book.We went back to the farm Monday night after dinner. On Tuesday Sally took Jack on a drive to a unknown destination to get him a birthday present. They came back a few hours later with two little calves in the back of the car. Naturally we didn't do much else than be with them, feed them and let them out for a run.
Gran and Pa came over for dinner on Wednesday. It was our last evening on the farm and our second lat in Australia. The kids performed a dance act for us in which I had to join in in the end...
It was so very hard to leave my lovely family again but it felt good to know that it won't take me as long as it took me the last time to come back.
We drove Ann's car down to the bus stop and got on to the bus at 1:35 a.m. that should take us to Sydney one last time.