Oz Adventure--Week 1

Well, we're back to the real world after our adventure down under. It's 1:35 am here and I can't sleep since my body still thinks its 3:35pm.

We had an incredible time in Australia. I didn't have much internet access after we left Sydney so I didn't get a chance to share much except a little info about Claire's accident. Here's some of what happened after Sydney and some general thoughts. If you missed the Sydney posts, they're here--

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

We left Sydney Sunday morning, June 28 and drove about 3 hours west into the Blue Mountains. We found our way to the Megalong Valley Heritage Center where we stayed in a rustic, but comfortable room before our horseback ride. It was pretty chilly, maybe down into the lower 30s that night. We had dinner at the Ivanhoe Hotel in Blackheath that night and it was a lot of fun. They had someone on piano and washboard playing old ragtime songs and everyone was clapping and swaying and having a rollicking good time. Later, a young man (late teens or early 20s) played a few songs on the piano and he was quite good.

Monday morning came and it was time for our horseback ride. We saw a few kangaroo and lots of Sulphur-crested and Rosella Cockatoos around the stable in the morning. We had a great breakfast and then went out to start our ride. Claire was quite disappointed when they told her that we had to wear helmets. She was looking forward to riding without a helmet, as we did in Wyoming in 2005, when Claire was only 7. But, being the good rule-followers we are, we all donned our helmets and thank God we did.

We were assigned to our horses and fitted on our saddles. Claire and I were each given a horse that Luke, our guide, said would be willing to run. We both wanted to have a chance to canter, or maybe even gallop, while we were out. Claire has ridden a lot and takes weekly lessons so we presented her as the most experienced of the group and she got the horse with the most horsepower. Alan was on an draft horse and Amy's horse was Seddie, a shortened version of sedative referring to the drugs the horse had to be given to quiet it down in its early days at the stable. (Note: add Seddie to the list of Aussie words that are created when a longer word is shortened to its first syllable and an "ie" or "y" added to the end.)

The ride out was nice, the horses well-behaved and the scenery was gorgeous. We had one little trot and a quick canter on the way out and everything was fine. We crossed the Cox's River and encountered a semi-wild herd of cattle led by an imposing Brahma bull that Luke said he didn't trust because he was a "mickey" bull and not used to having humans around. So, we turned around and started heading back.

We got to one section and Luke asked who wanted to canter, and, of course, Claire and I did. We had a good little run of a 150 yards or so. Luke watched each of us at the start of the run to make sure we could handle it and Claire was behind me, since she was the more experienced rider. Claire mentioned to me that she lost her stirrups on the run so I reminded her to keep her weight on the balls of her feet and her heels down so she didn't slip her foot through her stirrups.
We took off again for another run up a hill and it was great. The horses quickly went from canter to gallop and we were flying. We found out afterward that our guide's horse had participated in a recent episode of "Top Gear" in Australia where it had raced a Porsche Cayenne across some of the same area we had been riding, so we knew Willow was fast...and our horses were keeping pace. (Here's a clip from the show, which, coincidentally enough, aired that night while we were in our hotel room. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvJXLqLTc5A The relevant stuff starts at about 2:00. The video shows a lot of the scenery we rode through. The ranch where they finish is where we stayed Sunday night and rode from on Monday.)

About a minute into the run, I hear Claire yelling, "Stop, stop, stop" and as I'm yelling ahead to Luke, I see her horse run past me without Claire. I started yelling "Claire's off, Claire's off". Luke says he was going to chase Claire's horse and he takes off. Of course, my horse wants to follow and I desperately wanted to get back to Claire because I knew Alan and Amy were a minute or so behind us.

I finally got my horse turned around and I see Claire lying on the side of the road about 100 yards behind me. I'm calling down to her and she jumps up and starts yelling, "I'm ok, I'm ok." Alan and Amy get to her about the same time I do and we see she has a bad cut under her eye. Amy gives her a scarf to hold against her cut and shd and Alan start giving her a neuro exam--"What's your birthday? What's your dog's name? How many fingers am I holding up? etc" They couldn't ask her what day it was since none of us knew that...hey, we were on vacation and I only knew what day it was by where we were and what we were doing. "Hey, we're horseback riding, must be Monday."

Luke made it back with Claire's horse and we began the hour-long ride back to the stable. We got to the stable, had lunch, Alan and Amy cleaned up Claire's wound as best they could and then we were off to hospital in Katoomba. Great experience, wonderful people and top-notch health care. (There is another post about that experience.) We left the ED and went to our hotel to prepare for our day of rapelling and camping out the next night.

Met up with our guide, Corky, early the next day at the offices of River Deep Mountain High in Katoomba. We were worried the night before because the wind was howling all night but he assured us that their rapelling site, or abseiling as the Aussies call it, was sheltered and there wouldn't be a problem. We took off to a site under Scenic World and rapelled down 5, 15 and 30-meter sites in the shadow of the famous Three Sisters rock formation .

After lunch, Craig took us on a 4WD tour to some of the sites around the area and gave us a crash course on the history, flora and fauna of the area. He's a really informative guy who has memorized the latin names for the animals of the region. He's written them on index cards and puts a colored dot on them when he's seen them in the wild. He knows a lot about the plants and geology, as well.

We ended the day in their safari camp way out in the Megalong Valley. Took a walk near the camp and saw some Gang-gang Cockatoos . Craig taught Claire how to start a proper fire and we had a great dinner with some good wine. Craig showed us the Milky Way and Southern Cross. We were worried about being cold out in the bush but the sleeping bags on the stretcher beds worked great and the tents were phenomenal. None of us were cold even though it got down into the 30s and was quite windy. We could hear the wind rush up through the trees and then, "bam", hit the side of the tent but we never felt it.

We were awakened at about 6:30 am by what sounded like 100 Kookaburras but was probably only 10 or so. We took a walk around the bush near the campsite and came back and had breakfast. Saw a few kangaroo and wallaby. Then we packed up and headed back to a hike near Leury.

The hike was originally supposed to be through the Megalong Valley but when he heard we had been horseback riding there, he changed the itinerary. Boy, did he change the itinerary. We went to this hidden trailhead that his company maintains and descended 150 metres following a water course into the Jamison Valley. It was very technical hiking with a lot of water, rock and mud. Some sections had us on a 3-4 ft. ledge with a 20-ft drop below and a rope bolted into the rock face for us to hold onto. We made it down and then started coming up around some beautiful sandstone cliffs overlooking a canopy of eucalpyptus trees. It was a hard 7 miles but the scenery was beautiful.

We left Katoomba on Wednesday afternoon and headed over to Mollymook and transitioned into beach/wedding mode. The drive over was pretty harrowing. Too bad it was dark because I'm sure the scenery would have been beautiful. We sure went on some windy, mountainous roads.

I'll cover week 2 in a post later tonight.

Here's a link to the photo album with the best photos from trip--
http://katseyeview.shutterfly.com/606

Heading Home

Well, we're on the way home..stuck now in O'hare since our flight was delayed by 2 hours. By the time we get home, we will have been in airports and on airplanes for more than 24 hours.

Trip was great. I'll post more tomorrow, including more photos. We haven't had a real internet connection since we left Sydney more than a week ago. Claire's injury didn't slow us down at all, other than the multiple trips to the "chemist" looking for antibiotic ointment only to find out its perscription only in Australia (where you can buy codeine over the counter.)

Rappelling, hiking and camping was great--saw the Milky Way and Southern Cross in the midst of a black Australian sky; the beach was nice, wedding was beautiful including the dolphins that kept swimming back and forth during the ceremony, almost like they were watching. Reception in Canberra was fun and we finished the trip with a lovely dinner at the home of my friends Tammy and Paul Mullins--beautiful home, great food, wonderful friends and awesome dogs.

Will reset the body clock tomorrow, collect all the animals and prepare for a return to the corporate world.

Claire Update

We're on the road from Katoomba to Mollymook. I'll post more details later but Claire is doing pretty good. Got 5 stitches but she enjoyed the laughing gas. We went rapelling the next day and she did great. We camped out last night and went on a 7 mile, highly technical hike today. Coincidentally, looks like she'll have a 1-inch high, horseshoe-shaped scar under her right eye.