Monday, 22 September 2008

This weekend we went to Alice Springs and Uluru in a rental car. Uluru was massive! At one of the campsites there was an enclosure with emus and kangaroos in it. The kangaroos were very cute. At the same campground I played the piano for Dinky, the Singing Dingo. Afterwards he spat on me. We slept under the stars in special sleeping bags that you could put another sleeping bag in. It was very cool.

Tuesday, 16 September 2008

I made my Indian meal yesterday. It was very nice. We also went boating on the Coorong (Near the Murray Mouth) on Sunday. It was very interesting. We saw an Aborigine campsite, with lots of shells. It was at the top of a lot of sand dunes, and they were fun to run down.

The Museum

Yesterday we went to the Adelaide museum. It was rather old-fashioned. There were stuffed animals and things from Papua New Guinea and other Pacific Island communities. There was even stuff from the Gogodala tribe, where Dad lived when he was a boy, as well as two Maori carvings.

meeting a local

more pics on mum's blog here

Monday, 8 September 2008

We are still having loads of fun. On Fathers Day we made pancakes for breakfast, but we had to use a pre-made mix instead of the making one as we usually do. It was just as yummy though.
On Wednesday we went to the zoo. There was a section in the children’s zoo that let you touch the animals! The kangaroos were very soft, and tolerant. There was a school there, and if they were allowed in the patting area the animals would have needed their refuge area.
We have started making journals for our time spent away. It is better we do it now, when we have time than when we get back, when we won’t have so much time.

The Second Weekend

We went out to the Flinder’s Ranges, and did a lot of walking. There were lots of kangaroos on the first evening, but none on the second day. This was because on the first day it was dusk when we did the walk, but on the second day it was around 9o’clock. On the way back we saw some Aboriginal rock carvings. One lot required rock climbing to get to, and Dad and I got across a big pond only to find there were no rock carvings at the other end! At least it was fun getting there.
We had dinner at a restaurant at around 7, which was good as we didn’t get home until 10! We would’ve been hungry as well as tired and thirsty.

Yesterday we went to the Migration Museum. We learnt a lot about people that have settled in Australia. I thought it was very unfair that if you were black you had to pass a test that was basically impossible, because it was in a completely irrelevant language. If you were white you got in easily.
After that we went to the art gallery. There was an Aboriginal exhibition that was very interesting. At the beginning there were life-sized models of Aussie animals. Some of them were completely stuffed, and some only had bits of fur on them. I thought that was gross.