Let’s Get a Wriggle On!

Good ol’ Aussie Hospitality

04.09.2006 – 10.09.2006

Unless you’re willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won’t happen. Phillip Adams (Australian)

Our travels headed east on a train destined for Melbourne. This train and date also marked Nadine’s 28th birthday. Awaiting us in Melbourne was the Bennett family.

We met the Bennetts through our good friend Joy. Her and her husband switched homes for a year in the 90’s as part of a teacher exchange, where they were blessed to spend one year in San Antonio hill country. Joy arranged for us to stay with them.

Despite the friendship between the Bennetts and the Culpeppers, there was still a bit of uncertainty in the unknown for our first encounter. That was all laid to rest when we walked into their living room and saw a massive chocolate cake with a birthday candle sitting on top. We knew our time together was going to be lively.

The Bennett bunch welcomed us into their family with a good ol’ Aussie “barbie” put on by Chris: brother, uncle, and family comedian. Over bottles of red wine, we spent the evening quizzing each other over Aussie words and their American equivalents. If you root for your favorite team in Australia, you may get more than you bargained for along with some interesting looks.

We visited the normal cultural sites, like the Melbourne Museum, parks, and cultural places that are completely foreign to New Mexican natives, but all that was secondary to our time with the Bennett family in Melbourne.

Melbourne is an active metropolis. We attended Terry took us to an Aussie Rules Football game between his team, the Richmond Tigers, and the West Coast Eagles. Unfortunately, his Tigers were demolished by almost 100 points.

I played basketball with David for an evening in his basketball league. We lost, but nowhere near the same margin as the Richmond Tigers. We spent a night playing cards with Louisa (Lou), James (Jam), Anthony (Ant), and Kathy (Kat). Anthony, being the dealer, some how he won. A little fishy. Rachel and I had some major battles over chess, the 12-year-old came close to beating me, but not quite. Jess was ever the entertainer.

Nadine and I also had the pleasure of meeting one of Nadine’s old classmates from Skutt High School in Omaha, Terry Packer. According to Nadine, he still looks exactly the same, despite being ten years older and an engineer living in Australia.

Due to all of our time with the Bennetts, a good thing, we only had two days in Sydney. That worked out because it had rained the entire time and for our last day in Australia, the forecast was . . . rain. Our plan was a whirlwind tour of Sydney’s Opera House, Harbour Bridge, Bondi Beach, Skytower, and any other places we could fit in.

We saw them.

We weren’t the only tourists hanging around the Sydney Opera House. A group of Chinese guys were hanging around. One boisterous individual saw me and in an international gesture of “will you take a photo?”, waved me over. Being the charitable soul I am, I readily agreed. One, two, three, and then four photos later, we were done. With a rapid succession of comments and gestures, the Chinese guy smiled, leaned over and promptly grabbed my ass. I haven’t been to China yet, but that butt grab must mean thank you. That is good to know as we will to mentally prep to say thank you to the billions of Chinese people we will see in the next couple of months. “Why thank you for the noodles, and here is a little something-something for you too.”

Hard to believe we are already a third of the way through our Around the World trip and passing from one stage of relatively easy travel in English-speaking countries to five months of possibly difficult travels in Southeast Asia over the next five months.

Chocolate makes life worth living. – Cathy Bennett

Life is good and we are both in good health and excited for another challenge.

JW