Holidays

As of 12:00 today, Dylan and I are on holidays for three weeks.  We caught a bus from Lameroo to Adelaide and are staying in a Hostel over night.  In the morning we are catching a flight to Sydney and then off to Cairns.  We are booked onto a bus called OzExperience.  It is meant for backpacking tourists.  We get on the bus in Cairns and drive down to Sydney being able to get off and on in whatever town we want whenever we want.  This gives us the flexibility to decide what we want to do.  We are very excited and are hoping that everything goes well!

3 in 1....

Last weekend Dylan and I joined some other trainees for a fun filled day of sightseeing.  We did alot of driving but it was worth it.  We have been spending more time with the other trainees and starting to gain pretty good friendships.  They are a good group of people and we are enjoying our time with them.

Monarto Zoological Park

This was our first stop.  Monarto Zoo is a 1,500 hectare open-range sanctuary  undertaking a major role nationally and internationally in breeding programs for rare and endangered species.  You pay as you drive in and head up to the main building.  There you can book a tour, either a Grasslands Tour or an Africa Tour which is included as the entry fee.  There is a guide on the bus  that tells you about the animals and a little bit more about the park.  They also have a separate bus called the 'Zu-loop Bus'.  It takes you around to the different enclosures where you can walk out on a viewing platform. It is a very interesting place.  Here are some pictures of our experience.  We could not include all of the animals that we saw but these ones were particularly interesting.  If you would like to find out more information about these animals, here is a link to the Monarto website.

Addax 

Scimitar-Horned Oryx

Giraffe

Baby Giraffe

Eland

Black Rhino

White Rhino

Cheetah

Cheetah

African Painted Dogs

African Painted Dogs

Lions

Lion

Lion

Zebra

This was one of the many miscellaneous pens. 

Whispering Wall

This was our next stop.  The Whispering Wall is basically just a dam.  It measures 36 meters high and approximately 500 meters across.  If someone is standing on one side and another on the other, you can whisper to each other and you can actually hear them.  It is pretty crazy.  You would think that there would be speakers hidden somewhere.  We found it very interesting.

Looking from one side not quite reaching the other.

Just a pretty picture!

That far down.

Dylan doing the whispering 

copying the guy below!

Melba's Chocolate Factory

This was our last stop.  We thought that is was going to be more of a demonstration but was actually more of just a big confectionary shop.  They did have a few samples which was pretty sweet!!  Te he, I just had to!!  We could see the machines but they were not really in use at the time.  We basically just wandered around tasting the samples!  Here are a few pictures from inside.

Dundee Wildlife

On June 14 we went to a place called Dundee Wildlife located just outside of Murray Bridge.  It is a small wildlife park where you can be interactive with the animals.  There were many different varieties as shown below.  There were many  more animals that are not shown below such as crocodiles, snakes, a barking owl, kangaroos, more varieties of birds and hopping mice. We really enjoyed it and since it was raining we had the place to ourselves!

Kookaburra

This is some variety of Parrot.  He kept saying 'Hello' to us.

This is a very rare white Kangaroo.  There are not many

of them left in Australia.  This was the only one that we saw.

This is a Rock Wallaby with its joey. 

They are pretty much the same as a Kangaroo but only smaller. 

This was the craziest Chook I have ever seen.

A very cute sleeping Koala

They have a very active bird sanctuary.  The birds obviously thought that

we came bearing gifts of seed!  This one would fly up to you and 

bite your fingers looking for the food. 

An Emu.

A Water Buffalo

One of the many loose Roosters!

Lameroo

Here are a few pictures from main street Lameroo.  This is the sign that you see on all entrances to Lameroo.  The one when you leave is very similar is just reads "Farewell from" instead of "Welcome to".  Enjoy!

This is just one of the signs for a Round A Bout here in Lameroo

This is just part of the school here in town.

Renmark, Berri and Loxton

This past weekend, Dylan and I had a long weekend so we headed off to some Tourist spots along the Murray River.  These three towns are all about 20 min apart from each other so it was fairly convenient.  We hired a little cabin at a caravan park in Berri.  Sorry, I should put that in Canadian english.  We rented a little cabin at a Camp Ground in Berri!!  It had all the crockery (pots, pans and plates) and cutlery supplied.  We did not have an en-suite but the park bathrooms were pretty close.  We had to supply our own bedding but that wasn't so bad either.  When we were in Renmark we hired a canoe for half a day and went down the river and some smaller creeks.  The next day we also had a picnic with a pelican!!  

This is us along the Murray River in Berri where they were holding speed boat 

competitions right beside our Caravan Park.

This is one of the Roads that we had to take to get there.

It was a very rough gravel/sand road.

The Murray River in Renmark.  They have old Steam Boat

tours along the river here. 

One of the docks in Renmark.

This is one of the many house boats floating along the river.

Our picnic with the pelican.  It was closer but Dylan kept

chasing it away cause he kept staring at his fries!!  

This is how close we actually got to the thing. Pretty crazy. 

This is their version of a Magpie.  They look different 

than the ones back at home. 

This would be Dylan doing all the work!!  We were in a calm 

spot so I could sit back and take some pictures.

This is....well, me!

There were a bunch of dead trees in the middle of the river

but out of the stumps, new trees were growing.  

Some scenery.

Some scenery.

In our Canoe

This is called the Tree of Knowledge located in Berri.  

All the dates on it mark the flood levels for that year.  As you can

see 1956 was an incredibly bad year.

While we were driving through Renmark, we found this building.

We thought it was pretty interesting that they actually had

an association for Table Tennis.

This was Dylan on the bouncy Teeter-Totter at the Caravan Park!