Natasha's Milestones

Natasha had a pretty exciting day today. We took the trainer wheels off her bike today and Wayne and I did lots of running alongside her. I think tomorrow could be more fitness training for me also as we haven't mastered the balancing act yet. Terror keeps getting in the way and the pedalling stops and the brakes get applied as soon as she suspects that we might let go.

When we got home the wriggly tooth got a helping hand and we now have the lovely toothless grin. The tooth fairy will be visiting tonight so both girls went to sleep very fast so she could do her work.

Meet the newest member of the family

This is Jesse. He is 9 weeks old and already creating havoc around our house.

Emily and Rhys are scared of him and he is smaller than most of their teddy bears.

He likes to sleep in the dolly bath. Natasha loves him and takes care of him. He's very playful and likes company. While I'm typing this he's lying on the floor next to me, quite content.

Echuca

This is the paddle turning.

A lovely adult fairy did this lovely facepainting for the girls. Emily has a cat and a horse and Natasha has a butterfly and a dolphin.

Captain Natasha.

Three little monkeys sitting in a row

We went to Echuca yesterday to have a look. What a lovely town. It is on the border between Victoria and NSW and is about an hour and a half drive from Bendigo. We had a one hour cruise up the Murray River on Pride of the Murray. The kids had a turn in the wheelhouse. We saw some beautiful riverboats, pictured here: The Canberra and the Emmy Lou They date back to the early 1900s when the main way to move freight from the Port of Melbourne was up the Murray River. Some of you may remember the mini series "All the Rivers Run" it was filmed here and we saw the actual boat they used for it.

We also enjoyed the Jazz bands playing on the street, nothing better than a cold Victorian Bitter outside listening to Jazz. They were having a Jazz Festival so there were different bands playing outside every pub and cafe.

They had some Clydsdales pulling a carriage around the block so we hopped in and had a ride up the main street.

On the way home we had a ride on a minature train at Elmore. It had a three km track so was quite a decent long ride. Rhys loved it.

On the whole we had a really enjoyable day, it was a bit like stepping back in time for the day. We will be visiting again soon, probably the winter Blues Festival in July.

A few more photos of interest

Here are some more photos to bring you up to date.

Natasha has started school, she attends Golden Square Primary School. The Lizard is one that we released after it tried to live in our cabin on our curtain.

The Pelicans are on Lake Weeroona in Bendigo and the tram is also a Tourist icon of Bendigo. I have included an up to date photo of Rhys who is walking more than crawling now.

Welcome to Australia

30th December we arrived here and began our new adventure. Our rental car was a red Holden Commodore stationwagon which we had for eight days. Our home was a little self contained cabin at the Dunolly Caravan Park and our first mission was to buy cars. Wayne bought a Toyota Hilux for his gold prospecting in the State Forest and I bought a 1994 Mitsibishi Magna.

Our first morning we were up early and off to Waanyarra to see Kangaroos. We saw big groups of them in the clearings alongside the road. It was really neat to see them in the wild rather than a zoo enclosure. There is a really neat church ruin there as well.

The land here is so vast and so brown. There are long gravel roads everywhere. The paddocks are huge and the country towns are like stepping back in time with the old General Store that sells everything and the close community feel.

The caravan park was really friendly and we soon settled into the routine of afternoon drinks by the duckpond and woodfired Pizza on Friday nights. The people are really friendly and helpful. Most of them are Gold prospectors.