A Vegemite Sandwich?

I am currently sitting in the Alice Springs Airport waiting to fly to Cairns with my family but that blog will have to come a bit later. There is still about a month of activities that need ot be recounted first. Sorry in advance for the delay.

After settling into Vanessa's for a couple days, I started to get cracking on my riding and training. At the start, we had 90 horses on the property and around 20 in work. Clearly I am not able to work every horse every day but I was managing to get to about 10 horses a day. Probably why I haven't had much time to blog and keep you all posted. The horses in work right now range from young ones just brought in from pasture to older horses with a few competitions under their girth. Sorry for the bad pun. If you really want to hear what my day to day life is like on the farm send me an email and I will try to fill you in but in the interest of time I will just hit the major highlights. The day to day stuff can get really repetitive. The first weekend I was here, Vanessa had a school reunion down on the Mornington Peninsula. The peninsula, as we locals call it, is the area just south of Melbourne. It is known for its surf beaches as well as its camping sites along the beach. Pretty nice area. I told Vanessa that she should go and I would be happy to stick around and run the farm but she insisted that I come down with her and Paul to look around while she was at the party. Paul is a really nice guy that helps out alot around the farm and he volunteered to take us down there and show me around.

After dropping off Vanessa, Paul and I continued down the peninsula and first things first, we got lunch. This was my first time ordering food in Australia and man did I screw it up. Paul went first and I tried to listen in. He said something about two potatoes and chips. That was the first point that I got confused. I thought that you ordered a certain number of potatoes to be cut up into french fries. Clearly I was wrong. By the time I got my food, I ended up ordering an extremely large burger, chips, and two potato cakes. That was a ton of food. Not to mention that food over here is way too expensive and that meal cost me about 15 dollars. For those of you who dont know, chips are french fries and french fries are potato chips shaped like french fries. Dont worry I'm still confused about that.

After lunch, we continued driving down the coast visiting random surf beaches along the way. Below are a few pictured from Gunnamatta Beach. Unfortunately the weather was a little overcast but you get the idea.


































After Gunnamatta, we continued back up the coast and stopped next at Arthur's Seat. This is a "mountain" as they call it right on the coast that you are able to drive up. Judging by the size of their "mountains" they clearly have never been to the rockies. From the top you can see all the way back up to Melbourne as well as all the way down to Portsea, the bottom of the peninsula. Again, the weather was pretty bad but the pictures give you an idea of the views from up there.



















Following our afternoon tour of the Mornington Peninsula, Paul and I went back to pick up Vanessa and ended up staying there for about an hour before heading back up to the farm. We got home around 1 AM and I was off to bed to get some sleep before waking up again at 7:30 to start my day at work.

The Beginning

Ok, here we go. This is my first attempt to blog so please everyone stick with me and dont expect to much. I am certainly not the funniest member of my family but hopefully everyone will enjoy the pictures and my accounts of the travels.

I guess I should start from the beginning. I left Dallas on October 28th headed for LA and my 11 hour layover. Fortunately, my former babysitter KK was nice enough to show me around LA for the day. For those of you who dont know KK, she watched my brother and I on numerous occasions and has become a member of our family and it is always nice to see her. She is also know to talk a fair amount so it is safe to saw that I know more about LA then I ever imagined possible. We had a great lunch at Duke's in Malibu and continued on to Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Century City. The afternoon was topped off with pizza at KK's and she dropped me off back at the airport for my 11:05 flight to Melbourne. There are a couple of pictures below of my quick but informative layover in LA.

When I checked into my flight I was originally placed on the 65th row. I instantly thought, jeez, this is a huge plane. I have to be in the back of the plane. I then asked the attendant, "IS this an aisle seat?" My long legs need some room for a 15 hour flight. She then changed my seat to row 73. I was sure that this had to be the back of the plane. I was amazed to see that there were 95 rows on this plane. Clearly it was the largest plane I have ever been on but it was brand new and quite nice. Each seat had personal touch screen TV with a 50 piece movie selection. Since I dont sleep especially well on planes I saw this as the perfect opportunity to catch up on my horrible movies that you want to watch but you know you will regret wasting that hour and a half. So we took off and I began my movie marathon. I started with The Hangover. All I have to say is, "You were right Becky Rainforth. That movie was awesome." It was the type of movie that my dad would love and my mom would hate. Easily the best movie I saw on the trip. But it isnt hard to beat Fast an Furious and some movie called Fighting. No points for guessing what that one was about. I also saw the new Dan Brown movie Angels and Demons and I was fairly impressed with that one. Is it sad that I understood and enjoyed the physics elements of the movie? So after four movies and about 6 hours of sleep I touched down in Melbourne and waited an additional 30 minutes for the other 200 passengers to get off the plane.

After I got through the first stage of customs, which only took about 5 minutes (they let foreigners go first), I sat and waited anxiously on my bag. What were the chances that the bag made it through two flights and an 11 hour layover in LAX? I thought for sure my bag wouldn't make it but sure enough, about 30 minutes later, my simple black duffle bag rolled out of the baggage claim and I began my trek to the second customs line in which they have to check your bag. The line, just to give you some sort of idea of the length, was probably as long as the empire state building is tall. That line took me about another hour but I did meet a nice elderly couple in line. They had claimed corn starch on their customs slip. Me, on the other hand, had to claim that I had been in a rural area in the last month. I think Hidden Spring Farm counts. Because of this, however, I was able to skip over to a different line to get my boots checked and that saved me about 30 minutes. Thanks Rox. After clearing all these customs and making it out of the airport, I found that dreams really do come true.

I have always wanted to have my name written on a board and held up outside the airport like the limo drivers do. Sure enough, this was the sign I read as I left Melbourne airport.




Vanessa picked me up and took me immediately back to her home in Goornang, VIC. The drive home was very interesting. Just when you thought you understood the scenery, it went and changed again. It was a bit like Texas weather. If you don't like the scenery wait 10 minutes and it will change again. We saw everything from flatlands to mountains, wetlands to desert. Did I mention the drive is only an hour and a half? As I sat on the wrong side of the car, constantly trying to put on the brakes and check the mirrors, I began to think about the total time I spent traveling. I left Dallas at 10:30 for a 3 hour flight to LAX, landed at 12:15. Took off again at 11:00 pm on Thursday for a 15 hour flight and landed in Melbourne at 9:15 am Saturday morning. That makes a total travel time of 30 and a half hours including the hour and a half driving home.

I arrived at Vanessa's about noon Saturday morning to find an impressive 800+ acre breeding facility with over 89 horses ranging from a few weeks to 8 years in age. It has four stallions and 20 broodmares and at the time 4 foals with another two on the way. There are three arenas, including one very large stadium and a full cross country course. She also backs up to 1000's of acres of riding through the bush. Below is a picture from my first day here, riding out in the bush on Bennie. As well as a picture of Vanessa's property. I know that this isn't much but i wanted to get you something to read and I will continue working on catching those elusive kangaroos.