This past weekend we went to Port Macquarie (pronounced Mackquarry) for our first Exchange Teachers League (ETL) weekend. On Friday night we arrived at ou
r billet’s home, Dawn and Mark’s, sometime around 9:30. They live across the river at Point settlement. We had to take a small ferry across to get there… only about 300 m across. Dawn and Mark met us at the other side of the river with beer and wine and took us to a lookout point with a wonderful view of the stars and ocean. We could see the milky way quite clearly. They opened their home to us and went out of their way to make us feel comfortable and homey. Dawn is a social worker, but is also a qualified teacher. You need to be both in Australia to work in schools. Her partner Mark, works with special needs kids. Because they live on an island without town water or a well, they collect rain water in these huge drums (the picture shows the next door neighbours) to use throughout the house.
You do not let the water run in this house, but to them it is worth living in this quaint little area away from the hustle and bustle. Dawn is looking for an exchange to Canada, but they have also done a lot of other travelling. In the fall they travelled 70 days throughout Europe using house swap programs www.homelink and www.homexchange.com. They gave us lots of travelling hints as well as other useful tidbits.
On Saturday morning we had a town tour by local teachers. We followed a caravan of teachers to some interesting places. First, we went to the harbour site where they talked about it being built by convict labour. Then we went to Shelly beach and learned about a hobo who lived and maintained the area and then became famous. It is now named ‘Harry’s Outlook’ after him. We then went to the light tower beach area. Most of our group went on a boat trip for lunch, while we decided to eat lunch in town and then spend the afternoon at the beach and explore the light tower area in more detail.
In the evening, went to Timbertown for some food, music, dance, games and fun! We met several exchange families, one from London Ontario, Oakville, UK, Guelph and Washington as well as several others. We learned how to Bush dance (while I tripped on everyone), played Aussie trivia games (Jocelyn and Avery did better than me at that too!) and exchanged stories about our travels and travel plans.
On Sunday morning we met at Billabong wild-life park. We got to pet Koalas and Kangaroos and saw some birds, monkeys and very venomous snakes. I am trying to figure out how to show you a video of a koala ... hopefully I can figure that out soon. I was really surprised at how they look when they walk... not like a bear.
Some interesting animal facts that we have learned:
…the most venomous snake in the world is the Inland Tiapan; the venom from one bite is enough to kill 50-100 people.
… a pack of Kangaroos is called a mob… so Avery kept saying all weekend that there is a “mob of kangsters” over there
… Koalas carry Chlamydia…the University of Sydney is doing a study on it at the Koala hospital we also visited
… the Kookaburra … known from the song “Kookaburra sits in an old gum tree…” are very noisy birds. The first morning we woke up here we thought there were monkeys in our front yard… yeesh!
... there are rabbits in Australia... we saw lots of them
Our plans for next weekend are to meet up with some of the teachers at the Sydney harbour boat tour for another ETL event. We are hoping to get good pictures from that one.
We are really enjoying the people we meet from the ETL as we are helping each other figure out our way around in this country. Many teachers have been on several exchanges and then do house swaps with their exchange families after they return. They share a passion for travel and a love of kids!
Hope you are enjoying the snow!
The Andress’
