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Top: Woohoo a chest full of chocolates! Cadbury Factory, Tas

Freycinet National Park, Tasmania

A Tassie Stinger

Sydney Harbour Bridge

Our week in Tasmania was great fun. Fairy penguins, days on the beach, historic towns, stone bridges built by convicts and mini golf. The two highlights were our visit to the Cadbury factory where they hand you chocolates at every turn, and a night tour through a wildlife park. Most of the animals in Australia are nocturnal, so we managed a private tour in the evening and got up close and personal with some cool animals. Did you know that if you scratch a kangaroo on the chest it will melt, they just love it!

Friday we were back in Sydney for the night, spent the afternoon at Circular Quay and watching the ferries come and go. Had a beautiful family meal while watching day turn to night in the harbour and the lights come on around the Opera House. We got on the plane at 11am on the 31st , landed in LA at 6 am, yes we travelled back in time! Home to the house by noon in time to have a rest and get ready for trick or treating. Total time from hotel to house 24 hours.

Hope this blog has kept everyone up to date and even a bit entertained while we were away, will post a few last pics soon to round it out. We look forward to reconnecting with our friends and family now that we are back.

Long time no post! Internet is even more diffucult to come by now that we are in a motorhome. We left Sydney Friday morning and flew to Tasmania. Got organized with our motorhome and set off to find groceries. We started off on the Tasman Penninsula and visited Port Arthur, a convict colony from the late 1800's. Spent two days in the area exploring the sites. Went to a Tasmanian Devil Conservation park to get as close as anyone wants to get to the critters. We're now further up the east coast in Freycinet National Park. Lots of bush walks and beautiful beaches. Last night went on a night tour to see the Fairy Penguins come back in from the sea for the night. Kids loved that! Will work our way back to Hobart over the next couple of days then fly back to Sydney in preparation for our big flight home

Yesterday was very hot! It was 35 dc! I went to the Sydney Opera House. It is so big and beautiful.

To find the design they had a contest. The design today was actually in the discard pile! Wow,

how could they get rid of something like that! that night I saw the musical Wicked. It was awesome! This might be the last time I can write so I will say goodbye. Maybe.

It's a long time since we went to the caves. We went to the Blue Mountains and walked in the rainforest and there was three rides. One was a train and the seats tilted back 52 degrees,there was a sky walk the middle of it was plexiglass that is fogged up but when it starts moving it unfoggs and the other is the same thing except without the plexiglass. After three boring days watching kayak racing, we came to Sydney and took the ferry to Manley Beach. We played in the sand, Ben and Amber went walking along the rocks. Today we went to the aquarium. We saw platypuses, crocodiles, sharks and dugongs.

Last Games Update

Kayak Day 3: Another stunning day! Darrell's K1 was again a difficult race with a very strong field. Amber and Darrell took bronze again in the K2. The K4 group changed categories as they were put in the 40+ when they should have been 45+, this put them in the very last race of the regatta. The 200m races are a flat out all or nothing style race. Many boats flipped even in the calm, because when you are pushing that hard any little mistake will put you over. Anyway...the K4 came off the start with a bobble and the other boats came out ahead. The lead boat off the start was an Australian crew all wearing colourful clown wigs. Darrell's group decided they weren't to be beaten by clowns, recovered nicely and powered through for the gold! Unfortunately, the officials were so far behind in the results that they weren't able to be presented with their medals. We left the regatta centre, packed up our room and moved into Sydney Darling Harbour for the rest of the week. Attended the closing ceremonies to watch the official hand over of the World Masters Games flag to the delegate from Turin, Italy the host of the next games in 2013. Bit sad that after 4 years of work up it's all over so quickly, but we're all looking forward to being able to relax and enjoy the rest of our time here in Oz!

Day 2 of kayak events. After some confusion yesterday over the result of the mixed K4 1000m, today we found out that they took the silver. Today Amber and Darrell were both in the mixed K4. Amber's inexperience was glaringly apparent, even in the beautiful conditions we had today (finally). Out of the start we pull way off to the left and realized we had lost our rudder. We managed to zigzag up the course and finish only to end up disqualified for leaving our lane. Bummer! We hopped out of the K4 and into the K2 with only one race in between, and zoomed back to the start. Had a cautious race and took bronze again.

Looking forward, since it may be awhile before we have internet to post again...

Tomorrow will be a short say of racing as we are only at the 200m distance. We will be moving from Penrith into Sydney for a few days, and hope to attend the closing ceremonies at Darling Harbour tomorrow night. The kids are overjoyed to finally be done with all the boring racing and to get back to the vacation part!

Competition Update

Top: bad light, but that's us on the podium

Bottom: Darrell under the Olympic rings

Rowing Day 5: Amber, Diane, Matt and Wally did a practice row, then our mixed 4x race early in the morning. Started off in the pack, but we got too close to the lane markers and whacked them a couple of times with the blades. These things are rock solid, so we lost a few strokes and ended up well out of the medals. The wind kicked up again late morning (gusting to 80km) and the schedule was cancelled again. Bit of a sad way to end the regatta, but what can you do about the weather?

Kayak Day 1: Kayak racing is a bit different than rowing. Masters rowers only race 1000m, the canoe/kayak/outrigger crowd does 1000m, 500m and 200m. Today was the 1000m day, Sat will be all 500m and Sun will be all 200m races. Today was again windy, but it seemed to remain a steady head wind making for bumpy but not impossible conditions. The wind did slow down progress though, the first race was at 8 am and the schedule was half an hour behind by 9. With that preamble: Darrell did his K1 but did not advance. Darrell was invited into a mixed K4, they think they took silver but there seems to be some confusion so we don't know for sure yet. The last race of our afternoon was Amber and Darrell in K2. Despite Amber being completely out of her element, and almost tipping out of the boat at the start line, we managed to take bronze in the 35+ age category. Yes, there were even more than three boats in the race. so, to Amber's complete surprise, she is finally brining home hardware even if it isn't from her sport of passion.