Travelog for: Natt Noy

Hi everyone~
I'm Natt Noy, I'm writing here in order to introduce myself to ToyVoyagers..I'm a nice little bear who are ready to explore the world..If you would like share the fun and would like to help me create the great experience, please feel free to PM my lovable owner, Natt

Wow~ Natt gives me a tag today..She also gives me the head-band..I'm so happy!! Here are the photos of updated me!!

Natt to NattNoy => Take good care of yourself, NattNoy..I'm sure you will have a great time with Sara..She's a nice girl..Don't bully her, okay??

Wow~Natt will sent me to visit Sara at NSW, Australia tomorrow..It's my first trip, I'm so excited~

Natt told me to be nice and don't bully Sara..I wonder why she said that because I usually am nice..LOL

Can't wait to explore NSW, Australia~!!..Hope it's a "smooth as silk" flight (That's our Thai Airline slogan :P)

Wow! That was a very quick trip. Sara heard the post bike go by and saw me in the letter box! I'm so excited to be here... thankfully it has cooled down a little bit Sara said it was very hot. :-) I got here just in time to have Sara be cleaning her animal cages (bird cage and mouse cage) all the animals are very happy... maybe we'll be introduced today. :-) Write again soon! :-)

It's been cooler so Sara's pets have been more active so Sara's been able to take some photos of them... we decided to get in the shot because she seems to own a zoo. She's a huge animal lover though and takes great care of her pets... lets see, here I am in front of her mice...

...they didn't really want to sit still for the photo but there are 5 of them in a huge mouse mansion as Sara calls it... they're happy since their cage just got a nice clean out.. now they're organizing things to make it their own again... haha they're so cute! :-)

...and here I am in front of the birds...


...now the question is... how many if any of those birds can you name? I know they're very hard to see so Sara took some photos. It's interesting because all the birds besides one is native to Australia. Click the name to get more information if your interested about the bird(s). :-) First we have the Society Finch...

The pair of society finches are the only ones not native... they're actually not native to anywhere... they were always captively bred so they're very good in aviaries and will pick up where other birds have left off sometimes in raising baby birds. :-) Aren't they nice? They're very friendly little birds. Sadly when Sara got them they couldn't fly more than 6 inches off the ground because they had been stuck in a tiny cage their whole life. They're much happier now. :-)

Next bird is the Spice Finch they're also very friendly birds and they get along best with the Star finches. :-) They like to wake up every morning to chirping... they're very cute! :-)


...now were getting into the kind of stranger of the birds... the beautiful little Diamond Dove they're the worlds smallest dove and they're very peaceful birds... they are very quiet except for the occasional"hoot hoot" noise...


Then we have the birds that live at the bottom... the little Button Quail these guys are two males, Milky and Red Baron (names fit well) it's hard to get photos of them sadly so Sara had to just deal with what she got here...


...then we have the beautiful Gouldian Finch they're very vocal birds and Sara swears they know they're pretty... but aren't they? The bright one is a male and right next to it is a female of the same type. :-)


...and last but not least of the birds we have the Star Finch there are two different varieties... the yellow face and the red face. You can see the red face and the yellow face in this photo. The red face are a lot more common... they're beautiful birds and the first finch she got was the yellow face male (the one with more yellow on his face) on the left hand side. His name is Peep. He's also the one in Sara's avatar with his "girlfriend" Dotty... also known as Peeps girlfriend in this house you'll find out why in a minute...


...if you want to hear what these birds sound like you can hear Peeps unique song here... you can hear the normal red face singing here who is Mr. Peep and ends with the white male zebra finch Frank. :-) Now as to why we call them that... just as we were about to go away they cuddled up together so Sara took a shot...

Aren't they adorable? :-)

Anyways, there's also the fish but they're happy being in the dark at the moment and Sara doesn't want to scare them for the photo... but we also have Anni... Sara's 10 month old beagle puppy...


Anni had to stay in the cage while photos were being taken because Sara can't fully trust her to leave it when she responds... case in point... Anni being good and Anni being naughty... it's a new trick so I can't expect miracles... :-P But yeah, now you've been introduced to all of Sara's animals... I hope you enjoyed having a bit of a tour on the animal side of Sara's house... write again soon mom! :-)

Today we took a trip to Sydney. We had to go to Camperdown for an appointment for Sara's son, Andrew. But we decided since we had a bit of time to check out some of the local beaches... well, since Camperdown is pretty much in the CBD of Sydney we were directed to the beaches of the CBD. Which are extremely crowded, hard to get to and overall a pain in the butt. Especially driving, people don't drive in the CBD for a reason... but the GPS took us there so that's where we went... the concrete jungle was too much for the GPS though because it kept driving us in circles before finally getting us out... needless to say we gave up going to that beach and just decided to head back to Camperdown...

Although I don't have any photos of me (it was too hard because we all kept slipping off of the dashboard) in the CBD but here are some of the things we saw...



This is coming into the CBD around Darling Harbor. If you can see that little gold star on the left side of the picture... very pretty... and look at all those huge buildings...


The next photos is the middle of the CBD on the main street of Sydney, George Street.



In these photos you can see the Queen Victoria Building it's a very iconic landmark of Sydney... very beautiful isn't it?  Here's the statue right out front of it... Queen Victoria... if you look at the link connected to the Queen Victoria Building you can see what it looks like on the inside... very elegant!

Next on the short tour through the lesser known CBD icons is the clock tower on Martin Place... isn't it gorgeous?


Last but not least we got to see the AMP Tower people climb up on top of it and walk around the edge in what's called the Sydney Tower Skywalk part of the walk actually has a clear walkway so you can see straight down! Crazy!

Well those are the lesser known parts of the CBD of Sydney. I hope you enjoyed the walk through so to speak. We hope to be taking another trip to Sydney in the coming days *fingers crossed* Write again soon mom!

Wow! Sara got the fright of her life earlier this morning. Remember that tarantula? Well, it disappeared for a few days. Her and her husband kept remarking that they should find it because it's a big spider and well, you really want to know where it is... because having something like that spook you... well isn't fun. Well what happened early this morning (around 2am) Sara will probably never forget...

Sara was sitting at the desk and then looked down at her hands and saw some legs moving towards her hand. She quickly pulled back and stood up. She even made a whimpering noise... how crazy is that? Someone so big... compared to something so small? Well it decided to make a home between her keyboard and mouse so Sara decided to show us how big he was... so here I am... do you see it?


Pretty dark eh? Well, here's with the flash... I'm sure you can see him now...

Definitely not something you want crawling on you in the middle of the night. Sara thinks it might have actually had to crawl across her stomach to get where it currently is... oh my gosh that would give me the heebie jeebies! You can bet she went straight to bed after that little incident...

Hopefully we'll take another trip to Sydney again soon! Write again soon mom! Miss you!

Hi! It's been really boring around here lately.. Sara hasn't been able to get out as much as she would have liked to so we've been sitting at home with her... well, nothing much interesting has been going on but today Sara tried kangaroo for the first time. So she thought this was note worthy... we all smelled it and it actually smelled really yummy! It looked just like a steak and Sara says it actually just tastes just like beef, but very very lean, almost no fat at all.. yummy!

Not much there but sometimes I wish we could try new things too - so here was Sara's dinner (or part of it anyways) from the other day. I promise more interesting things ahead in the days to come! Write again soon!

Today we were taking a small road trip. No where exciting but Sara took this as an opportunity to show us what the Central West is full of... which sadly isn't all that interesting, but hopefully you'll find it a bit more interesting... it's very dry and brown here. There's been barely any rain, so now that it's Autumn, we're hoping for a bit more rain... *fingers crossed* first stop we went to a small town called Blayney which has a population of only 3,000 people...

Here I am at the top of the highest point in Blayney, Church Hill... you can see the whole town from here...


...and here's the rest of the view around Church Hill from where we're standing...




Coming down from Church Hill we went down the main street to our next destination... here I am on the main street which is called Adelaide Street...


We're back on the road again... I'll update more soon!

Next stop was the Blayney Wind Farm and Carcoar Dam which is just outside of Blayney and Carcoar... here I am in front of the wind turbines...


Sara also decided to show you Carcoar Dam... if you click that link you can see what Carcoar Dam used to look like. Since the Central West has been in a drought for so long the water level is much much lower than at the moment... here I am in front of what is left of the dam...


Kind of puts it into perspective how much of a drought Australia is in, especially inland from the coastlines... here's a closer image of the water level. You see that line on the hill just below the trees? That's where the water used to be... can you imagine THAT much water evaporating? Scary isn't it?


...and here are a couple more photos of the wind mills that run the wind farm...



Write again soon!

Next stop was Carcoar which is one of the many tiny towns between Blayney and Cowra, so we decided to get a few photos. Carcoar has a population of around 400 people... so very small, here I am on the main street...


...there's sadly not much to see here but Sara took us down to the little river that runs through the town. Sara says her and her husband Daniel used to drive here from Blayney to here to have picnic's once in a while. :-) Isn't it pretty?



Back on the road... we're almost there! Another 40 minutes or so... write again soon!

Last stop, we're finally there! We've arrived in Cowra which is a town about half the size of Orange, with around 13,000 people. There's not too much to see here... Sara and her husband had to do a few mystery shops. So we just waited, after all the jobs were done we all went down to the Lachlan River... we saw a LOT of bird life while we were there... here I am in front of the river...


Walking down to the river there were a lot of aboriginal paintings on the underside of the road (which passed over the river)... here are some of the paintings...



Can you guess what some of the animals are? Well, there are dolphins, echidna, turtles, fish, dugong, kookaburra, and snakes. How interesting is all that? Isn't it pretty?

You can't tell but there are HUNDREDS of Long-billed Corella's... they're making heaps of noise but they're fun to watch. Sara took a short video of them in the tree... you can watch the video here. It's short and you can also hear the noises they make... they were crazy... here are a few snap shots of them as well...





...and we even got to see a bunch of Australian Wood Ducks...


After spending an hour or so at the river we decided to head home. It had already been a long day and it was only 230pm. Crazy! Well back home we go... write again soon! Miss you mom I hope you enjoyed my day out!

Today we took a trip to Bathurst... and something Sara does always when she goes to Bathurst is she goes and sees if she can spot any kangaroos. They're commonly just outside of the town on a road going towards Blayney. They're in a farmers paddock which is now slowly being turned into a more residential area sadly. So now they're being pushed farther and farther out of the town... this time we actually did spot some kangaroos... can you see him behind me?


Here's a close up of that same guy:


I know! He's really really small but Sara couldn't get much closer... when she tried not only did that guy hop off... but all the others as well. Sara didn't even notice those guys, they blend in so well to the dry grass don't they?



We were kind of rushed in Bathurst today so we didn't see as much as Sara would have liked to show us... but there's another stop in the mean time... write again soon! :-)

Right near the kangaroos actually is a famous Australian race track... Mount Panorama.. which holds the famous race each October called the Bathurst 1000 this race means all of the Central West (where we are living currently) is flooded with people for a weekend and Australia shuts down because on Sunday everyone is watching the races. Sara told us there was a couple times she went out when she lived in Blayney (population 3000) there was like no one out.. it was literally like a ghost town... well now's our time to take a little part in something very famously Australian... :-)


Here I am in front of the Mount Panorama gate... you can see in the background the sign on the side of the mountain (which is the close up in the picture above)...


Here's the starting gate... although we started from the other side so there are no pictures of us there sadly...



...and here's some pictures of us going around the track...


















...at the top of the mountain Sara took a very quick photo to show the view from the top of the mountain (which is right above that white sign that says Mount Panorama)...


After we took a ride on the track we got out of the car and visited a now famous statue of Peter Brock who won the panorama races a record 9 wins before he died in a car crash in 2006, very soon after Steve Irwin died actually! Here we are in front of his statue...

...here's a better photo of it...


...we also learned a bit more about the race track. They have some huge signs along the side of the gate (which I'm standing in front of in one of the first pictures)... Sara couldn't get a good photo so she'll just write out what it says:

Shortly you will be on Mount Panorama. A 60kph scenic drive offering spectacular views of Bathurst and surrounding country side. The last true public road racing circuit left in Australia. Twice each year it is of special significance to the motor car and bike racing enthusiasts rising almost 200 metres and falling through a succession of bends, it has heart-in-mouth appeal to drivers and spectators alike.

With motor racing in Bathurst as early as 1911, the Vale Circuit for motor cycles was opened in 1931 and when abandoned, a scenic road albeit a race circuit, was constructed to the Bald Hills, now Mount Panorama.

The home of the toughest and most famous car race in the Southern Hemisphere, the Toohey's 1000, it is a unique test of man and machine with every driver striving to do the perfect lap.

This has changed somewhat from the first Australian long distance classic, the 500 miler at Phillip Island in the early sixties, shifting Bathurst in 1963. The Bathurst City Council, Australian Racing Drivers Club, ATN Chanel 7 and sponsors alike have been involved in this phenomenon of excitement, spectacle and human drama, Australia's greatest motor race the Toohey's 1000.

Since 1938 the Easter Australian Grand Prix for motor cycles has been held here. To every Australian motor cycle enthusiast Bathurst has the most magic of all, even though in 1989 the Grand Prix went to Phillip Island and in 1991 to Eastern Creek.

It's amazing how much I learned today about Bathurst and the most famous part of Bathurst... this last weekend we actually watched a race at Mount Panorama, it was some kind of 12-hour race... how crazy is that... can you picture going around that thing for 12 hours. I think I'd go crazy! Well I'll update again soon! Miss you mom! <3

Today we decided to do a bit of the touristy stuff in Orange since we've seen the surrounding areas it's now time to explore the town we've lived in for the last few weeks. We packed up the car and took a short drive. The first stop wasn't too far from where Sara lives, it's Banjo Patterson's birth place. Which wasn't where we are but very close to where we are standing... here I am on the bust that looks like Banjo...


If you don't know, Banjo Patterson is a very famous Australian and he's even on the $10.00 note down here. He's famous for writing the poem Waltzing Matilda... if you've never heard it here it is:

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,
Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And he sang as he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Down came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong,
Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee,
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred,
Up rode the troopers, one, two, three,
"Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?"
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
"Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?",
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong,
"You'll never take me alive", said he,
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me."
"Oh, You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me."

Right near the Banjo Patterson bust is the remains of the old Templers Mill... here's the rubble... can you see us on it?...


How about now?


...here we are!


Sadly people use the rubble as a bit of a garbage pile sometimes... really sad actually... but here's a bit of information about the historic templers mill...


In 1828, the land between Orange and Suma Park was granted to emancipist Simeon Lord as part compensation for the land he had surrendered to Governor Macquarie in 1811 in Sydney. It was probably Lord's son, Thomas, who built and supervised the district's first flour mill on the property, which retained the Aboriginal name Narrambla.

It is possible that the grinding stone was first operated by convicts but in 1840, when the mill was acquired by John Arthur Templer, these were replaced by horse works. In 1848, Templer installed a 12 horsepower steam engine and boiler, and the mill's chimney probably dated from this time. Farmers brought grain for grinding at one shilling a bushel.

It was in Templer's homestead among the trees by the creek that his great nephew, Andrew Barton Paterson, was born on the 17th of February 1864. Banjo Paterson as he became known, is one of Australia's best known and most popular poets.

Templer's Mill operated until about 1870. The boiler was later used for many years at Heap's Brewery in Moulder Street, Orange. The remains of the mill, considered dangerous and beyond repair, were demolished in 1971.

Last stop we got to see the memorial to Banjo which is right next to the road... here we are in front of the memorial...



The Australian Poet Andrew Barton Paterson "Banjo"

Was born 17th February 1864 at the Narrambla Homestead which stood 8 chains North East of this memorial. Erected 1947.

"And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended and at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars."
-Clancy of the Overflow

On the way back to the car we got a view of the surrounding areas of the birth place... this is a lot of what the areas around Orange looks like. As you can tell, we really are in a bad drought with how brown the grass is... we haven't had a good rainfall in months!



That's our visit to the famous poets birth place... now it's time to move onto the next big tourist trap in Orange... this is a bit longer of a car ride... write again soon!