Travelog for: UrselHH

Sadly UrselHH the first is lost - but UrselHH the second is travelling -searching for UrselHH the first.

If you want to become her host, just send a PM to RikeH. 

Today I decided to become a ToyVoyager.

My Mum told me, that I have to be afraid of this
strange thing..... Hope, that nobody has things like this
at home !!!

This afternoon we went to the postoffice.
Now I have my first photo on a postbox - and I helped my
Mum to sent away some postcards 

Maybe you remember the postbox on my photo yesterday?

Now I am IN this postbox and on my way to sara in Australia.
I am very excited and hope, that my flight will be a good one 

Hope to write from Australia soon !!!!

Bye for now !

Hi mom! I've arrived to Australia (well yesterday actually) I sat in a post office for 4 days while they had their holiday and weekend... finally glad I made it here...

There was actually a sticker on my post bag put there from Aussie customs saying that the bag was torn during shipping... and they repaired it... thankfully nothing in the bag went missing (ie. me)... Sara has had one of her toys go missing in that way... really sad! So I'm finally here... finally in Australia...

Not much to do lately - we're taking a rest but in the mean time we can help Sara with her daily chores, she's got a lot today since it's Andrew (her son's) first day back to daycare... write again soon... with photos I promise! ;-) Miss you!

Today all of us toyvoyagers decided to help Sara with some of her chores around the house. Usually Wednesday's for her are pretty busy, but this one was way busier than normal since they had so many public holidays in a row... first off Sara had to clean the mouse mansion - once she had it all clean and put new bedding in we decided to sit in it to relax... not really that comfy, but they make burrows in it...


...once that was all done we had to top up the food for the two other mice in separate cages... they're wild mice that Sara caught in her house... since they had been reliant on Sara's food she couldn't release them to their deaths... so Sara keeps them just like the other mice but in separate cages... here we are on top of the cages...

The mouse cage on the left is the boy mouse, who is called Mr. Jingles, the cage on the right is a female mouse (not put together for obvious reasons) called Dorothy...

Sara actually got a photo of Dorothy who came out to eat once we changed over her food and water. It was from a distance because she's scared very easily... this is what she looks like...

...very very small isn't she?...

Next on the list of chores we had to finish off the mouse cage... here we are preparing to put the mice back in their mansion...

...there's four mice in there, can you see them all? Two of them are pretty old now, the large black and white one (more brown and white now) is called Moo, the white one is Charlotte, the tan colored one is Puff (her sister died just recently - she was identical but had a tiny white spot on her back side)... and the small white one with black spots is called Choc Chip... Moo and Charlotte are around 18 months old, which is pretty good... the average life span of a domestic mouse is around 24 months...

Before they were put in the cage Sara thought it would be nice for me to meet up with the mice... Moo seemed most inclined to meet me...


...Choc chip hid from me (in the tube), and the other two stayed back... they all seemed very cautious of me... but Moo was very friendly and approachable... :-)

Finally... the mouse mansion is complete... see the mice in there?


Once that was complete, we had to get the washing baskets ready, so we had a whole heap of laundry to fold... Sara hates folding laundry so she was happy to get some help...


Now that's all done, and another load of laundry is in the washing machine, time to move on... time to clean out the bird aviary... it's in the kitchen, Sara's got lots of finches but they're all very beautiful... here's me in front of the aviary...

In Bree's photo one of the birds was caught mid air... here's a close up of the zebra finch flying in her photo...


...now we got to clean out the bird cage... we do it twice a week and the birds love when they're cage is all clean... here I am in front of all the stuff ready to go back into the cage...


...as for the birds, some of the birds are quite unique. Zebra finches are very common everywhere in the world. But Sara has some pretty unique ones, she's got star finches (yellow and red faced), gouldian finches (which are endangered in the wild - and extremely hard to breed), spice finches, diamond doves (which is the world's smallest dove)... and society finches which are a bird that was never found in the wild - it was a domestically bred bird, so it's very handy to have in mixed aviaries especially with breeding, as if you do it right you can have the society finches take over and raise the babies that were abandoned. Here's some photos of the finches closer up... can you figure out which bird is which?...



...Sara also has some "ground dwelling" birds at the bottom... also good in aviaries, they're called button quails they're both of the silver variety...

Something exciting... is we hear some... odd sounds come out of the cage recently... Sara says two of her gouldian finches actually have had fertile eggs that have hatched. There's sadly only one baby remaining... and it's sure noisy. Sara's not sure how old it is or what it looks like since gouldian finches are extremely hard to breed since they'll easily abandon the nest. Even when Sara was taking a photo of all of us in front of the aviary one of the gouldians sent out a "warning" chirp that made all the birds freeze and Sara didn't want to bug them too much. Sara promises when the baby leaves the nest she'll get photos of the baby and us so we can see what a baby gouldian finch looks like. :-)

If you can't tell Sara is an animal lover, she also has fish, and she has a dog... since they're not cleaning the dog right now there's no photos helping with that... Sara put the dog in the kennel to get the photos since she's still a puppy and in training. So here we are with her 1 year old beagle, Anni...



Last but not least it's time to finish off the washing, so we all headed outside and "hung out"...


...after what seemed like forever, all the clothes were on the line... it got very very windy while we were outside but we were protected by one of the kid toys Sara's got outside for Andrew (her son)... here's all the clothes on the line...


...now it's time to rest... it's been a long long day! write again soon mom! <3

Well... we all took a road trip to Bathurst. We got a call today saying that we were going to be taking a long road trip in a few days (when we were going to go to Bathurst)... so we pushed our trip here sooner... first things first, Sara always searches for kangaroos since she knows the places that they frequent on the outskirts of the town... so... lets see if we can find any of those famous Australian animals...


Next thing you know... we were there, and there were some kangaroos... just sitting on the side of the road. Sara got us in a photo before she got some close up photos. They weren't all that close to us... here I am with the kangaroo in the distance...


...and of course Sara got some close up photos of the kangaroos... there was a large male there as well, you'll notice him out of the bunch when those photos come along...







But that wasn't the last stop in Bathurst... this town has a much more famous thing in it... something that all Australian's know about and it makes this country stop when it's on... let's move onto the next stop... write again soon! :-)

Next stop was the very famous Australian race track... Mount Panorama... this is the race track that holds the famous Bathurst 1000 each October. For one full weekend the city is absolutely booming, people come from all over Australia to see the races... so we got to visit the track... here's us on the way to the track... if you see in the background on the side of the mountain you can see the writing? See it mom?...


I'm sure the sign was a bit hard to see, since we were still quite a distance from it... here we are at the entrance to the track...


...but before we go on the track we got to visit the new statue of Peter Brock which was introduced last year at the races. Mr Brock was famous for winning more times than anyone on the track... sadly he died in 2006, in a car crash, on a different track... very shortly after Steve Irwin died... within days. Here I am in front of his statue...


Sara decided to take us up to a higher level to see the race track from above... sort of... here I am in front of the sign you might have been able to see some of earlier... it's the very famous 'Mount Panorama' sign on the side of the mountain...


...and of course we had to check out the starting gate... we had to see where we were headed...


There aren't many race tracks open to the public. Nor are there many race tracks where you can drive on them, or have to drive on the track to get to your home... some people live on the track (on the inside ring of the track there's vineyards and quite a few little houses that people rent out during the races)... well... what are we waiting for, let's see what this race track has to offer...

















Now we have been able to see the whole track as it is, you can see the view from the top of the mountain... isn't it beautiful? Well I better get home and get some rest... Sara says we'll need it for what's coming up! Write again soon!

*yawn* It's 6am, and we are already on the road... were leaving Orange now... Sara's keeping quiet of where were going... it's a big surprise to all of us, although it's mainly just a long drive for us we might get to see some fun things... well here we are, leaving Orange just as the sun is coming up...

Lots more to see... write again soon! :-)

We've already been on the road for 2 hours... it's a place Sara's never even been before, a small town out West of her called Parkes... it's a town with only around 11,000 inhabitants but it's the largest town we'll see for the rest of the day...


We got to see what Parkes is famous for... it's radio telescope...


Can you see it? It's pretty big at 64 meters wide... but obviously it's still a bit of a distance away, you can see it slightly over the trees... you'll see it a lot better soon...


...and finally here we are... isn't it massive?


I don't think the picture gives it the justice it deserves... it's amazing how huge it is... apparently this radio telescope actually helps with NASA, and helped with the Apollo 11 Moon Landing in 1969. The famous transmissions with the voice of Neil Armstrong came through here, before being transmitted to Houston... isn't that awesome?

Sadly we couldn't stay long, so we just got some photos around the front area of the museum... here I am on top of the world... what toyvoyager can say they've done that?



...and here I am on a sun dial... I'm not quite sure how it works but it is cool to look at isn't it?...


Well we quickly had to get back to the car and get on our way... we had another 2 hours to our first destination... I'm thinking this is going to be a long day... but a good start! I can't wait to see what else I'll get to see! Write again soon! :-)

Next stop was a small town called Condobolin... this town has around 3,500 people in it, but honestly it looked a lot smaller than that... we struggled in this town, we couldn't find a place that sold the fuel we need for the car. So we had a bit of a panic attack before finding someone that sold it... thankfully... here we are on the outskirts of Condobolin...


Throughout this tiny town there was a lot of huge trees, it was actually quite pretty... very dry and warm but it was very pretty... here are a few pictures from around the town...




...and this is us when were filling up the tank... we were so happy to find fuel, we would have been lost in the middle of nowhere and that would have been even worse... and you'll see why soon...



...it's time to get back on the road... so much more to see, and the most interesting of it is coming up! I promise you'll enjoy this next bit... I know I did! :-) Write again soon!

Now we were on a long stretch. Sara said this would last a while so we all got pretty comfortable and laid back... it was a nice smooth road, this was going to be nice...


Just as we got confident about the ride... the road went from this wonderfully paved road...

...to this... for 100 kilometers (62.5 miles)... it was a very bumpy ride...


So throughout the ride we decided to just watch out for wildlife... see if we could see anything... sadly we didn't see anything... and then... what did we see in the trees...

We saw an emu! A wild emu... how cool is that? Sara had the car turned around so we could get a few photos. Sadly he was at such a distance that we couldn't really get any photos "with" him...

Moving on we just watched the landscapes, if we're lucky we can see something more... I'm surprised I got to see an emu as it is... how amazing, Sara's never seen an emu in the wild before... here's the landscapes that we were driving by for the 2.5 hour drive up this road to our next destination...





...and then all of a sudden... we saw more emu's... wow this is getting crazy... this guy was on the side of the road...

...he was really really scared of the car so he stayed back and tried to get on the other side of the fence, we had to over take him in hopes he didn't hurt himself trying to get past the fence... he was fine thankfully...

...then almost just as we passed that one we saw another group of emu's... this time there was 10 of them all together...

...they all got startled quite easily and took off running farther into the paddock so Sara got some photos of that...


Sara got to see two other groups of emu's with at least 10 birds in each group... Sara even got a video of the emu's if you'd like to see it check it out here it's only 15 seconds long... they're very curious birds aren't they? I think I'm starting to enjoy seeing them... they get more and more interesting as time goes on... :-)

Finally we were at the end of the 2 hours on that dirt track, no more emu's... although we came into something very common in the "outback"... farmers letting their cattle out of the paddock to graze on the side of the road... we had to be very careful...




Just after that we were finally coming into the next town... write again soon! That was such an interesting ride through the "outback"... we even passed by the center mark in New South Wales... it means we got exactly to the center of the state... how crazy is that?

Next stop was a town called Nyngan it's a town with only around 2,000 people but looked surprisingly bigger than the last town we were in that had another 1,500 people in it... go figure...

It was only a short trip through the city so here are a few photos on the way through...





Well, we're moving onto the next small town... thankfully we're almost done, we've been on the road now for 8 hours! Crazy stuff! Write again soon!

Next stop was Narromine a small town outside of Dubbo (around 45 minutes drive from Dubbo)... sadly we didn't have much time to spend there so we got some photos on the road... it was already a long way home and we've already been driving for so many hours today!



Next stop is the last stop before going back home to Orange! Yay!

Finally! At our last stop before heading back home... we've ended up in a tiny tiny town called PeakHill... it has a population of only around 800 people... so a very one road town... not much to see as were driving through...



...it's finally time to head back home... we have to go through Parkes, so if you look at my map you realize we just went in a really big square type shape... amazing isn't it? Especially done in one day, we're as tired as it seems! Write again soon!

We're finally back home... I think it took just this long to recover from 11 hours of being on the road... it's been a crazy last week but has been relaxing for us toyvoyagers. Sara says to quickly pack our bags because we are back on the road again today... we get another visitor this time as well... Rob Dyrduck has come and visited us just in time! Write again soon!