The A-Team Does Australia, Part 1

As we enter the holiday season, the celebration of Thanksgiving and the coming of Christmas have reminded Brad and I that a new country provides a very different perspective and experience for this time of year.  Though we can anticipate celebrating the birth of our Savior, the fact that we are walking among palm trees strung with Christmas lights, singing Christmas carols in 80 degree heat, and attending Christmas barbeques on the beach in the middle of summer is an entirely strange experience.  Understandably, Australians think that celebrating Christmas in any season other than summer is odd.  However, if I know my biblical research well, I believe that most Christian scholars believe that Jesus was most likely born in the summer, so perhaps it’s entirely appropriate that we experience Christmas in this way.  Mary was probably suffering the heat on that ride to Bethlehem, and she and Joseph were perhaps a bit concerned about shielding Jesus’ baby skin from the sun. Maybe we can relate now just a bit more. J 

It is also a little bittersweet that we don’t get to celebrate the season with our friends and family, but the recent visit from my parents was a wonderful gift in this holiday season.  Though Australia doesn’t have Thanksgiving, my parents were able to spend two weeks with us over Thanksgiving (except for a few days when they went to Adelaide) and for THAT we were very thankful.  They arrived first in Sydney, where we spent about five days with them, then they flew to Adelaide and visited Kangaroo Island for a few days before we flew to the top end and met them in Cairns for four days to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef and explore the rainforests.  Cairns was so beautiful!  We looooved the beauty of the Great Barrier Reef and the rainforests, so I’ve decided that Cairns deserves its own blog post, coming soon.  There are too many pictures we’d love to share!  For now, I’ll share about our time with my parents (the A-Team) in Sydney.

My parents first arrived on a Friday while I was at work, but Brad had the chance to meet them in the afternoon and then take them to the beach for a coastal walk.  They completed the Bondi beach to Coogee beach coastal walk, and in the span of a couple of hours, saw all five of the beaches closest to us … if that doesn’t welcome you to Sydney, I don’t know what does!  The next day we headed to the harbor and enjoyed everything it has to offer.  We walked all along Darling Harbor, Circular Quay, and Farm Cove and strolled through the Royal Botanical Gardens.  Along the way, we of course had to get 1,001 pictures of the Opera House and we spent a bit of time exploring it.  How could you not?  It was a beautiful sunny day, and we had so much fun showing off the area that we’ve been enjoying the last few months!

You can never have too many pictures of the Opera House, right?

 

After that, we perused the Rocks and the Rocks’ weekend market, the historic district across from the Opera House where the first English settlement in Australia was established.  From there, we decided that a Sydney Harbor cruise was in order and enjoyed all the sights, including Fort Denison, the Opera House and bridge from the water.  When we got back, we decided to walk across the bridge and enjoyed even MORE great views of the harbor.  We reached north Sydney and then took the train back to Darling Harbor, where we enjoyed a great dinner on the water, and capped off the evening with the Saturday night fireworks show over the water.  What a great day!

On the Sydney Harbor Bridge

My lovely parents :)

 

On Sunday, we took the A-Team to the Hillsong church that we’ve been attending, then we decided to take a ferry across the harbor to visit Manly, a quaint and beautiful beach town at the northwest mouth of the harbor.  We also walked along the coast to check out one of my favorites, Shelly Beach.

The next day the A-Team decided to check out the Blue Mountains.  They took the train out to Katoomba, saw the Three Sisters (the famed rock formation of the Blue Mountains), and hiked down into the Jamison Valley along the same route Brad and I took a month or two ago.  Along the way, they took the Great Staircase down, saw lots of wildlife, viewed Katoomba Falls, and took the Furber Steps back up the canyon.  It sounded like a wonderful day.  Tuesday was the A-Team’s last day in Sydney, and Brad had the chance to accompany them on an exploration of Royal National Park, to the south of Sydney.  They wandered through some trails, enjoying nature, loved the wonderful senior citizens they met along the way, and capped off the day with a rowboat ride in the river.

They left us then for a few days to fly to Adelaide and then trek across the water to spend two days on Kangaroo Island to see the beautiful rock formations on the coast and all the wildlife Kangaroo Island has to offer.  They then flew up to Cairns, where we met them to begin our Great Barrier Reef and rainforest adventures … to come soon!  As soon as I get a chance to go through all our pictures, I hope to provide an update on our time there. 

In the meantime, as always, we miss all of you, our friends and family, and hope that you are enjoying the coming of Christmas and the celebration of our Savior’s birth.  We hope that you are blessed and able to take the time to truly appreciate the meaning of the season.