Thank you Jason & Mairead!

Thank you for the best breakfast EVER!

Another day at the office

Not a bad drive to work!

Road side oddity

Now THAT'S a big banana.

Warriors

Two Red Crossers... ready to take on the world (or a small handful of streets in MacKay)

Hard out work

This team just returned from outreach. They are either pointing out the areas they just finished, or the 7 fundamental principles... it's hard to tell!

Favorite Red Cross photo ever!

No... this isn't a Red Cross stock photo... this is my teammate Donna delivering "trauma teddies" to some kids in MacKay.

Post-It Notes

I am now OFFICIALLY convinced that the Red Cross keeps the Post-It Note people in business. I am in another country... yet still find my name and position posted on the wall with that magical reusable glue. I was the Team Leader for Personal Support Outreach Team #6 (after staying as low profile as possible in hopes of getting out into the field again!).

ARC Cargo

It wasn't just us on the plane!

Home Sweet Home Away from Home

This was the Red Cross Headquarters for the operation, set up in the local Red Cross office. It was good to see a framed photo of Henry Dunant overseeing the operation the way he oversees every Red Cross office in Australia. You gotta love that guy! He had a pretty good idea to create an international movement out of an experience on a bloody battlefield.

Welcome to MacKay...

...now watch out for the "jet blast" (the red sign).

The not-so-sunshiney-state

I'm back!

Thanks right everyone... my luggage is spewed all over the living room floor, and half of the laundry is done. In a nut shell, I am back from MacKay, Queensland. I have a few days off as a mental health break and look forward to posting some pictures and some stories from the journey. We had another wave of Red Crossers head up there Sunday night, and another wave will go up this Friday. It looks like MacKay is on the loooong road to recovery.

Oh dear...

Rain intensity is off the scale
Rainfall figures collated from last Friday’s flooding rains have revealed the enormity of the situation, with the rain intensity twice that of a one in one hundred year event.

Mackay Mayor Julie Boyd said an analysis of the rainfall intensity indicates that Mackay received peak rainfall intensities up to 184 millimetres in an hour.

“The recorded intensity was double the one in one hundred-year rainfall intensity, according to figures from the Bureau of Meteorology, “ Cr Boyd said.

The figures show the rain intensity continued unabated for six hours, resulting in the city receiving falls well in excess of the one in one hundred year rainfall event during that period.

“This resulted in Mackay receiving about 600 millimetres over a six hour period.

“No drainage system in Queensland is designed to carry runoff from such a significant event,” Cr Boyd said.

Cr Boyd said early indications suggest that this rainfall event was among one of the most intense rainfall events recorded in Australia.

All our new developments are based on the recommended state standards.

Cr Boyd said it’s important to recognise that this rainfall event also occurred with the city already saturated from falls of up to 200 millimetres only days before.

“This creates an already saturated environment, which increases the storm water runoff into the drainage systems,” she said.

Mackay has received about 80 per cent of its annual rainfall in the first seven weeks of the year.

MacKay Bound!

I am leaving in about 15 minutes for MacKay, Queensland on a Red Cross deployment. Woohoo! I haven't been deployed since Katrina in '05 so I've been DYING to go (as many of you are well aware, I'm sure). I will miss Megan though. :(

Another great one :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7q_3wegb8g&feature=related

"I'll tell you what, you put a hat on a kangaroo and peoples' heads will explode"

Great cricket commercial

Americans just don't understand cricket. HAHAHAHA!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFj0wutF5RQ

EEEEEWWWWW

Jelly fish?

Remind me not to swim here again!

:)

You supply the plane ticket... we'll supply the beach

Not eww.

This is pretty (especially the tiiiiny little starfish that is living in the shell). We live by a great beach. This is what we do every Friday night. It's a good life.

Eww.

Summit

I declare this... Mt. Recycle-able!

(Someday we'll take it all out to the bin)

Sunset

Sunset at the G

Lone soldier

LAME fans

These folks sat in front of us and read their motorcycle magazines during the ENTIRE game. When Australian fans would stand up and cheer over a boundary (4 points), or an Indian wicket (an "out") they would act irritated. Why are you here?!!! Haha.

Long day at the MCG

This isn't your average baseball game. Cricket games last up to 8 hours a day. Here we are about hour 5 or 6. We're running low on snacks and Diet Coke! Oh no!

we heart cricket

We just love it so much!

MCG

Another beautiful day at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds.

ODI (One Day International) vs. India

Feb. 10th, 2008

2:15pm-10:15pm

yummy in my tummy, continued

guacamole + cricket = perfection

yummy in my tummy

What a great breakfast... pancakes with raspberries and a white chocolate sauce. Mmmm...

"Law & Order"

We have always enjoyed an evening filled with "Law & Order" re-runs, but they've been especially entertaining since being in Australia. You see, when the network runs it's commercials to let you know that "Law & Order is coming up next," the Aussie doing the voice over says, "Lar & Orda." This got me thinking... why do Aussies add "r's" where they don't belong, and drop "r's" where they clearly need to be?! I asked a colleague this and we spent the better part of an afternoon debating how to properly pronounce it. By the end of the day she was saying, "Laaaaa & Orderrrrr." Close enough I suppose. Close enough.

Cricket

This picture clearly lays all all the possible fielding positions in cricket (click on picture for full effect). And people say cricket is complicated. HA!

Only 4 more days 'til we go to our next match! :)

200th Post!

"I'd like to thank Australia... for giving us pictures to post and weird stories to tell."

DD

<-- What I wouldn't give.

Pink Lake up close

Megan is modeling a nice sample from Pink Lake.

Pink Lake

Here's another interesting roadside stop. It's hard to tell from the picture, but this is a salt lake out in the middle of no where that has a remarkable pink colour. Quite strange. Like much of Australia! haha.

South Australia/ Victoria state line

Incredibly... we barely noticed the flies in S.A., however as soon as we crossed back into Victoria the "bush salute" resumed.

Room with a view

This was the view out of our cabin on the Murray River (South Australia).

Australian Reality TV

http://youtube.com/watch?v=iWus4ij6bgI

:)

Keeping score

Okay, I promise... this is the last cricket photo. That is, until NEXT SUNDAY when we go to a 1 day match between Australia and India at the MCG! Yup, we're obsessed, but it's a healthy obsession.

Manual Scoreboard

A cool feature of the Adelaide Oval is that it has a manual scoreboard. It's just like going to a baseball game at some of the old stadiums in the States... well... except here the scoreboard logs overs, sundries, wickets, etc. In this photo, the scoreboard is being switched over as Indian prepares to bat.

Oi Oi Oi!

Pieces of work.

Us, not the hats.

Aussie Aussie Aussie

Here's our guys... sliding to keep the ball from the boundary (if the ball reaches the rope, it's automatically 4 points).

Harbhajan Singh

This here is an interesting fella. Harbhajan Singh has been in the centre of controversy for the past month or so after using a racist term against one of the Australian players. He has a hot temper and the Australian fans hate him dearly. He appealed the ruling against him which lifted the 3 match ban against him... thus allowing him to play in Adelaide. What this picture DOESN'T show is that after the game we were out in the parking lot (i.e.- parked on the grass by the river outside the Oval) and we were flipping through our Lonely Planet to figure out where to eat. As we started to drive away we spotted Harbhajan and a few of his teammates walking to their hotel. Keep in mind... in India these guys are SUPERSTARS! They are a team of 11 people who represent a country of over a billion people. They can't walk anywhere without being mobbed, and their team hotel is guarded like a fortress. But in Adelaide, they casually walked toward their hotel. Megan seized the opportunity, hopped out of the car, and asked for an autograph. Unfortunately we couldn't find a pen for the life of us (or something that wasn't uber-pro-Australia to sign). So here these superstars stood... waiting for a couple of Aussie fans in green shirts to dig through their piece of crap car for a pen and paper!!!! What a weird experience. He signed our program. Or maybe he just doodled in it. It's really hard to know. Who cares... we saw Harbhajan Singh, R.P. Singh, and Ishant Sharma (the 19 year old Indian phenom)!!!!

GAME TIME!

We got our tickets... we had our green shirts... and we were sporting our Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi hats. The weather was perfect and we were so excited to see more cricket. Unlike our first game where over 65,000 people packed into the Melbourne Cricket Grounds, only 16,000 or so were in the Adelaide Oval. It was a much more mellow, civilised cricket crowd. As Megan noted, "The streakers in Adelaide keep their clothes on and give up pretty easily when the cops chase them!" What a great day it was. For those of you who follow cricket (hahaha) Australia had to chase 526 runs, which has rarely been done. Lucky for us... we saw it happen. :)

Friendly little neighbours

These gorgeous parrots lived in the trees outside our cabin in Murray Bridge, South Australia (about an hour from Adelaide). They were much prettier in the evening than at 5 or 6 am when they woke up... but I guess we can't be too picky. You don't see these fellas flying around all over the States!

Time to get our game faces on

We carefully prepared our homemade Aussie pride hats for day 4 of the match vs. India in Adelaide. We are becoming serious cricket fans... much to the dismay of many Australians who try to convince us that cricket is "dumb" and "boring." :(

Surfing in a park

Yeah, I'm talented.

Best playground ever!

This crazy little slide-train thing was at a playground in Keith, South Australia. I don't really know how we stumbled upon it... but I'm glad we did!!!