Hugh & Justine’s Excellent Adventure

January 26 is Australia Day. There is a lot of angst about this date because it represents the day in 1788 when Great Britain's flag was raised in Sydney Harbour, thereby paying no respect to the Indigenous people who had lived here for millennia. As a newcomer to...

To celebrate Hugh's birthday this week, we flew to Melbourne to watch tennis at the Australian Open. Unlike any time we'd watched it on TV, where it always seemed to be stifling hot, this year it was COLD! The daytime highs were 18-20C and the overnight lows were...

The title refers to what was definitely a highlight of our time in Australia thus far! But like any good broadcast, I'll make you wade through less interesting stuff first 🙂 Our back bathroom renovation is now complete! There is a curious Aussie phenomenon where...

I am totally stuck for a name for this week's blog. I was going to reference the damn tree frogs again but I'm trying not to give the buggers the satisfaction of making it into too many blog titles. So this one is just a "mish mash" because this week just has a mish...

I think we're getting used to this hot Christmas concept! Well, that's in the context of having air conditioning in the house and car, of course 🙂 (The image with the title of this week's blog came from my friend Leigh - I just love it!) The week before Christmas, we...

Just a video for you today 🙂  

I've been gathering Aussie vocab for you and just never had enough room in prior posts - until now! It was a bit of a light week in terms of new experiences, so I'll take this opportunity to share some Aussie vernacular with you. Starting with a word in the title of...

OK, you better put a pot of coffee on or crack open a bottle of wine - it's been a busy week! Three very important things happened this week. First, it was one year ago on December 7 that I received the job offer from Central Queensland University that has changed my...

Hugh and I have gone south at Christmas for a number of years, so being somewhere warm over the Christmas holidays isn't strange. But being somewhere warm in the lead up to Christmas sure is! I have a monthly calendar that I brought with me from Canada and when I...

Let's get the frog part over with. I am keenly aware that just one week ago, I commented that the green tree frogs in our gutters didn't bother me. I lied. They are LOUD. When it was just one, not too bad. But when a second one arrived (or maybe more, we still haven't...

Before getting into this week's Aussie experiences, I wanted to follow up on a couple of last week's. First, our friend Ray sent this interesting article about vegemite in the NY Times last week (definitely worth reading - right click on the photo to open in new tab,...

Before I forget, I need to share the exciting news that Hugh has finally cracked the mystery of getting sourdough bread to rise in the hotter, humid environment here! Three batches in a row have risen to perfection, so we now consider this problem solved. He just had...