Australia's Snowy Mountains

This past Canada Day weekend, we headed to the Snowy Mountains (known as the "snowies" to most Aussies) to celebrate being Canucks! It took us two years of living in Australia before we would even fathom heading to the snow, but we figured we needed to get there before we moved home, and really... what better place in Australia could we have picked to celebrate the birthday of the best country in the world?!

The drive to the mountains is about 2.5 hours south of Canberra in the state of New South Wales. It is a fairly scenic drive which passes through a handful of small towns along the way. One thing that stood out to us along the drive was that - as we got closer to the snow - the number of snowmen signs attached to buildings began to increase dramatically. It was quite comical, really. There were snowmen, like the one below, plastered to every storefront and awning on the main street of Cooma. Also of note was that every.single.store offered both ski equipment and snow chain rentals.

The snowy mountains, located in the Kosciuszko National Park, are the highest mountain range on the continent. Australia's highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko is located at a height of 2,228 m (7,310 ft) above the ground. The mountain range experiences large natural snowfalls every winter (June/July/early August) and host several snow resorts including Thredbo, Perisher, Jindabyne, and Selwyn. We happened to choose Thredbo to head to on this particularly snowy weekend.

A colleague of ours had told us to stop at a Christmas store in Bredbo on our way to the snowies. She said that this store had every kind of Christmas item you could ever imagine. And she was right. It was kind of crazy!

Christmas store!

Some of the hundreds of thousands of Xmas ornaments for sale

After our stop at the Christmas store, we continued along our way to the snow. We knew there had to be snow in the mountains as there had been a large storm only the day before, but we didn't end up seeing any until we were inside the National Park (only once we were at an extremely high elevation). Once we were inside the park though, the roads ended up being quite snow covered. Given that we were driving in summer tires, there was enough snow accumulated for us to actually consider puling over to put our snow chains on (which, by the way, are legally required to be carried by all cars driving in the park).

Since we had Matty with us, we had no intention of skiing when we arrived. We had planned on having some lunch, taking the chair lift to the top of the ski hill to check out the view, and perhaps letting Matty play around in some snow while we took some pictures. Unfortunately, the snow was just too wet for us to ride the chair lift - we would have been absolutely drenched within minutes of getting on. Instead, we headed indoors to grab some lunch. Low and behold, the cafe at the resort was selling "Hot Cheesy Chips" - aka poutine! As we were celebrating Canada Day, we simply needed to order it. Unfortunately they were an extreme let down. They tasted so bad that we each only had a few and then threw the rest out. I guess we shouldn't have been surprised by this.

Hot Cheesy Chips for _only_ $12 :S

Nasty 'poutine'

Following lunch, we headed outdoors again to let Matty play in the snow. As a true Canuck (moreso than his parents, we'd say), he absolutely LOVED the snow. On our way out of the park, we drove through Lake Crackenback (a resort area on a lovely lake). We've decided that we will head back there sometime this summer to enjoy some of the outdoor activities they offer (it looked like it could be great fun for our little family).

Base of the ski hill

Snowy Mountain Highway

 

Some of the ski hill

Snow chains which were legally required to drive in the park

Canberra's National Arboretum

Canberra's National Arboretum is a place we've been frequenting quite a bit lately. Stacy heads there often during the day with friends, and we've both taken Matty there for a bite to eat and for a play in the playground. Why do we frequent this place so much you ask? Well, because it's a pretty fantastic place.

First of all, the arboretum offers panoramic views over Canberra, Lake Burley Griffin, and the mountains beyond. The village center itself is a huge spherical-type building, with a soaring ceiling and a wall full of windows. A photo of this place simply does not do it justice. There is also a cafe and restaurant inside where you can order some coffee and food and enjoy it all whilst sitting at a table along the wall of windows overlooking the city. Perfect.

Finally, this place offers THE best playground ever. This "Pod Playground" features banksia cubby houses; acorn-shaped pods at various heights which are connected by rope tunnels and tube slides; and discovery trails and climbing nets. It is simply awesome!

The Arboretum - Photo credit: Brett Boardman

The Village Center - Photo credit: Surface Design

Inside the Village Center - Photo credit: John Gollings

The awesome Pod Playground

Another angle of the Pod Playground

One of the entrances to the playground

Skate in the City

For the past four years, Canberra has been celebrating the start of winter with a month long event called "Skate in the City".  This event consists of several "winter" activities that people can partake in, but is mostly centered around a mechanically cooled open air ice rink that features both cultural ice shows and general public skating sessions. The rink itself can apparently hold up to 200 people at any one time, though we'd hate to see it that full as there would be no room to move, let alone skate.

With a price tag of $17 a person, we decided to simply observe from the sidelines and wait until we move back to Canada where we can skate for free. We did get to enjoy great entertainment for a few minutes watching all kinds of Aussies using plastic penguins to help them keep balance though. Great laughs!

The ice rink

The "Snow Globe" - Winter Entertainment!

Sydney Vivid Festival

At the end of May (on Blair's birthday weekend) we headed into Sydney to check out the Vivid Festival of Light.  This festival, quite similar to the Canberra Enlighten festival that we posted about a little while ago, has been running for 6 years now. Every night from 6 pm to midnight over a two week period, Sydney's famous landmarks come to life with light and music. 

Here are some of the pictures we took!

We were also very fortunate, on the second night we were there, to be upgraded to a two-bedroom apartment in our hotel - which happened to come with a phenomenal Sydney Harbour view. We quickly invited some of our friends to join us in enjoying this fantastic view.

Here are some of the pictures we took from the living room of our hotel room!

And finally, after we got home, Blair spent a bit of time using photoshop to come up with this blended version of the Opera House. Pretty cool!

Canada

In April, we traveled back to Canada for a VERY awesome event - Andrew and Stephen's wedding!! We spent a fantastic 6 days in Vancouver catching up with family, attending the wedding, and watching Stacy's family meet (and get to know) Matty.

We were also very fortunate to have had enough vacation time to travel to Ottawa to meetup with some of our closest friends, and to then head onwards to Fredericton and Saint John to visit with Blair's family.

It was a fantastic two week getaway, one which only made us even more excited about moving home next year. We are very happy that Matty had the opportunity to meet so many of the people that mean so much to us.

Unfortunately, we won't be posting many pictures from this vacation (though we have hundreds). As a rule we do not post photos showing Matty's face on our blog. Furthermore, we will not be posting photos of our family or friends on here without their permission. :) 

So that leaves us with two photo to share - the first being a picture of us in Sydney before leaving for Canada with all the luggage we needed to take with us overseas. Who knew that such a little human being required so much "stuff" when they travel? ;)

The second photo is an accumulation of all the gifts Matty received from family and friends back home in Canada. This little guy is incredibly lucky to have so much love in his life.