Sea Pilots

One of the memorable things we did at Geelong, besides picking those beautiful seashells and wading at the shore, is to see the sea pilots bringing in the big ships.

We were at one of the lookout point where we could see the ships coming in to Port Phillip. They say that place is also where we can see QE2 when she comes in to Melbourne.

QE2, or Queen Elizabeth 2 is a huuuuge luxury cruise liner who travels the world. Think she is about 300m in length. It would be a sight if I get to see her.

This is QE2 when she was berthed in Sydney... She IS huge!


Sea pilots are important in getting ships into the port because The Heads is narrow and it could also be dangerous due to tidal and weather conditions. You really need someone local who knows the channels, depths of water, currents and dangers within and around the port to get the ships in.

While we were there, we saw one of this sea pilots going into the ocean to get a big container ship in. We saw almost the beginning of the job to nearly the end. I told Meredith that was how our furniture in a container came in to Melbourne. But she was looking for our red Crown container, but there was none in red.

At first we thought these little orange sea pilot boats are just suppose to guide the ships in. But I learned that the pilot, as in the man and not the boat, may get into the big ships and assume control from the master after boarding at sea and then get the vessel safely moored at the allocated wharf. This includes all steering and engine orders. No wonder we saw one of them going to the container ship, looped a round, and then zoomed back to the port itself, leaving the big ship way back behind. Now I guess the pilot, as in the man, could have boarded the ship and steered it safely into the port, through the narrow Heads.

Waiting for the aeroplanes

We were sending Daddy to the airport yesterday. After checking in, Daddy had about two hours to spare. We drove to Sunbury, about 16km away from the airport, because someone has told us its their favourite suburb and we should go take a look.

The scenery on the way there was awesome. There were hills and valleys and it was really a pretty sight. Can't say that about the suburb itself though.

Anyway, the sky yesterday was in a magnificant 3 shades of blue.


We stopped by at a aircraft viewing area to see the planes coming in. It was everyone's first time. And it was truly an experience.

First you try to spot the lights of the plane among those fluffy white clouds. Then as they approach, get ready for that thundering plane-above-your-head experience!


We just loved it!

Looking out of the window

The sky is not always the same. You can really get lots of things happening over the horizon. On weekends early in the morning just before sunrise, the hot air balloons pass by our windows. You pay to be up there. They serve you breakfast and take you across Melbourne. It must be beautiful. There were 4 balloons this time. Sometimes there are as many as 8!

Today in the late afternoon, we wanted to take Meredith to cycle. But it rained. And after the rain, we saw two rainbows from our window! Aint we lucky!

Down by the bay

We visited Aunty Maxine over the weekend. Aunty Maxine now lives in St Leonards, just next to the water in Geelong; about an hour and a half's drive from where we are. I'll just post some pictures of what we've been up to.

This country preserves their old buildings well. These two churches are now used for trades. This one is now a restaurant. They still retain the stained glasses and the cathedral ceiling makes this place to "sanctified". You just imagine the inside of the church but instead of long benches and the pulpit, they have tables and sofas for the restaurant. I felt it was too quiet and church-like to be a restaurant. A choir would sound really beautiful in there though.

This old Methodist church is now a bookstore...


We were driving around the bay...Reegan had a chance to walk around, and he was just so happy he could do that...


If you look closely at his mouth, he's saying the word-of-the-week: door

as he checked out what's behind the door...

All this while Meredith went to take picture of the pelican which loves to perch on the lamp posts...

such big long beak they have...


We drove to Torquay to visit the most popular beach- Bells Beach. But they had a surfing festival where you need to pay over $30 just to get into the beach. Of course we didn't in the end. We had Fish and chips at another nearby beach. Reegan decided to cling on to Meredith and let her dragged him along. They thought it was real fun.


His latest trick...learning to "pray"...


Just as we had enough of food and fun and some chatting, the rain decided to come. The waves got really bigger. I wished I have had the correct attire. Would love to be in the water...

We got lost trying to get out of Torquay and saw some of the new houses by the beach they were trying to sell...



They all look rectangular...

And this is Aunty Maxine's rented place. St Leonards is a new residential. It is not even in our Melway. It is so new Aunty Maxine don't even have a neighbour.

She has no neighbour on her right...


and no neighbour on her left! Her place just stands alone!


And she had a red Elizabeth Arden door...



A beautiful rainbow after the rain... and Meredith's first rainbow...now how's that!

Nearly there to see the penguins

So we left Berwick after we had a nice lunch and Meredith had a go at the playground. Berwick is really pretty near the penguin place. However, when we were very close to our destination, we were trapped in a really bad jam.

We concluded it must be the Easter crowd and decided we would turn back and go to see the penguins another day.

On the way, we had saw signs from a farm.."Fresh dairy smoothies"..."Hot scones with jam"...etc every 200m or so. Oh it was too tempting. We decided to turn in and have a look.

It turned out it was indeed a dairy farm, the Caldermeade Farm. And this farm is apparently responsible for a high percentage of Victoria's total output of milk. So we went for their cakes and coffee.

After a nice break, we went to see the animals. Meredith liked the way the sheep rushed when they know food is coming. And she was pretty excited to hear them. The sheep were making a low "mehhh...mehhhh".


Then we went into the 'milking chamber' and saw how they milk the Holstein cows by the number. We saw how the farmer attached the milking equipment (in yellow) onto each cow.


The round container at the bottom is where all the milk will be collected to be pasturised.


It was amazing how the cows know when to get on to the platform to be milked and know when their turn is up and they need to leave the platform. They explained that its because cows are animals of habit, and they can just follow or copy what the cow before them is doing.


It was really interesting and we were glad we turned in to the farm.

On the way to see the penguins

I was just telling a friend we were going to see the penguins. And indeed we were. On the way there, we were going to stop by one of the suburb to look around and see if we might consider living there.

We went to Berwick, a suburb about 40 minutes away from Meredith's school. It is a rapidly growing suburb and the houses are still decent. We consider living there because it is away from the inner city traffic nightmare and there is a very good school there. We liked the place. There were a lot of new houses and new areas being opened up for constructing these new houses.

We passed by a school, well, we thought it was a school... but it was actually one before, now a cafe with a spanking new playground attached, and right next to a park. We had our picnic there because we had brought our own food.


There was also, strangely, a steam clock, a clock powered by steam. There are only 3 in the world. One of them is in Vancouver, can't remember where the other one is. But this guy is still perfecting the clock and hope someday he'll be successful in coming up with a real reliable steam clock.




Interesting!

The Family Book...everyone has one

Meredith made a book about Reegan for his birthday. It followed the repetitive style of some of the readers she brings home. Two of the pages made me smile...because they're so sweet...

"This is my baby Reegan playing." She drew his red toy basket...

and the cart that Reegan so enjoy pushing around...in full colour detail...see closely!


"This is my baby Reegan Talking"...with speech bubbles of Reegan's favourite words "Hot! Hot!"

Won't you just want to give her a BIG hug!

One beautiful year

Reegan turned one last Sunday. We had to celebrate his birthday...he's been such a sweet and funny little guy.

He was born at 0908 a.m. so we had a little cake cutting ceremony before heading off to church. We made a jeep cake because one of his favourite toy is the little zoo jeep. And it sure was a fudgy chocolaty chewy cake. Very yummy! But Mummy has to watch that fat tummy now bulging out pretty obvious!!

When he saw the candles, he said," Hot! Hot!" He was then more interested to put his Mr Cow from his little farmyard onto the plate.

After church, as planned, Aunty Carol invited us to her house to celebrate Reegan's 1st birthday. She had also made a chocolate cake for him. It says "1". Uncle Hon cut out the number from a paper so that we can put the icing sugar on it. Very clever! And that special candle there sang a Happy Birthday tune. Of course, everyone's singing overpowered the poor little candle.

This is a very nice picture Raymond took of him. What a big boy!

Back home, we had balloons...

Oh how can we forget the goody bags we had so much fun preparing! Everyone loved the soccer ball chocolate. Benjamin nearly threw it on the ground thinking it would bounce back. What?!!


Reegan is very clever. We just showed him a few times how to play with his new toys and there he goes!

This little bike is from Big Sister Meredith. And she fixed it up for him! I thought that was very clever.


We slept very early that night, everyone was quite exhausted. But we were very happy. We did what we wanted for Reegan. And the next day, we were going to the farm and boathouse!