Down Under

Australia... where should I start?  There is so much I have that I can tell you, but it has never really been one of my life ambitions to write a novel, so I decided that I shall stick to the highlights.  Two and a half months, 10 weeks or 70 days, doesn’t matter how you look at it, went by in a flash.  Oh but what a brilliant flash it was.  I’ll try to contain my excitement as I relive my time in Australia.

After a wonderful time in New Zealand, we flew into Sydney at the end of May.  I immediately fell in  love with the city as it has that old Victorian feel to it, yet you have all the modern day essentials like a good (and clean) public transport system, wifi hotspots, good coffee and Tim Tams to go with it.  What sealed the deal for me though was the fact that the city is built on a waterway and the sea is a short train trip away.


The famous Sydney Opera House

We enjoyed our sightseeing tremendously and apart from seeing the opera house and the harbour bridge, our visit would not have been complete without attending a sermon at the world renowned Hillsong church.  We are after all a missions group!  Wow!  We enjoyed two sessions there and were really encouraged by them.

So, after a quick couple of days in Sydney, it was off to our actual destination not too far from the capital, Canberra.  Oom Johan picked us up and took us to Mountain Trails Adventure Campsite (MT), our home for the next two and a half months.


Mountain Trails Adventure Campsite

As it was winter and MT is situated inland, it was a bit frosty in the morning, but nothing that some toast and a good cuppa couldn’t fix.  The average day started at 6am with quiet time followed by group prayer sessions.  8am was when the MT staff all met to have devotional time and to discuss the work to be done that day.  So at roughly 9am we would head out to do our various tasks that ranged from building tin huts, cow sheds, chicken coups and fences to milking Honey, the cow, for our daily supply of milk.  After work (5pm), we would lounge around the house, normally the kitchen until supper time.  The night would normally end with a teaching on DVD or just a movie to relax before we hit the hay.


The tin huts - before...


...and after.

We did however do many fun activities seeing that it was an adventure campsite after all.  Here is a short list: horse riding, abseiling, rock climbing and dirt bikes to name but a few.  Apart from all these fun things, we were very blessed to go with some of the MT staff to Jindabyne and the Mt Perisher ski resort to go skiing for the first time in my life.  What an amazing experience!  Day one was a bit frustrating as I was spending more time ploughing snow with my face than standing up straight.  Day two on the slopes was however much better although I did carve open my knee when I connected a snowboarder on my way down.  On another day I might have called it a day, but it was too much fun and the exchange rate was just too high to stop!


Carving some powder!

As the name states, we also helped out with the camps.  We did two Barnardos Camps, a youth at risk program, the junior and senior winter camps and a bike camp.  What a privilege to work with young people and to see them develop and grow even though you only had a short while to spend with them.  I was fortunate enough to be cabin leader on two camps and camp programmer on another.  I just love how you learn new life lessons every day and the camps were definitely a time of growth for me.  Seeing how others react to certain challenging situations and realizing that I do the same thing, even though I want them to do it differently.  The words I believe are retro- and introspection.

The senior camp was especially blessed and the Spirit really moved.  Some of the kids made serious commitments and from what I can gather from the Facebook updates, they are really flourishing.  Definitely one the highlights of my time at MT.

Then, the other very exiting activity that we did was the dirt bikes.  Especially the one weekend when Jones, Stoffel and I packed some bags and went into the hills onto the tracks for 2 days.  Let me tell you, a total of 7 hours of riding up the steepest of hills with ruts so deep that you can sit in them and then having to manoeuvre through little creeks and through trees on a narrow track was quite tiring.  Luckily none of us had any serious falls, only the odd over-the-log-and-into-the-bush incidents.  I also realized the truth behind the saying “to be stuck in a rut.”  It was great fun though and definitely another big highlight of life at MT.


Jones, Stoffel, me after our crusade.

So after two and a half months and with lots of stories to tell, we left MT.  Auntie Ruth had an amazing farewell dinner for us at her house with most of the MT staff present.  The ladies at MT can certainly cook, thus we had a delicious meal.  Jones drove us to Wagga Wagga from where we took a bus to Melbourne.

We spent a day roaming the streets of Melbourne seeing sights like the Remembrance Shrine (a monument for those who fought in WWI), the Rod Laver tennis arena where the Australian open is played every January and then the highlight for me was definitely our visit to the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground).  We had lunch on the bank Yarrah River and before we knew it, it was time to go to the airport to catch our flight to Kuala Lumpur. 
After a day in KL, we flew to Kochi in the very south western part of India where we spent 2 days sightseeing.  It is a wonderful little town that is supposed to be predominantly Christian, but I fear Hinduism and some other religions have corrupted the message that was originally brought to India by the Portuguese, Dutch and English.  Still, a quiet little gem hid away between the warm waters of the Arabian Sea and the lush vegetation and huge rivers of southern India.

From here we travelled by train to Mumbai to fly to Cairo.

So as you can see, Australia was an awesome experience and the memories will for years to come put a broad smile on my face.