SebastienLGreen, Sunshine Coast QLD, Australia

scole Posted May 24, 2008, 9:34 am	Still at home with mom, scole. Getting ready to be let out into the wild. Hanging out with StanleyC.  And updating my blog! Also hanging out with the native kitty, Sammie. Lucky I'm getting out of here, I may become a chew toy!
scole Posted May 25, 2008, 12:42 pm	I went to the Mellon Arena for the Stanley Cup viewing party with mom, scole, and StanleyC. He thinks I'm bad luck. I don't think my mom'll be taking me to the one on Monday. And by Tuesday, I should be in the mail, on my way to Australia (thanks to sararingham)! That's three of my missions in one!
scole Posted May 28, 2008, 7:52 am	I'm off to Australia tomorrow! sararingham will be hosting me! I'm so excited I get to visit a whole different country! Thank you, Sara! Last night I hung out with StanleyC and giant Stitch.
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jun 3, 2008, 5:45 am	G'day From Australia! As you can see I arrived in Australia. One of the few stormy days they've been having, Sara had an idea that I might be here so she had Daniel go outside and I'm really glad because even in the box I could feel how windy and cold it was... brrr! I then didn't get opened until a few hours later but I was glad to be out of that box... The moment I came out I was inspected by Sara and I showed her all the goodies you had inside for her, she was very happy to see them all and she's hoping that I can pick out a few goodies from here to send to you about my journey in Orange... :-) ...and then that's when I got a little bit of a startle... I saw Fluffy the other toyvoyager that's staying with Sara... didn't expect that - but now I can tell were going to be the best of friends... she's telling me all about her journeys and it sounds a lot of fun, did you know she was originally from Austria? Crazy! Well, once the sun comes out again - which won't be too long, we'll take a trip up to Mount Canobolas, Lake Canobolas and see the sights of Orange... until then I'll make another update soon! Miss you!
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jun 7, 2008, 6:58 pm	Wow, today was a big day! We had to do some errands in Bathurst which included some mystery shopping and well, some other boring stuff... but we got to do some fun stuff, and I even got to see some interesting sights... First thing we had to load up in the car, Sara decided to show myself and my mentor what Orange looks like, and the outskirts of Orange on the way to Bathurst. So lots of photos were taken of the road... this tells you how dry this area really is and how much we really need rain. As you can see it's mostly dry, mostly farm land and quite a few hills... although it isn't too much... Shortly out of Orange you see a very small town, what you see is what it is... literally... a one street town. If you look to both sides of the road you can see some strange looking objects sticking out of the ground. A bit of background information... Lucknow used to be called "Luckno" because people came here to mine gold, and after a long long time they found nothing - so hence why they named the town Luckno, the one day, someone came in and found some gold in the mines where people weren't looking before, so the town was renamed to Lucknow. Kind of funny, but they're abandoned mine shafts obviously as just a reminder to the past of the Central West. Now back on the road to Bathurst... ...as you can see, as Australia is very known and famous for, eucalyptus trees, and red dirt... there is a lot of red dirt in Sara's area, and especially a bit farther East in a town called Dubbo (which is 6 hours drive from Sydney) and that's more "outback" like... very desolate, dry, and very HOT! ...finally... after 45 or so minutes we are now entering Bathurst... this is what the town looks like... ...not much... first stop was a few pet stores... we couldn't go in nor could photos be taken, but Sara and Daniel are looking for a little puppy to bring home and she's been showing us some of her options. The puppies she's thinking about are so cute! Then afterwards we did the mystery shop, of course we stayed in the car and took a bit of a nap because it wasn't that interesting for us toyvoyagers... ...but then the fun started... we stopped at a park called McCattie Park in the middle of Bathurst.... here we are in a really weird tree near the entrance of the park... ...and in the middle of the park was a huge duck pond... there were lots of people were out feeding the ducks, and we had a close encounter, one of the ducks popped up looking for food. When they realised we weren't food they went back into the water.. we saw some pretty interesting ducks... ...some black swans, how weird is that? I guess they're native to Australia. Sara said she never saw any black swans before coming down the first time either, and she says she's never seen them besides in this exact park. Strange! ...next stop was this weird little abandoned fountain, it was kind of cool looking so we stopped for a little bit of shade... don't we look comfortable?... ...and last but not least in McCattie Park we got to stop and see a huge statue... ...this statue is to commemorate the discovery of the Bathurst Plains and "opening of the West" in 1813. This is a very interesting and well crafted statue if I do say so myself... Next part of this trip was SO much fun, I couldn't even imagine I'd ever have this opportunity in my life... Sara took me out to the outskirts of Bathurst where it's common to see some wild life, and what did we see?... ...we didn't get too close, and because they were being so cautious we had to watch from a distance and Sara couldn't put us in the photos as we'd be a blur because of the zoom in distance that Sara had to do... as you can see in the photos the kangaroos are very curious of us... but yet, in some of the photos there's someone standing behind the kangaroos... not even noticing them standing there... Sara says that sadly they're trying to build up that area of the grasslands between Bathurst and Blayney so the kangaroos might be in a bit of trouble! :-( I hope not! They were so awesome! ...and it fits well, on the way towards our next trip, we got to see this sign... how fitting... ...and now were going to visit Bathurst most famous area... Mount Panorama... it's a very famous race track within Australia and even in other countries it's displayed on TV every October... it's open to the public to drive on at anytime so we got a chance... so we got to first learn a bit about it... ...as you can see this is me posing in front of the sign, how exciting is this going to be?... ...and here's a bit of information about the track... ...and here we go... there's the starting gate.. ...and here's what the track looks like as were traveling along it... it was so much fun! ...as you can see it's a big track, and around half way through the speed was a bit much so we rocked around a little bit but it was so much fun! Some of those turns are crazy and it's amazing to think some of the people go around those corners at 200+ kilometers an hour... crazy! ...and this is the sign as your exiting the track... and back onto the road... time to go home! It's been a very busy day! ...on the way home it looked really stormy out so Sara got a nice photo of the sun coming through a really dark cloud... isn't this a pretty shot? ...well when we got home I pretty much crashed I was so tired... and the 8th is Sara's sons birthday so that's going to be fun! I'll update again soon! Talk soon!
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jun 14, 2008, 12:29 pm	Today was a very special day, today was the day Sara was getting a puppy, so we all tagged along, we couldn't sadly go into the area with the puppies as we all probably would have been played with way too roughly, there were 2 females and 4 males to choose from and we even got to meet the parents. They're so cute... We drove all the way to Canowindra, which is about an hours drive from where Sara lives, on a HUGE farm... sadly I didn't get any photos there - but I did get a photo of the puppy Sara picked out... introducing Anni... she's an 8 week old beagle puppy... As you can see she's very small, I'm almost as big as her, but what you didn't see is she wanted to play with me... so Sara had to command her to sit down and then she was able to get a photo of us together, isn't she adorable?
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jul 3, 2008, 9:30 am	Hello! Sorry I haven't updated in so long, the weather has been miserable so sadly we haven't gotten to go out much yet... although recently we took a trip to Dubbo... although because it was raining we didn't get to see anything, but it's way more "outback" than Orange... and the dirt is a LOT more red, which Sara says means there's lots and lots of iron in the dirt... It was a very long drive of around 2 or so hours, so there wasn't much to see sadly we just listened to some music, and then we entered Dubbo.... finally!... ...we had a few things to do in Dubbo which included some mystery shops, so we got that done and because it was raining so much we decided that sadly we couldn't do much else... ...so then we headed back home!... :-/ Thankfully Sara says though because it's been a bit more sunny lately we plan on taking that trip up to Mount Canobolas. Another thing she says stopping her is the price of petrol on top of being extremely broke the last few weeks but she says I'll definitely be able to see more before continuing on my journey. I promise I'll update again soon! <3
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jul 4, 2008, 9:46 am	Today we got to meet a new toyvoyager Percy his mentor lives in Okinawa, Japan, but is an American as she lives there because her husband is in the military - Percy had a lot of interesting stories to tell us, he had just come from Germany so that was pretty interesting to hear about... I hope I get to travel that much!... Besides that today was pretty exciting (at least for Sara anyways) for MONTHS she's been trying to finish up her bedroom and today we all got a chance to help her finish it... it was just a day at home today - her first day at home in days so it was a... well, kind of relaxing day - there was a lot to get done while Andrew was at daycare... ...and we all after finishing Sara fix up the room collapsed on the brand new shag rug they put in - it's a lot brighter than it looks in the picture (just like the bedroom picture) but it matches and looks really good in real life... :-) We all had a bit of a nap on the rug before moving on... ...once we came out of the bedroom Sara noticed someone fly over our head... she looked up and thought it was one of her quails, instead it was one of the gouldian finches. Mr Colors had recently met Percy and obviously didn't get a good enough hello, so he came out and greeted all of us, to our surprise.
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jul 11, 2008, 10:41 am	I wasn't quite sure where we were going today. It was quite unexpected even for Sara... but we packed up the car and took a little bit of a drive... After a bit of the drive it because really woodsy, there was a lot of eucalyptus trees, and the road started to get really slippery... it's amazing the temperature change too, pretty shocking... ...and then we got there - well, not really got there as we never quite made it to the summit... but we got close... a whole 2 kilometres away, but Sara took us to see what she could without having to walk 2 kilometres in the freezing weather... ...as you can see it had snowed up there, this is only a little bit of the snow... but the summit of the mountain was covered in snow... Sara didn't think there would still be snow as on the lower ground there was no more left... but there was so we got a photo with it. Who knew it snowed in Australia? I guess it's not that common because there was a LOT of cars parked where we were, people had come from all over New South Wales to see the snow at the top of the mountain. It doesn't snow as often as it used to, so it was quite amazing to see... As you can see with the whiteness of the trees that's all snow on them... and on the ground... it was REALLY cold... and to top it all off it was snowing from the trees onto us and the wind was blowing really hard as well... brrrrr! This is a picture after we ran back into the car, that shows how much snow was coming off of the trees... it's weird that it's snowing in July, how backwards is that? ...we got to stop on the way back down the mountain though and see a bit of what we would have seen at the top... here are me with the mountains surrounding where I was standing... it's an entire mountain range the tallest one in the photo is called 'Little Mount Canobolas'. ...and then we got to see what was behind me in that last picture, an idea of what it would have looked like at the top of the mountain... this is a higher view of Orange... at the top of Mount Canobolas on a clear day you can see very very far. Especially since Mount Canobolas is the highest point until somewhere in South Australia on the Perth side of the country. Crazy isn't it? ...but that's not all we did... wait for the next update. :-)
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jul 11, 2008, 11:06 am	...next stop was Lake Canobolas, only a short distance away... when we got there we were the only ones there... because of the recent rain (which we've really REALLY needed) the lake was overflowing over the dam wall... looks cool doesn't it? ....and then we got to pose in front of the lake, it looks quite cold doesn't it?... ...here's some more photos of the lake... isn't it big?... ...and just as we were about to leave, a huge bird, Sara says it's called a magpie came to us to pay us a visit. Obviously he didn't feel safe enough to come closer to us, but it was still cool, he's quite big! ...well I'll update again soon! With the recent freezing temperatures I wouldn't be surprised if we'd get a bit more snow in the lower lands. I hope so, maybe we can make a snowman this time! A snowman in July, haha the thought of that is so funny isn't it?
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jul 17, 2008, 2:55 pm	Well Sara took us on another trip to Bathurst, and we all got to see some kangaroos again, this time it was a much closer shot than before... it was pretty awesome. Since the kangaroos were much calmer than last time Sara tried to get us in the shot but it wasn't possible with how far zoomed she was, we would have just been a blur so we just sat back and watched... :-) Seeing the kangaroos seriously has to be the best part of coming to Australia! I'm glad I've been able to see that! <3 ...this was pretty close to the fence line maybe 15 feet from where Sara and us were standing... how crazy is that?... ...whoops... I guess we got too close, she didn't feel that comfortable obviously... ...just as Sara saw the last kangaroo bounce off, she saw around 5-6 others pop out of the long grass and have a look at us... ...you see the joey in the pouch? See how the dad is so much bigger than the mom? He's bending over and he's almost as tall as her, crazy! ...and here's the baby and the mom again with another kangaroo they're very interested in what I was doing... Sara actually made a few loud noises to get them to look up at her. They seemed to be getting pretty comfortable with her around... ...and here's the last photo of the kangaroos and the baby... aren't they just the cutest? :-) I'm so glad I got to see some real wildlife in Australia! :-) It's been so much fun! <3
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jul 17, 2008, 3:17 pm	Today we took another road trip... although not as long... we went to Molong. Molong is a town around 30 minutes drive from Orange towards Dubbo, but obviously not as far. It was another mystery shop... and sadly enough, Molong is pretty small, one street town, so there's not really much to see... so Sara just got a shot of us on the main street. :-) Molong is a town with just over 2,000 people. So very small... we even saw a horse riding through the main street... people seemed to know each others name... it was pretty crazy! lol Sara said that Molong is a historic town with all the buildings in the picture all all original even if they've been changed a little bit they're all very very old... Molong was the site of the first copper mine in Australia... so that's pretty interesting. But not much to see sadly... :-)
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jul 17, 2008, 3:34 pm	Well... after a busy week we got a new visitor, this guy is called Misko and he's all the way from Slovenia... he's very new to the travel scene like we all seem to be (besides Fluffy of course... so we told him all about our travels so far and what we've seen, I think it impressed him a bit... this is going to be heaps of fun! ...I just know that understanding him is a bit hard since he only knows limited English at the moment, but I'm sure we can teach him a bit of English as well as maybe a few other languages... :-) It's going to be great... Sara let us know that we'll be traveling to Parramatta on Monday morning. It's going to be a busy day, and she doesn't think we'll be able to see the famous parts of Sydney like the harbor, the bridge and the opera house but she'll do her best to let us see that. As I know she wants to see it herself. Anyways, we'll at least say we've been in Sydney anyway... :-) Better get a restful weekend it's going to be a big day on Monday! Write again soon! <3
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jul 23, 2008, 3:58 pm	We had to take a trip today, on the way there we of course had to pass through Bathurst. Some of us had been there - some of us - not quite yet. But I'm sure will make a trip there again soon to see more of the sights, but we were on a tight schedule and were already an hour or so late. Whoops! Here's us on the road to Bathurst, as you can tell it's very rainy and cloudy, and the windscreen is foggy. No matter what Sara and Daniel did it didn't help it, it's crazy sometimes how foggy the windscreen of their car gets (from what they were saying anyways)... Well, now we're in Bathurst, but it's only a pass through - no time for breakfast - onto the next stop... I think this time we might be stopping for a bite to eat... :-)
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jul 23, 2008, 4:06 pm	...around half way now to Sydney just outside of the 'Blue Mountains' which are at the outer edge of Sydney and we've been on the road now for a good 90 minutes. My legs are getting a bit sore but we're almost there... as you can see it doesn't look *too* much different... but Sara couldn't get some photos to show the main differences. They have a huge power plant and a huge lake or something next to it... pretty crazy. ...as we're now entering Lithgow, we see something really strange... what... is... that?... ...that is Lithgow's famous "Miner's Lamp", it's a huge version of it obviously... next stop was McDonalds to get something to eat. I couldn't get any photos obviously since we were a bit late... next stop... something a bit more exciting... yay! I wonder what it's going to be...
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jul 23, 2008, 4:20 pm	...in route to the Blue Mountains now... lots of people visit this area anytime they go to Sydney because of the beautiful nature that surrounds them. Since it's just on the extreme outskirts of Sydney it's a popular destination for tourists... Now that we've entered the Blue Mountains, as you can see there is LOTS and LOTS of trees and lots of hills... and lots of small little towns... the driving up and down, up and down, our ears popped a lot. It was quite uncomfortable. But closer to the Sydney side of things is a small town called Katoomba. Katoomba is known as the 'Heart of the Blue Mountains'. It's a gorgeous little town, and it seemed quite touristy at the time we went there... Sara said she thought it might be because the pope just left town the day before, and therefore all the tourists now decided to take a bit of a tour around the famous parts of the outskirts of Sydney... ...as you can see lots and lots of cars... ...finally we got to our destination... sadly since it was so busy Sara couldn't take individual photos so Sara just got a photo of something called the 'Three Sisters'. It's a very famous rock formation, if people go through the Blue Mountains they have to stop off and see them. There's also lots of trails to take around, one of them Sara said was extremely steep and hard to climb down, let alone up. So we only spent a little bit of time there, and then we were back on the road...
sararingham sara.ringham@gmail.com Posted Jul 23, 2008, 4:35 pm	...Welcome to Sydney... after 3-1/2 to 4 hours drive we're FINALLY here. Sadly Sara says we can't really see anything famous like the harbor bridge or anything... but we suprisingly got pretty close to the famous CBD of Sydney... we had an appointment at 230pm, so it sadly was just that. We did see the famous hospital called "RPA" which is known as Royal Price Albert Hospital that's got a TV show named after it, and is obviously filmed there as well. One of Sara's favourite TV shows. But this wasn't at RPA but more a smaller clinic that is owned by RPA... anyways, here's us navigating around Sydney... Although it seems like it should be pretty simple and straight forward... you can easily get lost, especially if we're getting close to the CBD. Sara told us about the story a few years ago that Daniel and her were trying to make it to Cronulla (South Sydney) and ended up in Glebe (which is near where we were going - in South Sydney). She told us how they ended up going over the harbor bridge around 3-4 times since they couldn't get off it and had to go back across before turning around. I'm so glad we didn't get lost though... here are some sights from around Sydney... :-) ...and now, we're in Parramatta, we have to get on Parramatta Road which is a huge major road, we've technically been driving on it the whole time but it was called the "Great Western Highway" it goes all the way to Dubbo, so it's a main highway through the state... it was amazing to see the difference between Orange and Sydney, I mean, I knew Sydney was big... but man, there are sure a lot of palm trees as well. :-) ...and now we're almost to the appointment, so here are some more sights around the area we were driving around... ...oh wow, we're getting close... although we couldn't personally go and visit it there's the CBD in the background, can you see it? It's pretty small but you can see the huge buildings on George Street (which is the main street and most famous street along with Pitt Street in Sydney... how cool! I just wish I could have seen a bit more... maybe someday...) here's a close up... :-) ...sadly when we got out of the appointment it was almost 530pm and we couldn't stay much longer. With a cranky child in the back seat and to be honest we were all a bit worn out... it was time to go home... here's the traffic on the road just as we were leaving Sydney... Well it was a long and busy day, but I hope to go back here some day and visit the more famous parts of Sydney. Maybe my next host will take me on a ferry even around the harbor? Who knows, it was pretty awesome anyways. :-) I hope you enjoyed my trip, I'll update again soon! <3
crizle crizle@westnet.com.au Posted Sep 1, 2008, 3:49 am	Hi everyone, I arrived in Queensland and love it here. This si my hosts third attempt to update but she is having trouble downloading my photo's, so I will tell you what I did,. I went in the car to Brisbane to work with her and drove over the Story Bridge. We had lunch at Kangaroo Point overlooking the Brisbane River and watched the ferries and boats.
crizle crizle@westnet.com.au Posted Sep 19, 2008, 5:19 am	These photo's are crizle's office, and Brisbane River where we ate our lunch from work. Early September I stayed on the Gold Coast. It was lots of fun, I went to the beach, and walked to the border of two states, New South Wales and Queensland. I stayed in a tall apartment overlooking the water.
crizle crizle@westnet.com.au Posted Sep 19, 2008, 5:24 am	Photo's of Gold Coast. The beach just after dawn and our apartment.
crizle crizle@westnet.com.au Posted Oct 26, 2008, 1:25 am	I have just had a wonderful holiday driving from Queensland, through New South Wales and Victoria. Unfortunately some of the photo's were put on a disc which won't work properly on my hosts computer, but I hope you like these ones. Victoria is a beautiful state and I went to some beaches there, travelled the Great Ocean Road and visited Bendigo Pottery amongst many other adventures.
crizle crizle@westnet.com.au Posted Oct 26, 2008, 1:46 am	Continuing my trip, I travelled from Victoria up through the Snowy Mountains Highway to Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. From there I went to Sydney and the Postcrossers Meet-Up. I then went to stay at a little place on the NSW coast called Hawkes Nest and liked the beach there.
crizle crizle@westnet.com.au Posted Oct 26, 2008, 3:25 am	For my last weekend here, we went up to the Sunshine Coast and I was able to visit the funny Ettamogah Pub, Caloundra Beach for lunch, and best of all, achieve one of my goals. Yes, I went to the Big Pineapple in Nambour. It was great fun. I climbed the spiral staircase inside and went all the way to the top. Today I had to farewell my host and all my Toy Voyager friends and set off alone on another adventure. I have had a wonderful time in Australia.

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