Travelog for: KattieMill

Meow!!!
Everybody!!! I'm so excited to be released!!!
I can't help to sing with my dearest Stutz ~
"We'd like to build the world a home and furnish it with love!
Grow apple trees n honey bees......" 

Meow!!! You wanna know meow more?
Look!!!



Moi looks sso daMnCooLzzzzz  isn't it!!! si? I'm Lovin' HK! Meow

Meow!~ it is such a rainy day!!!

Mami planned to take us to the beach or go biking
but now...nothing... 





Let me tell u a secret! When Mami has tutoring,
she always keeps looking at that beach n starts day-dreamin' a lot!!!

Look at the beach! It was taken on a more clear day! Meow?!



Meow~ but today I met a new friend! I guess..he's ( probably is  meow ) a pet of Emilie!!!
She said we are a good match 
ahhh be honest, I am not really...
not really into him! 
Why? I guess he is just...just not too maturez!!! 



Look!
That bed looks so lovely, meow?



Mami always go tutoring these days and I can see that

Emilie is a good student ...the only thing is that
she sometimes plays trick on Mum!

I wish I can go to school one day so that I can also have tutoring!  Meow!~





P.S. Mami got me a roll of toliet paper 
it smells like roses!!! Probably she sprayed her perfume on it?
Mami said I can use it whenever I want and she will get me the second roll but I don't really want to Messz it up! I'm lovin' it!!!

Stutz n I're sitting on the BANANA DUCKIE






What a ROMANTICO restaurant !!!

Wow!!! Now I know why Mami is so in love with the harbour view!!!

KattieMill is now travelling to her host in AUSTRALIA!!!

I arrived in Orange safely today! We've been very busy ever since I came out of the package and it might take a bit of time for Sara to work up the energy to actually get all the photos posted...

Something exciting even happened today... but I'll leave that to be a surprise, but I think you'll like it! I was sure excited about it!

I'll post again very soon mom, with lots and lots of photos! :-)

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!

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...



She was trying to play with me as you can see - so Sara had to hold me upside down and commanded her to stay and she obviously thought of me as a bit of a toy... but isn't she just adorable?

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

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.

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. :-)

...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?

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

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... :-)

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