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Baffled by Massive Cadbury Cream Egg
Being that Cadbury produces most of the chocolate that Australians eat, come Easter time there are some of the most amazing selections for a sweet tooth like myself. I like Creme Eggs, but just LOOK at that puppy. Who needs an Easter Ham when you can just slice that up and serve it as a main course?

My Mom and Lord of the Rings
My mum came to visit me in Melbourne for the month of January. Part of her visit, however, was a small trip around Australia and New Zealand. As some of you may know, Lord of the Rings was filmed in the later country. New Zealand as replied by setting up a tourism trade based on sites filmed in Lord of the Rings; they even went so far as to create a position in their government by the title Minister of Lord of the Rings Tourism. Here, at a park at the outskirts of Wellington, NZ, mum stands at a site were Aragorn falls off a cliff. In the movie the distance down was about 50 feet, but in real life it was about 5.

Yes, this is our finished meal in front of the Sydney Opera House
Part of the tour package that took us around to the various cities of Australia was a buffet lunch aboard a boat that drove around the bay in Sydney while we pigged out. The concept was so over-the-top touristy that I tried to encapsulate the experience in this photo. That said, there's nothing like sitting and eating fried rice and broccoli while watching the SOH float by.

Mum at the Sydney Olympic Stadium
This sculpture (sculpture?) stood outside the stadium that hosted the 2000 Olympics. On each of the posts was a partial list of the volenteers that helped during the event... (there were 14 Liddells). It was a pretty neat idea, though, so I got a shot of Mom as she walked through.

The Gray-eet Bare-eah Rife
The first night we arrived in Cairns, they experienced the worst rainstorm in years. The next morning it was still qite stormy, so our plans to go out to the reef were cancelled. The next morning our itineratry had planned for us to go out to the rainforest on a 'safari-trainride', but I opted to stay at the docks and risk a second cancellation for the reef. They decided to take us out, and I think I made the right choice. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen; I had expected to see maybe one or two fish; instead it truly was like 'Finding Nemo'... there were thousands of fish everywhere! As I was the only one out in the water, I had to take all the photos myself, and this was the only one of the bunch that is really worth showing (instead of a bunch of pics of fish.) Notice how close the reef is to the surface... I was tempted to reach down to grab it, except that something would certainly suck me up, eat me, and spit me back out were I to do so.

Mum, The Olgas, and Ayers Rock
Yet another stop on our whirlwind tour of Australia was in the scorching desert, to visit Ayers Rock and the Olgas. Both are massive rocks that stand kilometres above the desert... you may already be familiar with Ayers Rock (if not, type it into Google and be amazed.) Here mum is admiring one of the smaller boulders that form the Olgas, which are the lesser known but frankly more amazing of the two natural landmarks. The weather was extremely hot and extremely dry, the only time that I've truly been content with the weather since being in Australia.

Mum and More Bloody Amazing Views
Another shot in Wellington, NZ. The town was completely surrounded by these incredible mountains; it got to the point that they were no longer striking when you looked at them. "Oh, there's another *yawn* amazing set of mountains." I think she's looking a book that we bought that details where each of the shots from Lord of the Rings was taken. It was actually a lot of fun to go back to the films and remember actually being at these places.