The Monty Birthday Boys and Oh Canada!

For those who know the Monty Clan, you will know that Mike's father and brother share their birthday. Many years ago (47 to be precise), Derek joined his brother Michael on this earth on this day. And many more years prior to that (in 1934), George Larry joined his parents Ralph Pat and Madelaine May on this same day. So Happy Birthday to both the Monty Men from this branch of the clan - missing you both!

Well it appears that Michael has network access at Country Week - he sent me the missing Canada Day photos for posting - so here is a sample of our Canada Day celebrations. We started with a rather wet drive to our hosts home near Perth. There was yet another torrential downpour which left the streets flooded for our drive - this was part of our drive in.

Our Canada Day celebration was actually two fold - it was also a farewell to Cindy who had her exchange from July to July. Cindy is from Barrie also - she lives right around the corner from St. Joe's!!! (You may remember her name from our April trip to Exmouth - we met up with her and her cousin there.) It will be fun to connect back in Canada and share some of our Aussie memories.

As is normal with such celebrations, we had LOTS of good food to share. Despite my fitness spare time activities, I have yet to lose any weight due to such events - that along with the most superb wine!

As part of the now annual event, the Canadians were required to join in a resounding rendition of 'Oh Canada'. And to be honest, I was quite surprised to find that it brought a tear to my eye..

We then in turn requested the Australians to serenade us in return with their anthem, which they quite enthusiastically provided. We ended with an all in rendition of 'Waltzing Matilda', of which we all managed one successful verse. (On closer inspection of the photos, neither team seem to be very thrilled singers :-)

As Cindy's departing gift, she received (as apparently we all will), a souvenir from Kalgoorlie (we go there in August). It is a 'betting stick' (sorry, don't know the real name yet) with spaces for 2 pennies. They are tossed in the air - in a very special motion as being learned/demonstrated here. Bets are placed on the heads/tails landing. I suspect we will find out in August just how much money can pass hands with this simple tool!

Back at home we stopped by the beach to check out the local waterfront with the high winds and high tides. This is an area of the beach we have walked along many times - the tides are definitely higher now. Not being an 'ocean' person, I am quite enthralled by the whole concept of the tides and their variations.

And finally - we will be heading off to the 'Red Centre' and 'Top End' this Saturday for our next two week break. I'm not sure what network access we will have for the break, but stay tuned on our return at the end of July for a flurry of postings with all our outback activities. I'll try to post a map of our planned route before we go.