Some Australian photos from July

 I haven't had my big camera out much in the last month, but when I took a look at the SD card this week, I found some nice photos. Parts of our journey that you haven't seen. So here's a selected slide show for you.

This was a sunset from where we stayed in Sydney, our first few nights back in Australia.

One day in Sydney we played tourists and did a tour of the iconic Opera House. Truly a remarkable building, with a possibly even more remarkable story.

 So photogenic! It's hard not to be awed by the amazing skies they have in Australia!

This tree overlooks the Opera house in the nearby Royal Botanical Gardens. We only walked on the edge of it, but the abundance of space this close to a city centre is always impressive. 

 We rushed around in Sydney centre. During our day there we did the above mentioned tour, met friends headed to Taiwan with OMF, and hung out in OfficeWorks! The latter was a frustrating couple of hours trying to use their equipment to download our lease to sign it (we got the manager of the store to witness it), then upload, and send to the real estate agency, so that the keys could be picked up the next day. It was a difficult afternoon that we didn't particularly enjoy. The internet was poor and progress so slow that it looked like we were setting up home there, as our three boys sat around in the aisles!

Here's one of the historical buildings in downtown Sydney. Don't ask me which one!

Yes, this is my family, doing our best to be tourists.

After a few days in Sydney, it was great to get out of the city. We drove two hours south to meet good friends who live much further south. We spent the weekend together with eight of our nine kids!

Love gum trees (otherwise known as eucalyptus trees).

We had a BBQ at a nearby dam for lunch on the Saturday. Got to see a little bit of wildlife. Our middle son got very close to this very bold Willy Wagtail.

Barbecuing lamb! The windchill factor here was pretty significant.

More wildlife. This is a wallaby, I think.

And a large goanna. It would have been at least a metre and was enjoying sunning itself on this bank.

Gorgeous escarpments.

Another gorgeous tree/sky backround.

Fungi!

This was below the dam wall. Obviously been water through here pretty regularly.

The boys (and seven of the eight kids were boys) enjoyed throwing rocks in here. If you look carefully, to the right of the centre is a splash.

Picturesque roots.

This is the 12-bed "cabin" we stayed in. it was perfect for our needs, with a huge living area where everyone could have their own individual lounge chair. The orange reflection in the window is the sky behind me at sunset (see photo below).

We looked across the valley to this escarpment.

Pretty flowers. Anyone know what they are?

This was particularly to show you the car someone lent us. It's a story on its own. On a Australian ministry-families Facebook page I connected up with a former missionary couple who were willing to lend us their second car for the weekend! They'd never met us. It was a bit mind blowing to just drive away with their car a few minutes after meeting them (and their house was just five minutes walk from where we were staying in the large city of Sydney).

Moving on to our own backyard. Our the back of our house is scrub. Actually it is a high power line corridor. But a nice place to go for a walk. In places it looks like much of non-urban Australia. It's lovely to be so close to this, it feels like we're not quite so much in the city, even though we're only about seven minutes from an expressway!

One more gum tree/sky shot.