In our last post, we told you that Krista got John a special Father’s Day present. John says the first thing that was special about this was getting to spend solid one-on-one time with his daughter, something he doesn’t get to do too often.

Phase one of the day started with Brunch at a great restaurant called
“The Butler’s Pantry.”

Phase two started with a drive to the city of Penrith. Here we are.

You ask, “Hey, John, what’s with the silly get-up???”

That “get-up” is necessary because we’re at iFly.

    iFly is an indoor skydiving simulator. You are in a vertical, plexiglas wind tunnel. The air blows upwards at speeds between 190-225 km/h (120-140 mph), enough for a big guy like John to float.
    John says it’s an incredible feeling. On one hand, you’re just gently floating. On the other hand, you have a hurricane blowing in your face. If you want to learn more, go to: ifly.com.au.

    Look at the picture on the right, and John’s face. One can hardly breathe with the wind force. The experience was incredible, and John was so happy to have done it.
    The young lady in black is Erin, John’s instructor. She was great. Afterward, Erin went in and did a demonstration “flight.” It was fantastic, and really showed what’s possible. Krista recorded about 40 seconds of it. It’s too big to upload to the blog, but if any of you want to see it, just ask when we get home.

Everyone, have a great weekend.

    There are two special things about today, June 21st. The first is that it’s Father’s Day in North America. Not here, though. Father’s Day is in September. But the kids are dual citizens, half Canadians, so we celebrate Father’s Day on Saturday night.

It was a lovely dinner of Beef Wellington.

The dessert was special, it was a Bombe.

    The Bombe is a classic French dessert, usually made with ice cream or sorbet in the middle. However, we made ours with layers of mousse — a brownie bottom, then strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate mousse, and then covered with whipped cream and decorations. Yum.
    John got a nice Father’s Day gift from Krista. Another experience. More on that next weekend.

    The second thing that makes June 21, 2026, special is that it is the solstice. In Canada, it’s the first day of summer, and here in Australia, it’s the first day of winter.

    Here’s something we found funny. We often check the weather in the many locations where we have family and friends. Checking on family in Steinbach, we saw that their daytime high was 18°C. Here, the daytime high was 18°C. The first day of summer and the first day of winter were the same temperature!
    One thing that is common between autumn in Canada and here is the LEAVES!!

    Leaves everywhere in autumn are common in both countries, but here are two things that are not.

    First, these leaves all fell mainly in the last couple of weeks, the last two weeks of autumn. In Canada, the last two weeks of autumn are mid-December. The leaves seem to fall much later here.
    Second, here there are many trees with leaves that do not lose their leaves, especially trees in the eucalyptus family.
    This little tree in the kids’ front garden lost all its leaves, but ….

    The lemon tree on the other side of the garden still has all of its leaves. (As does the olive tree to the right of it.) Note that, in addition to keeping all its leaves, the lemon tree is almost ready for harvest.

    Something that’s popular at this time of year is Origin. In North America, we are familiar with the all-star games we see in football and hockey. This is similar, except it is an all-star game in the National Rugby League.
    John and Jonathan were invited to a friend’s house to watch one of the games. John was very thankful that they were very patient with his many questions. Thank you, Mark and Scott.

    John said he really enjoyed watching the game once he started to understand what everyone was doing. One thing he found amazing is … take a look at the picture … they don’t have pads and helmets as is common in our CFL and NFL. Yet, they still tackle and collide with each other. It was amazing that no one got seriously hurt and that every player there wasn’t suffering from concussions.

Have a great week!

    We ended our previous post by saying that on Tuesday, we would be off on a new adventure and that it was something Beverly had always wanted to do. It all started by going to…..

…..the Sydney Zoo. Sydney is blessed to have two fantastic zoos. We took you to one of them already; this is the second one.

    We were there for one specific animal. An animal that has been Beverly’s favorite for almost her whole life. And that animal is……

An ELEPHANT
 

Beverly was thrilled to meet this handsome fellow and his brother up close. This one is 12 years old, a teenager in elephant years, and weighs in at a slim and trim 4,100 kgs.

(Look at that smile on her face!)

This zoo has “animal encounter” experiences with numerous animals, from the tiny meercat to the large giraffe and Asian elephant.

A plus of taking Beverly on this experience is that John gets to go too.

Fun fact: These elephants have been trained to respond to about 100 verbal commands. Even more interesting, all these verbal commands are in Thai, not English.

    The three animal handlers who “handled” our visit were great. The handlers for each of the two elephants were there, arguing over which had the better elephant. We didn’t care; they were both great. We learned so much about elephants, their behavior and training.

At the end, the handlers asked us to stand for a group picture with the elephant standing normally behind us.

It wasn’t until we looked at the picture later that we realized that once our backs were turned, they must have told the elephant to make this goofy pose. It turned out great!

Thanks to Sydney Zoo, the handlers, and the two elephants for a great experience.

    Sorry, it’s been a while since our last post. It’s just been a week or so at home. We have been helping our son-in-law. He is organizing a conference for the second week of July, and we’ve been “volunteered” to help with a few things. Like getting t-shirts…

    If you’re bored, have nothing else to do, and are the slightest bit interested in learning about this conference, go to icom2026.org. I must brag a little … our son David designed all the graphics for the conference, including this shirt and the website.

    The title of today’s blog said it was about shopping, so we’d better head over to the mall. This past Friday afternoon, the kids took the afternoon off, and off we went. John and Jonathan were the perfect husbands: they carried all the bags, paid all the bills, and ooo’d and aaah’d at the appropriate moment when Beverly and Krista were trying on clothes.

    I asked Beverly if I could take some pictures of her bounty, and she declared that you will all have to wait until we return.

Taking a break from busy shopping for gelato. Thirty incredible flavors at this shop. Mmmm.

How many children in Canada have a rocking horse?
Did you have one as a kid?
It’s always a horse.
Hmmm. Not here.
Ever seen a rocking koala??

    That’s all for today. Tomorrow, we are off on a new adventure. It’s something Beverly has always wanted to do. We won’t tell you now, but come back in a couple of days, and we’ll tell you all about it.

    We got home from the Blue Mountains on Friday afternoon. It was such an enjoyable trip.

    It was a quiet weekend as some in the family were not well, so it was a casual time at home. Time for games, snacks, and good food.

    Today is Monday, June 8th, a statutory holiday here in Australia for the King’s Birthday. We just finished a big card game … John won.

    Beverly and Krista both love jigsaw puzzles. On Saturday, they did a very unique one. The puzzle pieces came in two packages with instructions to use only the first package to assemble the puzzle. Only when the first puzzle was complete, could you open the second puzzle and assemble it. Follow the progression below.

The first part of the puzzle is complete. Oh no, a meteor in the top-left
corner is plummeting toward the village. What shall we do?

Notice that the puzzle can break into 3 pieces….

… which can be rearranged to leave a large open area in the middle.

Now you open the second package and assemble it.
It fits perfectly in the middle.

Slide the pieces together, and you have a new completed puzzle.
The village is saved from the nasty comet as it will now bounce
off the new trampoline in the middle and go back into space.

Puzzles, games, or whatever activity we had, they were all closely supervised by the bunny!

    This picture was taken just a few doors down the street from the kids’ place. A few kms away is a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Base.

    John’s background in aviation always has him looking into the sky and “plane-spotting.” This one is a large military transport called a Globemaster.

    Hello from Scenic World in Katoomba. The three small peaks above Beverly’s head are called “The Three Sisters,” one of the top landmarks in the Blue Mountains.

    A big attraction at Scenic World is its cable car and incline railway, which take visitors from the top down to the bottom of the valley. We took the incline railway down and the cable car up … twice.

    This picture is of the incline train leaving the lower rail station.

    Two things to note. One, note that even the loading platform is slanted. Look at the stairs. And two, note how steep the track curves upward as the train leaves the station.

    At its steepest, the track is at 52°. Scenic World claims this is one of the steepest inclined railways in the world.

    On our second trip down, we got seats in the third row of the front car. We had a great view down our 52° slope as we went down.

    I shot a 1.5-minute video of our trip down. Let me know if you want to see it.

    Above, did you notice the nice rail cars we rode in as we went down?

    If you came here as a tourist in 1933 and took the incline railway, this is the car you would have ridden in!! Don’t believe it? They had pictures. Men in their suits and women in their fancy dresses, riding in that little thing.

    The railway was initially built in the late 1800s to carry coal carts up from the mine at the bottom.

    There are extensive trails and paths throughout the canyon floor.

    Going between the rail and cable car stations, they built an excellent elevated walkway.

    We considered one of the trails, but the stairs and elevations on it were too much.

    Going up, we took the cable car, giving us a smooth ride from the bottom up top again.

    Unlike riding the rails in the trees, in the gondola, we were well above, and the views were spectacular.

    In this picture, we are nearing the station at the top, and you can follow the cable down to see the tiny station at the bottom.

    Yesterday we visited the lovely Hydro Majestic Hotel. Today we visited another similar hotel in Katoomba called The Carrington. Both opened in the 1880s (we believe) and have probably been strong competitors since day 1.

    One thing we loved about both hotels was the effort they went through to retain the look and feel of the early 1900s everywhere you went.

    We had lunch at The Carrington in Champaign Charlie’s, Katoomba’s oldest cocktail bar.

    Day 2, Tuesday, the weather turned on us. Frequent rain showers plus high winds. We wanted to go out and see how bad it was, so we went to the next town, Leura. After walking through a bunch of cute shops in their historic downtown, we called it quits. After getting some groceries, we headed back to the B&B. The high winds, drizzle, and 12 degrees were too much. We didn’t bring enough clothing for that!

    Just before dark, the sky started to clear up, and we saw Mr. Sun for a little bit. Combine sun with rain showers, and you sometimes get beautiful rainbows.

    Day 3, Wednesday, the rain reduced to occasional showers, but the wind was worse: 30 gusting to 70. We headed out to the town of Blackheath and an area called Govetts Leap.

    Left, is a lovely waterfall coming down the cliff face. With the wind, there was a lot of mist flowing from it.

    Below, the view from the lookout was incredible.

    We were considering a walk on one of the many trails here, but just as we started, the skies opened up, resulting in a quick dash to the car.

    With the crazy wind, an indoor activity was needed. After lunch, we had arranged a tour of an old, classic luxury hotel, the Hydro Majestic. It opened in 1904, when fads among the rich included things like spas, and in the case of this hotel, treatments like hydrotherapy, hence the hotel’s name.

    The original owner was quick to embrace new technology, so the hotel had electricity before the city of Sydney, cars to drive guests long before they were commonplace, telephones, etc.

    Fortunately, some of the crazy hydrotherapy treatments ended, and it remained simply a luxury hotel. During World War II, the armed forces took over the hotel as a hospital, where many of the injured from the South Pacific battles were treated, including a Navy man named John F. Kennedy.

The Billiard Room. In the early days, this was the lobby, but over time,
it became the place men would gather after dinner.

The Hotel Lobby. A bit distorted by the wide-angle lens, but it was spectacular.

This hallway was where the ladies gathered when the men were in the Billiard Room

This is the view from the rear of the hotel. The open fields below and in the middle were owned by the hotel. They grew much of their food there and transported it up to the hotel via a very small cable car.

And we end the visit to the Hydro Majestic with a “snack”, sitting with this phenomenal view!

    Last Thursday, our daughter, Krista, needed to go to Sydney for a work-related meeting. With her mobility challenges, there was no way she could do it on her own. John went with her as her “wheelchair chauffeur”. After leaving her at her meeting downtown at 10:00 am, the question for John was, what to do until the meeting finishes at 3:30? No problem. Downtown in a major city, there are lots of things to do.

London has a Hyde Park, so does Sydney

A history museum featured models of ships used to transport prisoners. This one, Lady Penrhyn, traveled to Australia in 1788 with 102 female convicts.

A statue from a random office building

It was a drizzly day, and John wanted a quiet spot to read his book.
He found one. This is the reading room in the State Library.

    Today is Monday, June 1st (Can you believe it, June already!!), and we headed off on a mini-vacation, just the two of us, to the Blue Mountains. They are called the “Blue” mountains because they are covered with eucalyptus trees, which locals call gum trees. (Hence the old song: “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree”.) The trees drops a type of oil, which combines with dust and water vapor, creating blue haze that hovers over the mountain.

    Much like our BC Lower Mainland, the area around Sydney and a bit inland is basically flat. Then, boom, the mountains. The picture below was taken just as we entered the mountains. If you look just to the right of center, you might see some tall buildings … that’s downtown Sydney.

<— We checked into a B&B in Wentworth Falls and are going to use it as our home base during this trip.

Sit on that bed, look out the sliding door to the deck … that’s our view!!!

    You need a better look at the view. This is taken from our B&B patio.

    Come back to hear more about our trip to the mountains. Have a great day!!