Goodbye Melbourne and Hello Perth!

We had a great group in Melbourne. The event was at a huge, Las Vegas style casino and 59 people showed up in a gorgeous room overlooking the river and the huge Melbourne Aquarium!  Wish we would have remembered to take pictures of some of the people, but here's dad with a dragon anyway!

He cleans up pretty nice huh?

We really had a good time with them although our host had just had a baby sixteen weeks premature at 24 weeks!  He weighed just over one pound. Wish Maureen was here to take care of him but he seems to be holding his own.

The next day we went to the Melbourne Exhibition Hall, which was a gorgeous glass and steel building right next to an amazing old building with domes and porticos designed by a 19 year old in the 1700's. 

Inside is the most amazing exhibit on the plight of the Aboringines.  See the valuesparenting blog for details on The Stolen Generation.

Next we were off to Perth.  When we got to the airport we found that they had cancelled our flight. They said it was a mechanical problem but it looked more like there weren't enough passengers to warrant a flight!  Anyway, we got on another flight and got to stop for an hour at Adelaide on our way! 

We were greeted by a bank of photographers.  We had no idea how they knew we were coming!  JK...they were waiting for Heath Ledger's mother Kim who was coming home to Perth for his funeral after a drug overdose. That is a sad story!  Right after we heard that story, Lenna wrote to say that Connie's (Bruce's sister) daughter's husband had a terrible snowmobile accident a few months ago and had just died of an overdose of pain killers.  What is this world coming to? 

Anyway, we got through that and a little dog who smelled out a sandwich in my carry on bag. Cute dog!  Then we were off to this next adventure. Perth was really hot and muggy, almost as hot as D.C. Boston and New York in the summer. But I LOVED being really warm for the first time. It was pretty cool in Melbourne and Tasmania. 

After a morning of watching the returns on Super Tuesday and being disappointed that things didn't turn out really well for Mitt, we caught a bus over to what they call the Bell Tower!  In about 45 minutes we learned 1000 times more about bell ringing that we knew when we walked in!  There just happened to be 12 bell-ringers from England there pealing the bells for three hours.  The bells were forged in the 1700's and were the actual bells from St. Martin the Field, which made us feel even closer to Charity who had just arrived in London!  The bell ringers are like symphony players with different patterns on every pull so that none of the bells go at the exact same moment so it sounds like a "peal".  The ringers were a floor below us, some bald guys and some women standing on boxes so they could reach the ropes properly.  They were behind darkened glass so the tourists would bother them so we couldn't get a picture but here are some of the bells, through thick glass and the modern tower they were housed in!

After that great education, we went on a Ferry ride and saw, not only the sky line of Perth but lots of beautiful homes and a busy shipping industry!

Last night we had a GREAT group at a fish restaurant owned by one of the YPOers.  The group was really fun and we loved their open spirits and some of the questions, like, "So how long did you tell your kids to wait to have sex when they were teenagers?"  It was fun to tell them about helping kids make decisions in advance, but a pretty hard sell to get them to think it's still important to wait for marriage.  That dang media!  

SO this morning it is raining like cats and dogs so we have a great day to write and think. We're doing lunch with an EO group and then we're doing an event with the tonight at the Perth Zoo.  More pics coming on that!

Puffing Billy, Melbourne and President Hinckley's Funeral

Dad just went bonkers over this train ride!  It was just a little steam engine compared to Grampa Howard's "Big Boy" but it must be in his genes...he was just like a little kid on this train!  We did go through a  fabulously beautiful forest including Fern Gully.  At the end we met the cutest boy who is 21, works on the engines and then shaves his head and dresses up as the Fat Conductor? once a year when they have Thomas the Tank Engine.  He just about died when he heard that Grampa had run the Big Boy. Last year he spent his life's savings going to the US and traveling from CA to NY on the Big Boy Express, the last one left in the world!  A great time was had by all!

 

How about these roller blades?

 

Sunday we had a wonderful opportunity to see President Hinckley's funeral at big Stake Center in Melbourne.  Here are notes that I've sent on email, but I wanted to put them here just for the record:

The funeral was astounding!  I LOVED every talk for different reasons.This is excepts from a letter I sent a letter to Charity through dearelder because I knew she saw it. I assume most of you saw it via the Internet. Here are my observations, some of which won't mean anything unless you saw the funeral.  If you didn't get a chance yesterday it will be in the archives on LDS.org soon so you can see it. It was just amazing:

I was moved to tears so many times (maybe fasting had something to do with it) as I heard his daughters and his best friends who just also happened to be prophets and apostles talking about him! I just have to write my favorite things and some thoughts about them before I forget!

First, I loved what his daughter Virginia said about the fact that he was really devastated when he lost Marjorie and again when he was diagnosed with cancer but he mourned quietly for a while and then, “Put on his shoes and went back to work.” So similar to those words of his father’s ringing in his ears when he was discouraged on his mission. Oh that we could all be just like that!

I loved the honesty and humor, from “You guys look like a bunch of penguins,” “I’m taking the stairs”, to “I know that I haven’t come along this path alone,” and especially, “Oh…things will work out!” and “Yes, I know there are 500 pieces of paper and I’m going to write on them…one at a time.”.  I loved Elder Eyring's remembrances of President Hinckley (while thumping him with his finger, near his heart) saying at the end of the conversation, “Hal, have you remembered the person who is struggling?” and “How did you find the time?” as well as the best missionary one: “Get the gospel down in their hearts!”

Of course one of the best things was his constantly reminding the general authorities that, “We’ve never done better and the BEST is yet to come!”

I hope this doesn’t discourage you I just have to tell you about the greatest talk we heard in Stake Conference here today. It was from a regional authority who said he went to the Island of Papau New Guinea to check on the missionary work. He said “It’s a pretty dismal place for people to live because of the poverty. BUT because of the extreme poverty an amazing thing is happening. Instead of people having 30 people in their teaching pool which dwindles to 20 and then 10 and then if 2 are baptized it is almost a miracle, their teaching pools were working exactly the opposite way! They have 30 people in their teaching pool and 50 get baptized!

He told of missionaries teaching a sweet little family of six in their little cardboard house with a little lean-to tin roof and when they were given the baptismal challenge, “Will you be baptized on Saturday?” they all said yes! And then on the other side of the cardboard they heard another little group say “Yes!” and realized that another family of four had been listening and were committing as well!!! That’s probably the only place on earth that is happening right now. He said it was very much like when the missionaries first came to England. The good people there were also starving and desperate and joined the church in droves, largely do to their humility and willingness to change.

I thought that President Monson was astounding! He said just the perfect thing to include everyone…including people watching from all over the world. It just wouldn’t have been perfect without a reference to that fun little cane that President Hinckley always carried so that he could wave! The interchange with the doctor, ending with “YOU tell him!” was perfect! It will be so fascinating to see what will happen in the next few weeks. When we have the internet we can keep up pretty well.

I think the thing I will think of most when I reflect back to the funeral was President Hinckley’s passion for what he did! Lots of people set goals and go along for quite a while before they forget them. He never did! He ALWAYS REMEMBERED! That reminds me of the covenant we make every Sunday to ALWAYS REMEMBER HIM! It’s easy to say, hard to remember on the day to day.  What a great and wonderful Prophet of the Lord!  Shows what Optimism can do!  Elder Maxwell says that Optimism is a big part of Hope!  Faith, Hope and Charity, personified in one dear man! 

That was a day I'll always remember, punctuated by at trip down the river in Melbourne. What a Sunday!

Cranes invented by the Australians changed the way we handle ocean containers!  One man can unload an 80 ton container in two minutes!

Beautiful City!!!

Skywalk, Trees, Bridges and Great People!

We're back in Melbourne but just wanted to post a few pictures of the amazing skywalk we went on in Tasmania before we left.  It has been constructed above the trees so as you walk, you see what the birds see as they fly over. It's actually kind of scary and when it started to rain and the walk started to sway in the wind, I must admit that I hurried to get to the end.  Dad, of course, went to the end and on another mile run to the swinging bridge which was an hour away. I thought I might never see him again but he showed up soaking wet with sweat and rain!  Just before the skywalk, we went on a crazy little hang glider thing. It was attached to a cable but was a pretty spectacular ride...for about 50 yards. Funny!

The trees were gargantuous and the ferns incredible!

   

Earlier we had driven to the top of Mt. Wellington, which Charles Darwin climbed many years ago with, in his words "a stupid guide who couldn't find a way to get through the underbrush. From it you can see all of Hobart and was also used to send messages back and forth from Port Arthur!

Here we are on a boat trip down the Tasman River. A ship went through this bridge in 1969, knocking down the first segment on the left. It took two years to repair it!

Here's Dad enjoying a gourmet meal at a vineyard owned by a reclusive genius who has a brilliant mind for numbers...at the gambling tables. He is using his billions to build a museum of antiquities (free to the public) on his gorgeous vineyard  grounds.  Pretty amazing thing to do with your gambling money! 

Although we didn't get there in time for church on Sunday, there seemed to be plentiful churches in Tasmania.  We just happened to turn at this sign!

  

Now we're back in Melbourne and we did our first speech last night. Most of the couples had gone home (EO) by the time we thought to take the picture.  They were a great group so eager to be better parents!  Can there be a better job?