Day one - Thurs 5 July

The Tantalising Tassie (road)Trip - the journey of Claire, Em and Mel

We aimed to start at 5am for 5.30am. We really only left at 5.50am! Em and I watched hardened city possums chasing each other through the MAC trees (quite entertaining at that time of the morning) while waiting for Claire.

Challenge 1: reversing out of MAC driveway in a new car with a clutch that I wasn't used familiar with and couldn't see the left-hand mirror!

What followed was a smooth drive until our breakfast stop at Hungry Jacks. Got very strange looks from the attendant when asking for a sausage mcmuffin @ HJ. The wind was bitingly COLD - we're hoping that Tassie's warmer - yeah right!!



Challenge 2: finding lunch! We visited Subway in Woodonga (VIC not NSW). Also bought overpriced thermal bottoms. We drove in the rain for most of the way, not great weather for a roadtrip, but hey, we're committed to the holiday.

We stopped amid racing traffic on the freeway to take photos of crazy signs. This is going to be our thing for the holidays - random signs.

This is Claire powernapping!

We made good time to Melbourne arriving around 4-ish. We decided to go to the city for coffee before queing for the Spirit (of Tasmania) @ 7pm.

Challenge 3: this is a big one, too demoralising to put all the challenges separately - basically it was to find the Spirit! We took a slight scenic detour of Melbourne. We called it the loop-deloop of Melbourne. I'll do this in dot points, it's less painful:

• driving for a few hours too many
• heavy rain - can't see more than 5m
  
• windscreen wipers on fastest setting - still can't see more than 5m!
• a very basic map of Melbourne - not any neccessary road names printed
• peak hour traffic in Melbourne
• only slept 3-5 hours last night - VERY tired!

We found the Spirit, eventually, a few funny things occurred through the day that kept us from crying at this point - there's nothing worse than being lost and stuck in traffic!

The funny things:

• I overtook a massive FOX freight truck. When he saw that he was overtaken by three girls, the drag racing began - very entertaining. So as not to break the law, we relented, after a while, so that he sped off with his male pride intact. I think all truck drivers secretly dream of being Ferrari drivers.
• We had to ask a random pedestrian on a Melbourne street where the Spirit was - did we mention that it's a huge oceanliner type ship, visible from a very far distance!
• We nearly knocked over the Spirit staff when parking (I was not driving at this point - promise!)

Challenge 4: Claire making it up the ramp into the Spirit. Mark, we're sorry about over revving your car!










Challenge 5: finding our room, 8243. The Spirit is the ultimate maze, every corridoor looks the same!

Challenge 6: my personal challenge: not choking on my dinner! Very entertaining for the kids around us but man did it hurt!

We're here!!!!!!

We are now in Tassie, we have been here for the last four days yet, I'll try to keep you posted on what we're upto, but there's a bit of a backlog as I'm just enjoying being on holiday at the moment, more will follow - promise!

Tantalising Tassie

It's only one more day until two friends (Claire and Emily) and I leave on a road trip to Tassie - the land of good wine, cheese and open fires. Please pray for us for safe travels and strengthened relationships. We'll be posting photos here as we go along the trip ...

holiday silliness

a little reflection

It's been a long week here in Newtown, cold and rainy with a looming church history assignment. And now it is holidays and I was wondering what to do after such a week and indeed such a term. I can’t contemplate doing any more work, although I need to catch up on some Greek, but I can’t do people either. A part of me wants to fly off somewhere (at maybe reckless speeds) on my bike or go for a run on the beach and leave everything behind. And yet a restlessness prevails. After chatting with some friends about nothing inconsequential, I decided to grab a coffee and reflect a little on some of the things that have been happening. I’ve recently just been overwhelmed with so many thoughts.

I don't want to sound too depressed, for truly I'm not, it is just the adjusting to the intenseness of college I suppose. The accumulation of many changes since last year while a continuing range of things changing this year!

I've been so aware this year of how much hurt people carry around with them. It seems overwhelming as I consider the new friendships made this year, at college and elsewhere. I wonder about the nature of relationships, how destructive we are capable of being to each other and how to move through the place when you are hurt by others. How much does one take with you when meeting new people and how does that affect your interactions?

I've been wondering how as Christians, it is possible to draw strength from relying on God in a practical way. It sounds so simple, yet so difficult to carry through. I've been very humbled lately in Doctrine class, while learning about the character of God, the nature of his power, wisdom and goodness. I don't know if writing about all this helps at all, I do take comfort in knowing that while I can only understand a little of life and the magnitude of my weakness, that God is sovereign and understands and knows all.

art and theology

I'm attempting, as part of Church History, to construct a time line of events and people that we're learning about and tying it up with the history that I already know. Having been a fine arts student and art history lecturer, that naturally would involve the history of art. Naturally I can't include all works, or artists, so these may just be some of my favourite or well known ones. But please feel free to make suggestions of things to include or about things that are already included.

I will start with this shortly, for now it's just an idea and needs a bit of time!

my visual diary

I'm not normally one to do these types of mass produced thingamajigs, but I'm procrastinating writing a Church History document! This one is surprisingly accurate and a lot of what I'm like - go figure! Enjoy

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