Spring 2010 Update

Brooke’s Australia Adventure Update – Spring 2010 October 4, 2010

Dear friends,

I love warm weather, the sun shining on your skin that is no longer covered up by multiple layers and the ability to wear sandals comfortably... I know this must all be influenced by my growing up in Florida, but I have to say how glad I am that the colder weather seems to have shifted out now. I went swimming this past week for the first time in an outdoor pool in over six months and I have to say I am excited summer is coming! I was in Coffs Harbour this past week – a beautiful place on the northern NSW coast that is filled with banana plantations, tropical birds, beaches and the beginning of warmer weather! I was sitting writing this update at an HSC Year 12 study camp being held in Coffs Harbour. For my American friends, let me just explain that the HSC is a test that students in New South Wales take that gives them a score that will allow universities to know where they should be placed (their test score is also influenced by the prestige of their high school, and they study off certain subjects). This is a camp that Young Life runs annually to allow Year 12 students a chance to come away from their home environment and provides tutors to help them with subjects they might need a bit of extra assistance with and has a mandatory four hour a day study period (often much more time than they would choose to study at home themselves). Of course, since it is a Young Life camp, it is a week also filled with fun activities like a high ropes course, beach trips, and crazy games and skits – which is where I come in. Kelly and I together actually, (Kelly is our newest amazing Ryde leader I mentioned last time). We have come up to help be the Program team which means lots of silly costumes, wigs, laughter and organising group games and competitions during what they have termed “Compulsory Fun.” The time of course is a lot of fun, despite the term compulsory. We’ve been having a blast doing this role even though neither of us knew what we were doing at the beginning. It has been a great learning curve and such a blessing to do this together to strengthen our friendship and ability to lead with Young Life in stronger ways. Being a part of the team behind the scenes of a camp is also a lot of fun as you are able to hear from cabin leaders how students are responding to the message of Jesus from club each night and afterwards in cabin time, being able to pray with the team before club and during cabin time is also such a unique opportunity and makes me so grateful for all the different roles in a Young Life camping team. Each is unique, but all supports the time that ultimately leaders have with kids to clearly present and explain the gospel, the good news. We brought with us one year 12 from Sydney, Lydia to camp. Please keep her and the rest of the 50 some other students that are faced with a big challenge beginning in less than two weeks... to take a test they feel determines their future. For those of us who have been through that end of high school and beyond, we know that there are many things that will determine their future... but the most important is who they choose to follow. Pray with me that the seeds planted this week would reap a good harvest in due season.

Matthew 13:23
“But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

Australia is filled with some unbelievable scenery. Brendan and I were able firsthand to experience some of it as we took a two week holiday in August that coincided with the celebration of our one year wedding anniversary. We decided to take a road trip to visit some places neither of us had been before and to visit some dear family members and friends that aren’t often seen because of how far away they lived. So, we started doing some research and found some cheap flights to a few of the places and some deals on relocating vehicles (think campervans and 4WD’s) to other places in order to have our adventure. Here was our itinerary and a few of the highlights in case you’d ever like to visit these places...
• Flew to Adelaide and picked up campervan from Apollo Rentals – first day drove to Wildunna in South Australia, through Kimba where a giant galah (pink and grey parrot) awaits with a sign that says you’re in the centre of Australia’s south
• Drove through Ceduna, that’s famous for oysters, to the Great Australian Bight National Park where we spotted over 20 whales, all mothers with their babes in pairs, from the cliffs immediately above and stayed that night just outside of Eucla in the beginning of Western Australia. This night was our anniversary night and although Eucla is a place on the map (therefore we were hoping for a good meal), it turned out that there were 172 cars stopping there that were a part of a Variety Bash charity race driving from Victoria in Australia’s east to Margaret River in the west... for their 11 day race, they were all meeting up to have dinner in the one road house for hundreds of kilometres we were meant to... which meant that we got take away burgers and chips (all that was on offer) and ate our anniversary meal in our campervan with the bottle of Moet champagne that we had (thankfully!) packed with us for the occasion.
• Continued across the Nullabor Plain (meaning no trees in Latin, but there were a surprising amount of shrubs) through the stretch of the straightest road in Australia – 90 miles without a turn, and ended up in Kalgoorlie-Boulder for the night. This is the home of the “Golden Mile” and the super pit gold mine. Brendan has cousins here and we spent the night parked in their yard and enjoyed a tour of the town from them, including seeing the historic pubs of Boulder that have recently been rocked by an earthquake in April that has left many beyond repair. Here in Kalgoorlie we journeyed underground to a former gold mining shaft 12 feet underground at the Mining Hall of Fame and were amazed by how massive the trucks are that are now used at the open pit mine.
• On the road again we journeyed through Norseman (where a horse was the one to discover gold) to the beautiful beaches of Esperance on the Southern Ocean. Here we saw a sea lion beside the jetty as the sun was setting and enjoyed a night parked beside the ocean. This was a place I could definitely go back to!
• The next day we drove through Albany, a former whaling city, through the winding roads of the ancient jarrah forests to arrive in Margaret River, a beautiful wine growing region. Here, excellent food and wine awaited us and although we only had time for one winery tour, Vasse Felix, the oldest in the region, it was well worth a taste and with wineries located beside the beach I reckon it might be worth a longer visit again.
• We then spent almost a week exploring Perth and the surrounding environs with Brendan’s cousins and uni friends and our mutual friends Deb and Nick. Perth was an absolutely beautiful city that was very easy to manage and also easy to see why our friends and family love living there. From a Perth Glory soccer match, to lunch at Hillary’s Boat Harbour eating crocodile, emu, kangaroo and buffalo, to sipping wine in the Swan Valley or boutique beer at Little Creatures in Freemantle, it is an amazing city. Brendan especially liked visiting the Perth Mint and seeing a real gold pouring demonstration, in addition to the time with family of course. And we both loved taking a boat down the Swan River, past the multi-million dollar mansions of the mining magnates to Rottnest Island, 20 km off the coast. This beautiful place was perfect for a day of bicycling and exploring. There are these creatures here called quokkas that are miniature wallabies (like tiny kangaroos) and they only stand one foot high. The island was named after them when the Dutch explorers came and thought they were rats – which is what Rottnest means – in Dutch – rat’s nest. It was a beautiful day and another place well worth a trip back to. A highlight of our trip to Perth was being with young families as two of the households have young children in them – Sonny and Luka and Joshua were amazing to spend time with.
• From Perth we flew back to Adelaide and had our first night with my new Young Life friends Hannah and Adam that are beginning Young Life in the Barossa Valley. We were able to go to church with them that night and hear Sy Rogers speak, amazing as usual. Check him out if you haven’t heard him before, he has an incredible testimony. We were also able to visit one of the directors for Women’s Forum Australia, Selena and her family in Adelaide. Selena is such an incredible woman, currently pregnant with their sixth child and it was amazing to see how full and fun their household was!
• The next day we picked up our 4WD in Adelaide and headed to Mildura, an oasis in the desert in the northwest corner of Victoria. This is fruit growing region as the Murray River flows through irrigating the orchards and fields surrounding. We went there for me to present at two Positive Body Image Forums on behalf of Women’s Forum Australia’s research. One was directed at service providers: teachers, counsellors and others working with youth. The second was for parents and their teenagers. It was a wonderful experience speaking in a rural environment and being so warmly received. Brendan and I enjoyed amazing food and wine in this town and again, a place we’d go back to. The cliffs along the Murray River were also stunning and well worth a look.
• From Mildura we travelled through Wentworth to see where the Murray and Darling Rivers come together. Unfortunately we couldn’t see the sediment mixing as they had had so much rain they seemed to look the same. (Just a note about this... we were expecting as we were driving through some of the driest parts of the country to have it be a dusty drive, but since we went in winter, we actually drove through rain almost every day on our trip. This meant we saw amazing yellow fields of canola alongside blue skies and rainbows with the dark clouds, unexpectedly on our trip.) From Wentworth we stopped at the Perry Sand Hills, a well-photographed spot with a huge gum tree in the middle of it and drove up to Broken Hill. This is an old silver mining town that boasts the highest number of pubs per capita anywhere in Australia (although many of the licenses were sold to Sydney for the 2000 Olympics and are now bed and breakfasts). We had a wonderful time in Broken Hill going to a 1950s style milk bar called Bell’s for thick shakes, seeing the living desert garden and the multitude of Sturt Desert Peas in bloom (Brendan’s favourite flower that he had never seen in the wild before because they only bloom in the desert after a rain, not a regular occurrence), and the amazing sculptures overlooking the town. We also enjoyed going to Silverton, a ghost town about 20 km outside of Broken Hill that the majority of the buildings were transported to Broken Hill after more silver was discovered there. All that is left in Silverton are the brick buildings that couldn’t be dragged by horses in the late 19th century. Silverton has been featured in many movies including Mad Max 2 and the pub there has been in ads for so many different products that we had to stop and have a beer there to see the paraphernalia. Brendan can’t wait to go back to Broken Hill and has been telling everyone about it since we’ve been back.
• Finally, we journeyed the 1200 km back to Sydney in one day and found that there really isn’t much between Broken Hill and Dubbo... but with a visit to Bathurst to see Heather, another Young Life friend, and the promise of our bed at the end, the drive was worth it. There are however, quite a lot of emus, wild goats and kangaroos that you will see!

Altogether, we felt very blessed to have travelled about 6,000 km on our two week holiday and to have done in at the one year point in our marriage. The time in the car offered lots of reflection space, dreaming time and by going through a book on marriage, Love and War by John and Staci Eldridge and time to talk about deeper things in our relationship. In addition to the blessing of books on tape, CDs like Bruce Springsteen, episode 1 of Kath and Kim and time with friends and family, it will certainly be a trip to remember!

Romans 12:11-13
“Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.”

Life has seemed especially full the past few weeks we’ve been back from our holidays and there has been many opportunities to serve the Lord, for which we continue to be thankful. Just a few highlight’s I’ll leave you with are that I’ve began teaching Year 7 & 8 scripture classes at Willoughby Girls High School, a school in the Northern Sydney area. This is an area we were running fortnightly Young Life clubs in for the past 15 months, but has recently stopped. This ability to now teach scripture in this new school will hopefully allow us more outreach opportunities and as we are in a transitional time in this area, your prayers for re-building of a team and a new initiative of club here would be great. Another exciting beginning is for Women’s Forum a new initiative this year to celebrate Love Your Body Day with our members. This is an annual event that first began in 1997 in the US with the National Organisation of Women (NOW) to resist the fake and unrealistic images of women seen everywhere in our society and encourage women to love how they’ve been created. We’ll celebrate this on the 21st of October and are encouraging Women’s Forum Australia’s members to host a morning/afternoon tea in honour of this and invite their friends and help raise money for our School Ambassador Program we’ve began in Sydney this year. It’s very exciting to be able to continue to have different initiatives that support women’s wellbeing and freedom! I am sure there is much more I could write, but I do want to be sensitive to how long I write and your eyes on the computer, so I’ll leave you there and thank you for your friendship, prayers and for journeying with me.

Psalm 68:1, 5 & 6a
“May God arise, may his enemies be scattered; may his foes flee before him. A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families.”

With loving friendship,

Brooke