New Year's Resolution = to start my blog already!

And what better way to start 2011 but with a trip to Australia!

Last time I went to Australia, it was January 1998.  I was working away at my first "real" job in Portland, Oregon, and living with regrets of not having backpacked around the world before settling down into my life's career.  So, I saved up my vacation hours, and went with a relatively new girlfriend, Pia to go "see about an Aussie boy" whom she met the summer before.  Yes, I was the third wheel, but it wasn't as bad as it sounded.  I actually acted as a bit of a translator back in those early days, as Pia, being Swedish, could hardly understand her new "mate".  1997 was a time before digital photography, before I started waxing my eyebrows, and when denim shortalls were all the rage in casual attire...at least I thought so anyway.  Needless to say, my photos from that first trip are rather funny to look back on, and aren't the best quality (I would've retaken most of them had I been able to see them before I developed them!)

Funny enough,  I'm going back to OZ with the same couple, who have become two of my best friends and travel buddies over the years, and finally tied the knot last year!  But this time, I'm bringing my fancy camera with me.  Eyebrows are tidied up, but I'll still probably look back at what I'll be wearing in a few years and wince...that's just the way it is.


We'll be going to spend a week in Sydney, and then go up to the Sunshine Coast (Eastern Queensland) for 5 days.  It's actually raining buckets and flooding on the Sunshine Coast at the moment, but I'm really hoping it will be living up to it's name by the time we get up there, and I'll come back to winter in America looking like a "Bloody English Tourist" yet again.  


Cheers!