Australia 4: Hanging with my Brother!

For those of you who don't know, my brother, Pete, lives in Jindabyne, NSW, Australia. He married Annette, an Australian, and moved there years ago. Nath, Lazar, and I arrived in Jindabyne late in the night, but Pete was still up waiting and met us at a gas station to show us the way to his place. He lives in a rather rural area outside of Jindabyne on about 16 acres of property. The road to his place was crawling with native animals, and I managed to see my first and last wombats of the trip on the way to his place. However, they were all running away, and all I really saw were fuzzy butts disappearing into the darkness. Pete says they're built like tanks and if you hit one of the little guys they can knock the wheel off your car! We arrived late, Pete showed us our room, we talked a little, and he let Lazar crash for the night. I went to sleep excited about the next two weeks, my first opportunity to spend time with my brother in about 6-7 years!

We did many great things while in Jindabyne. We hiked local hills and rivers, explored a cave, jumped in hot springs, tried local liquors, saw a band and a comedian, and drank a lot. One day, we even went on a hard core mountaineering trip through the snow and ice up Australia's tallest mountain, Mt. Kosciuszko! Actually, it was more like a day hike up a road with patches of snow/ice a few inches thick to the modest height of 2228 meters/7310'. Pete introduced me to Top Gear, and English car show that is absolutely hilarious, and he showed me quite a bit about building as we worked on his house and property. I now know the basics of welding and thus my running shoes have a hole in the toe. :)

One of the really enjoyable things that Nath and I did was help Pete work around the house. Pete is a carpenter by trade now, and designed and built much of his beautiful house. It is a two story home on 16 acres of slowly rolling hills. He has a truly massive window (around 8m x 8m?) that overlooks the countryside. Annette has a horse, and was in the process of buying a 2nd while we were there. The two major projects we helped Pete with were nearly completing the new deck with a sunk fire pit that he had designed and was working on, and we helped him clear his land of many non-native willow trees that "land care" had killed last year. The deck was beautiful and the fire pit was perfect. Pete threw a party and we all hung out by the fire getting drunk on good alcohol until the wee hours of the morning. Clearing the trees was fun because we had to haul huge sections that fell into the creek with a chain attached to the 4-runner. Even better, we had to burn the piles that we created! Our dad taught us all about how to burn stuff as we grew up and its definitely something that I've been missing while living in San Diego!

I really enjoyed living in the country for a few weeks, and it was a truly needed relief from all our travel. Travel is hard. It sounds all fun and amusing, but stress is often high and logistics are a nightmare. At Pete's, I was waking up and taking his dog Diesel out most mornings around sunrise on a 30+ minute walk through neighboring sheep pastures. At sunset some nights we'd try to go see the platypus that live near Pete's place. While we were working on the house, it was low stress since it was fun to help Pete and it really felt more like hanging out. The whole experience was just relaxing and very rejuvenating.

The best was just talking while we did all of these things. I learned a lot about my brother that I didn't know, and got to know Annette better. I'm writing this in July, halfway through the trip. Nath and I have been to Thailand, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, and Malaysia. We've had amazing adventures and climbed spectacular things. We've scuba dived in unimaginable beauty and seen bizarre and captivating wildlife. However, the best part of this trip so far has been staying in the little town if Jindabyne and reconnecting with Pete after so long. I'm already looking forward to going back!

Thanks for a great time Pete and Annette!