Pop Goes The Question

Cassidy and I have become formally engaged. In a move befitting her independent nature Cassidy was the one who did the asking and I was the one who had the honour of accepting.

We went to Sydney last weekend to visit a friend of mine, Emma, and her husband, Damien. It was a brief visit. We were only in town for 36 hours or so and so we thought we should take in a few of the must-see sights including the Opera House. Our friends had a cooking class for 4 hours and so we were left to our own devices to walk through the city. We wandered down through the Botanic Gardens to the harbour and walked out along the peninsula of the park that lies opposite the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House in front of it. Although overcast, it was a beautifully warm day and we lay about on the grass taking in the view. Because of some typical Melbourne-Sydney rivalry we had only ever heard negative things about Sydney from our Melbournian neighbours but the reports were very misleading for Sydney is far from the bland corporate ghost town that had been described.

Having oh-so-casually worked an apparently hypothetical "what would you say if I asked you to marry me?" question into a conversation 20 minutes earlier and received an encouraging reply, Cassidy took the plunge and asked me if I would marry her. Of course I didn't have to think twice.

Cass was appalled to learn that her unorthodox proposal was not as iconoclastic as she'd thought when she learned that there was a sexist loophole in proposal etiquette "allowing" a woman to propose to a man during a leap year. She has gone to great lengths to research this tradition and is at pains to point out that this custom is only applicable on the leap year day, i.e. February 29.

Damien took a photograph of us shortly after in front of the Opera House, so I guess this is officially our engagement picture.

We're thrilled to make official what we've both known for a long time, that we want to spend the rest of our lives together.

FAQ

But aren't you guys married already?
No, that's just Dave being an idiot. However we did toy with this idea over a year ago so you could be excused for experiencing a slight sensation of deja vu.

Did Cassidy get down on one knee to propose?
No she did not. We were standing on some precarious rocks at the water's edge so to have knelt down would have been an unnecessary extension of the risk she was already taking. She did stand on a rock slightly lower than mine though.

When are you getting married?
We haven't thought that far ahead yet. We're still just excited to be engaged.

Was a ring given?
Neither party received a ring but that will be remedied later.

Is Cassidy merely getting engaged because she is in silent competition with her brother?
No she is not. We are very much in love and she is just happy that Brendan is happy.

I heart Melbourne

Tomorrow marks our one-year anniversary in Melbourne. It's been a busy year, an adventurous year, a very good year. I am, I would say, much happier and more secure than I was a year ago. Leslie's unwilling to compare years but says he's happy now.

I truly love Melbourne. I love the trees, the buildings, the people, the atmosphere, the diversity, the buzz, the location, the weather. I love my job, I'm making some good friends, and I love our apartment.

Here are some things I have learned in the last year:

What a huntsman spider looks like (big and ugly, and pretty scary when they're in your apartment block

What the words "arvo," "fair dinkum," "grouse" and "crook" mean ("afternoon", "genuine", "decent and hardworking" and "ill or sickly" in order)

When an Aussie asks you how you're traveling, he doesn't want to know the details of your commute. He's asking how you are

Complaining about the weather and real-estate prices is a human trait, even if you live in a place (like Melbourne) that has beautiful weather and prices that are not exorbitant

The MCG, Melbourne Cricket Ground, is where they play Aussie rules football. Go figure

Speaking of cricket, I have learned it is a looong game. But I now know the rules

Everything Americans say about Canadians and the Irish say about the Welsh, the Aussies say about the Kiwis

"He doesn't know me from a bar of soap" is a way better expression than "He doesn't know me from Adam"

One does not "root" for a team in Australia. This is a rude expression. One "barracks" for a team

George Bush isn't good enough to lick Kevin Rudd's boots, if Kevin Rudd wore boots, which I don't think he does

We're going to celebrate our one-year Melbourne anniversary by going to Sydney, funnily enough. We're going up there to visit Leslie's friend Emma for the weekend. We haven't yet made it to Sydney, so this will be a good chance to see the opera house and all those iconic images of Australia that we haven't visited. It should be a nice little break, but not nearly as adventurous as what we did a few weekends ago.

On Australia Day weekend (a three-day weekend) we went camping with a group of friends about 100km from Melbourne. Driving down (I had somehow managed to be the one driving) I was more than wary. My friends kept making allusions to horror movies, and I'm not good in the countryside at the best of times. I was fairly convinced, as we drove into the mountains in the pitch-black , that some sort of murderer was lurking in the darkness. We came upon a car with its bonnet up, clearly a car with some sort of car trouble. I sped by them. "I am not stopping this car for anyone or anything," I declared. I feel bad about it now, because they clearly needed help, but I was far too freaked out to stop, fearing it was a trap of some kind. I just have to think the RACV helped them out.

Once we got there I calmed a bit, though my role in the tent-pitching and fire-starting was mostly to hold a torch so my friends could see what they were doing as they worked. We sat around the campfire and chatted, and I was no longer afraid. Half a dozen curious kangaroos hopped around us, getting within a few feet and grazing on the grass in the clearing where our tents were pitched. We also saw two wombats, or maybe it was the same one - they're slow.

There were LOTS of bugs - tons of flies, some mosquitoes, and lots of huntsman spiders. On the third night, one climbed our friend Ruth's leg (she dealt with it really well, in my estimation - squinching up her eyes and kicking feebly. I would have passed out and fallen in the fire. Our friend Ryan came to her rescue and brushed it off her).

Despite the bugs, though, it was actually tons of fun. We built fires and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows and played campfire games. During the day we went swimming in a nearby lake and chilled out and read and played frisbee and cards and games, and at night we cooked our food and sat around the fire and laughed.

The end of a holiday

Okay, we'll get on with telling you how the rest of our New Zealand holiday went. But it's only because Faith posted a comment. The only way I know that anyone has been reading the blog is if they leave comments. If there's no comments, I figure no one is reading it or cares if there's a new entry.

Anyway, back in New Zealand, the next day was our day of white water rafting. We'd decided to raft the Wairoa River, which has grade 5 rapids. Five is the most extreme rapids you can commercially raft; after that you need a special license. The rights to the Wairoa were bought by the power company that wanted to use it for hydroelectric power. They wanted to dam it up to harness its power, but the kayakers and rafters were very upset that they would lose such a great river for rafting. So they came to an agreement: every Sunday in summer, or about 26 days a year, the power company would allow the river to flow its natural course. The rest of the time, it would be dammed and the riverbed would be dry. Rafters and kayakers want to make the absolute most of those 26 days, and they go out on the Wairoa every one of those Sundays. Our tour guide (who has been rafting the Wairoa for more than 20 years, since before the arrangement was reached) says it's like church - no one misses a day if they can help it, and all those who go out on the river get to know all the others on water craft on the river.

I wanted to bring my camera on the trip (it has a waterproof housing), but the guides said it would be too big and would get in the way. They were right; it turned out we needed our hands free at all times. There were a few commands we needed to know: "Forwards" and "backwards" are self-explanatory. "Left back" meant the left side of the raft (there were 6 of us in each raft) paddled backwards while the right side paddled forwards, useful for turning. "Hold on" was used for rapids - we were to stop paddling and grip onto ropes on the side of the raft. "Get down" was for fiercer rapids still - for that command we were to all go into the bottom of the boat and hold on for dear life. "Hold on" and "get down" were commands we learned to follow quickly, and they came up a lot.

We were wearing wetsuits, which was a very good thing because we got absolutely soaked. But it was an absolute blast. Going down the rapids was like being on a water ride at a theme park, only more fun, and we were allowed to jump out of the boat and swim in some of the calm pools. The scenery was beautiful, and going down waterfalls was very exciting.

But after the second or third set of rapids, we got stuck on a rock. Our raft hit it at the wrong angle and became lodged, and with water rushing into the bottom of the boat we couldn't get it unstuck. We all held on as tightly as we could to the rope on the side of the raft while our guide and a nearby kayaker tried to figure out how to get us unstuck. Leslie was behind me, so I turned to see how he was doing. He was in the bottom of the boat, struggling to hold on. The water of the river kept rushing over his nose and mouth, and he was unable to hang on. He says he didn't almost drown, but it sure looked like that from where I was. He was carried by the force of the river a few feet, but the guide grabbed his life jacket and sat him on the rock we were stuck on. The kayaker, who had by this point gone to the shore, threw him a rope. Les held onto it and was pulled to shore. We then all had to repeat this procedure. We were completely submerged during this mid-river rescue, but we had wetsuits, helmets and boots to protect us from the river's many rocks. Once we were all safe on shore, we tried to dislodge the raft by tying the rope to it and pulling, but it was still stuck. The water rushing into it weighted it down, and it was really tough to budge. But the guide, who stayed on the rock, managed to dislodge it a bit, and we all pulled it free. We walked through the bush on the shore downstream to get out of the rapids and re-embark in calmer waters.

Our boat encountered no other unexpected difficulties throughout the rest of the journey, but one of the other rafts in our group tipped over at the bottom of one of the waterfalls. It was nicknamed "tipping point, " and it was easy to see why. But I have to say, the mid-river rescue was probably the most fun thing about the whole trip. It was so adventurous and real. The white-water rafting trip was the highlight of the whole vacation for both of us. It went on for several hours of adrenaline and excitement, then calm and serene sailing, then more exciting rapids.

Two sets of goats along the route apparently did not realise that it was a Sunday during summer. They had been cavorting (or whatever it is goats do) in the dry riverbed when the water was released. They must have been terrified to see a huge wall of water rushing at them. They climbed to the highest rocks they could find, which luckily for both pairs, was above the water line. But then they were stuck in the middle of the river. This was their plight when we came across them - stuck on a rock in the middle of the river looking confused and helpless. They probably also didn't know that the water would be shut off at 4pm, so they wouldn't be stuck for too long. When they got out, they probably would be more wary of dried-up riverbeds in the future.

Not having had our fill of water sports, when we got back to Rotorua we rented a couple of kayaks ourselves and paddled around Lake Rotorua. It was calm and beautiful and stank of sulfur. Leslie managed to tip his kayak over and got poured into the lake. He was out beyond the boundary of where we were supposed to be, so I wasn't with him when it happened and thus can't say exactly how he managed it. But he has so far found no sympathy for it, from me or the kayak rental people. He had to lay out all his money all over our room after that to try to dry it out.

The next day we went on a boat trip to go swim with dolphins. I couldn't make my camera work properly, and it was running out of batteries, so we don't have any underwater pictures of that, sorry. But it was really cool to be in the water with them. You could hear their shrieks and clicks and cries everywhere, even underwater. And they seemed to be swooping and gliding all around us. We didn't get too much time with them before they swam off, but it was pretty amazing. We were snorkeling with them, so we could keep our faces in the water the whole time and see them cavorting around. If you ever get the chance to swim with dolphins, take it.

In the afternoon we went to Ohope Beach, near the town where the dolphin swimming was. The beach was a surfing beach, so the waves were intense. I sunbathed for a while, but Leslie convinced me to come in eventually. He really likes being knocked down and battered around by waves, so he was out where they were breaking. I thought he was just messing around when he yelped "Ah! My pants! The ocean is taking my swimming togs!" But it turned out he wasn't kidding - as he was knocked over by a wave, it managed to rip his swimming trunks off him. He was then left naked and fighting with the waves. I went to get his boxers from shore, but he was being carried further and further down to a more populated area of the beach. He's lucky I was the one swimming with him - I'm pretty sure a male friend would have just returned to the towel and read a book for a while and left him stranded. But I did bring him back his boxers and he got out of the ocean with his modesty and dignity still intact.

That night was New Year's Eve, so we bought some strawberry champagne and had dinner at an Indian restaurant. Partway through the meal a Scottish bagpipe band parked itself outside the restaurant and played "Amazing Grace." It was an odd mixture of cultures - Scottish and Indian in New Zealand. For New Year's Eve we sat on our balcony outside our hotel room and watched the fireworks over Lake Rotorua. It was a peaceful, beautiful setting for it, and strawberry champagne was delicious, or as delicious as $6 champagne can be.

And that's all, folks. The next day we flew back to Melbourne and resumed our regular lives here at home.