{"id":5730,"date":"2019-06-14T03:33:55","date_gmt":"2019-06-14T10:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leslieval.com\/?p=5730"},"modified":"2019-07-03T10:50:28","modified_gmt":"2019-07-03T17:50:28","slug":"visiting-new-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leslieval.com\/?p=5730","title":{"rendered":"Visiting New Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After two days on\nthe Great Ocean Road and in the Eucalypt forests, we violated all\nAustralia travel rules and overlooked many overlooks . We drove and\ndrove through extensive sheep farms and croplands with weird storage\nsilos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Eventually night\nfell, yet we continued on \u2013 watching for (actually hoping against\nhope for failure) kangaroos as we sped along at 110 km\/hr on a narrow\ntwo lane highway. Headlights of opposing cars eclipsed our vision all\ntoo often, forcing us to drive ever farther to the left while\nsquinting and hoping that we would avoid hitting a kangaroo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The next morning we had only a two hour drive to get to the McArthur homestead of Sue, Tim , Monika and Hastings in the hilly farm country south and east of Adelaide. <\/p>\n\n\n\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n\n\n\n

Sue is the mother of\nTim, and Tim is a cousin of Tory, Annie\u2019s (Scott\u2019s wife) great\nfriend. These wonderful people showed us around their sheep farm (no\nsheep at the moment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sue rode with us and\nwe followed Tim to where we had lunch at the top of a nearby\nmountain. Here is the view from the top of Mt. Lofty looking down\nover Adelaide and on to the Southern Ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We then headed into the forest to search for koalas with a prize of ice cream to the first spotter. It may not surprise some of you that that first individual was Cora! Here are her first photos of a \u2018koala in the wild\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\nngg_shortcode_1_placeholder\n\n\n\n

We then visited the\nnearby Cleland Wildlife Park where Hastings, age 4.5, knew where\nevery animal in the park was to be found. He enthusiastically guided\nus from wombat to Tasmainian devil, to dingo, to kangaroo and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\nngg_shortcode_2_placeholder\n\n\n\nngg_shortcode_3_placeholder\n\n\n\n

Val failed on multiple attempts to pay for lunch or pay for the entry to the wildlife sanctuary \u2013 as Sue kept claiming the high ground. If we happened to live close to Sue, we think that we would become great friends because of our many common interests and philosophies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Night found us in Victor Harbor back on the Southern Ocean where we stayed at the charming and unique Anchorage Guesthouse. We enjoyed a late dinner, entertained by an unusually gregarious waiter. Cora and Leslie ordered mint hot chocolate. It came as a cup topped with white foam and lots of shaken chocolate. Asked how it was, we both replied that it was a little heavy on the mint and quite light on the chocolate. He returned to the bar and came back embarrassed and convulsed by laughter with his friends behind the bar. Turns out that he had never prepared this beverage before and had poured way too much mint syrup into the hot milk in our cups and had not added any chocolate other than the bit scattered on the top! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After two days on the Great Ocean Road and in the Eucalypt forests, we violated all Australia travel rules and overlooked many overlooks . We drove and drove through extensive sheep farms and croplands with weird storage silos. Eventually night fell, yet we continued on \u2013 watching for (actually hoping against hope for failure) kangaroos […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leslieval.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leslieval.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leslieval.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leslieval.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leslieval.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5730"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/leslieval.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5771,"href":"https:\/\/leslieval.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5730\/revisions\/5771"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leslieval.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leslieval.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leslieval.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leslieval.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}