Admittedly, I may have slacked off a bit...

Remember me? Maybe you don't, so I'll introduce myself again. My name is Reid The Man Mason, previously known as the kid who was interning in Australia, now known as the kid who's sitting at home watching TV and playing with his dog. Kind of like the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, except I'm a college bum and not very royal.

However, I am officially back home! I flew into Kansas City over a week ago, last Wednesday night, April 20th. It was a long trip but good trip home. This week I've been catching up on sleep, getting over jet lag and generally being lazy.

But that's not important. What is important is the question "Reid, what did you do for the past month? You fell off the face of the planet, what happened?" First off, thank you for being so concerned with my well-being; that's very sweet. Second, I was actually really busy! I'm family came and visited me for a week, then I went on a few travels, then before I knew it, it was my last week in Melbourne. Time flew by for the last month or so, as I was really busy at work, thankfully, and doing a lot of things outside of work. But now that I'm home, there's never been a better time to tell you what I did for the past month.

One of the biggest things that happened was my family coming to visit me! They were in Australia for ten days and we made those ten days count. We saw Melbourne, drove the Great Ocean Road, drove back to Melbourne, drove to Phillip Island and saw the penguins, drove to Canberra and then finally made it all the way to Sydney. It was a lot of driving, but we saw a lot and had a lot of fun. 

Hey Family!

In our first go around in Melbourne, we checked out my house, the Royal Botanic Gardens (see above picture) and a lot of the other sights that Melbourne has to offer. It was great being able to show my family where I had lived for the last 3 months. I felt like such a tour guide, it was great. After our a few days in Melbourne, we drove the Great Ocean Road, which is renowned as one of the greatest stretches of road in the world. 

Oooooh. That makes sense.

Where was this taken? Kansas City or Australia?

It was a very pretty drive, even though about half of it was through a national forest. Great Ocean Road going through forests? Yeah, it confused us, too, but the road was a lot of fun regardless of the tree filled middle. A huge highlight on the drive was seeing wild koalas!

It didn't move a lot, so it could have been a prank by some bored teens...who knows.

 We took about 45 pictures of this koala, then we figured out that there were four more koalas in the area. We had run into a koala posse! Which, honestly, is probably the least frightening posse in existence. We kept on driving until we came to the Twelve Apostles, which are 12 towers that have become separated from the coast. There are only eight still intact, but those eight are still impressive. We checked out the Apostles, then drove to a nearby beach and had ourselves a little frolic. 

Beaches make everything fun.

After some good times playing in the waves and getting everything went, including a close miss of the camera, we kept on driving until we reached Port Campbell, our home for the night. We stayed in a sweet log cabin, and Joy and I were actually able to drive our van around town! Driving on the left feels wrong, because the right is right. We woke up the next morning and drove back to Melbourne, where we stayed for a day and checked out my work. On the way, we saw wild kangaroos! It was awesome seeing the animal in the wild. Once in Melbourne, my family met my manager and foreman and Joy said "They're pretty much exactly what American girls picture when they think of hot Australians." Yep, that pretty much sums it up, I guess. After we tore Joy away from my co-workers, we kept on driving on, headed towards Phillip Island and the famous Penguin Crossing. 

We made it to Phillips Island, which is about a two hour drive from Melbourne. The island itself is fairly large with a lot of things to do. We went to the Nobbies, which is a series of rocks and small islands on the edge of the island. It's a breeding ground for many types of birds and sea lions and penguins.

He wasn't thrilled that I was taking a picture of him.

The Nobbies. Rough name, but pretty view.

 That evening, we went to the Phillips Island Penguin Crossing, which unfortunately, has a strict policy on prohibiting cameras. But envision in your mind if you can: a 100 foot long beach, with two concrete bleachers built into the hill side, so the water is 20 feet from the front row. The penguins cross on either side of the two bleachers, heading from the surf into their burros in the hills on shore. We saw probably 40 Little Blue Penguins cross that evening; the Rangers said that they could see an upwards of 300 penguins cross on some nights. It was cool seeing them come in from the ocean, and as we walked back to our car, you could see and hear them call to their partners, locating their burrows and generally making quite the racket.

The next morning, we stopped at a Koala reserve before leaving Phillip Island and headed on our way to Sydney. We stopped about halfway between Melbourne and Sydney in a town called Bairnsdale, and we actually stayed at a hotel called....

You couldn't make this stuff up.

At one time, the motel was owned by the Kansas family, who thought it would be fun to have a city named after them, apparently. Pretty fun coincidence, and it was a pretty good hotel, too. We walked around Bairnsdale in the evening, and checked out the local river walk.

Hey look, it's a river. Let's walk!

We left Bairnsdale the next morning, after a good breakfast at McDonald's, and kept on headed towards Sydney. A few hours into the drive, we saw more wild kangaroos!

Proof that they really do exist.

We saw about 20 kangaroos in total throughout our drive, most of the time in groups of four or five. We stopped in Canberra, Australia's national capital, and checked out the parliament. We did a little learning too, as we learned about the Prime Minister and the Governor-General, whom I had never heard of.

The Mason family about ready to undertake an unsuccessful coup d'etat

 The Parliament was pretty neat, but we were on a schedule, so we high-tailed it to Sydney. Sydney is a seriously big city. I don't know what you picture when you think of Sydney, but whatever it is, triple it. Sydney feels a lot like Chicago, except filled with Australians. We spent two days in Sydney, and had a very full two days. We went to the zoo, Bondi Beach, the CBD, Olympic Park and the Sydney Opera House. Sydney was a lot fun, but a very busy city, and it took awhile to get around. On the first day, we went to the zoo, which was also pretty busy, but even in spite of the crowds, the zoo was a lot of fun, and we saw a lot of cool animals.

Seriously impressive. He's the size of a Toyota Prius.

 The zoo is set up really well for viewing the animals, with medium sized enclosures with good viewing areas. It ended up being a perfect day for the zoo and the animals were all active. The chimps were one of the highlights; there were two 1 yr old chimp brothers that were swinging around the enclosure and causing general mischief. They kept playing with each other and having a great time. The zoo was a pretty full day, but we wanted to go to Bondi Beach, so we powered through and drove to the beach. It wasn't exactly a perfect day for beach-going; it was about 65 degrees and windy. But we were only at Bondi Beach once, so we went for it.

And by 'we', I mean everyone but my mom. She has a serious hatred of cold water.

 We played in the surf and body surfed for a while, easily over an hour. The water was pretty warm once you got used to it, and there were still about 30 people surfing, even despite the poor conditions. Bondi Beach was a lot fun, but definitely tired us out, so we drove back to our hotel and crashed for the night. The next day, we woke up, had a nice breakfast, then headed to the Olympic Park.

Home of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The Olympic Park was gigantic, with a ton of stadiums and grounds and parks. They now hold concerts and a variety of athletic events on the complex. It was cool being able to see where all that history had been made. We left the park around lunch time, then headed into the city and the Opera House, as we were scheduled to watch the YouTube Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House that evening.

As pretty as you imagine it, and even more impressive.

We got to the city a little early, so we walked around the Opera House, and the Botanic Gardens. The Opera House is actually three separate buildings, so it's more like a complex than one singular house. There are two gigantic halls for the opera and other concerts, and then a smaller room for more personal performances.

Left: Personal performances, Middle: Concert Hall, Right: Opera Hall

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra was a lot of fun. Artists from around the world recorded themselves playing their respective instruments, and then submitted them to YouTube to grade and make their selections. The Orchestra contained artists from something like 33 different countries, which was really cool. The show lasted about three hours and was generally really entertaining. Also, the inside of the hall takes your breath away.

Taking a picture with a flash was permitted, so sorry about that.

It's pretty much the biggest room ever. After the orchestra, we headed out and had dinner at this really good pizzeria. Unfortunately, we picked possibly the worst time ever to go, because we sat in the same room as the world's biggest bachelorette party. With no exaggeration, there were 30 women at one party, all in white dresses and all rather tipsy. The food was good, and the party provided some entertainment.After dinner, we walked around Sydney and did some shopping, then headed home for our last night in Sydney.

The next morning, we woke up, packed up our things and then headed to the Sydney Airport. My family was headed back home and I was headed back to Melbourne. It was pretty strange flying to a different place than them, but I knew I'd be home in a month or so, so it wouldn't be too long until we saw each other again. It was a great 10 days in Australia and I was really happy that they were able to come down and see the great Down Under!