Yesterday we had an earlier practice and beautiful conditions (no wind)!! There were quite a few more teams at the course today. It was kind of weird that some guys from the German team were taking photos of us but I guess they remember us from years.

A lot of the girls had planned a trip to Manley beach on wednesday but Gavin said he wanted everyone to stick close to home and focus on racing - good advice - so we planned our trips for today (Tuesday). Chanda, Katie, Eve, Julie, Suzanne and I decided to go to the Featherdale Wildlife Preserve.

I was really just looking for something to do but it turned out to be fantastic! The animals are accessible and you would think they were performing! You know how at the zoo they are usually sleeping in their burrows and don't respond to humans? Not these creatures, the wallabees and kangaroos (with babies in pouch) were roaming around free and you could feed them, we got to pet a koala bear (you're only allowed to hold them in Queensland, which is against the law here), the laughing Kookoboora laughed, the barking owl barked, the peackocks spread their tails and the wombat woke up and came out of his burrow when we talked to him. They had a flock (?) of Little Penguins that were swimming in a pond and a bunch of animals we'd never heard of before - like the quoll at right.
Oh, and the Tazmanian Devil was freaky. Apparently they like to keep moving and it ran endless figure eights around a couple of trees in it's encolsure.

We got to see a ton of venomous snakes, including the Taipan.

We were there for hours - it was so great. I'll hopefully have some photos to post soon.

We took the train back to Parramatta. I had missed lunch so ordered and Angus steak for dinner. The beef tastes slightly different here but it was still fantastic (even though it cost $27.00!!). Everything is ridiculously expensive here but I guess it reflects their incomes. Again, I was in bed and asleep before 9:30pm. I keep waking up at 2:30am which is a problem as I'm not always able to fall back asleep.

Practice this mornign went well And hooray - Clem is finally here! She had an exam to write so couldn't come before. Damn, I've used up another hour of internet time...more soon.