Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I arrived in Newcastle (a university town about 2 hrs north of Sydney) just in time to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day! Reyna is at teachers college there and took me to the Bar on the Hill (campus pub) for a beer and then to Finnegan’s (Irish pub downtown that looked an awful lot like all the British pubs in Canada) to see the festivities. As I’ve found in Ottawa, people here are also very friendly on this particular night of the year (when else do you make friends with someone in line while waiting to go into the bar?). Earlier on in the day, we went to Blackbutt Reserve to see some koalas and kangaroos (my first in Australia!). Then the next day, we drove into the Hunter Valley to visit some of the local vineyards. On Sunday, we went to Nelson Bay to see dolphins – at first it didn’t seem like there were any around, then suddenly we were surrounded by them and they seemed to be diving around wanting our attention. It was really neat, and we had the perfect weather for being out on the water. Then we hiked up the hill in Tomaree National Park (I think I have the name right!). It didn’t take us long, but I think I managed to work up a sweat. We saw the sunset on our way down, and also stopped to look at some huge spiders… (I think Reyna was impressed that I didn’t seem to panick!)