The New Year

We went into “the city” (downtown Brisbane) for a fireworks display on New Year’s Eve. It wasn’t as impressive as River Fire on the weekend we arrived, but it was still fun. Then on Wednesday we went to the Gold Coast to Surfers Paradise where Wesley rented a surf board (but no lessons) and Wesley and Jake both tried their hand at surfing – with very limited success.

On Thursday we went to the Australia Zoo. That’s the zoo that was owned and run by Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter. The kids all three got to have their picture taken with a real, live koala. The koalas and kangaroos just run around loose, with zoo workers making sure you don’t bother them too much. In their habitat you can pet the koalas and kangaroos and feed the kangaroos. You can only hold the koalas with the guidance of a zoo worker at a photo studio.

We also got to watch trained crocodile handlers feed the crocodiles, which was pretty exciting.

The Australia Zoo was plenty interesting and entertaining, but it was also kind of sad because Steve Irwin was everywhere. His larger than life personality was so central to the zoo, and so dear to the hearts of Australians that you couldn’t escape it. They had a Crocodile Hunter video running in one place. A video of him preceded the crocodile show. Big cut-out figures of him allowed people to have their photo taken looking like they were standing with him and a crocodile. A memorial wall still had shirts like he wore, signed by thousands of people expressing their admiration and grief. The souvenir shops included little action figures of him, including one in scuba gear posed directly over a toy shark. That hit a little too close to home. So the whole thing was just an odd mixture of life and energy and fun and loss.

Last night we (Roland, Jon, Brady, Wesley and I) went to a cricket game. It’s a brand new, speeded up version that is played in “only” three hours” instead of the usual 1-5 days. It was probably about as fun as cricket gets for a total beginner. The score was 174 to 130-140-something. Our team won. It hasn’t been around long enough for the organizers to have a good feel for its appeal and they vastly underestimated last night. They were expecting 10,000 and had food and drink stocked at the concession stands for 17,000 and wound up with nearly 30,000 people. They had to just let the last half of the crowd in for free because they didn’t have enough ticket takers and sellers to get them all through in time. Wesley sat beside Roland the whole evening and asked lots of questions, so he feels like he’s pretty up on the basics of cricket now.

Tonight Karen and Emmy and Roland and I are going out to eat without the kids, as a Christmas gift from all the kids (their dime). Tomorrow (Sunday) night, just all five Mercers will go out to eat together on my brother Roy Lee’s dime (another Christmas gift). Wesley’s hoping his mother will be able to take him to the beach one more time on Monday or Tuesday, then Wednesday he’ll be heading back to the U.S.

He plans on moving back here to be with us when he graduates from university in a year. We can’t wait.