Australia Day

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Today is Australia Day. We learned last night from Master Walker that on January 28, 1788 the first fleet came here from England.  I need to learn some more about this day to understand the history better.  It reminded us of the 4th of July. Wollongong had a big day planned. There were activities scheduled all day, a carnival, food/craft tents, and fireworks.

Pagoda

Picture of the fantasy animals on the roof.

Front of the main shrine

We went to the Nan Tien temple first before joining in the fun.  We took the guided tour. We learned a lot. This temple is the largest Buddhist Temple in the Southern Hemisphere. It was built in the 1990's. We visited different parts of the temple.  In some areas, we were allowed to take pictures and in others we couldn't. There were five different statues of Buddha in the main shrine.  They chose to use five instead of one because each one represented a different aspect of Buddha.  In the museum, we saw a really intricate carving out of wood (it took three people five years using only a dental drill to complete it), very old teapots, and pictures/words inscribed on a human hair and egg shells with a sharpened piece of rice. We needed to look at the inscriptions through a magnifying glass.  They were amazing. I wish I could have taken a picture. In some of the paintings in the temple and growing outside, there were lotus flowers. Lotus flowers have special meaning to Buddhists.  In the pond where the lotus flowers were growing, Koi fish were swimming around them.  They were fun to watch.  The lotus flowers grew a lot taller than I expected they would.  I figured they would sit on the water like lily pad flowers do, but nope they grow a few feet high.  We enjoyed seeing the temple.

lotus flowers

My surfer and rugby player

Eating our dinner

Bumper cars

After we got back from the temple, we took the kids to the carnival. Unfortunately, they didn't have wristbands for sale for the rides. We had to buy tickets.  Fortunately, Sydney and Dagan were able to use up all their tickets. They went through a mirror maze (too easy), on a twirly ride, swings, a giant slide (the one at the Wisconsin State Fair is larger), and the bumper cars.  The bumper cars were strange because they made everyone go in the same direction.  Aren't you supposed to smash into each other?  We got dinner at one of the tents and ate on the street. We had more fun people watching than anything else.

twirly ride

swings

giant slide

The "smoke" off the fireworks covered the full moon.

The four of us were playing May I.

One of Dagan's photos of the fireworks.

Dagan took pictures of all our hands.

We still had a few hours until the fireworks, so we headed for home. We played cards until 9:00pm when they started.  Thankfully, we could see them from our balcony.  Dagan had fun taking pictures of the fireworks. We went to bed soon after the fireworks were over. We could hear people having a good time outside for a while into the night.

Another photo of fireworks