Our Saturday was so good, I'm breaking it up into two posts.

We spent the day on a group tour to the Royal National Park. Holly and Scott bought us this tour for Christmas, and it was a great way to get out of the city and learn some things about the history of the area.

The downside of the day was the weather. It was absolutely terrible, with gusty winds and rain. All. Day. Long.

So I thought the day would be like this:

But it was actually more like this:

Toby chewing sarsaparilla leaves

In Toby facial expressions, this equals A REALLY GOOD TIME!

The Royal National Park is about 30 miles south of Sydney. The tour picked us up in Sydney and took us there, so we again dodged actually having to drive on the wrong side of the road.

There was a minor disappointment when we first left Sydney. Our guide assured us that we would stop for a dunny break on the way. Already being cold and wet, I was excited by this, picturing a stop for doughnuts in a warm coffee shop. It was most disappointing when our dunny break turned out to be a stop at a roadside bathroom. =/ But at least I learned a new word!

Hands-down, the best part of the day was our guide, Andy. He was this Australian cutie with the energy, enthusiasm, and attention span of a 6 year-old.

He was incredibly intelligent about Australian history, facts, and local wildlife. He was always pointing out areas of interest and showing us unique plants in the bush. We were both so impressed with him, and his endless enthusiasm kept our whole group going, even through the wind and rain.

Kurnell

We started our tour out by going to Kurnell - the birthplace of modern Australia. (This is the middle flag on the map.) Kurnell is the town at Botany Bay where Captain Cook first landed the Endeavor (although not, as we learned, where he claimed Australia for Britain).

We did a walk through Kamay Botany Bay National Park.

Boomerangs allowed here!

There were lots of monuments to Captain Cook.

As well as monuments to the Aboriginals living in the area during that time, since this was the first point of contact between the British and the Aborigines.

The park had a nice walk along the foreshore, which was really beautiful.

The surf was up because of the weather, so the locals were out.

The rain started up again, so we spent some time in the visitors centers while we waited for it to ease up. The center was manned by an Aboriginal woman named Pamela. She gave us an impromptu talk about being a member of the Stolen Generation, being raised by an Irish family, and then discovering her Aboriginal culture once she was an adult. It was a fascinating story. It was interesting, too, because there is still a fair amount of tension surrounding the treatment of the Aboriginal people in Australia, so it was enlightening to hear impressions from a member of that community.

Pamela took us outside and had Andy run out into the rain (many times) to fetch various plants so she could show us some of the ways her culture uses them. She crushed one kind of leaf and rubbed it in the puddles and between her hands until it made a foamy paste. They use the paste as a soap and a means of catching fish in puddles (it sucks the oxygen from the water).

She showed us some weaving that would be used to make baskets

Plants that are used as soap

And T's favorite, wild sarsaparilla, used to get vitamin C

It was a fun, unexpected bonus to our day!

After Kurnell, we stopped by an overlook. In the spring and fall, you can see whales migrating from this point.

Royal National Park

Next, we made our way out to the Royal National Park. Andy told us that within the park borders, there is more biodiversity than in all of the UK. It's also the second oldest national park in the world (after Yellowstone).

First stop in the park was lunch, which Andy cooked up on a barbecue in one of the shelters. Lunch wasn't really a main event of the day, but it provided a lot of entertainment to Toby & me, so I'll give it some room here.

Lunch was pretty basic: the meat eaters got to enjoy sausage and kangaroo kebabs.

Don't worry, there were a couple veg burgers for us on another BBQ

Lunch came with a make-your-own-sandwich kind of setup. There were no drinks or plates, but everyone was a good sport and rolled with it. It was a pretty good spread for being something that Andy fished out of the back of the van.

There was also "burger sauce," which one assumes would cover any and all sauce requirements for burgers?

About halfway through the meal, Andy also fished some Vegemite out of his jacket pocket and added that to the table. He was extremely apologetic that everyone had not had the chance to put that on their burgers from the beginning.

Andy's travel Vegemite

During lunch, we learned that it was one of the women's birthdays, so Andy spread the word quietly that he was going to "make her a cake." I'm not going to lie, after he made this announcement, another girl and I looked at each other and wondered aloud how exactly he was planning to whip up a cake in a picnic shelter. He seemed confident enough about it, though, even going so far as to borrow a tea light candle and a lighter from another group in the shelter celebrating a birthday.

The "cake" ended up being a success: it was sliced bananas on top of lamingtons. Andy even added a sandwich round to the top with an "A" drawn on it (for Andrea, the birthday girl) with Nutella. (Pretty sure the Nutella came out of a jacket pocket as well.)