Australian healthcare

.... Is amazing! Without trying to be political, I have to share my experience of going to the doctor here.

First off, I probably shouldn't have been gallivanting around in the cold rain all last weekend because by Monday I had a cough. By Wednesday I was in bad shape and pretty much crawled into bed the minute I got home from work. Lesson learned: I'll just stay home next time!

But anyway, Australia has universal healthcare; it's available to permanent residents and citizens. Since we're neither of those, we have private insurance. But we still go to the same doctors everyone else does, and it's very efficient. Here are some of the things I noticed about going to the doctor this week:

• I called for an appointment at 4:30 on Wednesday afternoon, and they got me into the doctor the next morning. There was no squeezing me in - I had a proper appointment time. And they apologized that they couldn't get me in that afternoon when I called!
• There weren't any nurses. The doctor came out to the waiting room to get me and then did all the things a nurse usually does, like taking my temperature, etc. It threw me off at first, since I wasn't sure why a nurse in a suit was chatting with me.
• I only had to wait about 4 minutes. Then, since the doctor was the one who brought me back to the exam room, I didn't have to wait on him. I was in and out of my whole appointment in 20 minutes.
• The doctor typed everything into my file in the computer while we talked. Then he printed out my prescription right from the exam room. Nothing handwritten. It felt like being at the doctor in the 21st century! Crazy!

Needless to say, my small sampling of the medical system here doesn't make me an expert. But I certainly don't look at going to the doctor with the same dread as I did in the States! A 20 minute doctor visit is hard to beat. =)

On the other hand, this is the sign by the lift in the doctor's office. Guess not everything is cutting edge!

 

And yes, I did make it out of the elevator without incident. Hooray!

 

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Making the best of a rainy weekend

It rained pretty solidly all weekend. Which, of course, makes me pretty fidgety. I braved the rain on Saturday to get my haircut and took a picture of these birds in the park. They way they look about standing in the rain is pretty much how I felt.

On Sunday I had to get out of the house before I went bananas. So after our morning Skyping, I made a mission for myself: learn all the underground connections between the buildings in the CBD. A lot of the buildings are connected in one way or another, but I am hopelessly bad at finding my way around. I usually spend a lot of time getting turned around and then pop up street-side completely in the wrong place. On numerous occasions I have asked "How did I end up here?" or have had to go out to the street where I could see buildings to know exactly where I was.

So I figured with the pouring down rain, I had a lot of incentive to learn my way around.

I ended up covering a lot of ground:

I also saw a few cool things, like the Superman costume on display in one of the shopping areas:

The QVB is always photogenic and fun to look at.

This was pretty much my moment of triumph: I had made it to the Westfield Mall, I knew where I was, and I hadn't had to go out in the rain to accomplish it. (You can see the bridge in the far background.)

All in all, I was pleased... Sometimes it's the small things. But here's hoping for better weather next weekend!!

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Sunny Sunday

Sunday was a beautiful day here. It was comfortably cool but a sunny Sydney day. So I decided it was a good day for some ferry ridin'.

The zoo in Sydney is called the Taronga Zoo, and there's a ferry that goes there from Circular Quay. It's a pretty short ferry ride, but it was a gorgeous one!

There were lots of sailboats out enjoying the weather.

When the ferry got to the zoo wharf, I didn't go in. It's really expensive and plus there were like a million strollers jamming up the sidewalks. So I just walked around some of the walks along the shore.

The trip back was just as beautiful. It was a prefect day for riding in the back of the ferry and snapping some pics.

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Happy Birthday to the Queen!

Monday was a public holiday here: it was the Queen's birthday celebration. Not that I'm complaining, but it's a very mysterious holiday:

• Britain doesn't actually celebrate the Queen's birthday; just British commonwealths do, it seems
• All of the states in Australia celebrate her birthday on the same day in June, except for Western Australia, which celebrates it in a different month. New Zealand celebrates on an entirely different day.
• None of these celebration days are on the actual Queen's birthday; my guess is that each place just picks a month when it seemed like there neededto be a reason to party and made that the celebration day.

Anyway, I'm a fan of the holiday since it meant a nice three-day weekend. One of the British expats I work with seemed especially excited about actually having a holiday celebrating the monarch's birthday, as he'd never had one before moving here. He brought in a whole display and British treats to work on Friday to kick off the celebrations!

Toby and I celebrated the day by taking a little roadtrip south of the city to the Southern Highlands.

The Southen Highlands is full of tiny towns and villages, that just like the towns in the Blue Mountains, look like they haven't changed in decades. It's also in a wine region so there are lots of picturesque wineries around, as well as livestock farms.

We took Bill the Yaris out for the day, and he was a champ! I did end up taking a few wrong exits getting out of the city - so much so that we ended up in the airport parking garage - but after that detour, we were off!

It felt really weird to see the speedometer at 110; it kind of freaked me out, even though that was the speed limit on the highway.

Don't worry, Toby took this picture!

Another thing that was weird was that there were practicality no billboards on the side of the highway. Occasionally, we'd see an ad attached to an overpass, but along the roads, there was nothing marring the view of the countryside. It was lovely.

We didn't have a particular destination in mind, so we stopped when something caught our eye. One of those was a lookout point where we could see a whole valley.

We next stopped in a small town called Moss Vale for some coffee and walking around. It was a cute little town, and probably looked exactly the same as it did 50 years ago.

We walked around for a while, and then we decided to make our way home on some back roads by farms and vineyards.

When we got back to the city, we decided to do the most Australian thing we could think of: we went to a pub and watched rugby. Or rather, Toby watched it and I wrote a blog post!

It was by far the best Queen's birthday I've ever celebrated!

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Blue Mountains

On Saturday, T and I made our first trip to the Blue Mountains. My friend Rachel from work lives in the foothills of the mountains and offered to take us around for the day.

The Blue Mountains are kind of like the Smoky Mountains of New South Wales: there are a lot of B&Bs, small towns with gifts shops and cafes, and lots so great hiking and vistas. The mountains are about an hour and a half outside of Sydney, so lots of people from the city go up for quick day getaways. On Saturday, that was us!

We caught a Mountain Line train out of the city to head up to Emu Plains where our day was to start. (Most disappointingly, there are no emus in Emu Plains.) A fun surprise greeted us in our train carriage; did you know that June 8th was "Knit in Public Day??"

Luckily those knitters behaved themselves and we had a nice train ride through the countryside. Rachel met us at the Emu Plains station and graciously chauffeured us around for the whole day.

We started our day by driving up through the mountains to the far side so we could make our way back toward the city. It was quite a bit colder in the mountains than in the city: it only got up into the 50's during the day and was very chilly when we started out. Our first destination was Mount York, which is on the edge of the mountain range and overlooks a valley. The bad news was that a heavy fog set in during our drive so we couldn't really see anything. The good news was that there was a handy sign with a picture of the view that we would have seen.

The fog made the overlook beautiful in its own way, so it was a great start to the day!
The next stop was Govett's Leap. Luckily the fog had cleared and we had amazing views of the mountains.

This was our first glimpse of the full mountains and it really gave us a good idea of how vast they are.

Here's a picture of me & Rach. You may think it doesn't get cold in Sydney, and just because I'm not wearing a coat, don't think it was warm! I'm wearing 4 layers here, including a nice thick vest.

It was time to warm up after that! We stopped in at Blackheath, a cute little mountain town for some lunch. There was a wood burning stove in the cafe so we got toasty warm!

Parts of these mountain towns look like they haven't changed in 100 years. This building houses the Common Ground cafe, which ironically enough, was started by a religious cult founded in Chattanooga, TN. The cult is called The Twelve Tribes and has spread worldwide - including, it seems, the isolated mountains of NSW.

After some food & warm-up time, we headed off to the most iconic point in the mountains: Echo Point and its view of the three sisters.

Interesting fact about the overlook at the Three Sisters: it's by far the fanciest one in the Blue Mountains and that's because the Queen visited there in 1954.

We did a short trail to another overlook. Here's me!

Our next stop was Leura Cascades, which ended up being T's favorite stop of the day. That area is down between two mountains and so we went on a short hike under the tree canopy.

It was very rainforest-y under there: the difference between being at the top of the mountains and between them was remarkable.

Our trail led us to this cool cliff overhang. Luckily no bats were waiting for us in there!

Before we left the parking area, Toby braved this cool cavern of a bathroom.

Our last stop of the day in the mountains was Wentworth Falls. We did a short hike to an overlook of the falls, and once again, the views were spectacular!

Even though it was cold, there were still some flowers & bushes blooming that we saw throughout the day.

Bottlebrush - looks just like a bottle brush you'd buy in the store!

A wattle bush - very common in NSW bush

Before we left for the evening, we had a quick stop at the best bakery in the mountains: Schwarzes German Bakery. The sugar high from our treats kept us awake on our ride down the mountain and the hour-long train ride home.

It was a fabulous day, and it made us feel more connected to Australia in a way the city cannot do. We loved the mountains and can't wait to go back. Thank you, Rachel!

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