Sleds Without Snow..

The Drinkwater brothers' adventure-challenge series continued this week as we moved to Threadbo in Australia's Snowy Mountains. Threadbo is a ski resort that keeps running in summer with hiking trails, downhill mountain biking, a 'bobsled' run and a nine-hole golf course. But since Australians don't go there until after Boxing Day, Eric and I had the place all to ourselves.

This was great on the golf course because it meant we had lots of time to look carefully for snakes before stepping into the rough. And on the bobsled run -- which was an aluminum track that we rode with a wheeled sled -- we could go as fast as we wanted without colliding with cautious Australians. (The Aussies aren't used to crashing tobaggans, so they tended to be a bit slow in the turns.)

The downside to being at an empty resort was that nightlife was somewhat slow. The place was so eerily quiet in the evenings that we were often completely alone walking through the town square. So we watched TV.

On our last evening in Threadbo, we watched a hockey game between Toronto and Buffalo on Fox Sports. Neither of us normally watch hockey, but we enjoyed looking at the ads on the boards at Air Canada Centre for familiar products like Mr. Sub and Tim Hortons. After the game, the "Trailer Park Boys" movie came on. The all-Canadian soundtrack featured Rush, the Tragically Hip, April Wine and Helix, and it made me homesick.

It's been a long trip and some of you have been asking where I'm going next and when I'm coming home. As it stands, I will be returning to Edmonton at the start of February -- as scheduled. But before then, I intend to make a final stop in Houston, Texas.

Houston is where my trips end. I'll tell you why later.

Guns and Gears..

My brother and I went to a resort on Hamilton Island on Australia's Gold Coast. It turned out there was money from a bequeath that was gathering interest in a New Zealand bank account, and a higher power (Mom) told us to spend it. So we've been using it on great things like scuba diving, go-cart racing and shooting some very large guns. It's like an episode of Top Gear at Club Med.

The shooting range was our first stop. Eric had never shot anything before so he had a shaky start on the .22 pistol. But he quickly found his mark when we moved up to the 9 mm Glock, and he excelled on the .44 magnum aka the "Dirty Harry Gun" or the "Hand Cannon." (I got a bullseye with my first shot on the .44, but the monsterous force of the gun was so jarring that I couldn't stop twitching for any of my remaining attempts.)

Next we went to the go-cart track, and let me just say that the carts were much, much more powerful than the last ones I tried back in 1987 at Splash 'n Putt Park in Traytown, Newfoundland. These supercharged rockets were able to build up enough speed for sideways skids. I did one and hit a rather solid wall. Still, I managed to beat Eric, who crashed into a woman.

These were only minor thrills, though, compared with our dive on the Great Barrier Reef. We saw clown fish. We saw a little fish riding on the back of a great big fish. We saw a shark! Words fail me in trying to describe the experience. Eric put it best when he said that if he drew his last breath and still had $300 in the bank, he'd be very disappointed if he hadn't gone on the dive that day.

We still have a few days of luxury living left, which means there's time for a few more Top Gear challenges. We have an idea for one at the driving range that involves a blindfold and a stopwatch!

How Now?

I've been volunteering at an eco-friendly farm on Tasmania this week. I joined WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) which allows me to stay as a guest at farms throughout Australia in return for a few hours of labour every day. So far, the jobs have involved mowing, weeding, moving an electric fence and collecting manure from the ladies you see in the picture.

The owners of the farm are named Carolyn and Richard. They both serve on various local land stewardship associations as well as with the Green Party. Richard is an avid birder, and he and Carolyn only just returned from Western Australia where they spent several months doing population research. And if that weren't interesting enough, in 1969 they became the first people to traverse Mount Victoria in Papua New Guinea. Alone. No one else has done it since.

Anyway, they're feeding me well here and I'm hoping farm work will offset some of the negative environmental effects that my airplane travel is causing.

An environmentally-conscious friend of mine once despaired that his efforts to help the planet weren't making a difference. I told him that in the few years since I'd become more eco-friendly, I'd convinced someone to ride a bike instead of driving a car, I'd gotten someone else to begin recycling, and I'd gently persuded someone to buy fair-trade coffee.

"And can you believe that the person who converted me," I said, pointing directly at my depressed friend, "doesn't think he's had any impact?"

Maybe we can't change the world, but we can change our little corner of it.