This will be my last report from Sydney as we are leaving Sydney this Wednesday to return to Paris and the US for a much needed R&R from traveling.

Not that this R&R will be work-free! I just sent off 214 rolls of slide film to the National Geographic lab for processing, and all of that film has to be catalogued and labeled with species identification and location information, copyright information, etc. This is no small task! Nicole has to do the same with all of her film, as well, but she also has to fit in a 3-week side trip to South Africa in January to finish up work on a film there. We plan to return to Sydney by March 15th to begin the next leg of our journey up the Red Center.

Australia has an ongoing and extremely effective ad campaign related to the cancerous impact of the sun in this part of the world. Their slogan is a simple one: SLIP, SLOP and SLAP every day. (Slip on a shirt, slop on the sunscreen and slap on a hat.) It seems to work. Kids in schools cannot go out to playgrounds without their hats on and hats are commonplace. Of course the hat doesn't always suffice...

I went into a small grocery store one day looking for a roll of aluminum foil. I couldn't seem to find it anywhere so I asked the clerk at the checkout counter who listened intently to my request and then said, with a sudden, bemused smile on her face, "Oh, you must be looking for ALUMINIUM foil!" I guessed that I was, yes, I said, with a bemused smile of my own.

The other day we treated ourselves to a sneak peek at Stadium Australia, the site of the September 2000 Olympic games. We took some preliminary photographs of the site, some of which will appear here on the website shortly. The City of Sydney is working feverishly to complete the olympic complex in time for the games to start. One thing is clear upfront, if you plan to attend the games don't even THINK about driving your car or even taking a taxi to the site. All traffic to and from the site will be handled primarily by train or secondarily by bus. Daily event tickets will include the price of the train round-trip which I think is a pretty inventive way around what would be an otherwise dreary traffic problem.

This last weekend we drove several hours south of Sydney to Sussex Inlet, to the home of Alan and Marlene Gray who will be storing the valuable contents of our Land Rover while we are out of the country. The Grays are wonderful folks who have treated to us some fantastic Aussie hospitality. As I have said many times before, one of the most delightful parts about our adventures here is the fun we have with folks that we meet along the way. When we return to Australia in mid-March we will stay again with the Grays while we repack the Landy for the long trek up the center of the country to Darwin, and to parts beyond. They will also rejoin us in later April when we plan to spend a week or so at Kangaroo Island.

There is no better way to really see and experience a country than through the eyes and hearts of long-time residents such as the Grays. We owe them plenty. And we plan to stay knowing them for years to come!

I was musing about this Australian adventure of ours as Nicole and I were driving back to Sydney. It has surely changed me already, and I have to wonder exactly how else it is going to change me as we wander further into its hinterland. Australia is an adventurer's dreamland, a country of potential and opportunity if ever there was one. It constantly reminds me of what large expanses of the United States must have looked and felt like to pioneers and explorers.