Family visit

A large part of the Wezenbeek family has been visiting us. Dad for two weeks and Johan and Marleen for about five days. We have showed them all kind of things. Obviously we first took them for a flight in our little plane.

Other items on the menu were:
* Philip Island to check out the koalas and (mini) penguins. They are so cute those koalas - they sleep, sleep and sleep some more. At sunset all the penguins appear at the same time from the water, neatly lined up (really!) - also fun. This is famously called 'The Penguin Parade'.
* Wine tastings with Dad. We visited a couple of wineries in the Yarra Valley to taste some of the local grapejuices.
* Day on the beach - that's only half an hours drive from our place and the bay was as beautiful as ever. There is also plenty of beach available, so you can always find a perfect (shaded) spot...

Dad got settled in pretty well after two weeks; no day was complete without a little nap under the gumtree! Johan had a taste of it as well (studied the koalas too seriously probably).

History

Since three months we've got a new Prime Minister in Australia: Kevin Rudd. He decided to immediately take some long overdue actions. First of all he signed the Kyoto protocol. Australia scores high on the pollution scale (mainly due to burning coal in elecricity plants) so it was about time to at least take a postive attitude towards this. We still don't understand why we're not using more solar and wind energy over here. Next he apologized officially to the 'stolen generation' of aboriginals. Until the late sixties it was policy to take halfcast children away from their mothers. A very moving film about this subject is: 'The Rabbit Proof Fence' . And although some people doubted what good this would do, it was a very emotional day for Aborginals of those generations. All this has made him the most popular Prime Minister ever according to opinion polls (73% approves of him). We look forward to what's next on his agenda.

Also, February 16th was remembrance day of the Ash Wednesday bushfires 25 years ago. Enormous areas on South Australia and Victoria suffered from this. These bushfires even got to our current backyard. Luckily enough bushfires on this scale are rarely seen and we've had safe summer.