Postcrossing Blog

Exciting news, everyone! We just got a big letter from the little mail carriers travel diary… they’ve been to Australia where they were hosted by Mundoo! Here’s their latest report from the road:

G’day Mates!

Here we are in Australia or 'down under’ as many of the Northern Hemisphere mates refer to Oz . We are visiting Mundoo or Vicki as she is also known. Vicki lives on Hindmarsh Island, which is in the estuary of the Murray River (the longest river in Australia) where it exits to the Southern Ocean. She lives in the state of South Australia .

We got our first look at an Australian Post Box and offered to deliver some mail. They have a bright red post box here.

This is where Mundoo posts her Postcrossing postcards at the Goolwa post office.

We don’t know what it is about Hindmarsh Island but the sunrises and sunsets are just spectacular. Vicki’s house in on Mundoo Channel (that’s where she got her membername from) which is part of the Coorong National Park.

Hindmarsh Island used to be accessed from the mainland by a ferry but about 10 years ago there was a bridge constructed joining Hindmarsh Island and the mainland at the inland Riverport of Goolwa.

You all know about the Sydney Harbor bridge, well Hindmarsh Island has the Hindmarsh Island bridge. We sat at the Goolwa wharf with a paddle steam boat, the OscarW tied up there and with the Murray River flowing past under the bridge. There is a strong paddle-boating history at Goolwa from the early days of Australian history before the railroads were built. Paddle-boats were the only way that cargo could be transported down the Murray River and they landed at Goolwa for loading onto ships.

We visited some Australian animals. We get our first look at a kangaroo. Vicki said this wasn’t a big kangaroo, it sure looked big enough to us!

Then we got up real close to a koala. Gee he has big claws but then we suppose he needs them for climbing gum trees all the time looking for food. Did you know that koala's only eat eucalypt leaves?

A kangaroo came over and gave Little Ana a big kiss as a welcome to Australia. Little Paulo was very happy it wasn’t him being smooched.

We saw a Joey in it’s mother’s pouch. He looks too big to fit in there we thought but he looked quite happy even with a leg sticking out. We didn’t get too close because we didn’t want to be adopted by the mother kangaroo.

We went for a trip with Vicki to the next state, which is called Victoria. The border between the two states is 300 km / 187 miles away from where Vicki lives. It only took us 4 hours driving. We were amazed at how large Australia is. All of Europe would fit into Australia. All of USA minus Alaska would fit as well. Australia is the biggest island in the world and has a population of 22 million.

Our destination was a town in Victoria called Moyston. It is the birthplace of Australian football or Aussie Rules as the locals call it.

There is a wonderful plaque at Moyston telling the history of Aussie Rules and Tom Wills who was the founder. Aussie Rules is nothing like any other football played in the world.

Moyston is at the base of the Grampians and we stayed at Jennifer’s house, who is Vicki’s sister. Jennifer wasn’t there because she was in Perth 3250km / 2020 miles away competing in the Judo games. Up the road from Jennifer’s house was the spot where gold was first found in the area. This sparked a huge gold rush in 1854

Back home again to Hindmarsh Island and the ocean in that area is of historical importance because it is a place where two scientific explorer Captains met in 1802 offshore while travelling in opposite directions mapping Australia for the first time. The encounter is significant because the encounter between Captain Matthew Flinders (English) and Captain Nicholas Baudin (French) was peaceful, even though their countries were at war at the time, But the two Captains put that aside and met in friendship and exploration and called the bay they met in Encounter Bay.

We met up with Apty (also known as Graeme) at Encounter Bay and had a good chat with him. Do you know he is really a kiwi?

We tried some Aussie food. We had a Lamington. Most accounts of the creation of the lamington agree it was named after Lord Lamington, who served as Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901. One of the claims of how the Lamington came into creation was that the Lamingtons’ chef at Queensland’s Government House, Armand Gallad, was called upon at short notice to provide something to feed unexpected guests during the busy period leading up to Federation in 1900. According to the Melbourne Age newspaper, Gallad cut up some left over French vanilla sponge cake baked the day before, dipped the slices in chocolate and set them in coconut.

Lamington Recipe & Another Lamington Recipe

Well we have had a great time with Vicki, thank you for having us visit and showing us some of Australia.

Now we have packed our bags and are heading off on our next adventure.

We wonder where we are going?