Australian Friends

http://www.randomactsofbrightness.com  I came across this website from my friend Melissa Williams and have enjoyed the beautiful mission they want to share with the world.  It is amazing when you do random acts of kindness how it can change a person's day.


After I read the website I wanted to put the idea into practice.  I do random acts of kindness but I haven't just randomly gone up and bought someone's lunch.  So the other day I went to a new restaurant TOAST here in Naples, Florida and had lunch with my friend and daughter.  I treated her to lunch and then two nice police officers walked by our table and said some kind words to my daughter.  I got up my courage and went over to their table and asked if I could buy them lunch.  They agreed, and then one of the police officers began talking to my daughter about turtles.  He said he had the largest turtles at his home.  I started thinking about my best friend June Edwards and her story she told me about a year ago of her family going to a friends house and seeing huge turtles.  She had even sent me some pictures and a video.

I asked him if he new a lady named June Edwards and he said yes they go to the same church and that Tamara Edwards her daughter had helped them in a rally and they were good friends.  It is amazing how we are all so connected.

So I hope this inspires you to go out and do your random act of brightness today.  This company is also based out of Australia so it fits perfectly with my blog.  Click on the link above to visit their site.  Have a Bright Day.

I found this website viddler.com and did a search for videos that related to the iPad. I enjoyed this one so I thought I'd post it using their share feature. Will continue research as we Love our iPad.  I can also use it to read my books and save my sites so when I do go to Australia I'll have a portable guide all ready.

I received an email from my friend Alan about a city he is going to be visiting soon to see some of his family.  The name was cool, Toowoomba so I thought I'd look it up.  It sounds very Aboriginal.   I found a nice website that has great pictures of the city and some interesting information.  www.toowoomba.org  



I also did a search on google as this is my first place to find great pictures and the results showed Toowoomba as the Garden City.


I checked out the Parks and Gardens and there are more than 200.  The name Toowoomba is thought to have originated from the Aboriginal meaning "The Swamp" and the place was settled back in 1827.  It sounds like September is a beautiful time of year and they have an annual street parade with a Carnival of Flowers.  Would be a fun place to take photos of all the different types of flowers and see the pretty landscape.  As per my son, we always have thought of Australia as being dry and sandy and we are finding out that it is lush and green.  I guess that is what research and exploring is all about - Discovery!

I think Facebook is an amazing place to keep connected with others and what is happening in life.  Since the time difference can separate people from wake up and sleep hours it provides the ability to check in.  The other day I was browsing my friends facebook page and I found a link out to Jim Rohn's page.  I love Jim Rohn and didn't know he had a fan page.  I quickly liked the page and then began reading some of the comments people were making on the page.  One was from this interesting profile picture of fun art and so I clicked through to her site and started reading about her artwork.  I became a fan and found out that she is from Australia.  When I became a fan she sent me a nice message and so I thought I'd share a bit about her here since I'm collecting resources for my future.

I also found this nice quote -  Giving is better than receiving because giving starts the receiving process. - Jim Rohn

I thought I'd write a short review of my friends website called Your Dreaming Place.  This website is a place that helps people find their purpose and a unique set of strengths. They have workshops and seminars that are uniquely designed to assist people to find their purpose and the vision to play out that purpose. "Without vision people perish."

I was fortunate to meet Melissa Williams at Klemmer Heart Team 30.  Melissa had volunteered to staff the leadership conference in San Diego and during one of those busy moments I helped her when she was swamped with sharing Michael Jr's great tools.  She is a beautiful woman and shined in her ability to direct when things got busy.

During my conference I was blessed to connect with many new friends from around the country and from Australia.  It so happened that Melissa was originally from there.  After I returned home to Florida I went on to Facebook and began connecting and found her.  She is the founder and CEO of www.YourDreamingPlace.com

I visited her website and love her passion she has for dreaming.  Her dream is to provide the space for others to dream and live the life they were purposed to live. She does that with her company. Check out the next YourDreamingPlace.com dreaming session.


I also enjoyed this quote from her website, "As we choose and move with new stories we will then have more and more evidence of success and therefore more and more confidence in ourselves. Leaving the old stories to be replaced with new ones." - Melissa Williams.

I'm starting my dream here today to someday travel the world with my family and eventually make a long stop over in the land down under.

It's Mother's Day today and we celebrated with flowers and cake.  Happy Mother's Day. It has been a great weekend and I have received some nice emails from my friends and family.  One friend asked if we celebrated Mother's Day on the same time as Australia.  I have to say I wasn't sure so I looked it up and yes we do although Mother's Day happens sooner in Australia because of the time difference.  I found this holiday list from wikipedia that has the Public Holidays, could be useful when making plans for a trip someday.  Here is the link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_Australia

 

There are so many actors from Australia if you do some research that have become internationally successful.  I found this list in wikipedia that has done a great job of capturing all the names in one location. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Australian_film_actors

I think for me the most prominent actors that come to mind are Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman.  For those that want to go to Australia spend some time watching the amazing actors movies.  We are going to the movies tonight to see Iron Man 2, I know it's not an Australian movie but should be a lot of fun.

I found this video on www.youtube.com that has an Australian teaching others
about the words that are unique to their accent. Some of it is
helpful to those that don't know all the slang words. Like the word
ankle bitters means toddlers. I'm sure there are many more words but
it was a good summary of the basics.

• The Super Pit (huge, open-cut goldmine at Kalgoorlie)
• The Sydney Opera House
• The National Gallery of Australia
• Australian Alps,
• Great Barrier Reef
• Uluru/Ayers Rock
• Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame at Longreach (western Queensland)
• Fraser Island
• Daintree Rainforest
• Kakadu National Park

I found some Fun Facts via a google search http://bit.ly/cKflpY

 *The name Australia comes from the Latin Terra Australis Incognito which means the Unknown Southern Land.

*You can find some great information about the Largest Gum trees at Famous South Australian Trees

*Kangaroo - The name for the Australian marsupial Kangaroo came about when some of the first white settlers saw this strange animal hopping along and they asked the Aborigines what it was called. They replied with 'Kanguru', which in the native language meant 'I don't know' .

*Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.

*Kangaroos need very little water to survive and are capable of going for months without drinking at all. When they do need water, they dig 'wells' for themselves; frequently going as deep as three or four feet. These 'kangaroo pits' are a common source of water for other animals living in the kangaroo's environment.

*Long fence - The 'dingo fence' in Australia is the longest fence in the world, and is about twice as long as the Great Wall of China.

*Great images of Australia can be found like the one above from www.davidwallphoto.com


*Purple wallaby - The Purple-neck Rock Wallaby [Petrogale Purpureicollis], inhabits the Mt Isa region in Northwest Queensland. The Wallaby secretes a dye that transforms its face and neck into colours ranging from light pink to bright purple.

*The Australian Lyre Bird is the world's best imitator; able to mimic the calls of 15 different species of birds in their locality and string the calls into a melody. Also been known to mimic the sound mobile phones.

*Australia was the 3rd country, after the US and Russia, to launch a satellite into orbit. It was for the British, using a 'Blue Streak' rocket

*Dropbears - Dropbears are an evil species of koala that fall from trees and attack humans. The evil strain of koala don't actually exist. The story was created to fool Americans.

This website is a place for research and information about Australia.  I never had any Australian friends until this last trip out to San Diego.  My life was blessed with many new friends and some amazing people from Australia.  I hope to be able to share what they do in their lives on here and how we can connect to each other all across the world.  So far I went to google to gather some information and the websites are endless.  A fun one we are visiting now is for kids to color the australian map, you can view it at here.  Here is Jake's version of the Map...












I'll keep updating this site but for now we are going to color the map.


Cheers!

Nicole