Dolphin Sands and our new family over here

So for those of you have haven't heard this story yet, I will tell you how it happened.  While flying out to L.A. to meet my cousin there so we could fly to TAS together, Lindsay met a very nice lady in the airport.  Her name is Pamela and they got to talking while Lindsay was waiting for me to arrive.  Lindsay found out that Pamela was born in Milwaukee and grew up in Chicago but has been living inTAS for the last 19 years with her husband Nic and daughter Zooey.  I arrived and we sat with Pamela until we boarded the plane and then met up with her after in Sydney while we waited for our last plane to take us to Hobart, TAS.  Pamela is lovely and we exchanged our e-mails with her and parted ways once we reached Hobart.  About a little less than a week into our stay Pamela e-mailed us to see how we were doing and if we had settled in alright.  So why am I telling you all this....well this started our new friendship with Pamela and she has kindly adopted Lindsay and I while were are here for the next 6 months in Hobart.
Last weekend was a holiday weekend for the Australians here, it was their Labor Day, and so Pamela invited Lindsay and I up to their beach house for a night stay.  Their beach house is on the east coast in Dolphin Sands which is located on I believe 9 mile beach, correct me if I am wrong Pamela.  So Lindsay and I took the 2 hour drive up to Dolphin Sands to hang out with our new family over the holiday.
The house was wonderful and they built it about 4 years ago.  It has so many windows so you have a panoramic view of the Hazards, the wildlife and the ocean.  It is really beautiful.  We ended up walking down to the beach to check it all out.  We took some pictures and collect seashells which are scattered all along the beach and are mostly intact, not like what you would find in Florida.  The shells here were beautiful and so we brought some back home with us.  Here is a picture of Lindsay and I and a few of the ocean.

Now we ended up heading back to the house to drop our seashells off, have a bit of lunch and then went back out to the beach for a real walk.  But as we headed back I noticed something lying on the beach that was not there before.  We walked towards it and it was a shark that had beached itself.  Nic, Pamela's husband, is a marine biologist so Pamela ran back to the house to get him to see if we could save this shark that was still breathing.  The shark was maybe 5 feet long and turned out to be a gummy shark.  Nic was able to pull him back into the ocean and the shark wouldn't swim away and seemed to go belly up.  We left for our walk and Nic stayed behind to keep an eye out for the shark.  When we returned there was no more shark, so we thought we had successfully saved a shark!  But sadly we found the shark beached again the next morning. :( Here are some pictures of it and Nic pulling it back in the water.

After our walk with Pamela and getting to know her some more, we headed over to Pamela's friends house that feeds all these creatures in her back yard with carrots.  Only one showed up for us but it is so cute!  It is a Wallaby and was a selfish little guy that ate 6 carrots, but I guess since no one else showed up it's not his fault.

We sat down for dinner that was absolutely wonderful.  We had beets, a pumpkin/apple/leeks dish, chicken and of course a great bottle of wine.  Oh and at the end we had homemade ice cream that Nic made.  It was a great meal and a wonderful time to get to know our new family who all of you would enjoy.  Their hospitality has been wonderful and we appreciate everything that they have done so far to help us fit into this new world down here.  Here is a picture of Lindsay, Pamela and I the next morning right before we left.

The last thing we did before we headed back to Hobart was to stop at Kate's Berry farm.  Now we were so full from breakfast that we didn't get anything to eat then, but we did try some jams that were out of this world and then bought 2 dark chocolate salted carmels that we saved for later.  I leave you with a picture of Kate's farm and the thought, if we reached out a little more to people, it is amazing how many wonderful people and new friends we could meet!