Aussie Millions

Hello,
Joani and I have been travelling together since 2005 when I ran the Boston Marathon.  In 2010 we took our first trip abroad, to Melbourne, Australia, when I won my way into the Aussie Millions poker tournament.  Because I was friends with several gambling degenerates who asked me to update them on my progress in the tournament via email, this became the start of my version of a blog.  In the eight years since, we have travelled extensively through the US, taken four trips to Europe, visited Hawaii, as well as a three-week trip to China.  And, just to be patriotic, a trip to Western Canada.  Joani thinks I should include trips to PEI, but that doesn't count because that's just going home for me.
On a lot of these trips I have sent pictures and stories that, as I stated, started with a small group of friends wanting poker updates, and over the years has increased to upwards of forty people; some of whom travel themselves, and some who tell me they live vicariously through Joani's and my adventures.
Being as I've saved most of these emails, and my storage capacity is growing smaller and smaller, I've decided to follow in the footsteps of my youngest step-son and create my own blog.  I'm going to back-date it to our first trip to Australia, with accompanying pictures and stories.  And, although Joani says that I embellish my stories, I hope that the photos I include with the stories will vindicate me.

 So Australia.
 I'm unsure of how to start this but I think it might be fun to tell you about winning this first trip. I had already started a bucket list of things I wanted to do, and playing in a large international poker tournament was high on my list. The only thing holding me back was the $ 10,000 entry fee.
 I sure wasn't prepared to tell Joani that I wanted to start a separate savings account for gambling. So what to do?
 In late 2008, early 2009 I loaded a couple of poker sites on my computer and started playing online.  I couldn't spare too much cash so I would put small sums of money... 20 or 30 dollars a month on to the sites just to get in the swing of things. I won a little, lost a little but was never prepared to play in any big stakes games.
 Over the span of 1 to 1-1/2 years I figured out that I was probably down between 100 to 150 dollars but it was a good pastime and I was learning.
 It got interesting one evening when I got home in the early afternoon and checked the mail to find a letter from Party Poker. I was invited to play that night in a Canadian Players only freeroll with tons of minor prizes and one major prize. First prize was Airfare to Australia, accommodation at the Casino hotel as well as $1000 spending money and I almost forgot to mention, a $10,000 entry fee into the 2010 Aussie Millions!!! All I had to do was beat out nine hundred and sixty some other Canadians and I was on my way to ticking something big off my Bucket list. Canadians are nice,right? Everyone else in the tournament would just roll over and let me win wouldn't they?
 I started playing at 430 pm. By 630 pm Joani had supper made and was asking me if I was eating downstairs? No dear, I'm not doing bad, can I have my dinner in the computer room? By 9pm Joani was getting ready for bed. Are you coming to bed soon Garry? I'm not sure dear... Things don't seem to be going too bad, I won't wake you up when I come. By midnight, I was getting quite Loopy. I had been up since 4:30 in the morning and Man was I tired, but I had made the final table and had beat out well over 900 other people. Every single person getting knocked out by that time was winning prizes worth hundreds of dollars, but I didn't want that. I wanted Australia.
 At 1:30 in the morning my computer was flashing like an old school pinball machine and it looked like I won, but to be honest I wasn't 100% sure until I received an email from Party Poker the next day.
 Joani and I were heading for Australia and I was Playing in a large international poker tournament in January 2010.
 Two birds with one stone!
http://www.pokernetwork.com/forums/live-tournaments/22096-aussie-millions-main-event-chip-counts.html
 If you click on to the link above, you will see my name with a starting stack of 19400 chips on day 2. I got knocked out half way through the second day,but hey it was cool to get that far and Joani and I had 7 free days to explore around Melbourne Australia.
 So that's my poker story and now on to some Aussie travel stories with Photos.
 We saw Penguins but we couldn't take photos because it was night and flashes would scare them so picture taking wasn't allowed. But take my word on it they were cool. 

https://penguins.org.au/attractions/penguin-parade

We got to watch Serena Williams play in the semi finals of the Aussie tennis open.

 We toured the great ocean road.

 Saw some awesome limestone formations

 Had a fantastic time. I thought I'd end Our trip to Australia with two of my favourite travel stories.

 The first story is about Koala bears. Cool, cuddly Koala bears. On one of our days we went to a Koala reserve. Just a quick fact about Koalas. They eat mainly eucalyptus leaves, so to see Koalas, you have to be up in the trees. The Aussies solve this by building staging up in the trees. You climb a couple of flights of stairs and walk along wooden pathways that are 10 to 15 feet in the air and hang out with the Koalas. Now I have a tendency to walk fast when I'm excited which has, on many occasion got me in trouble with Joani, because I get excited quite often when I'm on vacation and traveling So on this occasion, I'm walking high up in the trees, far ahead of the rest of the tour group when I come upon this older looking Koala, hanging out all by himself

 As I passed him, he looked at me and let out a loud grunt.. I thought it was only polite to grunt back. We spoke back and forth for a few minutes and he started to make his way down out of the tree to the rail on the tree pathway where I was standing!

It only seemed polite to reach out and scratch him behind the ear. I mean he was awfully cute and being very friendly. As we were getting to know each other better I started hearing my name being shouted out by a strange voice and then by Joani. " Garry, what are you doing? Stop petting that wild animal!" Neither my wife nor the park ranger were willing to accept the fact that he talked to me first, and did not approve of me scratching him behind the ear even though the Koala seemed to think it was great. Go figure! Still A fairly cool vacation story.

 But my favourite Australia story, ( Perhaps my all time favourite vacation story) concerns my wife.

 On another free day we had in Australia we visited a Kangaroo ranch. Think of it as cattle farm but sub in Kangaroos for cattle and you get the idea.

 Anyway this ranch had all kinds of animals. Emus, Peacocks, Wallabees and Wombats. But the highlight was to be a field full of Kangaroos. Males, Females and babies. We could buy a cup of food and get right into the field with them. How cool does that sound.

 We bought the food, Joani was armed with the camera and I started feeding the kangaroos. All went well until we switched places. Joani took the food and I took the camera.

 Now Joani and I take pictures differently. I set the camera on auto focus and snap photos fast. Joani goes for different settings and focus and takes her time on each photo. So when she gave me the camera I was intent for 10 or 15 seconds on changing the settings. Turns out a lot can happen in 10 to 15 seconds. While I was just throwing the food out willy nilly to whichever Kangaroo got it, Joani decided that she wanted to pick and choose who she fed. The babies of course.

 This never sat well with the largest male in the field. He figured that he should get fed until he was full and when Joani ignored him, he took matters into his own paws!!

 This kangaroo, that when fully erect was as tall as me. he stood up and put both of his front paws on Joani's shoulders which we learned later is a very dangerous position because it means that he is steadying himself to kick up with his strong hind legs in order to try and disembowel whoever he's angry with.

 Only Joani's quick thinking saved her. She told me later that when a dog jumps up on you like that, you push them down to show dominance. Probably saved her from serious injury, but on the other hand only served to further anger the Beast. This all happened in the time that I was changing the settings on the camera, so by the time I looked up ready to take a photo, The kangaroo was rearing up a second time, seriously ready for a fight. I amazedly got between them shouted at Joani to run for the fence and followed her as fast as I could out of the meadow. What a shock. 

I have no photos of Joani feeding this guy because we were too busy running but here I am.

 I tell people all the time that my wife is the only person I know who went to Australia and got in a fight with a Kangaroo!!. How cool is that?