Bill and I just returned from another amazing visit to the “Land Down Under.” The sights of the country and the spirit of the people of Australia are so wonderful that it makes the long flight and subsequent jet lag worth every moment.

On this trip, we visited the states of Queensland, Victoria and South Australia, but met with beautiful people from Tasmania, New South Wales and Western Australia, as well. We conducted 2 advanced trainings where we reconnected with Eden Associates who are well on the journey. We also held 2 Eden Associates Trainings – which brings our number of Eden Associates in Australia to 350!!! We were accompanied by some Aussie trainers who are preparing to take up the mantle of bringing the good word of Eden to the country. While there, we also attended an Eden In Oz board meeting where we began plans for the 2006 Eden International Conference which will be held in Cairns Australia next summer. Put it on your calendars now.

Bill gave a keynote address at the Tri-State Conference in Mount Gambier, where even more folks learned about Eden. We garnered a lot of press along the way with TV, radio and newspaper publicity. One day the newspaper had articles with photos of Prince Charles, Crown Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark (all of whom were visiting Australia while we were) and right beside them was our very own Bill Thomas!

Lest you think it was all work and no play, we were also treated to many wonderful experiences by our gracious hosts – Glenn Bunney, Petra Neeleman and Olaf Zamestra. It is the end of summer in Australia, so we took advantage of it. We took a ferry ride, saw a “footy” game, flew in a hot air balloon, surfed on the Great Ocean Road (well, Bill’s son Virgil was the only one brave enough to try that), walked through “amazing” mazes, rode the chair lift down the mountain, saw the cars competing in the Australian Grand Prix, and visited the hallowed grounds of the Melbourne Cricket Club (They are very serious about their sports in OZ). Whew!

If that wasn’t enough, we then flew to New Zealand for our first appearance in that country. About 80 people attended our one day conference hosted by Noeline Whitehead. We had a great response and are getting requests for further training. On our brief visit there, Bill and Virgil went rock climbing while Petra and I visited the museum. Our visit was cut short as Prince Charles was following us around and was scheduled to visit the museum in Auckland that afternoon!

It was a wonderful trip. I think that we have much we can learn form the Aussies and the Kiwis, while they have much to learn from us. If you would like to connect with an Edenizing Home in Australia, please let me know, and we can find you a sister facility. Then, when you come to the conference, you will have some new friends to visit. There are many wonderful friends to find in this Eden world of ours. See you in Oz!