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Parade brings them up north from Down Under
By David Steinkraus
Journal Times
RACINE -
If someone were to give one of those awards to the people who came the farthest for Fourth Fest, Ron and Chris Fink likely would win easily.
They came from the opposite side of the planet - Australia, which is where 52-year-old Ron, a Kenosha native, found a job and a wife who is a native Australian. They live in Woodend, about 40 miles north of Melbourne, and have two daughters and a son, the youngest of whom finished high school last year and is working a year before starting university. Their older daughter works for Australia's park service, and their son finishes university at the end of this year.
"I originally started to train to work in the National Park Service." But when he finished his biology degree at Carthage College, Fink said, he looked for other options.
"I thought I'd like an experience overseas, so I actually signed up for the Peace Corps, so I was looking for assignments overseas." He happened to see a bulletin board notice inviting people to apply as teachers in Australia.
Now he teaches high school science (high schools there combine grades seven through 12 and rarely exceed 1,000 students, he said) and is a deputy principal. As a deputy principal, he had to hire his own replacement while he went
traveling.
In Australia, he said, people who have worked for a certain number of years are eligible for long leaves. That means three months off, all paid. But Fink said he hasn't been out of Australia for 21 years. And it's a long way from Australia to almost anywhere else.
He and his wife planned this trip to include the Fourth of July. In Australia, he said, the only American holiday he and his family observe together is Thanksgiving Day, and then they always invite someone different who doesn't know the U.S. custom.
"We just wanted to be somewhere to see a proper Fourth of July. Our original plan was to go to San Francisco, but they said the Fourth of July here was terrific," he said.
So they came to stay with his sister, Karen Van Lone, and her husband, Dick Britton.
Because they arrived only on Tuesday, it's hard to talk about a place he hasn't seen in decades, Fink said. They will become better acquainted with southeastern Wisconsin. They'll be here for a week, then will fly to New York and Washington, then return for another week and a half. After that they plan to drive to British Columbia and down the West Coast to Los Angeles. From they're they'll depart on Sept. 27 to return to
Australia.
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