NET MEETING BRINGS AUSTRALIANS HERE

JACKSON -- Yvonne and Neville Young are a long way from their house in Manjimup, Australia, but they have been made to feel right at home in Jackson by Roseann and Billy Bell.

"It's been excellent," said Neville as he indulged his interest in history at Trail of Tears State Park.

The Youngs are spending eight weeks with the Bells, seeing area sights, meeting people and hearing about history.

It all came about because of a chance encounter on the Internet.

Roseann, who works at the Cape Girardeau Wal-Mart, had just learned to surf the Net and found herself in a chat room, where Neville was also a first-timer.

"I saw a message that said, 'Good day from Australia.' So I typed in 'Howdy Australia from Missouri, USA,'" Roseann said.

That was Nov. 6. The friendship between the Youngs and Bells grew steadily after that with more chats on the Internet as well as exchanges of letters, photographs and videotapes.

While they had never met in person before the Youngs' visit, Neville and Yvonne said they didn't look at the Bells as strangers.

"After corresponding so long, we feel like they are family," Yvonne said.

"Anything that happened in our lives we shared with them," Roseann said, "and whatever happened in their lives, we know about. It's just like family coming for a visit."

Except that a visit from relatives probably wouldn't put 4,000 miles on your car. That is what Joanne estimates she and Bill, a supervisor at Thorngate Ltd., have driven since the Youngs arrived about three weeks ago and the Bells began trying to fulfill their visitors' requests for sightseeing.

"Neville is interested in history, but I'm more interested in Elvis Presley," Yvonne said. "Memphis was the first thing on my list of things I wanted to see."

Roseann took the Youngs to Memphis to see Graceland, one of the many sights that were a first for her as well.

"We stopped to see where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers meet," Roseann said. "I've driven by that umpteen times, but I'd never seen it before I showed it to them. There are so many things I never took the time to see."

Neville was fascinated by the Mississippi River. "You hear about it, read about it, but it's unbelievable to actually see it," he said. In fact, the first thing he asked to do after his arrival in St. Louis was walk in the river.

The Bells have taken the Youngs all over Cape Girardeau -- to the Garden of Roses, Capaha Park, West Park Mall, the Mississippi River. They took the ferry across the Mississippi from Dorena to Hickman, Ky. After visiting in Kentucky, it was too late to take the ferry back across, so they had to drive to Cairo, Ill., which included giving the Youngs a whiff of the paper mill in Wickliffe, Ky.

They traveled to Illinois and saw the Shawnee National Forest and parts of the Trail of Tears.

Roseann jokes that the Youngs will need a larger plane when they return home to make room for all the souvenirs Neville has accumulated.

"Everywhere we stopped, he'd pick up rocks, dirt, sand, leaves," Roseann said. "He's got water from both the Mississippi and the Ohio."

"He's taking half of Missouri back with him," Yvonne said.

The Youngs' lengthy vacation was possible because Neville is self-employed, working on his family's cattle farm, and Yvonne has worked 15 years as a traffic warden.

"After you've worked 15 years you get three months off with pay," Neville explained.

The Youngs have found some similarities between where they live in Australia and Missouri. It is mainly forest land around the town where the Youngs live, just as it is in Missouri, but many things are very different.

Gasoline prices were a real shocker for the Youngs. They pay the equivalent of $4.50 a gallon for "petrol," Neville said, noting it takes $65 to fill his truck.

He couldn't believe it when Roseann filled the tank of her Dodge Colt for less than $7.

The size of the stores here also surprised the Youngs. Neville said the store in their hometown of Manjimup has seven checkout stands.

"The whole town of Manjimup would fit in Wal-Mart," Neville said of the town of 4,500 residents.

Food is different here.

While the Youngs raise beef cattle on their 2,500-acre farm, they usually eat sheep.

"Sheep aren't worth much more than $20, but you can get over $1,000 for a beast (cow)," Yvonne said. "So we eat sheep and sell the cows."

And Neville has developed a taste for Bud Light.

The Youngs don't mind answering the usual questions about their homeland.

Yes, they do have kangaroos, "heaps of them," Yvonne said, but they don't see them as the cuddly animals Americans might think of from watching nature shows.

"They are a nuisance," she said, explaining kangaroos have wrecked vehicles when they have jumped onto the road, and a herd of 200 to 300 kangaroos, which isn't unusual, can eat all the grass in a pasture.

While the Youngs brought the Bells a boomerang carved by an Aborigine, Neville said he can't hunt with it himself.

The Youngs plan to return to Missouri in December 2000 because they want to see an American Christmas.

"We have dust and flies at Christmas," Neville said, noting that December is a summer month in Australia. "Santa comes, but he's pulled by kangaroos."