Rottnest island
Spent yesterday hanging around the hostel, going over work-type stuff, and watching scrubs with Leslie who got booted out of the country for his car accident. Boo. However, we had a little goodbye party, despite the fact that it is really cold here! I don’t get it – it’s Australia! It is suppossed to be warm!
Anyhoo – today I got up at the crack of dawn and went to Rottnest island, so named because of the resident quokkas, which a dutch captain thought looked like rats and dubbed the isle – rat’s nest. Like my hair after the ferry crossing. Walked around the island, did some birdwatching, saw the quokkas (the smallest wallaby – they are awfully cute). They are semi-nocturnal, semi I’m guessing because the island supports a large number of very vocal crows. Seriously – the crows here crack me up – they don’t caw – they YOWL. (kinda like the hacken-cracks). The island is mostly limestone, sand dunes, and salt lakes, and much like Angel island it was an internment camp, a military outpost, a boys reform school, and an aboriginal prison before becoming a tourist spot. It also has a few ship wrecks – including one called the city of york that was sailing from SF.
Ate some sorta-Mexican in Freemantle (it was close enough for someone who is culinarily homesick) and am now back at the hostel. PLans for the next 2 days include seeing zodiac, finishing posting madagascar stuff, reading more of a tale of 2 cities (its going quite fast and is surprisingly funny), and seeing the WA aquarium.
I’ve been accepted to go stay on a GOAT CHEESE FARM (Ha ha Ross!) starting saturday for 2 weeks, so I’ll be a bit hard to reach then. I’m still working on getting my aussie phone working – the sim card company sucks). Oh – and Eve Best IS up for a tony – although poor Michael Sheen didn’t get nominated.
Also: from Cleolinda: “Gonzales proposes new crime: ‘Attempted’ copyright infringement.” Do you ever get the feeling that they’re just looking for things to imprison people for?
Tags: Travel
jwdmeow
Hurrah for goat cheese! I’m very pleased to hear that it worked out. Re: weather, isn’t it supposed to be cold there? I thought it was currently autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. LOL re: the hacken-gracks (sp?) and the crows, AND:
Dickens is ALWAYS funny! He’s a wonderful writer whose characters are the most interesting and fun of any author I’ve ever read (and that covers a LOT of territory)….
Do you like Sidney? (Or is it Sydnie for a boy? — joke –)
Well, it was technically autumn in Madagascar too, but it was all tropical. I thought Australia was Northernly enough to be warmer. I know NZ gets cold, but it is further south.
I found this very amusing rant on a message board (cleaned up a bit):
First of all, why are you living at the base of Mt. Crumpet? I think that, if I lived at the base of the mountain where the Grinch lives, if I lived in a place where relatively often (often enough that our township has a person who’s job it is to live in a mushroom-bunker and watch for the Grinch), the Grinch comes down the mountain with his “Paraphenalia Wagon”, kidnaps children and exposes them to some sort of insane psychotropic mist which sends them into a black void of terror, surrounded by horrible spectres of evil which rival even The Grinch himself, I’d move.
Don’t want to move? Fine. Build a wall. Dynamite the road down Mt. Crumpet. String some razorwire and lay some landmines. Just kill The Grinch already. What are you, Quaker-whos?
Remove all the tree-stumps. If there are no tree-stumps, then there’s no place for the Gree-Grumps. No place for the Gree-Grumps? No Gree-Grumps period. And if there’s no Gree-Grumps about, then when that sour-sweet wind starts a-blowing, no Gree-Grumps will start a-growling. Those tree stumps just sit there doing nothing but sheltering Gree-Grumps, and as you can see, those Gree-Grumps are nothing but trouble. Do you really need the tree stumps?
Kill the Gree-Grumps. Again, if there are no Gree-Grumps, then when that sour-sweet wind starts a-blowing, then no Gree-Grumps start a-growling. No Gree-Grumps a-growling means that stupid pond won’t start a warbling, or whatever.
And if that pond isn’t a warbling, the Hackencracks won’t start a-yowling. And if the Hackencracks don’t start a-yowling, The Grinch won’t start a-howling. And as the end of the movie showed quite decisively, if The Grinch isn’t a-yowling, he can’t go about his Grinching, he just heads back up the mountain to wait around for that sour-sweet wind to start a-blowing, so as to set the Gree-Grumps a-growling, which in turn upsets the pond, inciting the Hackencracks to begin a-howling, irritating The Grinch into a-yowling, and in general setting off an unfortunate chain of events.
In short, People of Whoville, do the following:
-Stop wasting your tax dollars on that impotent “Grinch Watchmen” who just sits there and (after everyone knows The Grinch is on his way, lets you know that, yes, he’s still on his way.
-Uproot the tree-stumps, thus driving the Gree-Grumps from their home.
-Kill the now homeless Gree-Grumps
-Drain the pond which houses the Hackencracks
-Kill any surviving Hackencracks
-Kill The Grinch
Idiots.
That’s hilarious! I particularly like the ending. Some day, you’ll have to show me the “my f-ing oxen died” site, too….