Rainbow Confetti
There was something strange about the street I was walking down. Strange—yet oddly familiar. I couldn’t put my finger on it. The only thing that was for certain was that we weren’t in Britain any more.
Maybe the familiarity was due to the English signs anywhere. But then, this wasn’t like the US, either. My mind still foggy after the flight, I stopped puzzling about it and retired to the hotel. It wasn’t until dinner that it came to me: Australia reminded me of Gibraltar! Admittedly, it’s a long time since I visited there, but it had the same pavement restaurants, the same weather, and the queen’s head on all the coins giving it the atmosphere of being an expat enclave. A whole continent like Gibraltar? Absurd.
I knew that I wasn’t in Gibraltar when the bus dropped me at the Lone Pine Animal Sanctuary the following afternoon. Actually, I had known that since we explored Brisbane’s shiny centre that morning. John returned to the hotel to nurse his blocked sinuses and I took the opportunity for a little detour.
The animal sanctuary was in the middle of a eucalypt forest and I was assailed with the whining of cicadas and chattering of birds as soon as the doors opened. Still, this could be Spain.
A tiny lizard peeked from a crack in the bark, turning its jewel eye up at me as I bent over a tree trunk to look for my wallet. Another, much larger lizard lazily got out of the way close to the entrance. It could still be Spain.
I had arrived just in time for the wild lorikeet feeding. Yes, wild lorikeets. After a bit of coaxing, they fell from the trees like rainbow confetti. Only much more colourful. These were Rainbow lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus), landing by the dozen, only to take off again in the blink of an eye as something spooked the flock. There must have been hundreds of them.
When they settled down, a few of us slowly approached the food bowls which had been glued to stalks and stuck into holes in a plank. Very carefully, a young guy with an expensice camera around his neck lifted up a bowl with six or seven birds perching on it like a living bouquet. He turned around and held it out to a baby which shrieked for joy. He completely forgot to take any pictures. But then, neither did I. I had contrived to forget my camera after removing it from the bag yesterday night (the neighbourhood around the Snooze Inn is a bit on the rough side). So, I might as well go and pick up a bowl too.
Remarkably, the four birds perching on it remained unfazed. The only female interrupted her greedy gobling briefly to look up at me, head cocked almost horizontally. I lifted the bowl a bit higher and got a birds-eye view of their feeding, scooping up bits of gruel and pumping starchy water with rapid flicks of they round tongues. I had to turn the tail-ends away from me to avoid being squirted with white cascades even while the birds were feeding. The three males only ceased lapping up the watery cereal for occasional brief squabbles and flew off quickly when sated, one landing on my head. Tiny claws scrateched my scalp for a moment, then he was off again, flying high into the trees.
And just for something completely different, the lorikeet feeding was followed by a sheepdog show in the neighbouring enclosure. A look at the blue sky reassured me that this wasn’t Scotland. And the thick-whooled Marino sheep looks nothing like the Scottish Blackface. Under those coats, it would appear that they should drop dead of heatstroke, but the shepherd assured me that the fine, hollow fibre whool actually acts as insulation against the heat, as well as cold.
To wrap things up: there are few things more weird than seeing a herd of kangaroos hopping across your path for the first time. Except, perhaps, seeing a real-life koala.
I have to take John along next time.
Tags: Australia, Birds, Brisbane, Travel, Tag Index
Denni