rtw with lucy

How to do the Aussie salute: take you hand and wave it around your face as if to shoo a fly off your nose. This in fact is what you are doing since the flies take many liberties with your face, such as divebombing your eyes, using your nose as a landing pad, and trying desperately to crawl into your mouth.

While they have some of the most venomous snakes and spiders and jelly fish and sharks and many other critters we don’t even know about, and we must respect them for that, the fact is that they think we must be pretty tough to put up with grizzly bears and tornadoes. Little do they know that Erin got chased down by an emu on our own little country road one day!

The crime rate here is very low, with almost no violent crime. We have not heard about one murder in the news since we got here. Most Aussies feel that they can go anywhere in their own country without worrying about it too much.

They have fewer weight problems than we do in the states, though they are catching up. I’d say they are about 20 years behind us in this. They see us as a country of many fast food restaurants and have the impression that this is mainly what we eat. The interesting thing though–when Europeans come here, they gain weight, depite the exercise, and when we came here, we lost weight. Hmm.

Australia is in the midst of a nationwide drought. The only area unaffected just happens to be the dryest place here anyway. This drought has been going on for over five years and they are beginning to think that they will have to take some extreme measures soon to ensure that they will continue to have drinking water. Right now a fight is on about whether to start building seawater desalination plants. In many places they can’t wash their cars or fill their pools, and we even heard a rumor about a place restricting people to a shower every other day. Also, one day we drove to a national park, only to find that it was completely closed to the public due to a fire ban.

Most of us know that Oz is a dry country in the middle, with most of the population concentrated on the coast line, and this is true. In some places, you only need to drive about 30 miles or less to get into the outback, like Queensland, and in SE Australia, you would need to go in much further. There are some places around the coast where you won’t see a house for miles, though it is forested. That’s because much of the coastal land is in national parks.

An interesting thing about the topography is that within a square mile you can have pockets of rainforest. Many times we have taken a walk that started out in a dry eucalypt forest, then descended into rainforest, then back into dry forest and then into grassland. We have all these changes too–they just don’t happen so quickly. In some of the rainforests there is a tree called a “lilly pilly tree”. Even the rainforests have eucalypt trees though.

A European tourist made a very good observation: she said that Americans and Aussies go to Europe for the lovely old architecture and history, and Europeans come to our countries to enjoy nature, because that is something they don’t have much left of. We are enjoying the natural life of Australia very much however. They have over 700 species of birds, and while some are pesky little thieves, many are a lot of fun to watch.

The kookaburras were the ones we really wanted to see and we have seen plenty, and heard more of them, with their maniacal little “laugh”. They are very dignified looking birds though. ”Merry, merry king of the bush” describes them very well.

There is another one, much like the kookaburra in looks, but smaller and very intense blue. I believe they call it a kingfisher.

There are several species of doves, and my favorite is the emeral dove. She is pearly pink on her breast, and emerald green on her back and wings.

This morning at breakfast, we watched as two crested dove males had a showdown. They fanned out their tailfeathers and drummed, and circled one another warily. We never did see the female, and since the male aggressive behavior soon fell apart, we think she must have left. They looked evenly matched, so maybe it was too tough of a choice.

We never did see a cassowary, and were somewhat disappointed until we found out that they can be dangerously aggressive, and it doesn’t take much to set them off.

We have seen many varieties of parrots, but the prettiest ones were the ones sitting in a juniper tree eating the berries. They were scarlet on their breast, and dark Christmas tree green on their backs, and that was a terrific sensory experience–the mountains for a backdrop, the tree full of parrots, and the sharp scent of junifer as they ate the berries.

Then there are the animals. We have seen several kangaroos and wallabies. These are the ones we most wanted to see, since to us, these are the ones that most symbolize Australia for us. The main difference in kangaroos and wallabies is that the kangaroos can only eat grass, and thus suffer during a severe drought, which is going on here now. The wallabies can live off of a much more varied diet, and so survive hard times much better. They are not very shy animals, and will lay around in the evening munching on the grass.

Also, many have become tame, due to wildlife rescue efforts. Lots of kangaroos and wallabies get hit on the highway, and if someone can manage to rescue the joey, it can be bottle fed and returned to the wild, and isn’t much afraid of humans. It made me wonder what Oz would be like 500 years from now, if these animals are getting killed on the highway, and the joeys are being tamed by rescue efforts. Will they become more like dogs?

We spent a week in a platypus viewing camp, which was a very interesting experience. These are amazing little creatures. They have a classification of their own, since scientists couldn’t quite agree on where they belong. They seem to be mammals, since they have warm blood, fur, and feed milk to their young. But, there the resemblance to a mammal ends, for they lay eggs and have a venomous spur on their back feet, which would seem to put them into a reptile category. They are about the size of a housecat and swim around looking for mainly insects and worms to eat. They are very shy, so it is a treat to get to see one. We saw two.

One night, we stayed at a camp that has scientific research going on with sea turtles. They are studing the loggerheads, green turtles, and flatback turtles that come in from the ocean to lay their eggs on the beach. People became so interested in what they were doing that they came onto the beach and wanted to watch, but the rangers knew they needed to control things better when 25 turtles came up to lay eggs one night, and 24 swam away without laying them because of all the people. Now they take people out in small groups and strictly control the light (it scares them and/or confuses them). Once the turtle gets about 20 eggs laid in the hole she has dug, the lights won’t disturb her and everyone gets to watch. This was fascinating, and after all the hard work of digging a hole, laying the eggs, covering the eggs, and them crawling across that expanse of sand, she was totally worn out, and we all cheered privately as she swam away. These sea turtles are all endangered species, so the scientists are helping to save them, by helping to ensure that they can still have places to lay their nest.

Then there are the koalas–not koala bears–I got a funny look when I said that. They are very quiet and docile animals during the day, and sleep for at least 20 hours of the day. Then at night they start grunting like pigs, and sqealing, and it sounds like they are stripping all the bark out of the trees. In the morning they are quite sleepy again and it looks as if you could go pet them, but that is very inadvisable, as the only real defense they have is a very sharp set of claws.

We also got to swim around on the Coral Reef, up near Cairns in the far north of Queensland. Gene took scuba diving lessons, and me and the girls went with him to snorkel on his last day of lessons. The colors really are that intense. I thought they just touched them up like they do the pix of Mars or Venus, but it is like an undersea garden down there. We lost our underwater camera, but were able to purchase some photos of all the strange critters down there.

Well we've been awfully busy. After Wazza's jungle platypus camp, we headed south again, and signed up for a 3 day/2 night stint on Fraser Island. We had to rent a 4 wheel drive because it is the ... [Continue reading this entry]

Before we left on this trip, we received many warnings from concerned family and friends--mainly the ones who were big fans of Steve Irwin and his show, "The Crocodile Hunter".  Of course, Australia is known to have the most venomous ... [Continue reading this entry]

Well, we were driving the other day and our transmission started acting up so we had to make a backword loop to Cairns and are waiting to get it fixed- We had already been in Cairns for about 5 ... [Continue reading this entry]

       In Missouri it goes-"buzz, buzz, slap! slap!"  In Queensland it goes-" crawl, crawl, AAAAaaaaaaeeeeeeeeee!!!"   The bugs here are pretty brutal.  I get mysterious bites on my arms and legs, and I don't know where they came from or how they ... [Continue reading this entry]

Well, we've been here almost three weeks now, and I must say that the birds are what amazes us the most.  They are such little comics.  The crows look much like ours, only bigger--heck, they're all bigger.  They say a ... [Continue reading this entry]

After enduring the 17 hours of plane flight we are a little groggy, but some iced coffee in Brisbane solved that. We are safe, and enjoying ourselves. We have come along a little mishap of losing our luggage, ... [Continue reading this entry]