From the Mouths of Babes

Well this was bound to happen - the girls have adopted some Aussie lingo and are very comfortable in the usage of many of these gems. Before I continue with the next anecdote, the following translations will add to the humour of the story:

Stubbie - a beer
Mate - buddy, pal, comrade, friend, acquaintance, anyone really

Anyways, now to the story...the girls were eating dinner last night and Dug and I were puttering in the kitchen when Elise pipes up (completely out of the blue): "Duggie, can you get me a stubbie, mate and pass me the remote". Once Dug and I picked ourselves up off the floor from laughing so hard, we almost did get her one, just because she was so earnest.

Next funny Elise story - she is going to be really mad when she finds out that the entire world can read these stories. The girls are pretty obsessed with making "nature houses". These are plastic tupperware containers that they fill with rocks and dirt and leaves to attract various wild critters to come and live in them. There are currently 5 of them in the back yard. Anyways, back to my story. I was home with Elise this afternoon and she was busy making a nature house out of a sandwich container. This house was intended to hold her pet lizard called "lizzy" - it is important to note that we don't have a lizard named "Lizzy". So Elise was out catching ants for Lizzy and in spite of my insistence, was bringing them inside to put in the nature house. In she comes - ant in each hand - good sized ones clenched tightly between thumb and forefinger...when she starts to yell - "they're biting me - they're biting me!" She starts to cry, very loudly, still yelling that she is being bitten. So here's the scene...Elise is crying and screaming, the dog is going crazy in the commotion, and there are ants now dropping out of the container all over the kitchen floor. It was like "Wild Kingdom" - beasts locked in a battle of survival. Elise was in pain, but determined to keep these ants tightly clenched in her hands. I'm sure they did not appreciate the humour of the situation or maybe had some insight into the fact that if they survived the squeezing, they were going to be fed to a non-existent lizard called "lizzy". Regardless it was funny - Elise was holding on out of pure stubbornness and the ants holding on for dear life. The ants finally won and Elise dropped them and then promptly squished them both.

My time here has taught me to appreciate the small things in life...

It's Raining...finally

Well the title speaks for itself - it has finally cooled down and we woke up to rain yesterday. It's not "sideways, driving, wet-to-the bone Victoria rain", but at least it's a little rain. I know, I know...there's no sympathy from the BC crowd who have started growing mushrooms between the toes and are sprouting gills, but trust me, extraordinary unrelenting heat and unrelenting rain are pretty close together on the continuum of miserable weather.

We had a nice Easter weekend. We even got a visit from the Easter Bilby - see http://www.easterbilby.com.au/. The bilby is a rabbit-sized endangered marsupial that has been adopted as part of the Easter tradition and many chocolates are in the shape of a bilby. Anyways, the girls were thrilled to find out that the Easter Bilby and Easter Bunny had both found their way to our house here and delivered a treasure of hidden chocolates.

We took a trip out to the Barossa Valley on Saturday with some friends. They took us to the Whispering Wall, which is a dam that has such incredible acoustics that if you whisper against the concrete on one side, your words can be heard perfectly on the other side...140m away! It was pretty neat. In this picture, you can barely see Dug and the girls on the other side talking to friends standing just underneath me.

Then on to the wineries!! We went to McGuigans, then carried on to one of our favourites - Torbrek (Malcolm - thanks for the introduction to this one). Absolutely fantastic!! It was hard to wipe the smile from Dug's face as we got to taste some of the best wine ever.

We continued our weekend with a trip into the Adelaide Hills - a beautiful countryside full of winding roads and charming little towns. Speaking of winding roads...we have come to the conclusion that this part of the world is host to some of the most dangerous and rudest drivers we have ever come across. I'm sure that many Australians are excellent, safe drivers, but you can be sure that 1 in 4 tailgate incessantly, speed, refuse to allow anyone in front and are generally nasty behind the wheel. My apologies to any Aussies who belong in the category of good drivers. But you have to admit that you take your life in your hands, especially on the country roads which are barely wide enough for 2 cars, no divider and have speed limits of 80km/hr! Dug is an excellent driver and he was visibly rattled by the flagrant display of machismo and arrogance by people thinking that they belong on a Formula 1 race course.

We carried on to another wildlife park and I have to again be negative about his experience. At many of the wildlife parks, visitors can purchase food for the animals - this is typically pellets that look very similar to rabbit food. At this place, visitors had the choice of peanuts or COOKIES!! Or if you didn't want to purchase food, I was told at the front desk that we could feed the animals whatever we wanted, with the exception of the otters - they were on a diet because they were getting too fat. I was shocked and absolutely appalled to see people feeding these poor animals cookies and Cheetos and whatever crappy junk food they had with them. It was heartbreaking to see people throwing cookies and potato chips at sad looking monkeys and droopy eyed dingos - it was kind of like charging admission to a dump so that people can watch once-majestic bears eat garbage. Anyways, we won't be going back there...

Our Easter weekend finished off on a high note at a brewery, for a fantastic plate of antipasto/ploughmans lunch and a cold beer. They sell their beer in 2l jugs with handles, that you can bring back for cheap refills. Brilliant!! You can't imagine how happy Dug was leaving the brewery with a belly full of meat and cheese and a jug of beer in hand!

Hot, hot, hot.

Well, first of all, I'm sure that many of you have heard about Adelaide's record heatwave. If you haven't, we're in the middle of record hot weather - day 9 of high 30's. This breaks the previous 8-day record set in 1934 and according to the forecast, we are in for the same temperatures until early next week. Apparently, March is supposed to have an average temperature of 26 degrees...we would enjoy some of that right now. We are getting used to the hot days, but it's the hot nights (with less than stellar AC in the house) that is tough. Too bad we couldn't refit our water cooler to run ice cold beer instead!!

Anyways, back to our adventures...we went to Belair National Park last weekend for a quick run outside before it got too hot. What a beautiful place. While the kids were playing on a big playground with a fort and underground tunnels, I was bird-watching. We looked up to see 3 kookaburras sitting in the tree, not the least bit concerned for my presence. I couldn't snap pictures fast enough. I then moved around the tree a little and to my amazement, saw 2 tawny frogmouths sitting on another branch. You probably haven't heard about them - they are nocturnal owl-like birds that look like branches when they sit in the tree. Needless to say, I did not manage to get a picture of these, but the park warden said that we were very lucky to have seen them as they are quite a rare site. We then walked around a small lake nearby. The bird life continued to amaze us - we could have watched for hours...if it wasn't so hot.

For any of you who are interested in birds, I have uploaded a bird photo album (pics that I have copied from other websites) onto the blog that chronicles the birds that we have seen to date in the wild. I'll keep this updated as we see more.

Till next time.

Continuing our travels

We took a little day trip to Glenelg, which really is a southern suburb of Adelaide only about 30 minutes drive from us. What a spectacular place - just beautiful. It' right on the beach...a little resort town full of neat restaurants and shops. It's a busy place with lots going on - buskers, camel rides on the beach(??), an amusement park for the kids.

The highlight of Glenelg though was the Rodney Fox Shark Museum - filled with pictures and memorabilia of his 40-year relationship with great whites. If you don't know who he is, the short story is that he's the once abalone diver who was attacked by a great white (I'm sure you've seen the famous pictures of his wound) who now dedicates his life to protecting them. He has been featured in National Geographic is is known all over the world - read about him at http://www.rodneyfox.com.au/. Just in case you're interested, go to that site and see some of the pictures in the Gallery that were taken during his Port Lincoln shark diving expeditions (I mentioned these in the last posting). Anyways, back to Glenelg...we arrive at the front desk to pay our admission to the museum and I am asked by a very nice lady (who realized that we were foreigners) what brought us there. I told that I knew the story of Rodney Fox and had seen many of his documentaries and admired his work. She said something like..."well you can tell him yourself" and he steps out from behind the counter. Turns out she is is wife and we had a lovely chat - it was a real honor to meet him.

On to the next adventure - we had our first encounter with an Australian beastie of the creepy crawlie sort. I was up late by myself and was just locking the doors. All the lights were out, except for the TV and as I walked through the kitchen (in my bare feet), I caught something out of the corner of my eye on the floor. I thought is was a lizard, realized it wasn't and thought that maybe it was a small snake. At that point, I had the good sense to back up and turn on a light. Turns out the bugs here are BIG, really freakin' BIG. It was a fine specimen of the Giant Australian Centipede and before you click on this link, keep in mind that this thing was about 5" long and the body (not including the legs) as thick as my index finger http://images.zacharoo.com/animals/centipede/centipede.html. Anyways, me being me, I captured it under a plastic container for the night so that I could show everyone else my find in the morning. Dug was not nearly as enthusiastic about it as the girls were, but the girls and I had a Free Willy moment and let it go in the garden. I have also learned a very valuable lesson - to shut the doors before it gets dark and wear slippers.