Incidents with Koala

Every morning we wake up and play "spot the koala" in the trees around Mum's house.  They are nocturnal but move in the day sometimes and seem to mysteriously hop from trees in the dawn and dusk.  We see one and then 10 minutes later it has vanished but I have never seen one on the ground.

Frost with a Koala in Mum's Garden

The Closest Koala to the house

A little Zoom goes a long way

On the second day we were in Adelaide, Mum found a dead koala on the road during her morning walk.  She said it was too big for her to move off the road.   She reported it to the council and it was taken away.

Despite signs to warn drivers to go slowly to avoid hitting koala's, especially at night, there are many koala killed on the roads.

At Cleland Wildlife Sanctuary we lined up for 20 minutes in the rain to have a chance to stroke a koala.  The fur is surprisingly soft and warm - not coarse as I had expected.  Whether or not you have them in the garden, they are iconic animals and tourists love to see and be seen with them.

The Cleland koala monument

Wren at Cleland with the captive koala whom he stroked.

Driving down from Cleland through the mist Mum spotted another wild koala in the top of a gum tree.  The tree was growing on a steep slope below the road so the koala was swaying the mist, not too high above eye level.  Mum is the master koala spotter and sees them all over the place.

Most Glorious Storms

Today we have been hunkered down with cake.  For breakfast I had a walk in the morning mist followed by chocolate raspberry muffin and french toast.  At lunch, we went down to the Adelaide Central Markets.  The Market on Gouger Street is one of my favorite places in all the world.  It is a combination of a farmers market, a European street market and a street of deli's, cafes and food specialists.  There is a mushroom store, a french baker, chocolatiers and an old fashioned candy store selling sour boiled sweets.

We ate in the Asian food court - I had some of the best Yum Cha (aka Dim sim) EVER... the softest dumplings, the most delicious green onion pancake and some other unknown food wrapped in fried tofu wrappers.  I was so enamored that I dunked them all in the chilli oil and loved the heat.  The stall was called Seng Kee Yum Cha... oh my goddess... I hope to try it again before we leave.

We had sweets - honeycomb and boiled sours - from the candy shop.  Frost, who had been feeling a bit unwell today, perked up considerably and asked to return before we leave Adelaide. 

Wren chose these fish

"This is my favorite place EVER"

The Blackebys Candy Shoppe

Sherbert Bombs

Turkish delight - my favorite

Later in the afternoon we had tea at Ruth, a friend of Mum's.  She and her husband Jim have a library of over 8000 books.  They use binoculars to read the titles on some on the high shelves.  The house is wonderful - exactly what I would like if I were a single woman.   A dream of antique cabinets, wide windows, high bookshelves and kilims.

And cake.

We were served 4 types of cake and sampled 3 of them.  Plus strawberries.

High tea at Ruth's with wattle blossom and strawberries.

We staggered home in time for dinner.  I made soup.  We ate that followed by blue cheese from the market and some quince jelly made by Mum and Mervyn.

The gale and clatters of hail now bluster against the house and I am going to have some rooibos, black, and plan a day of healthy food tomorrow.  Minus cake.

Haircuts

Now that we are home from the tropics we are doing our chores.  Today we did another walk removing feral plants with the pickaxe, draw a picture of a puffball and took the boys for haircuts.

Both were less than enthusiastic at the prospect but endured with grace.

Both said they would rather the stylist not cut the back much, the front much or the top much.  This did not leave a lot of room open for styling.  The stylist said "Well, I have to cut some off at the top or it will look like a big mushroom."

Wren insisted on keeping his bangs on the left side.

"You can have an asymmetrical style," said his stylist.

The haircuts were in a real true salon but cost only $20 each.  They took about half an hour.

Frost in Hazelwood Park on the way home

The Hunt for Clover and Crystals

From time to time the boys are captivated by something and hunt, seek and accumulate it with  ferocious urgency.  I think this has a neurological basis and has to do with survival.

Today, they became obsessed with yellow oxalis aka soursop (to Mum) or yellow shamrock or yellow sorrel or Oxalis Stricta in the scientific venacular.

It started on the walk from the house to the post-box when Mum mentioned that the stalks of the clover flowers were edible and tasted sour.  Wren loves to forage for plants and eats things that have not been sanctioned so he leapt upon the clover flowers and started sucking them and proclaiming on their sour squinty taste.  Frost followed.  They started competing to find 'soursop' flowers.  (I do not think these are soursop but Mum calls them that).

They wanted to climb down hills and not walk further in their increasingly urgent need to find more soursop flowers.

Frost thought they might juice them.

Mum showed them a large patch of clover near the house and they sat in it with a bucket and picked the yellow blossomed stalks.

I googled the plant and the leaves are edible with the caution not to eat too many dried as they contain lots of oxalic acid (which makes them taste sour) which can interfere with digestion.

Frost is waiting to juice the flowers in the kitchen shortly.

Mining Crystal
Another source of excitement has been Granny's pickaxe.  Since the advent of Minecraft, Frost and Wren are compelled by the idea of mining for things and when Mum came on a walk with a small pickaxe (which she uses to uproot seedlings of invasive olives and other feral plants) the boys have been keen on the idea of mining the seams of quartz (aka "CRYSTALS!") found in the banks above the road and path to the crest of the hill.

We hope to take them mining for fossils next week!

The boys chop out a chunk of crystal (quartz) in the path.

Frost helps by mining out an olive seedling with the pickaxe.
The large olive specimen behind him shows what happens if you
do not get them young.

Kangaroos are Cute (for Americans)

In Australia, Kangaroos are a barometer of otherness.  To locals, kangaroos are like cows.  Why on earth do people get excited about cows?

To tourists, kangaroos are unique, exceptional, rare, cute and photogenic.

To be fair, both views are valid.  When taken in a global context, marsupials - even big stupid common ones - are pretty 'rare', but in Australia they are as likely to take you out as a white-tailed deer on the interstate.  Why photograph a deer in the distance?

Still, this week Mum took her Australian-American tourist family to the Rainforest Habitat Center in Port Douglas to enjoy some bonding with local fauna and we found that we, along with the other tourists, love kangaroos - particularly the cute little reddish wallaroos and wallabies.

Aside from their general appeal as large furry mammals that eat from your hand, some of them bore a more-than-passing resemblance to our dog, Beezle.

Sweet baby kangaroo with sharp claws.

I told Frost not to rub his hair on the kangaroos but he
just wanted to snuggle them.  If we have some weird outbreak of
Kangaroo Flea in Seattle, you will know who to blame.

the Big One gulped an entire handful of kangaroo food
in one mouthful causing Wren some alarm.

This one was a perfect size for Wren to feed.  It was also
persistent.

The boys fought over the chance to "feed the teeny one" while the ducks
fought to gather the scraps.

Pademelon or wallaby?  Not really sure.

Wren loves this Beezle wallaby and wants to kiss it.  Yes, really.  

We really MISS Beezle and have started seeing his face in shades on our toast, in patterns on the beach-sand, in the hanging faces of spectacled fruit bats and in the wallabies in the 'zoo'.

You will see what I mean.

Dusk and Dawn

Dusk and dawn are special times up here.  Night falls sharply and as it closes into deep blue tens of thousands of spectacled fruit bats rise up and circle above the coastal forest near our house.

"Those are going to Mr MacGregors farm.  Those are going to Mr Smith's farm.  Those are going to the rainforest." calls Mum, watching them as she swats the mosquitos wheeling about is.

The first bat rises in the air at dusk

Grass seeds catching the light as we wait for night to fall.

It happens suddenly.  At first they stretch their wings as the skies become the color of lemons.  Then a few lift off and flap heavily to a nearby tree, crashing back into the large leaves.  Then a few rise up together and cross in mid-flight before returning to roost.  This happens all around you into the middle distance.  Suddenly, one lifts up and flaps higher and does not return.  Then another, then another.  Stepping back 50 meters from the forest margin you realize that there are hundreds aloft, hundreds streaming out in long undulating streams towards the far horizons.

"Mr Smith's banana farm!" shouts Wren.  "They will BITE through the PLASTIC!"  Yesterday we passed a banana farm and saw the fruit wrapped in plastic to protect them and hasten ripening.

Soon a steady stream of bats flies out. 

You think they must be done but more and more rise up from the trees...

People stop to watch as they continue to stream out in all directions.

The next morning the sky was wide and blue.  Mum and I went for a walk / run down 4-mile beach.  Mum saw the sunrise but I was a bit later.  We are finally over the worst of jet lag and get up at 6.30am instead of 5am daily.

Sunrise at Port Douglas

The view from the South end of the bay at Port Douglas

Morning light on the coastal palms

Today we spent the whole day at the beach.  It was calm and almost waveless.  Wren became very brave entering the water up to his waist and Frost wallowed around for hours.  Mum and I lay under a beach umbrella alternatively reading, throwing a tennis ball for the kids and adjudicating their cyclical squabbling.

Here are some pictures of our day at the beach.

Arguing about who can break which castle and if you
can only break your own creation or someone else's IF its a game of
attacking and breaking a castle! 

Checking the morning beach conditions.  Calm.  Low risk of stingers.  Low
risk of crocodiles.  Jenny is the Lifeguard on Duty.

In the water.  Wearing a hat on sideways.

The Land of Sobek Crocodile God

Sobek

In North Qld there is a tension between the heat and refreshing watery vistas and the threat of crocodiles.  Even the main tourist beach in Port Douglas has signs about stingers and crocodiles (salties) and there was added signage on the day we arrived because a salty was seen off the beach last week.

The normal beach sign

Frost about to swim at the beach with the
RECENT CROCODILE SIGHTING sign in front of it.

We were reassured by the lifeguards that the salties seldom attack swimmers in the sea - its not like the rivers.  The salties go in both fresh and salt water but they seem to prefer to attack out of the real ocean.  Even so, a friend mentioned that one of the researchers working in the area had their foot bitten by a salty when they were on a paddleski in the surf.

Today, on the way to Daintree Village, we stopped to look across the river and saw two fat wild crocs lying on a sandy inlet on the other side.  As we drove over a small bridge past a tributary stream, Mum mentioned that on a previous visit to the area they learned that a man was killed by a crocodile swimming in that creek at night.

A freshwater croc at the Rainforest Habitat Center.  He is green
from algae in the water, not his usual color!

Warning by the Daintree River.

We saw this big information sign on a National Park walk.  Its all crocodiles and cassowary information everywhere.  Cassowaries = GOOD and Crocodiles = BAD. 

Crocodile information board

In an interesting synchronicity, Wren and Frost have been listening to a CD of Egyptian mythology and we learned about Sobek, the Egyptian crocodile-headed god who was an aggressive and troublesome fellow.   Perhaps crocodiles are the bane of all riverine people.  The hot weather, the tempting waters, the lurking jaws.  

Looking out across the Daintree river today at the beasts on the shore, I certainly felt the tension.

Mossman Gorge

This morning rain rolled off the sea over the coastal rainforest.  There was a small area of alternating clear and overcast sky over Port Douglas but inland and up north low skies hung over the green hills and the sugar cane fields.

An early morning walk along 4-mile beach under grey skies.
Frost still had a swim.

After an early morning walk, we took a drive up to Mossman Gorge in the Daintree National Park - a beautiful rainforest area in the hills above Mossman where a few crystal creeks roll into the jade green Mossman River.

On June 22nd , 2012, a new visitor center opened and you now park your car at the Mossman Gorge Center, pay for an 'eco-shuttle' ride and wait for the bus.  There is a lovely cafe - Mayi Cafe - at the visitors center and you can watch birds from under the wide eaves of the open air cafe seating.

The boys, Mum and I walked the 3km circuit through the rainforest looking at huge buttressed trees, lawyer vines and odd tropical fruit.  There were few birds visible in the rainforest - Mervyn saw more on the forest margins - and although Frost considered swimming on the way in he decided not to on the way out!

Frost overlooking the Mossman river.  Large fish loitered by the beach
expecting treats from tourists.

Wren, wearing his new koala hat, at the Mossman Swimming pool.

We drove North as far as the Daintree River ferry to Cape Tribulation but had had long enough in the car and returned home.  We bought a ripe black sopote from a farm store and will have it for desert.