Wow, 2 years since we arrived in the Land of Oz! It’s a strange feeling because in some ways we feel like we’ve been here forever (e.g., we have terrific friends), in some ways it feels like we’ve just arrived (e.g., we still look around in wonder and awe at the paradise we’re living in), and in some ways it feels temporary (e.g., not being permanent residents). Hopefully when Aussie-versary #3 rolls around, the latter problem will be fixed!
(FYI, there are lots of videos in this post – if they’re slow to buffer, despite my efforts to increase space on the website, just click Play, continue reading something else, come back and click Play again – it seems to play fine the 2nd time you click on it)
So where better to start than with a party! Last weekend we hosted our 2nd Aussie-versary party and once again were surrounded by our new mob, the people who’ve made us feel so welcome here. I was busy chatting and eating (and maybe drinking some wine) and didn’t get my camera out until later, so I didn’t get photos of everyone. But I did get a few. Here are some of the original pickleball crowd, L to R are Robyn, Leanne, Brian, Darren, and Carollyn:
Below you’ll see Sharyn and Geoff (middle and right). They were some of our earliest friends here (fun fact – Sharyn invented the “Aussie-versary” term). Canadian Rob (left) brought us twoonies to celebrate our 2-year Aussie-versary and even went all out and bought a brand new Dunnville Dinner Jacket (those from Hamilton and Niagara know what I’m talking about :)) for the party:
This is Geoff and Sharyn’s daughter, the lovely and talented Alanah:
On the right below, many of you will recognise Barb (who has to tolerate the Dunnville Dinner Jacket) and of course you’ll all recognise the big smile on the left. In the middle are sailing and golf friends Phil and Doiya:
Phil is the owner of the mesmerising 3D printer and he made this fabulous dragon for me:
This mob is Toni, Dave, and their son Mitch:
You can see the strong role model Dave is for Mitch 🙂 We met Toni and Dave initially at a music bingo we went to with our friend Leigh and then when I posted a question in the Tesla Owners Australia group at some point last year, Toni responded – it turns out they have a Tesla! So they’ve been our amazing resource for all things related to owning a Tesla in regional Australia.
Here you can see Dave being a role model again 🙂 and in the middle are Colin and Tavie with their Sunny Coast friends Tim and Joyce:
Colin and Tavie are from the UK but moved to Australia about 8 years ago and up here to Yeppoon about one year ago.
You’ll of course recognise these two, Jo and Llew – when the boys are off golfing, we find our own trouble to get into:
Kevin brought his guitar (funny how Canadian friend Kevin plays guitar and Aussie friend Kevin plays guitar!) and played a fabulous set for us. He ended with one of my all time favourite Canadian tunes (not that many people here realise it’s Canadian):
The night before our party was another party, this one celebrating our friend Darren’s 50th birthday. Here is a great photo of Leigh and Darren at The Rocks:
The day after our party was the Festival of the Wind down in Emu Park. And it was “blow a dog off a chain” windy, so it was perfect for all the kites!
Our friend Sarah was performing at the Festival of the Wind and does she ever have a beautiful voice!
I’ve previously told you about the Flying Foxes (huge bats – 1-1.5 metre wing span!) but I’ve never been able to get a good photo or video for you – until now! They were hanging out (literally) in some trees near where we parked for the kite festival and anytime someone walked by, they started flying around, so I got a great photo and video for you:
In other bird and bug and boneless critter news, we saw 2 new birds in the last month. I wasn’t able to get photos so here are screenshots from my Merlin app (not to scale – the Brahminy Kite is WAY bigger than the woodswallow :)):
This photo isn’t the best because I was zooming in from across the street (we FINALLY found a great restaurant for steak in Rockhampton and it’s right on the river):
If you click on the photo, you’ll see the trees are full of large black and large white birds – crows and cockatoos! On the way to dinner at this restaurant, we happened across another one of these enormous plants:
And saw this funny sign:
I’m not sure I want to see an attack hydrant 🙂
Hopefully you aren’t getting sick of Lorikeet photos – they’re just so darned colourful and entertaining, I can’t stop taking pictures of them! I’ve told you that they swarm in the thousands to the foreshore at dusk each day (and make one hell of a racket). We were having a snack and drink at the Keppel Bay Sailing club one evening and caught this video of them starting to arrive:
The next night we were having a drink across the street a bit earlier and got this close up of one tiny group of them:
Here are a couple sitting on the fence near our patio:
Here’s a Little Friarbird sitting in the same spot – birds seem to like this part of the fence:
Oh, while we were watching the lorikeets flock in one night, we saw this contraption go by:
A motorised unicyle!
A new spider for you:
Alanah found him on a bouquet our neighbour Bree had picked from her garden for our Aussie-versary party. He’s aptly named a Flower Spider (also crab spider).
Here is one of a family of resident St Andrew’s Cross spiders hanging out on a web in between a couple plant pots. I’d never seen them move much until one day a moth flew very close to one of the webs and wow, they are lightning fast! But the moth got away, I didn’t have to witness a murder on my patio.
Speaking of plant pots:
I still crack up (ha ha – crack, pot) everytime I hear “pot plants” (that’s what plant pots / planters are called here).
Hugh and I happened across a bunch of these crabs on Mulambin Beach a few weeks ago:
They were a good 2″ or so in diameter and very good at burrowing in the sand. This boneless critter was not so good at burrowing:
Jellyfish amaze me! Too bad so many of them have brutal stingers, they’re just fascinating. This one was completely transparent.
And then there are the snails making their patterns in the sand:
The one on the right looks like the map of a country. The one on the left, well, this poor guy seems to lack direction in life 🙂
Now, I have no idea what this stuff is:
It grows or attaches itself to non-living things like screen doors and this plastic base of a solar light. They are tiny hair-like spores with white ends and yet they attach themselves very firmly. Aussie friends – any idea what they are?
I’ve previously told you about the Pilbeam Theatre in Rocky – a fabulous place to see shows and bands. Well, we discovered another hidden gem called the Rockhampton Musical Union Choir – a tiny place that maybe seats about 100-150:
Llew discovered they were putting on a musical I had just told Llew and Jo about a couple months ago. You won’t believe what it was!
I was so excited! And wow, did the actors/singers ever do a great job – it was on par with the production I saw in Toronto years ago! We are truly spoiled for talent in this small, regional area. And boy, did I ever go through some Kleenex. I think anyone watching this show goes through some Kleenex, but throw in having moved to the other side of the world and remembering what that week was like and hearing the Newfie accents – well, I was a bit emotional thinking about some of the wonderful people and places we’d left behind in Canada. Everyone in Canada of course knows the story of the planes landing in Gander on 9-11, but no one here had heard about it. It was nice seeing a group of local Aussies do such a wonderful job on the play and everyone in the audience loved it as much as I did! And I got to explain what “come from away” means. If Australia was Newfoundland, our friends here would say Hugh and I had come from away 🙂
Before the show, Jo and Llew and I went to the Rockhampton Museum of Art to see the Ken Done exhibition. I had never heard of him but he was apparently HUGE in Australia in the 80’s. I liked a couple of his pieces but I think you need more of an artsy brain than mine to appreciate a lot of it – to my unrefined eye, many pieces looked like they were painted by a 7-year old 🙂
Outside of the gallery is this sculpture:
And this explanation:
Next door to the gallery is this fabulous sandstone building (thanks to Llew for the photos):
And this explanation (I had no idea Queensland almost split into 2 states!):
And on the doors to the gallery, here is the list of prohibited items:
Helmets! I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.
What else to catch you up on… Oh yes, grocery items. Family and friends in England – look what I found:
I used to LOVE Ribena! Nana always ensured she had some when we were visiting 🙂
I’ve previously mentioned that food comes in much smaller packaging here (which I like). Check out the size of the salsa jars:
That is as big as they get – about 1/3 the size of jars in North America.
I’ve previously talked about how when it rains here, it comes down in BUCKETS but usually moves along quickly. We had some of those buckets of rain days a few weeks ago (2 inches of rain in a couple days) so I tried to capture it on video:
The video doesn’t do it justice, but it gives you a bit of a sense. And I’ve previously showed you photos of the huge drains in the curbs (spelled “kerbs” here) that are built to manage water run off during these downpours. Here you can see one on our street during the above downpour:
On the bottom left, you can see the massive volume of water coming out of our neighbour’s drain (the downspouts run under ground from the house to the road here) and at the top right, you can see the huge drain to catch run-off volumes like this.
It has been autumn here since March 1, although the weather stayed very hot and humid until April and then pretty much overnight cooled down. We still don’t have a good intuitive feel for when various plants bloom here. I take photos every 3 months to document how things look to help us learn, but it’s much harder to remember when plants are growing 12 months a year intead of 6! So many plants here grow big super fast – there’s actually a section in garden centres dedicated to plants under 2 metres in height because there aren’t that many of them! As an example of rapid growth, here is our African Aloe:
You can see that there are 3 flower shoots coming up in the middle – none of those was there one week ago!
Here is our Foxtail Agave:
I think it might be getting ready to bloom and if it does, the flower it produces will be at least 5 feet tall! Stay tuned for updates…
Another sign of winter approaching in a couple weeks is the long shadows at 4:15pm (our shortest day of the year is the northern hemisphere’s longest day of the year):
Have I mentioned how un-busy beaches are here? Well, it is starting to get chilly. It was 26C when we took this photo and we find that when it gets below 25C, it feels a bit chilly to us now! This morning was only 15C when we woke up and we had to put socks, slippers, long pants, and long sleeves on!
Unlike Canada, you can sail in the winter here 🙂 Here is Hugh on Kevin and Jo’s boat, Vivacious, on Wednesday:
That’s Sarah in the foreground – in addition to being a talented musician, she’s also a talented sailor. Hugh didn’t crew on Kevin’s boat this week though, he instead joined Phil on his boat, Moderation:
Someone on another boat took that photo – isn’t it incredible! Hugh had forgotten what it was like to be on a tippy (mono-hull) boat. He sailed a number of times with Ray on his tippy boat in Lake Ontario but here has become quite accustomed to the non-tippiness of the double-hulled catamarans.
OK, a funny photo to wrap up this month Down Under. Canadian friends Allison and David were traveling in Austria last month and happened across this in a shop:
Happy May Two-Four weekend to everyone in Canada – hope those of you at cottages don’t get carried away by the blackflies and mozzies 🙂 I’ll check in with you again in about a month and should have a new adventure to tell you about.
And oh yeah – Go Leafs!