Australia celebrates

What better way to celebrate the last day of summer holidays and Australia Day than a trip to the beach! We went to Cottage Bay, across the harbour from Manly, to enjoy a day on Shelley Beach. A great family beach, but one for snorkeling and swimming since it is sheltered from the surf by a headland. Swimming beaches tend to attract skimpy swimwear; surfing beaches, board shorts and rash tops with high necks and sleeves. I felt a little foolish with my boardies/rashie, but this Nonnie body needs sun protection. We have our own humpie, or sun shelter, now. Very popular on the hot days when it is so important to stay out of the sun. Sharks were spotted the next day off the headland to the right of the beach. I think the rise in shark spottings is due to reduced fish farther out in the ocean, so the sharks have to come closer to shore to find food.

Nearby wild

It's never far from a wild place on the northern beaches. I met my roommate the other night, a very large grasshopper. I didn't mind the critter, only the thought of the size of predator who would like to dine on it while I slept. Grasshopper is now liberated to the great outdoors. In the continuing spider events, the other night a large furry brown specimen was spotted on the outside of the flyscreen on a bedroom window. The creepy part was the way the ends of her legs poked through the flyscreen to the inside. I walk to the mall on a shady path through the wetlands. where birds, lizards and who knows what else rustle around as I stride by. It's a shock to emerge from the shadowy track onto the glare of the parking lot for K Mart.

Full-on summer

It is the northern equivalent of late July right now, smack in the middle of the antepodean summer. After the last rain, lots more things are popping into bloom, so that early morning and just at dusk, the breeze carries the most delightful scents. We have three frangi pangi blooming on the south side of the house now; in Hawaii, they are called plumaria and feature in leis. The poinsettia is the size of a small tree, and may bloom later in the summer when daylight ends earlier. The neighbor's mock orange is a riot of sweet perfume and a tree right beside our walk is related to the tempramental china doll potted plant we coddle in the Northern Hemisphere. It has a peppery rainforest smell that is unique and I dearly love. The bristly red bottle brush blooms don't last long because the birds are keen on their nectar. From my bedroom window I can see the huge plate-sized blooms on the big magnolia tree; these grow well in Oregon, though they must be a different variety to survive the heat here.

School, at last

The first day of school has come and gone at last. Abby has heaps of new friends and Jack is doing well in Year Three too. All schools, public or private, require uniforms; there are many more private schools than in the US, mostly with around 300-400 students each. It's fun to watch them all, hatted and lugging backpacks, off to their different schools. Outside our school, Sacred Heart, there is a "drop, kiss and leave" zone, so parents can tip their offspring out at the kerb. It's reasonably effective (that's Jack's teacher helping), but not nearly as organized as Mrs Whitford's well-oiled machine at O'Hara or Buena Vista's three-lane scheme! After school reward on a hot summer day can be an ice cream in Mona Vale, or a romp at a bay on Pittwater, Winnererremy Bay, with a great climbing tree out of water at low tide, easy swimming and a flying fox in the play area. For the parents, on the way back from school drop off zone is a great plant nursery with tea room. Tracy was wondering just how many insects one of those carnivourous plants could consume. Not as many as one of our little resident lizards, I'll wager.

Inauguration and Australia Day

I could tell President Obama’s inauguration captured the attention of Australians: Australian Open Tennis replays were suspended while everyone had their eyes on Washington D.C.! Newspapers put out special editions and expat Yanks got up at some ungodly hour to watch the live coverage of parades, speeches and balls. A feeling of optimism, tempered with Aussie practical “let’s wait and see” attitude pervades the news and conversations. And, never missing a chance to celebrate, Aussies will enjoy their own Australia Day on Monday, January 26. This excuse for a party is in honor of Australia’s birthday and it is akin to July 4. School starts on January 28, after summer holiday, so it’s a grand finale to the season. Still plenty warm, tho, and the kids will be wearing light-weight uniforms. Abby’s is a classic green and white striped number, with peter pan collar and little green tie. She does look adorable. Boys wear green shorts and white shirts and all the kids wear the wide-brimmed hats. Much excitement surrounds first of school for Jack and Abby; it’s a leap into the unknown, but school supplies are purchased and labeled, and they are ready for their next adventure.

Beach on demand

What a treat to be a five-minute walk from a wonderful beach, Warriewood. We can walk across the street and; up the hill and be looking down on a lovely little cove, tide pools at north and south ends, enclosing sweep of cove, with lifeguards and a beach-side café. The kids and I can go for wave-jumping, sand castle construction or tide pool exploration and most of the sand will have fallen off our feet by the time we’re back at the house. We discovered an adorable little octopus, blending in with the reddish sea weed in a pool and watched him (or her? I think it changes for octopi) skulk around the pool. Of course, when we got back home, we looked him up to discover him to be a blue-ringed octopus, quite venomous. Australia is just so wild! Yesterday a much-beleaguered rugby coach had 17 10-year-old boys on the beach for rugby camp. It looked like barely-organized chaos, with much falling the sand, yelling, kicking and somehow moving toward an improvised goal post. About every 30 minutes, he ran them down to the surf to cool off and jump around. Same falling, yelling, and kicking only in the water; a good time had by the little campers.

 A walk on the wild side

Just 30 minutes drive from our new digs in Warriewood is Ku-ring-gai National Park, on the south bank of the Hawkesbury River. What a treat! It’s huge, but we started with a discovery walk from the Kalkiri Center. It was late afternoon, with a gentle breeze in the bush, mostly eucalypts. First we spotted the fresh roo poo, then peeking out from behind tree trunks, we spotted a nice-sized Eastern Grey Kangaroo. For us, major excitement; for the roo, a ho-hum encounter. After a lovely bushwalk, we went down to Bobbin Bay for a mangrove boardwalk, leading off into a rainforest gorge. At one point, we looked down and realized Jack and Abby were standing on one of the Aboriginal rock carvings, reportedly almost 10,000 years old. After shooing them off, we found a few more carvings in the area. There is also a rumor oft-repeated by locals about the existence of one of the oldest living trees in the world in the park somewhere, but the location is a well-guarded secret. I’d like more info on that! As we left, cockatoos were coming down to be fed by picnickers; right under the sign saying, “Please do not feed the birds or goanas.” Some things are the same the world around.

Our yard is wild too

Besides the huge spider spotted dashing across the living room wall the other night, we see things that really make me feel like I’m living on a National Geographic shoot. Yesterday it was a large wasp, about 1.5 inches long, dragging a furry spider about twice her size across the lawn. We think she was storing it for her young, who will feast on the spider when they hatch. We haven’t seen a big bluey yet, but there are heaps of little lizards running around. I can only hope they are making a dent in the flying insect department.

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Tidepools, waterfalls and kids

A walk up the Irrawong Track to a waterfall with the three grandkids was great for an afternoon’s exploring. Five minutes from the house and we’re in the bush. No koala sighting this day due to the cool and rainy weather. Another day, we spent a lovely if blustery day at Warriewood Beach. Kylie got a good boogie board tutorial from Dan and the kids found a wily little octopus in one of the tidepools.

Where the rainforest meets the reef…

…is definitely Cairns, in northern Queensland! This unique environment of wonderful tropical rainforest extends right to the ocean’s edge and the Great Barrier Reef beyond. A few days in Cairns are never enough to explore the region and I only had seven days at our unit this trip. I did manage a few serene hours at the Flecker Botanical Garden; its collection of tropical gingers and helliconias never fails to amaze. A family tradition is the climb up Mt Whitfield’s Red Arrow Track as well as the walk on the boardwalk and track through the Centenary Park swamp. The croc that has been eluding capture in the Centenary Lake was finally trapped, but I suspect there are more smaller ones lurking.

The mighty fisherman
Craig realized his dream of going out with a friend to fish for big rock fish just off Cape Tribulation. Good success, as you can see. A female croc has moved into the swimming hole on the creek that runs through our friends’ property, so no fish-cleaning remains can be left to tempt her out of the pool. I didn’t know that ducks would finish off all those tasty fish entrails, but between the ducks, chooks (chickens) and sea eagles, there wasn’t a thing left a croc would desire.




Nanniguy, soursop, mangosteen, and more
There is no end to tropical delights we enjoyed while at a farmstay north of Cairns at Cape Tribulation. You saw the big rockfish Craig caught, the nanniguy. In the fruit department, we had fresh soursop, durian, mangosteen and passionfruit as well as the normal stuff like fresh sugar bananas, pineapple, mango, and starfruit.

Friend or foe
It’s safe to assume it can harm you and resist picking it up or going in the water where it is cavorting. In the water category are the jellyfish (stingers) of several varieties that breed in the warm water of estuaries and inlets between November and May. Nasty to possibly fatal stings! Also nasty are the stings of cone shells (conus geographus) found when diving. Land-based critters common along the east coast include funnelweb spiders; thank goodness I’ve only seen one in a jar. Safer are golden orb spiders, whose legs would spill off the palm of my hand if I ever wanted to pick one up. I lounged beside the pool up at Cape Trib with a drowsy lace monitor, about two feet long, keeping me company. We spotted a lovely stick bug on the banana plant outside our accoms up there, a small one, about ten inches in length. The green ants taste like lemons and can be made into lemonade if you're brave. On the other hand, Australia’s complement of cute-and-cuddly is very high, and our resident possums are pretty frisky at night lately. Forget the snakes. I intend never to look for one.

More icons

Manly ferry, check. Opera House, check. Sydney Harbour Bridge, check. New Year’s Eve fireworks over the Harbour Bridge, almost check. I fell asleep. And white-lipped green tree frogs are definitely an icon of the tropical north. This guy was visiting our lanai on the day I left Cairns.

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