Tag Archives: Oz

Pompilidae Cryptocheilus bicolor

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I was taking laundry down and heard a shout from Ben, on the patio. He’d dropped something on the ground by our door and a giant  wasp flew up, circling him. It flew away, but we found this:

Paralyzed Wolf Spider

Poor thing. This is a large female wolf spider, and it’s very much still alive, but paralyzed. It can very slightly move its legs, but that is all.

The wasp had stung it, and was probably in the process of dragging it to wherever the wasp’s burrow is, to seal inside as food for its larva.

I’m pretty bummed that we disturbed the spectacle and didn’t get to watch it to completion. Once stung, as far as I can find, the spider will never recover. Now two spiders will die to feed this one larva! Yes, I’m sad for a spider. But it also would have been really cool to watch.

In which there is value in unexpected moments (and lengthy side notes)

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wolf spider finger

One of the nice things about unexpected situations is that they force you to stop and alter how you’re looking at things – life, the universe, everything, hunger, surroundings, people who drive utility vehicles around dark fields shooting at kangaroos…

Anyway. One of the things I discovered while camping… or should I say, confirmed while camping, is that no matter how delicious I thought I was to bugs in the US, I must be a rare treat indeed in Oz for I’ve managed to get bug bites while biking home from work, a feet which I did not think modern mosquitoes were capable of. While camping the story was no different, except that in addition to mosquitoes there were *flies*.

Now, we’ve been warned about the flies here. The folks we stayed with upon arriving in Sydney said the summer’s great but just you wait until the flies (dun dun dun). I have to say that in the suburbs of Sydney where we spend most of our time, the flies really aren’t an issue, so those warnings have been easily discounted. But in the bush? In the hot dry plains? Whoo. I’ve always looked at pictures from african countries designed to pull at your heartstrings, the ones with small children with swollen stomachs stand sadly, frequently with flies in the corners of their eyes, or on their lips, as something beyond reality. Not just because it’s hard to imagine, and IS heartbreaking, that there are plenty of people in this world who don’t get enough to eat, clean water, education, all of the above… but because how could flies possibly be so bad that you’d be complacent about six or seven of them sitting on your face at all times? Now I know. They’re relentless. They’re ever-present. They’re really freaking annoying.

And here I’m going to go into another segue: A Terry Pratchett book I read long ago before I ever dreamed I might live in Oz (and have read several times since) happens to be a spoof on Australia. It’s about a wizard who is unfortunately spat out of the dark dimensions back to reality only to end up in the Discworld’s equivalent of Oz. It’s called The Last Continent (living here makes the book even funnier). Anyway, one of the images from the book that has stuck with me the most is a modification this wizard made to his hat with lengths of string and bits of cork. He decorated the brim of his hat all around with corks suspended on strings, and the idea was to help keep the flies away a-la a constantly swinging horse-tail effect.

When warned about the flies here, I joked that I should get some corks and string them up around the brim of a hat for defense. I don’t think they knew what I was talking about, but they laughed anyway. However, one day when wandering around central Sydney with whip boy, I found THIS! AHA! They may be hats designed specifically for gullible tourists, but they do exist!!

Cork hats

Back to the main story. ANYWAY. While camping we each had sleeping containers, as well as a small tent that we set up most nights simply to hang out in, safe from the bitey things. The point of this is, that although we were awake and conscious for at least part of the night (most nights. There were exhausting exceptions), most of our time was spent behind some sort of screen, other than quick jaunts to the toilet. We were perfectly able to see the grazing kangaroos and sunsets and sunrises, but time in the open air at night was limited. (there was one exception to chase around a bunch of possums, but that was the exception)

Back when I first started this blog, my aunt asked for a picture of the southern cross. Sydney has far too much light pollution to get a picture of the stars, so I thought this camping trip would be my chance. Little did I know that the threat of massive itchiness would be more powerful than my desire to set up a good shot.

But when stuck on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere with a steaming engine next to kangaroo-hunting nuts in trucks, it’s time to take another look at your surroundings.

As I described before there was time to explore the ground,

wolf spider in grass

peeking in holes

spidey in a hole

and playing with toads.

roadside toad

There was time to find strange mounds of tiny seeds (a truck that dumped its cargo? wha?),

ben with seed pile

dead bird carcasses and lots of trash, and there was also time to set up a shot of the sky, to capture the brightly shining stars.

Southern cross horizon

Here you go, Sally:

Southern cross

In which I find something to say

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Sometimes so much has happened since I last found time to write that writing about *anything* feels like a betrayal of all the other awesome things that have gone on. I think that’s where I am right now. I keep thinking I should start with the “most important” of the things, whatever that is. But that’s part of the problem – I have no idea what that is. So I’m just going to write about minutia as they occur to me.

You might have read on ben’s blog about bits of our camping trip with my old friend whip boy (I’ve finally gotten him to somewhat accept the nickname! hurrah!) along with some of its many ups and one rather significant down. Right before that big down (down, down, downdowndown) we stopped at a gas station near Yass, about three hours from Sydney, on our way back from camping for a week and a half through several national parks and a brief stay in Melbourne.

Screen Shot 2013-01-17 at 11.05.51 PM

Around ten o’clock at night we were switching drivers (Ben to Ben), we needed a gas refill, and Ben (whip boy) wanted coffee. As he wandered inside the truck stop to find some (a story in its own right, where the machine he tried to use spewed coffee and water all over the floor rather than into his cup) I stood outside watching thousands of beetles swooping under the giant canopy over the gas pumps, swarming around the lights. Ungainly, lovely, inch-long golden-brown shiny beetles. They were also attracted to the lights inside the truck stop and flew into the giant plate glass windows and through the open doors. They crawled along the sidewalk aimlessly, and on the floor inside the gas station. I kept trying to rescue them, bringing them back outside where they’d have a chance at mating, or moving them off of the side walk out of being-stepped-on range. But they kept flying back inside, crawling back into the sidewalk. I gave up and just watched.

Bugs are weird. As we walked out of there we thought of a legend that could be created, of the small town with the large truck stop, where once a year under the light of the full moon fairies were transformed into beetles and had twelve hours to collect glitter from the electric lights to power their fairy furnaces for the next year.  Or something like that, anyway.

Ten miles out the engine light blinked on and we got off at a truck pullout. The engine coolant was boiling, the water we replaced it with leaked out, and we didn’t know it then, but we were about to say goodbye to that borrowed car for at least three weeks as some mechanics in Yass removed the engine and replaced it with a new/old one.

As we waited for a tow truck I walked along a nearby fence line in the dark peering with my headlamp down every odd little hole to see what I could find. A small mammal peered back out of one, before disappearing at the tremor of whip boy’s footsteps, and large wolf spiders lurked in others.

A pickup truck with spotlights attached pulled into the field on the other side of the fence and Ben (wb) heard shots. Probably hunting roos grazing at night. The Bens strongly urged me to continue peering in the brush on the far side of the car, away from the truck and guns, nearer the highway.

We were eventually towed to Yass where the driver dropped us in the parking lot of a mechanic across the street from “the only motel in town with a 24-hour check-in.” After checking at the motels 24-hour check-in and discovering there was no room for us, we dragged ourselves and our luggage back across the road to make nests in what room was available in the car, awaiting the opening of the shop in 8 hours.

We made tea on the camp stove in the parking lot, found breakfast, checked the car in with the mechanics, grabbed what stuff from the car that we could carry, and dragged several kilometers up and down hills in powerful heat to the bus stop where in five hours a bus that warned us it might need to stop along the way because it had been overheating in this weather would take us to Canberra where we would catch another bus to Central Station, Sydney, and a train to Strathfield, where we would finally walk the twenty minutes home, drop our things, shower, and sleep off our exhaustion.

It sounds tiring, and it was, but it was also an adventure and certainly a new experience. While in Yass we were forced to stop and look around. When we told our landlord we had stopped in Yass he said, “Yass? Nobody stops in Yass. Why would you stop in Yass?” and I can’t really disagree, there isn’t much there. But we did find a small cafe in a small shopping center run by a friendly old couple who drew a cocoa smiley face in the foam of my mocha and really, that summed up the experience. Seeing the bright side of a small disaster in the new experiences we were having, and laughing as we contemplated how this trip went from oh-so-cheap to oh…well… at least we didn’t break down on one of the twisty dirt mountain roads we had been traveling on in a lonely part of a national park.

At that hot bus stop in Yass where I dumped water on my head every hour to cool myself through evaporation I found the most beautiful beetle, sadly dead, on the ground. I’m glad we stopped there.

Fiddler beetle edit

Eupoecila australasiae

In which rituals are made

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It’s 7am on Boxing Day in Sydney, Australia. I’m sitting on the floor in the bathroom with my laptop, painting my toenails, because everyone else is still asleep.

If you have to spend Christmas half a planet away from family, I recommend inviting a close friend to visit, and spending the day popping in and out of the kitchen in pursuit of delicious foods, listening to a thunderstorm, and cutting up old cereal boxes and newspapers to construct cardboard costumes. What started out as an effort to create some sort of traditional decoration (crowns) turned into a full-on all-day effort to make our own interpretation of legends’ three kings.

Some of us were more kingly than others.

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Japan-Ben (whip boy) brought appropriately japan-presents, in the sense that they are bizarre and, of course, awesome. It turns out The Gift of the year in Japan is a set of electronic kitty ears which plant electrodes on your ear and forehead to “sense your brainwaves” and express whether you are concentrating, relaxed, or In The Zone. We’re not sure how highly correlated any particular brain state is with the motions of the ears, but it turns out that their somewhat erratic punctuation can be appropriate for just about any conversation. Whether the ears happen to snap alert when thunder rolls, or wiggle adorably when one is making a very serious comment, or turn down just in time for a glare inspired by unfair teasing, the results are inevitably hilarious.

We traded the ears all day, but eventually I claimed them and incorporated them into my costume-crown. Ben was the Warrior of Heart and Goodness, and Ben was I’m not sure but he had a lot of bits on, a cardboard cape, and a formidable scepter.

We went on a grand journey to find the one convenience store open on christmas day to procure unfamiliar bubbly beverages, with kitty ears (pre-costumes), which the cashier greatly appreciated.  Whip boy tried his best at mixology, but perhaps he needs a better-situated bar. We made a spectacular mess in the living room (paper bits, tape, glitter), made a spectacular mess in the kitchen (absolutely everything) in the process of creating and consuming delicious soup, steak, and potatoes, and ice cream cake, and toasted sporadically to everything and everyone.  We played board games and conversed, all with pandora trying its best to stream christmas music all day long, intermittently interrupted by lightening, thunder, and whooping cheers in response from the three of us.

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We created our own christmas rituals on the warm side of the globe, and I call them a smashing success.

 

In which I DO NOT almost die! So there!

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Ok, so, I told Colin and Alexis and Ben they weren’t allowed to write about this because ohmygosh I WANTED TO (really, I asked, honestly!) and it’s been three weeks and I haven’t yet, so here goes.

One day when Colin and Alexis were visiting we got up early, packed lunches, and took the train to the Blue Mountains. Colin talked about it here. It was great fun to watch the two of them experience the Charles Darwin Walk and then the gorge for themselves for the first time. We went to some of the spots Ben and I had already hiked, and then took a new track down to not-quite-the-base of Wentworth Falls, and had a grand old time, really. There were skinks and spiders and rock formations and biomes and ants and weird angry caterpillars that seeped yellow stuff from their heads, and Alexis particularly enjoyed watching the Sulfur Crested Cockatoos cruising above the tree tops, far below.

It was, altogether, quite a nice day. And then we got to the end of our hike, refilled our Camelbaks,  and decided to take the shortcut back to the train station along some country roads.

We looked at flowers and interesting mosaic bus stops, we admired the fuzzy new leaf growth on the trees and the smell of the earth. And then as we were passing by a clearing adjacent to some woods, we saw some magpies!

Now, magpies are wonderful birds, are brimming with smarts and personality and are very common around Sydney. But they are not native to Michigan or Minnesota, so we had all been quite taken with them over the course of the trip, making up our own rules for  different numbers of magpies. The old rhymes are too boring so we liked to make up our own meanings. Colin started counting, “two magpies, TWO! Two is for laughter… wait, three! Three magpies for trapezoids… FOUR! Four magpies for… ” I interjected, “Five! Five magpies! But one looks like a fledgling, so maybe four and a half?”

And then they started shrieking, and all but one flew off. That one only flew a small distance, a bit deeper into the clearing, and began to dance, calling all the while.

Magpies are new to me, to us, so we were fascinated! I was, at least, and I think the others were at least passingly interested, but I wasn’t watching them to find out.

I walked toward the magpie, slowly, to see what it would do. Was it a mating display? Were there other magpies around? Was it a territorial dispute? As I got closer, it flew up into a nearby tree and continued to call. I stopped and watched it for some time, looking around, and couldn’t figure out what the fuss was about.

Then I looked down, and forward.

“Snake! It’s a snake! The magpie was dancing to warn about a snake! Oh man how cool is this come see the snake!” There should be more exclamation points here.

Alexis ventured slightly closer, but Colin and Ben decided to stay a little further back. Their loss! EDIT: By the time I deigned to notice the location of my friends in my haze of SNAKE!! they were further back, but in reality they had been closer. ah, perception.

I didn’t have my good camera, only my phone, but I managed to get a couple of shots.  Alexis took a few from further away. It was dead-still, unmoving.

(Don’t worry, I stayed outside of its striking range, in my opinion. My friends didn’t quite agree, but honestly, most snakes aren’t aggressive, can’t jump, and can only strike as long as their body length while maintaining and anchor on the ground or a tree, sheesh.)

I watched it for a good long while, and when I acknowledge that it probably was time to go… do I really have to?… I wanted to see it move. So I tossed a stick near it. The others did not approve. But I got to see it slither away towards the woods, and walked giddily back to the road to continue our trek.

We had a little discussion about how far away was far enough away to be safe as we continued our walk back. I had to interject periodically with, “we saw a SNAKE!”

On the train, we compared Alexis’ and my pictures and tried to identify the snake on our future devices.  We concluded that it was probably an Eastern or Lowland Copperhead.

 

The next day we went to the Australian Museum and as I was browsing the Surviving Australia section, Alexis was in Search and Discover researching our snake with a staff member. They agreed, Copperhead, here’s some printed information on behavior, habitat, and dangers of.

Thanks, Australian Museum!

Thanks, magpie! Now we know, five is for SNAKE!

 

In which I give up the reins to… Colin!

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[written by colin {see if you can pick out the various literary references!}, very slightly edited by adrienne, few comments inserted by adrienne, pictures taken by colin and adrienne, pictures slightly edited by adrienne, pictures picked by colin. etcetera.]

I am not Adrienne.
My name is Colin, pronounced nearly the same as “Callin’.”
Names are important, as they tell you a great deal about a person. I’ve had more names than anyone has right to. But I was brought up as Colin. My father once told me it meant “victory.”
I have, of course, been called many other things. Some of them uncouth, although very few were unearned.
I have stolen a baby bear from its mother’s den in the dead of winter. I was knocked over by lightning at the top of Mt. Rainier. I once headbutted a car so hard that its driver ran away in panic. I skied in weather so cold that trees exploded. I’ve looked boldly over the edge at the end of the world and danced at the lip of an active volcanic caldera. I have walked across rubble-strewn fields where gods have died, loved women, and effortlessly done the impossible.
You may have heard of me.

It was late October when I got an email from Adrienne saying that her work would start after American Thanksgiving and she had a whole month free before then, so visit maybe? It was short notice and I had to work and move to California. I wrote it off in my mind.
Then, on the night of November 1st, I realized in my sleep that I could totally make it work!  So I did. 24 hours later I had tickets, a visa, and time off from work. Whee!
And then, even more last minute, Alexis decided to visit AG and BB at the same time! It would be a shindig!
I have looked over Adrienne’s blog posts and we pretty much did everything that has already been posted about, [and several things that weren’t!] except for finding a place to live. Now would be a good time to review what has come before in this blog. It’s quite worth a reread.
We didn’t ever manage to make it to Luna Park, but we saw it many times, lurking across the Sydney Harbor. That giant, vacant face continues to haunt my dreams, its sightless eyes searching, its gasping mouth ever more hungry.
Anyway, I’ll give my impressions of the many things we did, but each one will be shorter than Adrienne’s posts.

…

Flying
I flew MSP->LAX->SYD.  I arrived at the Minneapolis Airport early for the hassle that comes with international flight, and got to my gate to see the last few passengers get on an earlier flight to LA. So I jumped on that flight, last minute, to give me a longer layover in LA.
When I got there, I found out that Alexis also got on an earlier flight, and we were able to share airport dinner together on our extended layover. Fortuitous!
Long flight was long. Delta had lots of movies available for watching, so I watched some movies and tried to sleep and drank lots of water. LOTS of water. I was in an exit row with no seats in front of me and the bathroom right there, so I had so much water. I also consumed a great quantity of donuts that were wholly delicious.
I flew into the night, watching the time get earlier and earlier, until the sun came up and I was in the future in Sydney.

…

Cockatoo Island picnic and Circular Quay
Adrienne and Alexis met me right after customs (which were painless and had a terrific contraband-sniffing dog) and we took public transit and a walk to the house. Sunlight! Real summer sunlight! Flowers and birds and grass and leaves on the trees! Happiness in seeing Adrienne and Ben again.
After handing over American goods that had been requested (largely oatmeal), and exchanging gifts, we took a ferry to an abandoned shipyard island that is clearly haunted by Deep Ones who perform unspeakable rites to hideous dead gods on moonless nights. Their loathsome gibbering echoed in the cries of the fetid seagulls that flocked, like hordes of malformed rats, around us any time we paused, as if searching for weakness, or food.
From the “man-made” structures on the island, it is clear that modern Australia is built of the blood and suffering of its many prisoners, poor souls sent far from home to suffer torments in a land under permanent martial law where giant spiders literally hide under the bark of trees to ambush unsuspecting prey.
We had a picnic.
The opera house was not as big as I expected, but did loom nicely against the cloud-marbled sky. Its looming was brilliant and clean and the arching sweep of the roof made for a remarkably friendly loom. It loomed, nicely.
I was pretty jet lagged by now, and my memories of the day are hazy at best. There are mental scraps of lying in the grass in the sun, interesting bathrooms with mirrors and wobbling counters, snakelike trees, and jumbles of rocks that were not to be climbed upon, but which Alexis climbed anyway. Because she is Alexis, and awesome like that.

…

Tidepooling
There was an eel! I touched it! Sea slugs! Marine life sticking to the rocks! Tiny things with too many legs or no legs! An octopus!
The eel was a moray, which I recognised but couldn’t remember why they were dangerous. As it turns out, they have hooked teeth, very strong jaw muscles, and a very simple jaw structure. They cannot let go when they bite people, even in death. There was no biting, and there was eel touching. It was smooth and strong and boneless, like a tongue.
The octopus was very tiny and fascinating. I’m always impressed with their combination of alienness and intelligence. It makes them both strange and understandable. You can see their reactions clearly and ascribe understandable motivations to their actions, but the way they carry out those actions is incredibly foreign.
After we poked at it for a bit, it got fed up and squirted ink. We were so fascinated by the ink swirling in the currents between the rocks that we ignored Mr. Octo and he got away. Clearly, it is a good defense mechanism!

…

Aquarium
I was tired and the darkness and music and many screaming children in the Sydney Aquarium was unpleasant. But I enjoyed seeing the dugong, which are creatures like manatees but in Australia that eat a lot of lettuce. They are apparently closely related to elephants, and they did have a certain Sea Elephant quality to them. The sea turtle was out in the sun and not available for viewing.
Alexis got a hot meat pie and we all sampled this Australian pop-culture delicacy.

…

Blue Mountains
Adrienne’s post on the Blue Mountains is spot on! It is my favorite place in Australia! There was so much to see. The Darwin trail gave an understanding of the evolution of the landscape as you approached the falls. It was a gradual buildup of many tiny details into a huge gorge full of trees and geological structures and carved sandstone!
We picnicked at the top of the falls, watching young people jump the guard rail to pose right at the edge. The curving stone path across the river was made of giant sandstone stepping stones, its gentle curve and solidness contrasting to the rushing water. My sandwich was peanut butter, nutella, and banana: thick and delicious.
We braved the many stairs and made our way to the base of the huge waterfall. We roamed among the slippery polished rocks of the river and cauldrons in the stone and mists in the air. Every dozen yards was a new biome with an entirely different climate and vegetation. There were tunnels of plants, tunnels of rock, and rainbows in the air.
It was one of my favorite places and there was so much to see and experience that I still want to go back.
On our return to the train there was an event that I promised Adrienne could describe, so she better get on that. [ok ok!]

…

Australian Museum
It was raining when we went to the Australian Museum. The skeleton room is indeed amazing as was described and the attention to detail in the exhibitions is marvelous. I marveled.
We spent the better part of the day there, and thus were able to see most of the exhibits and get full details on about half of them. There were turtle skeletons!  Turtle shells are made from a ribcage-like structure, which I had known, but what I didn’t realize was that their shoulder blades are inside of their shell! It was obvious when I thought about it. This means that somehow, through iterative changes, turtles evolved their shoulder blades through their ribcages (which is ridiculously unlikely), or that there was an evolutionary branching to having shells that happened before shoulder blades were fully formed. It could be a case of parallel evolution in action! Am I right about this? I don’t know much biology.
There was also a sea sponge skeleton made out of silicon (!!!) and a giant stuffed wombat and amazing insect exhibits. They had spiders weave their webs over black backgrounds so that you could see the structure easily!

 …

Featherdale Zoo
So you know all those crazy Australian creatures with funny names? Yeah, they’re all made up. All of them. What, you think there’s really a creature like a man-sized rat that hops around and boxes? Or a beaver thing with a duck’s bill that lays eggs? Or the so-called “Wombats” or “Wallabies” or “Koalas.” Even their names sound made up!
Anyway, I want a wombat for a pet! They are like giant marmots that have gotten extra cute with their larger size. They have a bony structure in their rump that they use as shield when they burrow into their holes with their butt sticking out! They also crush predator skulls against the tunnel roof with their back legs and bony butts! They can run at 25 mph! Their poop is square! SQUARE POOP!
I also fondled wallaby testicles, because, well, Adrienne did it. And how often do you get that chance?

…

Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Sydney Tower Eye
Alexis and I crossed the famous and distinctive Sydney Harbor Bridge. There are tours that climb the curving structure, but they are a bit pricey. So we walked along the pedestrian walkway of the bridge, which was free!
The bridge reminds me of a modern version of the Brooklyn Bridge – cables and trusses and stone support towers, but everything is new and has a cleaner design. It is a cathedral of iron and wind.
The air on the bridge, and in fact all along the coast, was both wet and dry at the same time. It was definitely sea air; slightly salty and fresh and full of the ocean, but the wind was dry and parched. It’s like when you run water over a dry sponge. It’s wet, but it’s also going to absorb all that moisture soon. All the air in Australia felt like a giant dry sponge, even when it rained. [This is an amazing description!]
After crossing the bridge we went to an Irish pub with a live house band that sang all the irish folk songs about being imprisoned and sentenced to transportation. I had excellent Bangers and Mash.
Then we went to the Sydney Tower Eye to meet Adrienne and Ben. They had been off at SCUBA all day. The Sydney Tower is a Space Needle like building, tallest in Sydney and second tallest in all of Australia, with a 360 degree panoramic viewing deck at the top. There was a storm threatening to hit the city as we walked, and I rushed to see it come rolling in from the top of the tower, but I was disappointed! The storm faded into the thirsty air.

…

Cronulla Beach
This was one of those rocky beaches with crashing waves and jumbles of rocks to scramble over and interesting geological features, like Avoca beach. It was probably my second favorite place after the Blue Mountains. Waves splashing up into the air, water rushing over rocks, through crevices and tunnels, in and out with each surge. Sadly, I cannot do its beauty justice.

 …

Blue Mountains 2
We went back! There was more to see! There’s still more after multiple visits!
The easily notable thing about this trip was our breakfast. We went to the little cafe that Adrienne bled all over when she hurt her hand. I had a cappuccino and an order of scones with cream and jam.
They sprinkle cocoa on top of the cappuccinos there! Why is this not done everywhere? [agreed.]
The scones were not like American scones. They were not lemon ginger scones or raspberry maple scones or cranberry whole grain scones; they were scones. Just scones. And, partaking in the very essence of a scone, they were divinely fluffy biscuity breadstuffs with a perfect texture. AND CREAM! Oh, we loves it! With biscuits and jams and butters, my precious. I was euphoric with every morsel, my head spinning and unable to stop grinning or sighing with delight.
If I was to ever have breakfast with David Bowie, I want it to be scones with cream and jam.
There was also a wild kookaburra, which was nothing less than a little fluffy gentleman. They are my favorite birds.

 …

The Maritime Museum and Thanksgiving dinner
Alexis left before I did, to make it home for Thanksgiving. After she left, Adrienne, Ben, and I went to the Sydney Maritime Museum and had a jolly time together. I’m really grateful that I was able to spend so much time with Ben this trip. The more we interact the more I like him.

There was a working, full scale replica of Captain Cook’s ship, the Endeavour! It had tours and apocryphal facts from the guides! Cook’s trips were honestly pretty amazing. Apparently he was criticised after his first major journey for not exploring far enough, so on his next two he basically explored the entire Pacific. His maps of the New Zealand coast are so accurate that they were widely used until the 1970s.
There was also a destroyer and a submarine and a super lifeboat with its own life support system and ability to keep functioning in an oil inferno. It could drop 30 feet without damage and propel itself even if completely upside down.
Then we went home and cooked American Thanksgiving! Chaos was in the tiny kitchen with us as everyone cooked their own dish at once! Yet somehow, it worked. No collisions, no one really in anyone’s way; we twirled and danced and chopped and stirred and sang. It was exhilarating and delightful and triumphant. We each made tasty tasty food for a tremendous dinner: stuffed bell peppers, mashed potatoes, and pie.
I really like pumpkin pie, but there are no pumpkins in Australia. None. They have a orange watery thing in boxes called “Pumpkin” Soup, but that looked dubious at best.
I thought about the dilemma  and decided: beets are a lot like pumpkins! So I made a beet and butternut pie with pumpkin spices, roasting the beets and then pureeing them, and it was DELICIOUS. The roasted beets added the right amount of sweetness and texture, with just a hint of beety goodness. Plus, it was a very fetching purple color! I recommend this substitution to everyone in the future.

…

The Final Day
On my last day in Australia I got stuck in an automatic bathroom. The Let Me Out button did not work and there was no handle on the door on the inside! Seriously! What happens if there is a power failure? After trying all the obvious things and deciding that it was just broken, Adrienne went off to make phone calls to find someone to help. I was left to fight off claustrophobia. I pondered my situation.
Windows – too small to climb through. Toilet – already used. Sink – source of fresh water in emergencies. Floor – public bathroom tile, pretty gross. Button that was supposed to open the door – broken. Other button – plays annoying music. Door – no hand-holds to force it open against the machinery. Machinery – where was the machinery?
Summoning up all my video gaming experience, I found a maintenance duct and crawled through.  I pushed against a heavy darkness made of spiders, twisted my lithe form around the corners that riddled the labyrinthine ducting, and clambered through the tangled, greasy clockwork of the mechanisms. At one point, I had to leap from platform to moving platform above a floor of deadly spikes. There was one level that was covered in ice. Finally, I faced the Doom Rattler, a giant poisonous snake with spider legs. With quick footwork and flexible timing, I tricked it into biting its own tail three times and thus defeated it. The exit was before me! I opened the maintenance door from within. Glorious, spider-free sunlight was mine once again!
Adrienne returned and I was all cool and mysterious about how I escaped. [he would not tell me!!]

The two of us walked far and wide across her neighborhood. There was a mall and trains and a blue tongued skink and, eventually, the outskirts of the Olympic Park. Our talk wandered along with us. Excitement was considered, friendship was remarked upon, good times and bad were visited once again. The sadness of life is easier with friends, even if they are far away, across mountains and oceans and time itself. I confessed that I’d always wanted to be thrown out of Woolsworths and she… Well. She can speak for herself. [no. no thank you.]

There is more, of course. There is always more to tell. But for now we can leave the two of them sitting there, in a patch of velvety English grass on the outskirts of the Olympic Park, as the sun begins to set. They talk, and share themselves, and be with each other.

In which Australia begins to feel like home

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Yesterday Ben gave me an early christmas present!

And by early christmas present I clearly mean pointed out a dead flying fox!

We were walking home from the train station after a pretty underwhelming trip to the zoo when I walked right by it. Fortunately for me, Ben saw it and knows me well.  We kept on to home where I turned straight around, grabbed a broken tupperware and some strong shears, and walked right back to it where lay. I cut off the head, stuffed it in the tupperware, returned home, buried the head under the tomato plant, and recycled the tupperware. In a month I’ll be the proud owner of a sparkly clean flying fox skull! Best accidental christmas present ever, or what?

In which I lose all of my arachnophile credibility

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Ben and I were sitting on the couch, enjoying some wine, and watching Deep Space Nine, a rather engaging episode, the one where Sisko, Dax, Wharf, O’Brien, and Kira get trapped in a James Bond-inspired holodeck program due to a transporter accident, and Julian and Garak have to keep them from being deleted while their patterns are recovered. You know that one? It’s good! But right around the time that Sisko was enjoying being the bad guy and running Julian for a loop, and Garak was making a cutting yet witty comment, Ben said, “Oh god! A huntsman!”

Cue screeching record sounds. Ben pointed to the curtain hanging beside me and I glanced at it long enough to see a dark shape before I levitated across the room and it went out of view.

And get this, Ben goes to his computer immediately and tweets:

This is BEFORE locating said spider. He’s a modern boy. In his defense, he was at his computer to pause Deep Space Nine, because one must concentrate when searching for giant spider.

I’m not going to blame the wine for my reaction because, as Ben followed up with:

So, now, cue shrieking and headlamps and gingerly examining the large heavy curtains to determine that the spider has moved on, to places unknown.

Ben kept repeating, “but how did it get in??” and I kept repeating, “oh god oh god oh god.”

Both are valid statements, I think. We eventually located it behind the TV stand on the baseboard. The new challenge was capturing it. I resourcefully used the TV antenna to herd it and that only backfired a little bit when I herded it underneath the television and out of sight.

I ran to get a glass tumbler to capture it with, to which Ben’s response was, “what are you doing?! That’s not nearly big enough!” After a few attempts at gingerly trying to place the glass over the spider, and a few more shrieks and jumps because that thing is fast and kept teleporting to the other side of the room, I concluded Ben was right, rejected the ceramic bowl he was offering, and found the perfect spider-catching container: the clear plastic cheese dish.

I dumped our freshly grated parmesan into the proffered bowl, and used the handy cheese-dish-feature, the foot, to grip it steadily, and managed to capture the spider on the fourth or fifth try.

Transparency is key. How do you know you’ve really caught it? Are you going to lift it up and *check*?

Only at this point did I ask myself why I was freaking out so much. It was a huntsman, a spider that might give you a few puncture marks out of self-defense, but nothing more severe than that. It’s a lovely house-guest, really! They hunt cockroaches!

I’m sure part of it was the surprise, and even the somewhat pleasant feeling of an adrenaline rush in a safe situation, sort of like a rollarcoaster ride. But they’re the wrong shape to be loved by me, the wrong size, and they’re blazingly fast. And they come out of nowhere.

In the end, it wasn’t even that big. The one I found in a funnel web on a tree was bigger. But this is our home, our couch, and most definitely our curtain, and I think you’ll understand if we were wary and twitchy for the rest of the night.

 

In which I… In which I… dude. Just, awesome!

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I think I found a huntsman!

Recently, Ben and I travelled the hour and a half to Viive and Ian’s house to take another rambling walk with Duke and Brandy. They were excited, as usual. They pulled us up hills, as usual. They dragged each other around while one was trying to pee, as usual. It was great fun! They seem to enjoy it, based on their wag wag wag VIBRATING pre-walk ritual once the leash appears, but holy crap they do not cooperate. And it’s hilarious.

Ben and I trade turns holding their leash, because while they are helpful getting up hills, one’s arm and shoulder also happen to go a bit numb after a while. We spend the time laughing at the dogs, looking for birds, and singing rounds of Kookaburra Sits In An Old Gum Tree and singing All I Want Is A Proper Cup Of Coffee faster and faster where Ben’s unwavering duty is to perform the deep “boom boom” necessary during the chorus.

We looked for new paths and found an interesting stretch along a dried up creek bed, then headed back to our normal route through several parks, many of which have several of the strangely blackened web-covered trees I’ve mentioned before.

As is my wont, I peered into the largest funnel webs looking for residents and tried to lure them out. I was successful once, but what I got surprised me, and well maybe just a little bit freaked me out, because it wasn’t the brown house spider I expected, but, I think, a huntsman!

Huntsman, or Sparassidae, spiders are the one species that creeps me out a little, both because of their size and their structure. I love orb weavers, with their bulging abdomens and spindly legs, hanging from their webs or awkwardly walking across the ground.  Crab spiders are elegant with their bright colors and long, graceful, first and second legs. Wolf spiders have a certain charisma about them, while they hunt through undergrowth and tend to their young, eyes reflecting lights at night like tiny diamonds. Tarantulas are giant friendly teddybears of spiders, furry and stout, with fascinating behaviors. Jumping spiders are simply adorable with their large eyes that track you and respond to your movements, and expressive, often colorful, pedipalps with which they wave in the air to communicate and clean their chelicerae. And on and on.

From Wikipedia.

But huntsman are the one spider that teaches me empathy for those that really can’t tolerate any spider, because of too many legs or hairiness or eyes or movement or whatever. Because to me, huntsman are simply constructed in a proportion that squicks me out on a deep level. Their legs are too long, and not stout and limb-like, or thin and delicate like some spiders. They’re long, so long, and thin (but not thin enough), and hairy. And they’re fast. And they’re big.

So I admit that I jumped when this guy appeared. And maybe continued to twitch a little.

But curiosity is an anti-fear of sorts, so I examined it, took pictures, and played with it with my probing tool.  He was maybe 5, 6 inches across? I’m not an expert in Huntsman, by any means, so this is only a tentative identification, but it was definitely *not* the spider that I think built the web. And what it was doing there, comfortably squeezed into the funnel dwelling? I have no idea.

Look at those chelicerae!

The fact that he wasn’t twitchy at all when I got close to take pictures helped a lot, which is good, because huntsman spiders are common all over Australia, and in fact I’ve been looking forward to finding one. To my knowledge they can more normally be found under loose sheets of bark and other narrow, flat spaces, rather than in other spiders’ funnel webs. But really, he’s beautiful.