Now that we know we have a place to live (it’s confirmed! we talked on the phone and everything!) Ian ever so graciously, I mean, seriously, carted us around to a farmer’s market and several different stores to buy some flat-necessaries.
At the market I bought some oranges that were picked yesterday. This is one example of when offering free samples to passers-by really pays off.
I mentioned that I’d never had passionfruit, so Ian bought some of those. What a weird fruit. They really look like the seed pod for some sort of dangerous alien-spawn, but they are delicious! The texture could be off-putting I imagine, but it reminded me of tomato seeds, and it was scrumptiously tart-sweet.
We visited a mall where two stores were going out of business, which, well, is sad for them but WIN for us. We got a store-used fan, some cheap used power strips, kitchen accouterments, and I scored a mouse for cheap that I’ve been lusting after for months.
Errands done, we awaited Viive’s return from a cancer conference where she’d spent the first half of the day, and then we set out to explore a lovely park called Balls Head and have dinner in downtown Sydney.
Balls Head is in the middle of a bunch of urban development, yet you can get lost in squiggly little paths through sandstone cliffs and scrubby bush.
And you always have the incredible views of the harbor and the city skyline.
After a chilly exploration (it’s spring here, plus coastal winds) Viive and Ian took us out for Indian at a place called “Cumin”. Hah. I converted everyone to my old, boring, favorite, Chicken Tikka Masala! There’s a reason it’s my favorite, after all. We all, um, ate a bit too much. Turns out four mains for four people is about one more than necessary, but only if you’re unwilling to stuff yourself on delicious. Viive and Ian have been so, so nice to us this entire time. They’ve let us stay in their house, given us breakfast each day (steel cut oats in the rice cooker), and taken us for dinner twice now. We’ve really been blown away. They keep saying “we’ve been there, we remember what it’s like being in a new place” but still. Incredibly generous.
And then, then! We took a walk down along the waterfront past Luna Park, which is supposedly reminiscent of Coney Island. But I’ve never been to Coney Island, so if I ever do go there, it will be reminiscent of Luna Park to me. It’s a nostalgic-feeling old amusement park with games and bumper cars and a small rollercoaster and, of course, lots of bright lights. And a giant head with enormous teeth and creepy-doll cheeks that eats you as you enter. Also that.
This may be the best part, however. The trash/recycle bins were all marked with what looked like those big boards at fairs where you stick your head into a cutout hole in order to take funny pictures. And then you feed the clowns your trash/recycling!
I call that a wonderfully full day. Passion fruit! Oranges! Cheap housing supplies! Delicious Indian! Fancy lights! Rubbish-clowns!
….tomorrow we move! Can you believe it? We’ve been here less than a week, and we found a place to live! That’s mostly thanks to Ben. I have to grudgingly admit that finding a flat is probably more important and nicer in the long run than visiting the aquarium :)
first glimpse of Australian dawn; southern hemisphere stars
Our flight arrived at 6:30 in the morning, Sydney time. I believe that’s around 4:30 in the afternoon back home. I slept a fair amount, I suppose. Ben slept very little. He kept saying his butt hurt. I can’t blame him, really, after 20-some hours sitting.
first glimpse of land
We arrived, deplaned, evacuated orifices, passed immigration, picked up luggage, changed money, and met Viive and Ian at the airport. Viive was waving a UM football seat cushion around to catch our attention.
It turns out that Sept 2 is father’s day in Australia. Happy father’s day! Viive and Ian had big family plans for the afternoon, so after showering, dumping our bags, and settling in a little (Ian made me a latte. Apparently Ozzies are coffee snobs, by their own admission. yum), Ben and I got dropped off at a kind of daycare while they did family stuff. Where the daycare was The Coolest Daycare Ever (™), otherwise known as the Featherdale Wildlife Park.
We pet wallabies, a koala, an echidna, emus, kangaroos, and wombats! I even accidentally fondled a wallaby’s testicles! What did YOU do today?
If you’re curious as to how you accidentally fondle a wallaby’s testicles, you pet a friendly wallaby all over, feeling its ribs and its paws and its tummy fur when you notice something on its stomach, which you then touch because the wallaby is letting you pet it all over, and then you realize you are holding your very own set of wallaby testicles. That’s how it happens.
If you were wondering what kangaroo wallaby testicles look like, well, they’re rather extraordinary.
Fun fact: koalas sleep 16-20 hours a day. If they’re asleep they don’t care what you do, and if they’re awake they’re far more concerned with munching on leaves than with how psyched you are to touch them.
what jet lag? KOALA
Like many small animal parks, you could buy treats to feed the animals. These were in the form of ice cream cones filled with alfalfa and food pellets. The brilliant part of this, for me, was that families would buy six of these for their kids who would then spill the food and drop broken cones in in cages where the animals were too well fed to care. This meant that I could then come along and scavenge armfuls of cones to feed various animals that most of the patrons ignored.
too full to care
Once I figured this out and we had already seen most of the park, I had a never-ending source of entertainment! Most people wanted to feed the warm and fuzzy and adorable wallabies that freely wandered the park with the people and the peacocks and the pigeons and the egrets and the ibises. Given the ratio of small children with generous parents to wallabies, the wallabies did not particularly want more food, being well stuffed and content to loll in the sun. They did, however, appreciate a good scratch.
they’re soft. really really really soft.
(Sidenote: the male that was attempting to mount a female already with joey did not appreciate me offering his intended a good scratch)
push off, yank
At one point I spent ten minutes with a rock wallaby which really seemed to appreciate my pets. (The rock wallabies were in their own sealed enclosure with holes in the fence just large enough to stick a hand through.
The animals that were most fascinating to feed were the birds and other critters mostly ignored by patrons. The park housed two emus in an enclosure with several red kangaroos who, like the wallabies, were more interested in sunning than begging. The emus on the other hand wanted food BADLY. The problem was that most people are somewhat intimidated by a five foot tall bird, and while they all wanted their pictures taken with one, they were wary of feeding them. Let’s just say I made two very good friends who didn’t mind me stroking their necks or scratching their large feathered bodies.
kinda like cookie monster
The cassowaries were also interesting to feed. I was quite timid at first, having heard much of how dangerous they are, but the thing about metal fences is they can’t kick you through them, and they loved being fed bits of cone through the fence.
We know we kick people to death, but really we just want some ice cream cone…
The park also contains several hundred parrots, cockatoos, cockatiels, parakeets, lorikeets, and on and on. It was interesting to try feeding different species and different birds within a species bits of food pellet and cone. Some were much more interested than others, some were much more dextrous than others, and some were much more intelligent than others. The red tailed black cockatoos were the most interesting and varied in how they ate the bits of cone. Some would bite with their beak and lets most of it drop to the ground, most would grasp it with one foot while taking small bites with their beaks, but one, oh, one! This cockatoo at first seemed to be having trouble eating the cone at all, as it took two pieces from my fingers and dropped them to the ground. But after I stopped giving it pieces, it worked its way to the ground by beak and claw, whereupon it picked a piece of cone up and walked over to its pool of water. It dunked the cone in the water and then ate small bites. Sometimes it would re-dunk a piece if it wasn’t wet enough. It repeated the process with each piece of cone I gave it. After this discovery I gave pieces of cone to every ret tailed black cockatoo I could find, but none used this particular method of consumption. Cool bird.
There was also another red tailed black cockatoo that I’m fairly convinced fell deeply in love with Ben, but I’ll let him tell that story.
The Tawny Frogmouth is an amazing and hilarious looking bird that fluffs its feathers such that it looks like a really cranky peace of rock. I kind of want one.
Kookaburras look like large fluffy kingfishers and cackle like packs of orangutans. Truly.
After four hours of watching, peering, feeding, petting, scratching, feeling, and walking, we were picked up, packed partly catatonic into the car, transported home whereupon we left for dinner at a “rather nice pub” called the Windsor. Worry not, there were no zombies.
It was a WEIRD pub experience. Nice atmosphere, but very odd service. You sat yourself, got your own menus, went up to the register to order, picked up your own food when your buzzer went off, and bought your drinks at the bar. The food was tasty but unremarkable. Lots of meat. I asked Viive if there were usually vegetarian options at restaurants and she said, yeah, I mean, there are salads. Oh well. We might be eating more meat here when we go out.
After returning home and fighting to stay awake during the car ride we lay down in our cold room under lovely covers on a mattress with a heating pad under the sheet. And this was not just ANY heating pad, this is a SPLIT SIDE heating pad! I cranked my side up to a three, Ben left his side off, and we slept like the dead from 8pm-7am.
This is how we felt.
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Summary: after traveling for 27 hours, young couple reaches new country, pets animals, and manages to stay awake until a somewhat reasonable hour. Go young couple!
