Australian Adventures

A description of my many Australian encounters ensues.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Two lazy animals: Wallabies and Wombats

Yes, it was a warm day. I say that once again, because... the wallabies, like the kangaroos, didn't move. Much. Nevertheless, here are the wallabies!


There are two wallabies in the following two pictures, that moved. Can you tell which ones they are?


Wallabies are a smaller version of kangaroos. I like them; they're cute :)


Aha! Wombats!

These ones didn't move at all. Hehe.


This one didn't move, either :P Oh well.


Wombats like to walk around slowly, and mind their own business; as a result, a lot of them cause road accidents. Wombats are really thick animals, though; I guess you could compare them to deer in terms of car accidents. It would be a nasty wreck to hit a wombat.

Rainbow Birds, Brolgas, and a Quoll

Okay, okay. So, this first picture has a couple of birds in it, with rainbow feathers. I do believe that they are Rainbow Lorikeets; I couldn't get closer to them than this, considering that there was a big glass wall in my way :( So, it's kind of hard to find them. But, they were gorgeous.

Here are some Brolgas! They are white birds with a pink/orange spot on their heads. They're really pretty, and very nice to look at.

In the bottom of the picture and towards the left, there's an Ibis. Ignore that for now; I have a picture of an Ibis to share later :)


I like this picture. You can see the brolga's pink/orange spot, in contrast to its white feathers. I also like the fact that the brolga was wading in the water.


A Quoll looks kind of like a humungous ferret, to me. This one was running around its cage like crazy, and was staring intently at something in these photos. I don't know what it was staring at, though.


Pelicans and a Water Hen

Well, we were walking past a lake, when... wait a minute!! There's a pelican swimming over there!!! Take a picture, take a picture!!!

So I took a picture :)


Then Cheryl pointed out to me... there's a bunch of them on my right! So I took a picture of them, too.


I can't believe my luck. I turned back to my left again, to find that the pelican in the first picture was coming closer to us. It posed for me, and I took this last picture. Pelicans sure are beautiful birds!


Last week, I posted a picture of a black bird with a red head... I couldn't remember the name of it! It is a water hen :) Just thought you'd like to know that.

A Ghala, a Platypus, and a Black Swan

I saw this little bird, and decided that it was pretty and needed to have its picture taken :) It's a Ghala; its head is pink, its chest is red, and its wings are gray. It's a cute little bird.


A PLATYPUS! Heehee. I took a bunch of pictures of this platypus; he posed for me! Hehe. This one turned out to be the best of those pictures, though... even though it looks like a blob. I think a platypus is my new favorite animal. They're really cool! And they're really cute; you can't see that in this picture but, when they're dry, they're fuzzy little creatures.

Some facts about the Platypus:

A platypus is a nocturnal animal. That means that the platypus sleeps during the day, and is awake during the night. I was able to get a picture of this platypus when it was awake, because the room that it was in was really, reeeeaaaally dark; so the platypus thought it was night time, and was wide awake!

Also, a platypus is an animal that lays eggs. This is kind of a strange thing, because a platypus is a mammal; and mammals don't lay eggs. Reptiles, like snakes and lizards, lay eggs.


Ahh... the Black Swan. This one was funny; we opened a gate to go inside and see more animals, and this swan walked right up to us. Heh. Melissa was afraid it was going to bite her :P It didn't. It just walked right by us. Can you believe how long its neck is??

Lazy Kangaroos!

So, here are the kangaroos! Well... they're not standing up or hopping around, but... they're still kangaroos! It was a warm day, and they were all lounging around. I didn't see one of them move, I don't think. Hehe. Oh well, at least I was able to see them!


This is the nearest that I was able to get to them. So, here's a lazy kangaroo up close!


And, just for good measure... here are some more of them! Heh. If I see a kangaroo in the wild sometime, then I'll definitely post a picture of it. I have officially decided to carry my camera around with me everywhere.

Actual Koalas!

Real koalas!!! They were in several spots in the sanctuary, but I took my best pictures with this one. His name is Djembe (don't ask me how to pronounce that, because I haven't the slightest idea), and he is adorable.


Koalas like to eat eucalyptus leaves, which make them really sleepy. I was so excited when Djembe decided to go for a walk, and even more excited when I saw that I had a really good photo of him! And I wasn't the only excited one... there was a horde of Japanese female tourists who all started shouting, "Cute!!! It's so cute!!! It's moving!! Look, look, it's moving!!" That was definitely funny.


Djembe decided to move into the shade. Who can blame him? It was a little warm yesterday. He probably decided to go to sleep... all of the other koalas at the sanctuary were already sleeping.


Did you know? It costs about $5,000 to feed one koala for one year. Koalas eat eucalyptus leaves, and the sanctuary had no shortage of those... however, koalas eat other foods, too! It gets to be really expensive to have a koala. Too bad, though... they're really cute!

Dingoes!

A dingo... looks like a dog ;) They're beautiful; their fur is a gorgeous orange color. These particular dingoes were howling at something, and it was pretty cool to watch them. In a book that Cheryl gave to me from the sanctuary, it says that dingoes "can be kept together easily as pairs but not larger groups as adult males tend to fight with other males, and adult females with other females." It also says that dingoes eat other animals, but they will also eat soft fruits. Interesting, no?



Now they're both in the picture, howling at something unknown. Could be that they were a little agitated at all the noise from the many, MANY elementary school kids that were running around all over the place. Who knows? Maybe they just wanted to show off.


One more picture of the dingoes. They were so beautiful!

Emu! Cool!

Emu!!! It's an Emu!!! And it came super close to us. I mean, there was a fence in the way, but I was still surprised that it came right up to the fence :) Cheryl told me that these things would be awfully nasty to come across in the wild. Maybe they like to chase people? Haha. That reminds me of a movie that I saw a long time ago, where the main character was chased around an island by an Emu. I can't remember the name of the movie, though...


No, I don't know what the Emu was eating in the next picture. It looks like leaves, though. Do Emus even eat leaves??


I like this Emu. It posed for me quite nicely :) There were more Emus with it in the same place... I think maybe 5 more or so... but none of them were as close as this one. It was awesome!!

Healesville Sanctuary

Cheryl, Melissa, Matt [Melissa's boyfriend] and I went to an animal sanctuary yesterday. It was GREAT! In fact, it was so great, that I took 190 pictures. Don't worry; I will not be putting all of them up here. Haha. I'm going to post pictures of a bunch of the different animals we saw, though. It was AWESOME, and I got some fabulous pictures.

When we entered the sanctuary, we went directly to a "Birds of Prey" show that started shortly after we arrived. It was really fun! The bird in this first picture is... either a Whistling Kite or a Peregrine Falcon. Heh. You know, I'm pretty sure it's a Peregrine Falcon.

This next bird is an owl. What kind of owl, you ask? Hmm...

Hehe. Okay, this is definitely a post that I'm going to edit :P

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Last Day of School

Melissa had her last day of school on Wednesday. Now she's into her summer vacation!

Anyway, I went with her for her last day. And, me being the funny person that I am, I wore one of her uniforms. Aren't I beautiful? ;) I wore it mostly because I wanted to, and also partly because if I hadn't... I would've stuck out like a sore thumb. Hehe. A sea of purple, and a random girl wearing normal clothes, who talks differently than everyone else. If I'm going to be stared at, I want it to be because I'm stunningly beautiful :)

Mmyes. Anyway, her last day of school is pretty much like our first day of school :p We went to the classes that she's going to be taking this next year, and her teachers gave out their syllabus and described the course. Not to mention, they gave out a lot of homework for the students to do over the vacation. Melissa has to read 6 books and write responses to them, read half of a text book, and some other things. Dude, it wouldn't be very much fun to be a senior in high school over here.

This is Melissa, being funny at lunch time.

ALSO!!! Before I forget, I just wanted to say to the people who've been commenting on my posts: I've been replying to your comments. It's kind of a pathetic way to reply, but it's what I can figure out right now... So, if you've written on my blog, I've probably replied to you! Just look up the post that you commented on, and my reply will be on the same page as yours.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I miss you! <3

Sunday, November 19, 2006

The Ride Home

On the way back to the station we came from, we passed over a bridge. It was really awesome! I'd assume that we passed over the same bridge on the way to the lake, but I was probably too busy looking at the pretty trees to pay attention to much else. These two pictures are of the train crossing the bridge...


Melissa and I decided to hang out of the train. These are our shoeless feet, hanging off of the bridge! (Yes, I have Tigger socks.) And we were perfectly safe, just in case you're wondering. The windows that we hung out of had bars across them to hang on to/prevent people from falling out of the train. You can see the bars in the first and second pictures of this post.



A view from the bridge of the vegitation below. There's a small creek running through the middle of the picture.

The Lake

We got off of the train at a place called Emerald Lake Park. The lake was really pretty :) We ate lunch at one of the tables there. It was a gorgeous day.

This tree fern is the same kind that the Taylors have in their back yard; however, these ones are taller, meaning that they're older. The Taylor's tree fern is around 30 years old, so... imagine how old these ones must be! The lake is in the background of this photo, too.

Here I go again, taking pictures of various things. I liked this bird, though, and there were a lot of them, so... I decided to take its picture. It has a red head; you can't really see that here. It looked neat. (Behind it is a duck.)


Melissa, being silly like always, declared that this shack she's standing in front of used to be her family's house. Haha, Melissa.


Did I get lucky or what?!? I got a picture of a kookaburra! It randomly flew up and posed for me. I have a few pictures of it up this close, and I think this one turned out to be the best of those. I was amazed that it didn't fly away... of course, after I took a couple of pictures and started walking away, it left. Melissa also took a couple pictures of it. Pretty amazing, no?

Mostly gum trees

The forest that we went through had TONS of gum trees in it. This is a picture of what I think is the prettiest gum tree, the Ghost Gum. I love how pale it is :) It's pretty.


I took a picture of the gum trees' branches, just because gum trees have pretty leaves. I like how the picture turned out, but... you can't see detail on the leaves. The top right corner of the picture is the train window.



More gum trees :) I don't know why this one was taken at such an odd angle. Oh well, I still like it.


There was a break in the trees, and it opened up to the picture below. So pretty... It seemed that no matter how far off you looked, there was still green. Beautiful.

Train Ride

Cheryl took Melissa and I on a train ride through the forest on Saturday. It was absolutely gorgeous! I'll put some pictures up in the next post of the pretty greenery. The train was called the "Puffing Billy." Interesting name, but fantastic ride.

One of the cool things about this train ride, was that it was perfectly acceptable to sit on the rail of the windows (there was no glass), and just "hang out." So fun!!! You can see people hanging out in these pictures. The first is of the front of the train, and the second is of the back of the train. It was SO FUN!


Melissa and I were goofing off and taking pictures of our feet constantly. Here's one of them.


At one of the stops that the train made, Melissa and I hopped out and Cheryl took a picture of us, acting goofy underneath a sign. We were having too much fun :)