Winter in the land of sun

It is really cold these mornings. in fact it is so cool that it is difficult to wriggle out from under my cosy feather doona ("doovey", "quilt") to face the day. Colin races down to the other end of the house to switch on the reverse cycle airconditioning to warm the place up. Perhaps he is afraid that he might miss out on breakfast if he didn't! How cold is it? Well this morning was a freezing 13 decrees!

Yes, I am tongue in cheek. 13 degrees is not really cold for most people in the world but for us poor people acclimatised to the not so cold temperature of the sub tropics, it is!

The good thing about winter is the change of plants in the garden. I haven't done a thing and the garden is ablaze with colour - mostly because it is being contrasted with the snowflake or snowball bushes. These shrubs are a type of poinsettia, sometimes called the Christmas bush in the UK because the red blooms are used as floral decoration at Christmas. They really come into their own in the cooler weather.

Here is a close up of the flowers of the snowball bush. You can see the likeness with the much larger flowers of the red poinsettia. The flowers are coloured leaves - more correctly "bracts" and the flowers are tiny and mistaken as stamens.

The flowers of the snowball bush

Just to show how these plants really make a fantastic show, here is a shot of my front garden. Actually it is really difficult to find the right time of day to take a shot from the road like this - the front garden faces South so at any time of the day the sun is behind the house. The plants nearest to the house never have the warmth of sun on their soil and roots. This is why I have had to plant shade loving plants there - such as ginger, tropical rhododendron and azalea. There are many plants which can enjoy living in shady places like this but they are mostly foliage and rarely flower.

The snowball bushes are to the left of the tall Alexander Palm

The red plant to the right of the palm is a double poinsettia

So here is one shot of my front garden. If I were to walk a few paces I could show much more - enough to bore the socks of you! So one is enough. I just hope that this year there will not be a heavy frost as there was a couple of years ago. The plants were all burnt off - even the palm trees - with one night frost of minus ten. It has taken two years for the palm trees to shed their dead leaves.

AJ

Koalas and wombats

Australia is home to many unique and wonderful creatures and I would love to share with you a little information about two of our favourites. The wombat and the koala. These two very different animals are distant relatives, they are marsupials, which means they raise their young in a pouch but the distinction that links them is that the pouch faces backwards. The pouch of most other marsupials faces forwards.

The Koala has long been known as the "koala bear" but it is not a bear nor is it related to a bear. The koala has the tiniest baby imaginable, it is barely more than a tiny one centimetre long embryo but it manages instinctively to slither into the pouch and latch on to one of the two teats inside. It stays in the pouch for about five months before it ventures out. For the next few months it will cling to the mothers back as she makes her way through the tree she is feeding on until, at 12 months, it is capable of self sufficiency and will leave.

The koala has a boring diet. It eats only eucalyptus leaves (the new leaves) and usually will only eat the leaves from about six varieties of eucalyptus in its location. It does not need to drink - getting enough moisture from the fresh leaves. During extreme heat or in drought the koala will seek out water for a drink but normally it stays in the trees.

The biggest enemy of the koala is its most ardent fan - us! It is because of our need to build houses that the habitat of the koala has been decimated. We have chosen to live in the same area that they chose and with fewer trees and therefore less food, the koalas are no longer in the numbers they enjoyed before Captain Cook told the world about Australia and white habitation made a difference.

The wombat is a ground hugging animal that I find very appealing. They can grow to about a metre in length and are usually quite solitary. They too have a rear facing pouch and the young have a similar pattern of development to the koala, staying in the pouch for almost six months but they trot alongside their mother once they leave the pouch and they look very cute!

The incisor teeth of the wombat, top and bottom, keep growing all of their lives so even when a wombat is quite old it is still able to grind the tough stems and roots that it eats.

Fossil evidence tells us that there was once a wombat the size of a hippopotamus in the time of Tyrannosaurus Rex! I am glad they shrank!

Wombats are not popular with farmers - when they come across a fence they barge right through it opening up a hole through which unwelcome pests can penetrate - such as dingos, foxes and rabbits. They are furry bulldozers!

There are a few different sorts of Wombat and all have slight behavioural and subtle physical differences but to me they all look the same!

AJ

Skin Colour

When I went to Noosa for the Video Convention there were two festivals in the locality in the weekend preceding the event. Although I principally used my still camera, I did manage to grab a few shots of the happenings in Eumundi - a country town just up the road a few klicks from Noosa. I do apologise for the wobbly nature of the shots, I used always to use a tripod and to see such lurching of the images makes me cringe - but when in crowds it is impossible and dangerous to try and use a tripod. So even though I know I should have used one (didn't take it out of the car) I know I could not. So hang on to your seat and enjoy the body painting competition at Eumundi.

AJ

Mighty lizards

I had heard about them, they seemed like something from a fairy story. An island on which lived lizards that were so huge and had such appetites that they could eat humans. I remember being told of an elevated walk way that had been built so that visitors (human) to the island could walk in safety above the reach of the lizards and look down on them and admire them. Woe betide anyone who fell off the walkway and did not clamber back before being spotted by these huge reptiles.

The lizard is real, It is known as the Komodo Dragon and I saw one on my visit to Australia Zoo.

My photograph is not really very good, the dragon was half in half out of the shade and so large I couldn't get it all in anyway. A thick glass shield separated the public from the reptile and yet allowed perfect viewing of it. The head is larger than the head of my dog, a curly coat retriever which will give you some idea of its size. What an ugly creature it is! But fascinating - in a scary way!

You can't but help respect a creature that considers itself above humans in the food chain!

Australia, too, has large lizards - and hundreds of varieties of smaller ones. The lace monitor, which is one of the goannas is one that often visits picnic sites in the bush and is rather partial to barbecued sausages, They are about a metre long and although are allowed to come reasonably close it is not wise to put fingers near its mouth. All goanna eat carrion so there would be many nasty germs on their teeth so getting bitten by one would not be a good idea.

When I asked what the goanna was - in this next picture, the Australia Zoo fellow who was chatting to us said it was a "perrenti". I am not sure if that is a common name for this goanna but I tried looking it up and found a picture similar to it with the spots running in rings around the body like on this one and it was called a Kimberley Rock Monitor. If you have any other suggestions to the name I would appreciate your input.

One time, on a visit to Central Australia I took a photo of a large black goanna sunning itself on a rock and was told that it was a black perrenti. So "perrenti" could just be a common name used instead of "goanna".

Lizards, to me, are a link with the dinasaur past. There is a similarity among many of them to the mighty lizards that roamed the earth before the mammals took over.

AJ

Echidna on the move

This little character is quite used to having his photograph taken and paid not the slightest attention to the camera held over the side of his pen. I love his "drunken Sailor" gait!

AJ

Botanic Gardens, NZ

Last day with the video groups

I received a question about the echidna and would like to tell you a little more about this unique Australian creature before I write about today's activities.

The echidna is unique, it is not related to the porcupine or the hedgehog. Surprisingly this little creature is a pouched animal. A single egg is produced and held in a pouch which opens to the rear. This direction is because of the low slung nature of the animal. If the pouch opened at the front like (a kangaroo) soil and twigs would be scraped into it and the egg and the young damaged. The egg hatches in the pouch into a bald, hairless and helpless embryo that, like a kangaroo joey, attaches itself to a teat which swells in its mouth, so anchoring it to the mother. Gradually the tiny embryo forms into a miniature echidna with soft hair and still it is anchored to the teat. The spines form but are soft at first. When the spines start to harden the tiny echidna is expelled from the pouch and is left in a hidden nest for a few more weeks while the mother goes out to gather food for herself and return often to feed the young milk. When the young echidna is weaned it is independent and may leave to live a lone life straight away. Defence is to disappear downwards into the soil. The echidna seems to be able to go straight down even in the hardest of ground! A hedgehog would roll up into a ball, The echidna merely pulls his head right under his shoulders and the four legs do the rest! Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle and down it goes.

Now just one more picture from yesterday's visit to the zoo, I was delighted to see this cat being walked along like a dog! So far this big puss is not in a pen where the public can see it so the keeper takes it for a walk - on the other side of a wire fence - past the public tracks so that people can see it. I was fortunate to be able to spot the cheetah (leopard?) as it was taken across the path from its walking track to the other side where it was to be taken back to its invisible (to the public) pen. But why did the girl walk so quickly when she could see a few of us wanted to take photos? I only just managed to drag the Samsung camera out in time - nearly missed them! I never saw the face of the animal, it was turned away from me all the time it was walked across the track.

This afternoon was the final activity for the delegates to the Video Convention. We were all taken to a little country town to a very old theatre that ran silent movies with a fellow who played the pedal organ to accompany the movie and give mood to the images on the screen. The trip to Pomona took an hour (detour to a lookout on the way!) and we all piled into the theatre.
Colin and I took our seats where we felt we would be able to see the screen without too many heads in the way. Five minutes later my head was swimming and I could hardly breathe. The musty mouldy smell was overpowering (have you even been into an "op shop" where there are lots of old clothes?) Two minutes more and I just had to get out, I felt as if I would pass out! I have never felt that way before. Fortunately Colin could see I was serious and we hastily made our way outside. It was only three in the afternoon and the departure time was 7.30pm What were we to do in a little place like Pomona for all that time and rain on its way?
We wandered down the shopping street to the old pub and decided that it was definitely not a place for any female! Talk about rough! I called into a news agency and picked up a puzzle book and we managed to find a coffee shop that was open. The tables were outside on the pavement but it was still daylight and still not too chilly so we sat there and enjoyed a palatable cup of coffee and a muffin. As we wandered along the street someone going home from work advised us to return to the theatre side of the rail track and seek shelter because a serious storm was on its way. I assume that when it rains the foot path turns to a quagmire! We did as suggested and chatted to the team doing the cooking for the theatre. They were using what looked to be a covered barbecue on the pavement to cook the roasts. A table was set up out on the pavement for us and when the theatre program was over we lined up with the rest of the delegates for our meal (which we took to our outside table) and no one was even aware that we had missed out on the films!
Yes, the storm came. About ten of us had climbed in to the bus for the homeward trip when it hit. Everyone else (the other forty) got soaked getting in! The rain poured down in buckets for fifteen minutes and we were hopeful of getting to the Conference resort and the cars without getting wet. Three minutes before we pulled up the heavens opened again and the rain was heavier than before! Most people dashed the ten paces into the foyer of the place but Colin and I were prepared to get wet, we wanted out of this convention! We ran fifty metres to the car and dropped in as fast as we could, stripping off our jackets as we did so!
Its been a good week, we have caught up with a lot of enthusiasts and have been enthused. Now I am ready to go home!
AJ