Australia is For the Birds

Yesterday we explored Melbourne a bit more, found a famous place called Hosier Lane, where every surface is covered with amazing graffiti. There were taggers at work and gawkers like us watching. We even saw a business for "exterior decoration" where you can hire taggers to come paint your property. Here is their van!




At noon we packed up and left our cozy hotel, "The Vic", in Melbourne and headed out to our next workshop venue. Two lovely women, Susan and Bernadette, are hosting us in their home for two nights. We like them both immensely, and have been chatting for hours. At dinner last evening (pasta, salad from the garden, homemade bread with garlic butter, Australian wine) the warned us "should you hear some odd noises outside your window tonight, it is probably just the fruit bats feeding in the lillipilli tree".




We did not, alas, hear the fruit bats (maybe tonight), but here in the outskirts of Melbourne we hear a gorgeous cacophony of bird calls. Rosy crested and lemon crested cockatoos are everywhere -we have seen fields of them. Also ibis, snowy egrets, lyre birds, huge flocks of starlings who fill the skies with their loud chatter. Then there are the lorikeets, budgerigars, mynas, crested pigeons, and a rainbow symphony of unfamiliar ones. There is so much bird life here, everywhere, that it makes us aware of how little bird life there is in the Santa Cruz area. The skies here are filled with raucous squawking all day long. Sad, really how little we hear at home.









And who knew that emus make a deep grunting noise like pigs?



It is cold and rainy the last few days. We are in multiple-layers of silk long johns and wooly sweaters. We hear that Ballarat, our next venue, is much colder. Strange to be in mid-winter in mid-July.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Melbourne, Au