"Are you Seanan?" she asked, after Jeanne and I got into her van. I affirmed that I was. "I thought you'd be a bloke!"
"I get that a lot," I said.
We drove around Melbourne picking up the rest of our party (hi, Kate and David!), including a bunch of cheery, chattery ladies from Tennessee, and then we were off for the You Yangs, where we would see, presumably, wild koalas doing wild koala things. On the way, we were treated to an enormous cornucopia of Australian birds, including my new personal favorite, the Australian magpie. This is a magpie that is not fucking around. It doesn't just have patches of white, oh, no, it is a white-out FACTORY, and it is COMING FOR YOUR EYES. (Also of note, the magpie lark, which is a third the size, very similar in coloring, sings duets, and will peck the holy crap out of you if you get too close.)
After we'd been driving for a while, Janine pulled into a field so we could look at HOLY CRAP PARROTS. Just THERE. Being WILD PARROTS. Dude, what the FUCK, Australia? There were also a few magpies around, so I wandered off to take pictures of them. "Seanan ignores the ostensibly interesting wildlife to photograph magpies" was a big theme of the day.
Once everyone had finished flipping out over the parrots, we got back in the van and finished driving to the You Yangs. On the way in, one of the chattery ladies spotted a swamp wallaby. The van was stopped. I spotted a second swamp wallaby. Janine was delighted. The ladies were delighted. Everyone was delighted! I found a guide to the native spiders of the area. Everyone was less delighted, probably because of my well-voiced desire to become the Spider Queen and lead my arachnid minions to victory.
We were met in the eucalyptus grove by Mary, the koala guide, who had been koala scouting to make sure we'd actually see some. Since koalas don't move much, she wasn't that concerned that the koalas would have gone anywhere, and we went hiking off into the brush. Koalas are boring. They sit, very high, and do nothing. It's like staring at shelf fungus that will pee on you if you get too close. I quickly lost interest in koalas, and started picking things up off the forest floor. "Things" included feathers (two of which went in Janine's hat), eggshells, interesting rocks, and pieces of bone. I am a dangerous individual when bored.
We drove on to an inordinately large rock called, reasonably enough, Big Rock. We climbed Big Rock. This was fun for me. Not so much, maybe, for the Tennessee ladies. Sorry, Tennessee ladies. Janine fed us all gum, like, from a gum tree. Janine is the devil.
Next up: lunch, served in a lovely little picnic hut in Serendip Sanctuary. It included sandwiches, fruit, biscuits (tim tams!), and outback tea, made with fresh gum leaves. I did not drink the tea. Everyone else drank the tea. Everyone else is CLEARLY INSANE, and I say this as the woman who went to AUSTRALIA to look for SPIDERS.
Now fortified, we went to finish the tour, and look at kangaroos. It turns out kangaroos don't much like being looked at. You have to sneak up on them (totally easy when you're a large group of people, most of whom don't spend much time outdoors), stay quiet, and look at them through binoculars. And then, when they inevitably notice you, you get to watch them boing boing boing away. Super-fun. The kangaroos were boring. The many varieties of giant flesh-ripping ant were not. Neither were the echidna scrapes, the big orange bugs, the entire denuded emu skeleton, or—best thing ever—the dead kangaroo. Oh, the dead kangaroo. Its flesh had been picked away by meat ants, and I was able to truly study its structure. Plus, there was a spider inside its skull. Thank you, Australia. I love you, too.
(Upon discovering the dead kangaroo, I hankered down to study it and take pictures. Our guide gamely tried to make this educational, and not get upset about the fact that the crazy Californian was way more interested in the dead kangaroo than in the live ones. Thank you, Janine. You were awesomely tolerant.)
With rain imminent and everyone exhausted, we made one last stop, at a billabong completely filled with birds. Black swans! So cool! Then it was back to Melbourne proper, passing kangaroos, swamp wallabys, and dozens of magpies on the way. Janine asked us about pie (apparently, cherry pie is viewed as a cruel joke in Australia, where cherries cost eighteen dollars a kilo during the off-season). We answered as best we could, until at last, we were back at our hotel, and could collapse for a little while before heading back to the alley for dinner.
I had lamb. Holy crap, lamb in Australia is like a religious experience. Welcome to the First Church of Mary's Little Lamb, please pass the sweet potato mash.
It was a very good day. Even without spiders.
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September 23 2010, 15:01:05 UTC 6 years ago
I would SO rather go tourist-ing with you than with a normal group *LOL*
September 23 2010, 15:06:51 UTC 6 years ago
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September 23 2010, 15:16:53 UTC 6 years ago
I think I would've been with you on the magpies vs. parrots debate. Parrots I've seen. A bird that looks like a crow who lost a fight with a bottle of white-out I haven't seen.
Black swans! So cool!
I thought I'd heard somewhere that black swans are native to Australia. They get all the cool species.
September 24 2010, 08:54:45 UTC 6 years ago
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September 23 2010, 15:17:25 UTC 6 years ago
I am told by another Australian friend that koalas may be boring, but they do also make horrible sounds that scare the crap out of people.
September 24 2010, 14:35:36 UTC 6 years ago
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September 23 2010, 18:31:50 UTC 6 years ago
it's not morbid, its interesting.
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September 23 2010, 16:23:51 UTC 6 years ago
I remember passing flocks of galas and cockatiels (big FOOFY WHITE WOW WAZZAT birds) and just getting the 'tourist, eh' shrug at the desk when we came in babbling from our drive on the highway.
You want another wild parrot experience, come visit me. There's a flock down at Hermosa Beach, care of the Los Angeles Zoo having a less than stellar record of keeping captive birds, well, captive. They hang out near the Starbucks on Pier Avenue. I can't make this up.
September 24 2010, 09:48:48 UTC 6 years ago
Around Arcadia, you will also find escaped peacocks in gangs. They like to block traffic, while telling you they OWN THIS ROAD.
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Re: I'll bite...
September 24 2010, 14:38:03 UTC 6 years ago
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September 24 2010, 14:38:12 UTC 6 years ago
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Re: May I metaquote?
September 24 2010, 09:55:29 UTC 6 years ago
I am very bad around lobster. I look at them and wonder which one is coming to my plate. Sometimes I greet them...
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September 23 2010, 17:40:44 UTC 6 years ago
September 24 2010, 14:38:45 UTC 6 years ago
September 23 2010, 17:41:54 UTC 6 years ago
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September 23 2010, 20:11:11 UTC 6 years ago
Only...I ask that you keep your arachnid army away from my husband. I love him dearly, but he gets a "flee or kill" response when around spiders.
September 24 2010, 14:49:05 UTC 6 years ago
September 23 2010, 21:04:00 UTC 6 years ago Edited: September 23 2010, 21:06:43 UTC
We saw Janine again fleetingly the following week. She still had the cool brown-on-one-side, blue-the-other feather in her hat. (We did see further examples of the leather bush hat "in the wild", by the way. Her partner Roger's looked slept-in, and I think Graham's had been born with him.) Janine was awesome. The rest of the trip, whether I was watching quokkas or humpback whales, I kept hearing her voice saying "You cheeky little beauty!"
How did I miss the emu skeleton??!
September 24 2010, 14:49:50 UTC 6 years ago
Lovely to see you!
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They are following you!
September 23 2010, 22:23:26 UTC 6 years ago
see more Funny Graphs
You do posts like this one and the image above shows up in GraphJam the same day. What can I say?
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September 24 2010, 15:05:30 UTC 6 years ago
September 23 2010, 22:31:23 UTC 6 years ago
* When they're in season, blueberries are $8 for a 125g punnet
September 24 2010, 15:05:37 UTC 6 years ago
September 23 2010, 23:41:55 UTC 6 years ago
1: Cycling through New Zealand, uphill, on my honeymoon, in the middle of nowhere, along an old deserted traintrack, a lone magpie watched my husband and I from a tree branch that was easily 100+ meters away, left its perch, flew towards us, and SLAMMED INTO THE SIDE OF MY HEAD by way of informing us that cyclists were not a welcome intrusion into its territory. I was not wearing a helmet. Some scalp-bleeding was involved, and also a good deal of swearing, as the collision caused me to fall into a ditch. But when we reached the next pub, strangers took pity on me and bought me drinks! So, I guess that was OK. That, and the magpie did look a bit stunned. I don't think it meant to hit me so much as, you know, peck at me, and though it hovered around for a bit afterwards, it eventually flapped away looking a dazed.
2: My mother was once summarily attacked by a magpie while cycling in NSW. When she braked, she fell over the handlebars, and the magpie kept pecking her WHILE SHE WAS ON THE GROUND, then chased her away from the bike, so that she had to be rescued by road workers, two of whom went back for the bike, and were themselves attacked by said magpie. In the end, they put up a sign at either end of that stretch of track warning that a VISCIOUS ATTACK BIRD was lurking nearby. Seriously.
Also, did you learn the thing about painting eyes on the back of your hat/helmet to magpies don't attack your actual face? Because people here actually do that.
September 24 2010, 09:02:35 UTC 6 years ago
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September 24 2010, 00:25:17 UTC 6 years ago
But magpies *are* interesting wildlife.
September 24 2010, 15:05:58 UTC 6 years ago
September 24 2010, 00:38:09 UTC 6 years ago
Koalas don't move much, ever. I believe this is largely because the gum leaves they eat have a narcotic effect on them, so they're usually doped up to the eyeballs.
September 29 2010, 21:02:25 UTC 6 years ago
I am not a latent supporter of the Collingwood Football Club, but I do have one of their scarves. It was a gift!
September 24 2010, 00:43:12 UTC 6 years ago
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September 24 2010, 01:42:09 UTC 6 years ago
For a country with so many sheep (though not as many as NZ) lamb/mutton is so damned exxy.
September 24 2010, 09:04:29 UTC 6 years ago
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September 24 2010, 09:44:37 UTC 6 years ago
I, too, would never drink that tea. I know too well what would happen next.
When I was in Scotland, the two things I wanted to eat there were lamb and salmon. Properly prepared lamb IS a religious experience. I can generally do a good job, but occasionally, I fail. I do better with lamb stew some months.
October 1 2010, 15:52:26 UTC 6 years ago
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September 24 2010, 17:22:26 UTC 6 years ago
I also thought that you might like to know that I used to have a pet (well, actually several different ones) Huntsman Spider when I was about 8 or so. It wasn't quite an arachnid army, but I think with the right vision it could definitely be possible.
And you're right, magpies are the best.
September 25 2010, 00:14:39 UTC 6 years ago
We did sort-of have pet blue tongues for a while, as they lived under our driveway and would come out on sunny days and we would say hello and pat them. Fun times.
Also, koalas are very boring, I've never seen the appeal. But I like wallabies, and emus are neat - one of them chased my cousin once, hehehe.
(Sincerely, another Aussie from
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