geo-apololitical

Q: "How can you tell an Australian band without any direct hints?"
A: "If the song starts with a line like 'We can remember swimming in December'"

3 the most common parrots in Canberra

As I've mentioned for multiple times, the first thing that you notice there in Australia in environment around you is the amount of the wildlife around you - in particular - birds. Of course there are many more, but those are the ones you're likely to run into every single day, not trying much. The most common bird is megpie - a vicious, raven sized bird that attacks the pedestrians and cyclists in order to protect their children in the nest, here's the warning. And taking pictures of megpies would be like taking pictures of pigeons - so I have none :).
Parrots tend to hang around the driveways and green zones in city's suburbs. This one is cool cos they are all with heads and hair up.

Those ones are at my house where I lived in - the most regular guests at the surroundings.

Those are the largest parrots in Australia - about at the size of a chicken - the Latvians I met in Sydney said that they do the most of the damage when their lemons are coming to ripe - just bite in all of them and throw them to the ground.

And here are some of the other birds and bugs I ran into when having the camera with me.

wallabies

My last weekdays of stay in Australia I spent in a Australian university camping near the ocean in a place called Kioloa, where the guys from research center were giving talks. So I got a chance to wander around a bit. As I was taking some pictures around the camping, I met a local worker who took me up a hill where kangaroos and wallabies hang around, from there there was a nice view to the ocean as well and according to him - it is a good place for watching the whales - regretfully at that time he couldn't spot one. Of course my main source of interest was to see some wallabies, as I hadn't seen one in the wild and I got lucky... trice :).
So here is some teenager wallabie

This one has already grown up

They call them the red-neck wallabies, not because they live in country side, but because of the red neck. As it can be seen in the picture the fur quite differs from the one of kangaroo.

There is one hiding under the big tree...

And here's a muscle-kangaroo for comparison :).

The whole album here

Ok, now I know!

Powered by Southpark

Can't surf

On the morning of leaving Gold Coast, I took the second surfing lesson of my life - I did quite a bit better - almost managed to stand up properly, but still my clumsiness and lack of coordination played the major role almost all the way :). I enjoyed this lesson much more than the first one in Sydney - the weather was much better and the instructors were more useful. Anyway it was one of my top amusements during my stay in aussie.
And here are some pics...
Practice makes awesome!

Here we go...


Almost did it, though completely at the shore :)


Golden advice - you better watch your back while surfing...

Cos someone may take a hit on you :D

Wet, wet, wet

It's a bit nerdy beginner's board, but anyway... :)


And here's the full story

Pelican

During our touristing around the aussie resort called Gold Coast, we stayed overnight on a boat-house, so it was a nice opportunity to fish and to watch somebody else fishing... like pelican. The guy who hosted us, said that occasionally there turn up dolphins to fish as well. Regretfully that didn't happen during our stay.
Ok here's the pelican - seagulls give him lots of credit of knowing where the fishes are.

Fishing in action :)

And here's the panorama of Gold Coast. I was too eager to go for a swim, so meanwhile my mate took some s***load of pictures over an hour being up there on the top of a 100-stories tall skyscraper. Though bad thing about those skyscrapers is that in afternoon they overshadow the beach, so that it's a bit gloomy there, if you don't find a place on a rare sunny stretch.
View to the China side:

View to the Sydney side:

Roo meal

Good for you - good for environment - no matter how ridiculous at the first moment it might seem while considering eating kangaroos, though having another look their arguments seem quite fair - kangaroos are part of natural fauna here; less grass is consumed to get 1 kg of meat as their organism processes the flora of natural habitat more effectively than the other domestic animals brought here do; as well they don't have such greenhouse gas emissions (or whatever that was); and it's 98% fat free (in aussie they write the fat all the time from the other end - not "only 2% fat" but rather "98% fat free"). Of course they keep and raise them in farms not hunt in the wild :).
I had to try sausages "Kanga Banga" as well :).

Input ----------------------> Output

The taste is like something between beef and goose - quite pleasant and enjoyable.

Kangaroos

When visiting Tidbinbilla national reserve near Canberra, our two sources of curiosity were of course koalas and kangaroos in their natural habitat, our desperate tries to spot a koala somewhere up the trees resulted with disappointment - none of 20 people guided by 2 reserve rangers could spot one of 7 in 7ha reservoir over one hour. So we had to see some kangaroos at least - though not that hard to do here as I've spotted some in outskirts of the city.
Those precautions animals during the heat at daytime usually can be found hiding in the shadows of trees.

They kinda never walk...

Managed to spot the baby-kangaroo? :)

There were couple of emus as well, in the very background there is another kangaroo and a flock of parrots as well.

They don't like my company, much :(

And another vid

koalas <3

Once you enter Sydney zoo, you got welcomed by bunch of koalas - I guess they got it right, what's the main purpose of visiting zoo in aussie :). Anyway at first I spotted one (down there on the vid) and couldn't take off my eyes for minutes thinking: "how cute is that ?"; only after a while I saw that family with a baby koala and a lone one on another tree.
baby-koala with sleepy koala-mama

baby-koala-mama shows some acrobatics

Later afternoon there was a bird show representing the birds of Australia - doing some tricks and demos and stuff. Of course this pic is not that much about the show than the panorama from there.

And here's the can't-take-eyes-off-object

koala 2

And here is the vid with the koala family

Crap (a month too late)

Thanks a lot gov, but for me it took like a month of bureaucratic stuff plus the fees :/

aussie for dummies

They tend to write much of a stuff on warning and road signs, often - too much of a stuff. Like on every "give way" sign making it explicit. And whatever you did on the road you shall do with a particular care.

There are some vicious birds and serious flooding threats:

And this one is just hilarious:

And these are some birds at my house's driveway (it's a vid btw :), they're quite active now. It's spring, you know...

No Canberra park

If any interest what else I saw in my ride around the park - spausk chia. Any of my other recent aussie amusements I tend to post here.