What is going on behind those eyes, Mickey?
It truly is a small world. Who would have thought tonight I’d walk into the executive lounge at the Melbourne Marriott and get into a discussion about the Big 12 football conference with 4 other people from the US? One lady’s daughter graduated from TCU’s School of Nursing, and the conversation was all about the new stadium and whether Gary Patterson (the TCU football coach) was susceptible to being spirited away from Fort Worth by another college. Unthinkable! Anyway, just when you think you’re a million miles from home, something like this happens and you’re back there again, if only for a few minutes…
Article from the Sydney Morning Herald, 27-April-2012. Photos by yours truly from the Australia Zoo this month.
MBW and MBD actually held one at the zoo. Your intrepid photographer was content to snap pics from a distance!
KOALAS are expected to be listed as a threatened species across parts of Australia from Monday, and some environment groups claim the government has excluded the marsupial from protection in certain areas due to mining interests.
Research conducted near Gunnedah, which is promoted as the ”koala capital of the world”, show numbers for the animal there have declined by 75 per cent since 1993, yet koalas in the area are not expected to be granted extra protection. The Environment Minister, Tony Burke, said his decisions about the animal’s status were based on advice from the national Threatened Species Scientific Committee. A decision originally slated for mid-February was deferred until April 30.
The new ruling will be published next week but, based on current data, is likely to list koalas in south-east Queensland as ”endangered”, and animals east of the Great Dividing Range in NSW as ”vulnerable”. In practical terms, the listings would mean the federal government could potentially impose conditions on plans for new mines, housing developments and logging operations to stop them from interfering with koalas and their habitat.
The national icon is dwindling because of the combined pressures of development in its habitat, drought, climate change and from the disease chlamydia.
Its numbers in Victoria and South Australia are relatively healthy and so the animals are unlikely to attract the protective classifications in those states.
Woke up 4:30am, couldn’t sleep so am doing work in my home office. Now it’s almost 6am and even though it’s dark outside the sounds of birds are the darndest thing you ever heard. Their crows sound nothing like the ones in the USA. They’ve been moaning for an hour now, interrupted briefly by kookaburras making an ungodly racket with their jungle-like calls. MBW and MBD are fast asleep through it all. Guess that’s why they use their Sound Machines to produce white noise while they sleep!
Ugh. Food prices are just silly here. A “good deal” today is $32 for 48 cans of Diet Coke. Jeez, I could fill an entire refrigerator with $32 worth of Coke back home!
As May approaches, the warm weather is tapering off down here. It was 59 degrees this morning at 8:00AM (about 15 degrees C). I must confess that living in a warm sub-tropical climate has made me a cold wimp. MBW and I went to Garfish for dinner with another couple last Tuesday evening and I had to wear my leather jacket for the first time this year. No need for the aircon now; open the windows and let the cool breeze flow through! Heck, I was wearing my flannel shirt this morning when I went downstairs!
Today is a national holiday in Australia. Similar to our Memorial Day, Anzac Day commemorates World War 1 veterans from both Australia and New Zealand. They had what proved to be an unsuccessful campaign at Gallipoli, trying to capture Constantinople (now “Istanbul”). It was regarded as a major victory for the Turks, and a disaster for the Allies.
MBD and I are commemorating the event by eating Anzac cookies! Yummy! Anyone want the recipe?
They’ve gotta get into everything. Knocked MBW’s Rolex on the floor and it landed face down on the stone tile. Cracked the crystal. Shit.
From our last day on the Gold Coast. I don’t care how old she gets. Even now as MBD has just turned 12, I still can see the little girl in her snuggling up to her purple bear. Some things DO last forever!
The Smiths in Oz 