Animals
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Having just come over a rise to see a dying kangaroo is hardly the way one'd choose to see Australia's wildlife. Actually, as Becky and I were driving up to Echuca, we saw a hold herd, if that's the right word, of kangaroos crossing the brow of the hill. I slammed on anchors and pulled over so that we could have a gawp. Sadly, i think that made them run over the hill; because as we drove off to the other side of the hill, a girl in a car flashed us. so we stopped and saw that she'd just hit one of the 'roos.
Poor girl was in a minor state, and so was the side of here car. She was together enough to phone her friends though. Fortunately, i suppose, the kangaroo died in minutes – saving me having to find a knife to finish it off with.
Judging by the sides of the roads, this was not an uncommon event. On a number of occasions I've heard kangaroos being referred to as a pest on the roads.
Of course for us, it was huge novelty; and one of the best memories of our road trip from Sydney to Melbourne was the seeing various animals that crossing the road. Or those that just hang around next to it; such as the koalas on the Great Ocean road.
When we were staying in Thredbo (in the Snowy Mountains), one evening Becky & I drove up Charlotte's pass to see more of the snow, and Mount Kosciuszko (Australia's tallest mountain). The scenery was wonderful, just like the highlands of Scotland in winter, but with sunshine. Becky got to build the snowman she'd been wanting to build for years.
Anyway, that evening, on the way down was our best 'wildlife drive' yet. We got to see loads more kangaroos – this time one of them even had a little joey hanging out (very cute, with it's chin hanging over the top of the pouch and it's two front legs lolling to it's mother's hops).
Later on we saw a wombat strolling along the side of the road. I pulled the car over, and quietly approached it, so as not to frighten it off, and take a photo. Turns out, it was almost oblivious to me (or seemed to be at least). The only time it acknowledged my presence was when it had walked right up to me and started sniffing my shoe. I might has considered stroking him, if it weren't for the cloud of flies around him.
And before we got back to Thredbo, we got to see even more groups of kangaroos (by now we weren't even stopping to take pictures), not to mention groups of pairs of bright red blue -winged parrots feeding on the ground.
The parrots, and cockatoos, were something that Becky just couldn't get enough of. Apparently they're endangered, but that seems unlikely if the number of birds that we saw. Especially when we drove down Megalong Valley, near Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. I'd hired a bike there, and ridden along the top of the cliffs that wall the valley in (famous for the Three Sisters rock formations). From the fire-trail I was riding on I had some magnificent views - and could hear all the squawks in the national park below (but not see much, other than the occasional flash of white).
The next day Bex and I went for a drive down below in the valley (Katoomba is perched on the edge of cliffs at the top). Having stopped at a charming road-side tea garden, we about to enjoy a drink in the shade of large blue gums, when a huge stick nearly landed on my head: a large cockatoo had just shaken it loose. It turned out that the surrounding trees were full of them. Being surrounded by as much as 20 chatty foot-tall sulphur-crested cockatoos is a comical theme Hitchcock could only hint at.
Sadly, the road from the Blue mountains to Sydney (the last stop of our Australian road trip) is mostly big highway, so our encounters with animals were limited. The upside, I suppose, was that there's far less kangaroo road-kill.
Sydney itself surprised me with how beautiful it actually is. The harbour and the beaches are incredible photogenic on the clear days we had there (two out of three). I wasn't expecting too much perhaps, what with some descriptions alluding it to “the sexual congress of turtles”, but the Opera House is a wonderful building (One misconception I had was that the 'shells' that make up its roof were just white concrete, but it's actually covered in a lovely tile-mosaic).
It was here were got re-acquainted with the most ubiquitous, and infuriating, Aussie animal. No, not the sort you find in Walk About pubs in London. Rather the fly. Even the locals seem to get sick of these insects following one about at every outdoors step. Continually buzzing in your ear, or sitting on your lips (especially when eating al fresco), there're as disarmingly familiar as your typical human Australian. One would think that, in the mean time, the generations of European descendants would by now have come up with a better solution than a wide-brimmed had with corks hanging off it.
