Archive for the 'Wild things: birds, plants, and critters' Category
Hiking and yarning
June 30, 2008We came into contact with fewer people on the hiking trails of “the red center” of Australia last week than we expected to meet and yet we had more conversations than we expected to have.
Even though we were walking the National Park trails during the last week before the start of “high season,” we thought the more popular locations would be far busier than they were. Sometimes we hiked for as much as two hours without seeing anyone else. Only on the shorter and most accessible trails did we see more than a half dozen or so other hikers.
A high percentage of those we did see, though, were friendly and engaging.
For example, as Kristi said in our “Brisbane Chronicles” email newsletter that we send to family and friends, we got into an extended conversation one day with a man and wife, probably in their 60s, who were travelling in a 4-wheel drive vehicle and camping out for a month or more.
Soon they were telling us about having just been stranded at a campsite in the wetter part of the Northern Territories. A rain flooded the countryside around where they were camping. They couldn’t drive out and nobody else could drive in. They had obeyed the rules of the off-road road, though, and packed a two week supply of food, so they just enjoyed the peace and quiet of being totally marooned for six days. No worries.
Two couples hiking together in the Olgas taught us to find true north using our wrist watches. We also discussed with them birds, binoculars, and ways in which climate change is affecting Melbourne.
Three young women traveling together, wild-animal biologists all, filled us in on the difficulties of Read the rest of this entry »
Finding Darling downs, avoiding toxic bush
June 11, 2008Finally, we have a clear notion of “the Darling downs.”
Most Brisbane folk watch the ABC television weather news on weekday evening, I expect, for hints on how to dress the next day, but for me it’s a geography lesson as much as anything else.
On an outline of Queensland, town and city names are posted with their high and low temperatures for the day, and I think, “Oh, that’s where that is” or, more rarely, “We’ve been there.”
But the names of various regions such as “the Darling downs” never get put on the screen because, obviously, everybody knows where they are. Unless, of course, you’re newcomers, as we are even after nearly three years.
Until Easter weekend this year, we didn’t know where Australia’s “New England” was. Then we drove through there and expanded our knowledge even further by visiting Texas, QLD, which is, appropriately enough, in the southwestern part of the state. Well, south, anyway, and as far west as we’d been.
On that trip, we also learned, while hiking over large chunks of it, where “the granite belt” is and we got to know a bit about Stanthorpe, where our farmers’ market apples come from, near the New South Wales border.
But “the Darling downs” was an entirely mythical place as far as I was concerned. I assumed it must have something to do with the Darling River, which is dying a slow death from drought, up-stream irrigation, and city-water demands.
Our printed maps don’t use the term as a label and my trusty Australian dictionary carries no definition of it despite listing “Darling shower.” That’s a dust storm.
As I said, though, we are finally in the know. This past weekend, Kristi and I traveled west and then north, passing near Ipswich, driving over the Wivenhoe Dam’s dam, and going through Esk, Toogoolawah, Blackbutt (named after the tree of the same name, I assume), Read the rest of this entry »
Aussie doors opening to workers
May 21, 2008Thinking of taking a big leap? Thinking of starting a new chapter in your life and considering Australia as its setting? Then you may be in luck.
The new Rudd Government has announced for the coming fiscal year the biggest annual increase in permanent and temporary migration into Australia since the 1940s, and there doesn’t seem to be much backlash. Some worries, but no real opposition.
The plan is to open the door to nearly 300,000 workers from overseas between July 1 this year and the end of June, 2009, and the work visas will be not only for high-demand jobs, but various kinds of work, skilled and unskilled.
As I noted in my last blog, Treasurer Wayne Swan, speaking for the Labor Government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, announced this widening of the immigration door in his budget presentation last week and it could be good news for anyone considering moving to the Land of Oz.
(Note: My spell checker IS working. Aussies put a “u” in “labor,” writing it “labour,” but not in the name of the party now in power, Labor.)
Inflation is a hot topic here and business leaders hope opening the door to more migrants will help dampen wage demands. Labour union leaders fear that it might, but they don’t seem to be too worried, only protesting that they need a place at the immigration decision-making table.
The reasons behind this substantial change and the absence of acrimony about it, so far, were expressed in a column May 17 in The Australian by the newspaper’s primary political-affairs editor, Paul Kelly.
Kelly wrote: “Australian labour shortages are here to stay. They are Read the rest of this entry »
Birds and bloodsuckers
April 13, 2008The best places for us to see birds and wild creatures during our hiking trips turns out to where we leave our car, in car parks where the hiking trails begin.On the lookout and with binoculars ready, we hike kilometer after kilometer along trails through eucalypts, in rainforests, and in open spaces, seeing little that hops, runs, slithers, or flies.Then, if we’re to see wildlife at all, we find it back where we left our car an hour or two or three earlier.
Maybe our next book will be entitled “Birds and Beasts of Aussie Car Parks.”
Girraween Park’s main parking area for Castle Rock, for example, was our richest venue for sightings during one day of our Easter Weekend hiking trip. In contented groups close to pavement, kangaroos and/or wallabies grazed contentedly so long as we didn’t get too close.
Bird life was easy to hear and sometimes in our line of sight, in part because of the large trees with open space beneath them where land had been cleared for cars.
One crow-like bird even let us get within six feet or so as he sat at eye-level among the limbs of a pine tree, staring back at us for several minutes. Looking closer, we saw that this bird was dark blue, not black. His yellow eyes let us, with the help of our bird book, identify him as a satin bowerbird.
While he is easy to mistake for a crow, the male satin bowerbird will never be confused with the female of his species. She’s decked out in fancy, decorative feathers that are mostly green, and we were lucky enough to see two of her kind, briefly, later.
On this trip, we did get to see more than 30 bird varieties, including a half dozen that were new to us. We also saw rabbits the size of cottontails (one at a time, on three occasions), skinks, and red ants more than an inch long.
The wildlife that got my attention most dramatically, however, was small, black, and as lively as an inch worm on a warm day.
We’d driven down to the Washpool National Park in New South Wales and hiked into the World Heritage area rain forest there. It is the wettest and most lush rainforest we’ve seen here and we enjoyed its narrow trails.
I was listening to the varied calls of a lyre bird (they’re much easier to hear than to spot with one’s eyes), when I noticed a small black worm on top of one of my fingers.
I flicked it off. Then I saw that it hadn’t left. A second flick didn’t dislodge it either. It was a leech. I had to pull it off.
Before the day was out Kristi and I had spotted Read the rest of this entry »
Finally: the Southern Cross
April 8, 2008A part of our Easter trip to the Granite Belt of southern Queensland was out of this world, literally.
We chose to stay at the Twinstar Guesthouse on the New England Highway in Ballandean because it advertises itself, accurately, as “a cozy B&B with stargazing facilities.”
This relatively inexpensive three-guest-room lodge near Girraween National Park is owned and run by a Japanese couple whose last name we’ve misplaced, Naomi and Eiji.
Eiji, whose name is pronounced much as the last name of the American writer James Agee (long “a” and then “gee” or “age-ee”), has been an amateur astronomer for much of his life and he loves sharing his extensive knowledge.
It was our bad luck to be Twinstar guests during full-moon nights with lots of rapidly-drifting clouds, but we did get some brief and rewarding looks through Eiji’s 46 cm reflecting telescope one evening.
Inside a backyard dome that revolves when Eiji pushes it along its circular track, the telescope collects, he told us, 4500 times more light than the unaided eye, so we were not disappointed.
Even in bright moonlight Eiji’s scope let us see the rings of Saturn; a beautiful cluster of stars known as “the jewel box;” Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, only (only?) 8.6 light years away; and Omega Centauri, which, Aiji told us, is a cluster of one million stars that hang out together about 16,000 light years away.
Best of all, perhaps, was Eiji’s authoritative identification Read the rest of this entry »
Flora, fauna, and victory for me!
January 25, 2008When you’re new in a country, as we are here in Australia, lessons can come from any direction. Even from the trees or a power line, as is the case when you look up and finally get to link a bird call you’ve been hearing for months with the type of bird that makes it.
Suddenly you know a tiny bit more about the neighborhood. I have learned to recognize the call of a Fig Bird.
Another thing I learned today came from our friend Peter. He told me the house for sale for $780,000 on the back or park side of our block used to belong to an elderly woman who could put two fingers in her mouth and whistle loud enough to cause a taxi driver to stop on a street 50 meters away.
That, it turns out, is as far as you can legally move an Australian possum.
This new information came from my reading Jane Fraser’s column in the “Weekend Australian,” and it confirmed for me the wisdom of my decision last week to spend $60 for wire mesh that I have now unrolled and attached to a section of trellis over the patio of our small house.
For a couple of months now, my bougainvillea plants have been doing their damnest to grow up to the boards of that trellis in order to proceed across them and fulfill their purpose in life by providing us with shade and beautiful blossoms.
Somehow, though, no green was getting much above the patio wall a couple of feet below the trellis. Why? Because the new, tender shoots at the growing ends of my bougainvilleas were neatly nibbled off.
Neighborhood possums use our fence tops as a highway at night. They don’t touch mature bougainvillea leaves and I’ve never seen one of them actually nibbling the new green, but I did espy possum droppings on the wall, right below the scene of the crimes against our vegetation. Felony convictions have hinged on less.
I toyed with the idea of capital punishment only briefly and it’s just as well Read the rest of this entry »
Back in Brissie with birds and mates
January 3, 2008The birds are singing, the weather is wet and windy, there’s hope for rainfall in Brisbane’s reservoir catchment areas, fuel prices are headed up, and we talked this morning with an Australian wearing a “Don’t Mess With Texas” T-shirt he bought in Dallas without knowing the slogan’s intended meaning.
In other words, my hope that we’d welcome the new year sitting in a Qantas plane about to leave LAX was fulfilled and we’re back from our summer/Christmas vacation.
Our friend Nicola met us at the airport yesterday and we used the last of our energy for unpacking. Jet lag put us in bed by 7:30 p.m. and our internal clocks had us wide awake by 4:30 this morning.
Shortly after five, with rich and various bird sounds reminding us that we are home, we went out for an hour-plus walk that turned out to be a social occasion.
We talked weather with Peter and Shane, neighbors we often see at a bench beside the Brisbane River.
I chatted with Alicia, a woman with whom we used to ride the ferry across the river to the University of Queensland.
And we got a chance to explain to a local man that the Dallas-purchased T-shirt he was wearing Read the rest of this entry »
Those bloomin’ trees
November 21, 2007I’ve been discussing trees and flowers with a couple of folks who read messages at a Google-group site for Aussie expatriates in the United States, ozinamerica.com.
One was born in Brisbane and the other has visited here. All three of us admire the flowers on the ground and on bushes, but especially the trees that flower. There is almost always some sort of tree in bloom here.
Just ending now is the Jacaranda season. This large tree covers itself with purple blossoms and then lets them fall off to become a purple carpet underneath its limbs. I first became aware of this spectacular tree when I was visiting in Mexico many years ago.
It was a pleasant surprised to discover that the same tree grows prolifically here. They burst into flower each November, as we near the end of springtime. I’m sure they’re imports, but everyone seems to love them.
The beginning of this tree’s name is pronounced “Jack,” here, as in “Jack and Jill.” In conversation with a Brisbane woman last year, I noted that in Latin America, where these trees seem to be native, people call them “Hock-ah-randas.”
“Well,” she said with great disdain in her voice, “they would!” — Bob
Aussie ambience: singing birds and fussing bats
November 16, 2007We are blessed with bird sounds every morning here in Brisbane’s inner suburbs, and some of the warblers start early, before we’re aware of any evidence of dawn.
Sleeping in a tree gives you a better perspective on changes in light, I guess. Certainly the fruit bats that occupy the papaya tree behind our house get fussy when I flip on the light in my study to do a little of middle-of-the-night writing.
My window is only about 15 feet from the roosts of two of these big bats known as flying foxes and from the tone of their screeching when my light comes on, I suspect it’s a good thing I don’t speak bat.
We don’t speak much bird, either and we’re only now beginning to know which birds are making some of the highly entertaining sounds we hear before, during, and after our rise-and-shine time.
I am not sure, for example, when I am hearing magpies, although I’m sure they are among our early morning singers. There are a lot of these black and white birds around here and Gisela Kaplan says we should be celebrating them.
Kaplan, a university professor in New South Wales, has published a book on magpies that I have not yet read, but I want to. I heard her interviewed on public radio recently and she made me understand what a remarkable bird this is. “The Australian magpie,” she said in a newspaper column this week, “is one of the foremost songbirds in the world.”
Maybe soon I’ll know one when I hear one. It’s a little embarrassing to live here and be able to identify with confidence only the sounds of doves, crows, flying foxes, and kookaburras. Oh, and rainbow loikeets, my favorite Aussie bird. — Bob
Bribie Island commute
November 12, 2007Bribie Island is just up the coast from Brisbane and it was about an hour’s drive this morning, going the opposite way from the in-bound commuter traffic. One of the joys of living in Queensland’s largest city is how quick and easy it is to get to beaches, forests, or mountains.
After being here more than two years, we’ve even begun to have favorite places that we know from previous visits. One of those is Buckley’s Hole Conservation Park, the “hole” being a lake only a hundred yards or so from Pumicestone Passage, the strip of sea water that separates Bribie from the mainland.
Since we’re having a cooler-than-normal spring (summer starts December 1 here and this area will be toasty by Christmas), we were glad of our windbreakers as we walked between the pond and the passage looking Read the rest of this entry »