Kookaburra

It's for a good reason that I am writing about the kookaburra today. I am celebrating a little personal achievement, that of over 1000 reads of my blog, with its 40 entries. I am happy I haven't given up and ran out of things to tell you. My other writing, of my memoir, is moving along too, and the exercise of this blog certainly helped me sit down daily and write. I am celebrating my achievement with another symbol of Australian life, the laughing kookaburra, because it is a special bird. This is the largest of the kingfisher family and yes, I love it! Just look at it's adorable hairdo, the sharp sight reflected by the round eyes, and the strength of the stout beak. The characteristic laughing of this bird in the Dandenong Ranges always makes my day. Sometimes we go to Grant's Picnic Ground in the ranges, where we feed parrots and cockatoos. At the back of the Cafe where we sit for lunch, there is a pair of kookaburras that come and eat meat "served" by the Cafe owner. I cannot stop laughing, too, when the wind blows the punk hair of this gorgeous bird!

Koala

Koalas and kangaroos form the stereotypical image of Australia. However, walking around a park on a suspended walkway and hearing the slow motion of a koala's jaws munching on eucalyptus leaves makes you open your arms to invite the koala for a cuddle. Their fur feels like dirty, dry hair, although by looking at the sweet sleepy koala, you'd think it has the softest fur (sorry for all the adjectives, it's Friday night and my brain is a sloth). They sleep about twenty hours a day, because they only eat eucalyptus leaves, which are toxic and contain very limited amounts of nutrients and energy. Watching a koala sleep on its tummy with all four limbs hanging like tassels from a tree branch or rolled up like a piece of dough is priceless. It's the image of sleep.

The White

I noticed that my last blog entries sound like the trilogy of French movies, "Red"-"Blue"-"White" directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. The reality is that white makes a striking presence in the Australian flora, and on the blue and red background, it stands out like a mild lightning. I do refer precisely to the eucalyptus tress, some of which have a stripped down trunk, shiny and smooth. They could set the standard for "whiteness" when in direct sunlight, just look at the picture! When we travelled through the MacDonnell Ranges in The Red Centre, we even found this legendary tree baptised "The Ghost Gum Tree," close to the Simpson Gap. So in my own trilogy of Australian colors, I add the white of ghost gum trees after the red dirt and the incredibly blue sky. In my heart they paint a landscape I have never seen anywhere else in the world and I fell in love with, yes, at the first sight.

The Red

Over most Australia, but especially in the Outback, the soil is a rusty red, dry and coarse. It is rich in iron oxides and poor in nutrients. This profound red inspires me to think of very old soil baked over million of years by the unforgiving sun. It is a perfect partner for the deep blue sky and the mix of colors give pictures the unique Australian signature. This picture is from the West MacDonnell ranges (close to Alice Springs in the Northern Territory), in the Standley Chasm. After driving for hours in the Outback, cars often look as if painted in red, like rolling tomatoes...

The Blue

Among mangoes and frogmouths there is the Aussie sky, another one of my favorites! I love it because unlike in most places in the world, in Australia the sky resembles very closely a painter's palette of colors. My picture testifies to it. I love it also because it's extraordinarily blue on most days. I always wondered if this deep blue is due to the hole in the ozone layer above Australia or to the very low pollution in this island. And because it is such a solid blue, the Australian sky seems to be lower than other "skies." Can I even say that? Lower to the point that I sometimes want to pass my fingers through it...

Australian Passionfruit

It is dark purple, oval shaped, and looks like an inflated grape. Surprisingly, when the knife cuts through, you feel the resistance of the peel, not guessing how much air is inside. The purple peel is white inside, like compressed snow. The fruit per se is a golden juice laced around black pointy oval seeds, I know that, I just don't know how to describe to you the flavor held in it. I always dip my teaspoon in honey and then collect the passionfruit to put it in my mouth. The sweetness of honey and the tartness with exotic echo of the passionfruit form a perfect marriage. There is pineapple, lemon, love, heaven and sadness in my mouth. I am sure that if blindfold and opening my mouth to this elisir d'amore for the first time, I would have whispered just one word: passionfruit. Two kinds of passionfruit with which we indulge here in Oz during the summer, green-purple and gold-purple, are in my "artistic" picture of the day.

Tawny Frogmouth

I call it Tony. It's my most favorite local bird. The name is puzzling maybe, but if you ever put your hand inside the mouth of a tawny frogmouth, you'd discover, just like I did, that it is indeed like the mouth of a frog. This bird surprised me, or I should say stunned me, twice. First time I saw one was in a zoo and I read the sign "Tawny Frogmouth", I stared at the wooden log lying on the bottom of the enclosure, but I didn't see anything. I passed, thinking that the bird had been moved. Behind me, Chloe started giggling and pointed out at a part of the wooden log, similar to a branch sticking up. It was Tony! With it's eyes shut, head sunken into the narrow shoulders and beak buried into the mass of grey feathers, the tawny frogmouth pretended to be part of the log and I got tricked. Small animals that constitute its prey get tricked, too. The camouflage was so perfect, I could have sat on the bird and not known it was there. Second surprise, the "frog mouth". We went to a small private zoo, Moonlit Sanctuary, for a night walk, when all nocturnal animals come to life. Wallabies jumped to our feet to be fed and quolls and sugargliders were smoothly sliding among branches just in front of our eyes. When we approached the enclosure with "the tawnies," we were asked if anyone wanted to stick their hand inside a tawny's mouth to see why it's called that way, frogmouth. Well, I did and I discovered that it was a compact green membrane, dry and stretched, which helped the bird swallow live prey without chewing it. I didn't get pinched, so the bird liked me. I fell in love with it and it's a game of hide-and-seek, whenever we go for walks in the neighboring parks at dusk, I squint my eyes to spot them perched on branches, pretending to be trees...