Bikes for Rent in Melbourne

I know you will all laugh at this, but I only learnt to ride a bike in my first year in Australia. Confession: I was "over forty" years of age! In case you wonder, no, I haven't broken any bones, and no, there are no holes in the asphalt, in the fence and anywhere else around our court, where I took my "bike license." I ride the bike only every once in a while, although there are so many places where to ride the bike here! I just don't have a lot of time, otherwise, I could ride every day on Scotchman's Creek Trail, which passes nearby. Or even in the city, where as you see in the picture, there are plenty of bikes to hire. It's really nice to see that Melbourne has plenty of roads that accomodate bikes and has quite frequent bike hire stations. I don't know much about their safety, but I would ride mostly on sidewalks anyway, because traffic can be too much, especially during the week. Well done, Melbourne!

Buzzing

Although it's winter and cold on Australian standards (40F at night and up to 60F during the day), and it's the middle of the school holidays, life is buzzing Down Under. July 1 marked the beginning of the Carbon Tax, a few days later the debate on political asylum reignited, and today I found out about the exacerbated unfairness of the price war between the two grocery store chains in Australia, Woolworths and Coles (I miss Trader Joe's!). So, end of a buzzing week in Melbourne, but bees, totally entitled to buzzing, continue their work. I hope you like this picture of European bees in a wild beehive, illegal immigrants to Australia!

The Birds--Hitchcock's World

My blog entry today will remind you of Hitchcock's " The Birds." There are a handful of birds in Oz that attack (not too aggressively, but still...) people and cars. Probably the most notorious is the magpie, which attacks people on foot or on bike, normally pecking at their heads. It can get bloody! But bike riders insert chopsticks in their helmets to deter the birds from attacking them. Yes, not a pleasant attack, but they do it mainly in the nesting season, when they somehow think people can threaten their nests and hatchlings. On the second place come the red wattlebirds, also attacking people. They do it though because they are curious. One time I was walking towards home. My hair was gathered in a tail, held by a shiny barrette, which most likely appealed to a wattlebird, because it flew low over my head, from behind me, and tried to grab the barrette without landing. It just got a few strings of hair, but as Aussies say, "I was startled as!" At number three is the noisy miner. This small bird with yellow facial markings belongs to the family of honeyeaters, but is so aggressive, it does not hesitate to fight for its territory with bigger birds, such as crows, kookaburras and magpies. There is a family of noisy miners at Chloe's school, who attack cars. No less! They grab with heir little feet onto whatever they can, such as the edge of the window or windshield, or even the side mirror, and then they start pecking at the glass or mirror. I've never been certain if they fight their own reflection or they peck at the shiny car paint or glass. The best thing of all is that when they do it, while I drive the car, Chloe laughs so hard and with such unrestrained entertainment, it's therapy for me. I just love now when the noisy miner attacks, because I get my laugh therapy from Chloe! Finally, sulphur crested white cockatoos come in at number four. These birds are naughty and smart. If you start to feed them, they grab the food from your hand and if you stop feeding them, they come eat your house! I'm not exaggerating at all. Many people replaced the wooden frames around their houses' windows with metal frame, because cockatoos easily destroy wood, not metal. Would you believe their appetite if you just saw them like we did, lined up and light-dining on this fence in Apollo Bay?

Felling Like a Sea Lion Today

Two years ago we drove from Melbourne on the coast to South Australia, all the way to Kangaroo Island. A good portion of the road in Victoria is very similar to Route 1 meandering from Ventura to Carmel in California and it's called Great Ocean Road. The coast is rugged, and the road takes sharp turns up and down the cliffs overlooking water or rain forest. The coast is almost as beautiful, although less dramatic, in South Australia. Beaches are probably more inviting to bathing than surfing. Kangaroo Island is, sadly, the place where the only kangaroos I saw were roadkill. A large ferry boat crosses from the main land to the island in over one hour. I don't want to write much about the beaches, some being among the most beautiful in the world. I just became a bit spoiled by seeing too many of these beaches, dipping my feet in white sands and crystal waters like never before. I hope you all can see them one day, especially those on Kangaroo Island. But what made me think of the island and that trip is simply the fact that I am tired. Just before posting this entry I fell on the bed like the sea lion in my picture below! The sea lions spent the entire night fishing and then come back to Seal Bay to... well, sleep! They sometimes wake up and play among family members, but just seeing them in this lethargic, yet adorable, state, spread like pillows on the white-sand beach, that is a treat!

Waterfalls

It rained so much these days, I felt as if I was part of a moving mass of water, just like that of a waterfall. There are many of them in Australia, a surprise if you think of how little water is on this continent. But on the North-Eastern, Eastern and South-Eastern coasts precipitations are not scarce and rainforests thrive. The waterfall in the picture below is called Mackenzie Falls, which is located in the Grampians (Victoria). We visited these mountains on a wet, wintery day last year and it seemed like now, that water was not "raining", but we were already sunken and moving just through water. After visiting the falls, we took a side road, unsealed, and drove for a good distance not knowing really where we'd end up. The sky was more black than grey, rain was light like fog and the ground felt like a stream. The forest had areas of lower tree density, allowing just enough light to reveal wallabies and emus to us. We were startled by their Jurassic-Park-esque presence, but they disappeared with the same stealth as with which they had crossed our path. So then there was again just water left... We left the mountains and started driving towards Horsham, the city where we spent the night. The sky suddenly parted like an eye woken up from deep sleep and let us see the sun while setting on the horizon. And with all that rain and the sun, nature produced filtered the light into another of those sharp rainbows I cannot have enough of in Australia...

Golden Notary

I must share today's experience with the notary. We have never needed one in these three years, but today we had our first encounter. We had an American document on which the notary had to verify my husband's identity and witness his signing the document. First, we thought the Post Office (here called Post) would have such a service, but no, notaries are rare here, maybe one every 20 km! The first one we called was on vacation for the entire month of July, but his office sent us to another notary. I called this office and was told that I was very lucky to get an appointment the same day! We went to this legal ooffice that is a four partnership and was invited to sit in a small, absolutely bare room, with just a table and four chairs, a phone in a corner and some sort of old looking document hanging on the wall. A lady took our papers and passports, and left. Five minutes later, she came with the notary, a small black suitcase, and a folder with an invoice already printed for us. The simplest of witnessing operations and date of birth verifications became almost a misterious ritual with the secretary opening the suitcase just half way to produce the seal first, and then the different stamps. The notary polietly conversed with us a few minutes, signed the seal and shook our hands. In just 5 minutes and $122, we had the job done! $122? YES! NO, I didn't buy a house and I didn't merge a company with another one... It's just that I recall how for such simple things there were public notaries at every other desk in the American institutions where I worked before. They didn't take a penny for this trivial operation, and I didn't have to take time from work to have documents notarized... Yes, I do feel lucky for getting an appointment today, knowing how notaries work here, and I'll feel even luckier if I never need one again! I'm posting a nice hibiscus flower today, to make everyone smile at the beauty of nature!

Reef Memories

Two years ago we spent a winter week up North, in the tropical paradise of Australia called Queensland. We stayed for one week in Port Douglas, just North of Cairns. The hotel was within 100 steps from the beach, which was one of the most private public beaches I have ever seen. This is the miracle of Australia, that relative to the US and Europe is so less populated, an 8-mile beach may seem private if you use just your fingers, and toes maybe, to count the people you encounter on the beach. One day we booked a Great Barrier Reef tour and snorkled in three parts of the reef, one hour away from Port Douglas. Leaning on a noodle and swimming in circles above the reefs for 30-40 min at a time, I could not remove my face from the water. Underneath me was a world of forms and color and if you peeked carefully, the density of life was growing continuously, as you could not stop counting one more coral and one more fish every second. But if we swam and snorkled in warm water, shallow, light blue, just half way to the horizon was "the big drop," the place were the continental shelf ends and the "real" ocean starts! The deep water is separated by furious waves and it is so dark blue, it feels solid. As usual in my life, whenever I am happy, very happy, I must find something that reminds me of why I should be happy and what is the opposite of happiness. It's again a sunny-rain "thing"...