A note from Down Under!! It has been some time since I have written here

I stopped writing this blog just after my trip to Indonesia, China, Singapore and Malaysia.  I never put any of those pictures or stories in here.  I promise to do that. 

Right now I am in Melbourne Australia.  The flight time was 22 hours in the air.  I left Newark on Wed July 3rd and landed here July 5th.  I lost July 4th altogether.  But I still got fireworks.  It is winter here and for some reason through the months of July and August they have fireworks every Friday night at the Docklands.  So of course I went to see them. IT WAS COLD.  The wind was blowing and it was cold.  here are a few pictures of my 5th of July Fireworks Down Under.

I am 14 hours ahead of the East Cost of the US here.  But it really feels like I am a full day ahead.

But first on the way over to the Docklands I found this cow in a tree.  Very weird.  But based on true stories.  There are such bad floods in the lowlands/farmlands outside of Melbourne and the water rises so high that sometimes cows get caught in the trees.  The artist took this from a picture that was in a newspaper after a flood.  This artist Australian artist John Kelly was born in the UK and his family moved to Australia in the 1980s.  This is an odd combination of a newspaper story of a cow getting stuck in trees after floods while paying homage to Sir William Dobell, who was an artist during WWII that created camouflage for the Royal Army.  One of his jobs was to create paper mache cows to place on airfield to camouflage them as a farm.  One of his statements was our commanders must think the Japanese have very poor eyesight.  Just for you cow lovers, unfortunately the cows are usually dead and there is a bit of job to get them out of the trees. 

On to the fireworks.  I can't believe how many people come out to see the fireworks on a cold winter evening.  Plus there is other entertainment see the pictures.

Of course you need to see Little Bow Peep and her? um? her? Bear?

And this guy playing with fire. 

Well there were fireworks, everyone has seen them before and I am having trouble getting the pics loaded.

Saturday July 6th - walked around Melbourne for the morning and then purchased a tour to Phillips Island.  We stopped at a Historic Farm - as I started to walk around I thought of Drogheda from The Thorn Birds.  It was just your typical farm.

 That is Sophie and she is a small draft horse. 

Then we stopped at the Koala Conservancy.  Finding the Koalas wasn't easy.  Many were just sleeping blobs up in the trees.  Wish I took a video of the Koala climbing the tree.  They pretty much sleep and eat, that is it.  They come down  to the ground and move to other trees during the night.  Also saw wallabies...

We went to the Penguin Parade.  They said there would be 100s coming a shore.  BUT maybe there were 50 tops that came a shore over a 50 minute period.  They turn the lights off after that and it continues for another 3 hours of them coming a shore.  They were sooo funny though.  They would take forever to decide to come out of the water.  There would be 2 or 3 that would float in on a wave, but they would usually float back out.  And if they stayed and stood up they would run back into the water if anything scared them.  Then after watching them do that for about 10 or 15 minutes they would finally stand up and run across the beach to the low brush.  The first group though was about a dozen and there was no playing around.  They came in on the wave on their bellies, all stood up and all ran (waddled fast) to the brush.  Then when we walked back over the boardwalk to the main building we were so close to them.  They were so cute.  They are the smallest penguin species and are at best a foot tall.  I talked with one of the rangers and he said that the penguins used to build their boroughs in the sand but the high tide would wash them away so the conservancy built boxes and partially buried them and then camouflaged them with low growing brush then planted.  They said the penguins took to them immediately and started to live in the boxes.  The winter is their down time and basically they hangout in the boroughs for a couple of weeks and when they get hungry they get up very early before sunrise and waddle back to the beach to go for a swim. The penguins can stay out in the ocean for up to 5 weeks this time of year and sleep by floating on the top of the water.  He said they do mate up permanently but are very promiscuous...he said that they will at times find 2 males in the same borough.  They also are mating too!!!!  Well there you go! Even nature proves there is no merit to DOMA!!

They don't allow any photography at all even without a flash.  The little penguins were starting to get some eye damage from all the flashes.  There were a bunch just hanging out in the area of their homes...he said that there were probably coming out of their homes to watch what has going on with their friends coming in from the ocean.  They stay all day in their buroughs and come out at night to preen and stretch a bit.  So that was the penguin parade.