Just wanted to show a few pictures of the different things here in Australia. First of all, the beautiful flower is a vibrant purple that I have never seen in nature before. Don't ask me the name, it starts with a T, and I can never remember it. All I remember is that it sounds Spanish and it confuses the Hell out of me because I can't figure out why someone would give an Austalian flower a Spanish name. It blows me away every time I see it. I'm instantly reminded of that Robin Williams movie, "What Dreams May Come?" The scenes with him in Heaven and the pure colors that are obviously CGI - well they are real here.
The restaurant menus are from one of the restaurants at the Sydney Opera House - gee are things expensive here?
The white birds are called Sulphur Crested Cockatoos. Besides the dreaded frogs found in Queensland, these are probably the most hated creatures in Australia, well, after the English cricket team....and rugby team. They are huge, god-awful loud and they will eat everything. Weather stripping around windows, roof tiles, electrical wires. This picture was taken in my backyard and as you can see, the rotton bird is eating the tree. You can tell in an instant if someone is native or not by watching them watch the birds. Native Aussies swear at them and the rest of us stop and stare in an odd wonder.
The spider is a Golden Orb Weaver. While scary as Hell looking, it's totally benign. That being said, I stay waaaaayyyyy far away from it. The crab in the picture next to the spider is hard to see so look close. It really is purple, I didn't photoshop it.
The weird rock thing is Mrs. MacQuarie's Chair. She was the wife of a governor of Sydney way back in the day. Convicts dug out a chair in the rocks facing the entrance to the Harbour so she could stare back to England - apparently she wasn't too happy here. Now as luck would have it, just on the other end of the point where her chair is happens to be one of the greatest photo ops in Sydney, a shot of both the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. On weekends you have to fight the crowds of wedding portraits that are taken there. I included also a close up shot of the Opera House that I took a few months ago. Mainly because most people don't seem to know that the Opera House is actually several buildings and it is also not all white. The tiles are a light beige color - if they were white then the reflection of the sun would be blinding.
