Test Cricket

Test cricket match. Check. Done that, and probably don’t need to do it again. This past weekend, we went to see a test cricket match between the South Australia Redbacks (named after the local poisonous spider) and the New South Wales Blues. We went with Brad and Laila, the couple from California, and John, another colleague from CSIRO. We picked this particular match because it was free to the public. (You can see pictures here.)

We made plans to arrive a little early on Saturday morning to make sure we got good seats, figuring a free event would fill up reasonably early since it would be first come, first serve. Well, we got good seats alright. There were perhaps 30 other people in the entire oval (stadium) when we arrived about 25 minutes early. It was so quiet that we started to wonder whether we had the day wrong. There was active construction going on in about half of the stadium, there were birds sitting all over the cricket oval, and there was absolutely no sign of any teams. The match was supposed to start at 11:00 am, and as the time slowly drew nearer, we really began to wonder. But, right at 10:55, the teams came trotting out of the locker rooms, along with the umpires. Apparently there is no need to warm up for test cricket: with five days to play the game, you can spend a good day or two of it warming up, I suppose.

We made it through two hours of cricket, and here’s what I have to report back. I was mostly hot and sweaty in my seat, despite being in the shade. I’m not sure whether or not you’re supposed to talk or even cheer during a test match. The five of us kept a conversation going throughout the play, but I kept wondering whether we were committing a big no-no because everyone else was pretty quiet. There was very little cheering. One guy had brought along his newspaper, and I think we may have received a number of annoyed glances from those sitting near us. The main source of noise in the crowd came from a large group of young boys who had come to the match. Amazingly, one of the outfielders was giving autographs to these little guys while play continued as usual. He seemed to be keeping one eye on the batter, but I was shocked. I just tried to imagine a baseball game with the right fielder hanging out over on the sideline, signing autographs, chatting with people, and glancing at the batter every once in awhile. I guess when you have five days for a match, it doesn’t really matter all that much if you miss a ball that’s hit to you.

Test cricket is definitely not the kind of sporting event I’m familiar with, though in retrospect, one benefit of test cricket is that there is probably never a rush on the bathrooms. You can go anytime because there is next to no chance that you’ll miss anything important. I have to admit, I had a good laugh the next day when I was reading the Sunday Mail (the big Sunday paper here), and they had a feature on the cricket match we had seen. The major question on the page was, Does Test Cricket have a future in Australia? I felt slightly relieved to know we weren’t the only ones wondering this. They had interviewed a number of people at the cricket match, asking what they thought about Twenty/20 Cricket, which only takes about 3 hours to play. My favorite response was from one guy who obviously felt younger generations were not adequately appreciating Test Cricket. He said, “Twenty/20 is not cricket; it’s entertainment.”


I didn’t come away empty-handed from the cricket match, however. I learned that the best place to sit is behind the catcher or bowler. You can see the ball much better this way, and also tell what happens when the batter hits the ball. And, you often have a better view of the scoreboard, which could potentially be the most exciting part of Test Cricket. There are so many things to report on the scoreboard, and at least the one at the Adelaide Oval is still done manually. I did enjoy watching them move around the names when a batter got out (they call that a wicket here), and was preoccupied for quite some time trying to sort out what all of the things on the board actually meant. Unfortunately, I’ll have to report back on that because I’m still unclear on a number of the categories.

Unfortunately, it seems that the Twenty/20 Cricket season is just about over, but I would still be willing to try out a one day match. Although Test Cricket is not for me, I’m not ruling out the sport entirely. But, for our next sporting event, we’re going for soccer.

Tele time

So, I have to admit, we’ve been watching a fair bit of television, or tele (pronounced tell-e) as they call it here. Our granny flat has a TV, and although it only gets about 4 channels, they’re actually fairly decent. And, we can’t help but watch the Olympics. That’s one of the great things about Aussie television—they show a lot of high-profile events on free broadcast channels.

It is a new experience, however, watching the Olympics from a different country. Of course they focus more on the athletes from Australia, but it seems like they are perhaps a little bit obsessed with the nationality of the athletes. We really noticed it yesterday during the 1000m speed skating final. The woman who won the race was born in Australia, but has lived in Canada for many years, and was racing for Canada. However, several times during the race, the Australian television announcer would say things like, “It doesn’t matter where you’ve gone, it only matters where you come from, and she’s from Australia.” It was a little bit goofy, but I suppose when you’ve only won four gold medals in the winter Olympics, you’re happy to have whatever connection to an Olympic gold medalist that you can get.

As many of you perhaps know, Australian Torah Bright did win a gold medal in the snowboard half-pipe, and the whole country is just thrilled. In fact, her face is going to be put on a stamp. The newscaster this morning said, “I reckon that’s the only way her competitors will be able to lick ‘er.” Oh gosh. In a strange sort of way, I feel a little bit bad for the US gold medalists—I’m sure they’re overjoyed to win a gold medal, but most of them probably will never have the same kind of fame and attention that Australian gold medalists receive. Unless you’re a superstar like Michael Phelps or Shaun White, I suppose.

Speaking of Shaun White, we felt quite proud of ourselves the other night when we were listening to them interview the flying tuh-mah-toe (not toe-may-toe). He said that the Australians called him ‘blueie’. We were trying to figure out how he got that nickname, and then we remembered that they like to give people nicknames that are the opposite of whatever obvious physical characteristics they may have. For example, if you were really small, they would call you jumbo. For red heads, they often call them ‘blue’ because I guess blue is the opposite of red. Anyways, we are fairly confident that this is where Shaun White’s Australian nickname comes from, and figuring it out made us feel like we’re starting to pick up on some Australian-isms.

One Australian thing we’ll perhaps never get used to, or tired of, are their commercials. There is one commercial in particular that I just can’t believe they air on TV. The ad is for diapers with extra carrying capacity for “poo explosions, or number threes, as we politely like to call them”. Are you serious? Poo explosions? Number threes? On TV? Anyways, it always gives me a good chuckle.

The other show that we’ve actually started to watch weekly is My Kitchen Rules, which is a cooking competition between couples from the different states. There’s probably some equivalent in the US, but I don’t watch these sorts of shows at home. I’m not too sure why we’re watching this one here—it’s got the same dramatic judging, with contestants nearly avoiding catastrophe at every turn. Yet, somehow, we’re enjoying the show. The best part is when the contestants from South Australia (that’s the state we’re living in) go shopping. They always go to the Central Market in Adelaide, and that’s where we do a lot of our shopping. It’s fun to see them picking out food from the same stalls we do—of course the food they make looks way tastier than ours.

Speaking of TV, the Olympics are now on again, and so I’m heading back to watch Torah Bright’s gold winning run for the 57th time. The funniest part is the Australian snowboard commentator. When he yells, if you’re just listening, you’re sure that the athlete has just messed up royally. But, in fact, he just yells, “Ohhhhhhh” after every jump, and then says things like, “Torah Bright has gone smack!” We’re not sure what that means precisely, but we’re hoping we’ll have a chance to go smack while we’re here. In the meantime, Dave keeps hoping that they’ll show biathlon or cross-country skiing, but since there are probably only 3 cross-country skiers in all of Australia, chances aren’t great. Besides, why would you show another sport when you can show Torah Bright’s big back side alley-oop inverted flip 15 times in a row?

You'll roo the day...

Today we spent the morning at Cleland Wildlife Park with Will and Molly. I met Will playing ultimate—he is from Minnesota, which here in Australia makes him sound like he has a funny accent. I think it’s a sign that you’re getting used to your location when American accents begin to sound a bit odd. Molly was just in town from Brisbane for the weekend for a training camp for the Australian ultimate team that is headed to Prague for coed Worlds in July.

Anyway, Will used to be a volunteer up at Cleland, so he volunteered to be our guide for the day. Cleland is one of a string of National Parks along western side of the Adelaide Hills—in this case, the entrance to Cleland is just a few kilometers from the summit of Mt. Lofty. We tried stopping at the summit on the way in, but it was still shrouded in fog. Fog in the summer is a good sign, because it means there is a lot of moisture in the air and it will be raining soon somewhere, probably in the Hills in a place like Blackwood, where we live.

The best part about Cleland is that for a great deal of the time you are in the pens with the animals. Things that you wouldn’t want to meet face to face—like Tasmanian Devils or aggressive, three meter long, highly venomous snakes—are suitably confined. But for the most part, you can walk among the kangaroos, wallabies, emus, potoroos, egrets, and other endemic Australian animals. It's a bit like a petting zoo--not exactly the wild, but still very fun.

And that’s what we did. Starting with the Tasmanian Devil in his enclosure. Apparently the ‘devil’ part comes from the sound that they make, but they look quite friendly, aside from the massively overdeveloped jaws. There is a strong effort to create a genetically viable population on mainland Australia due to the spread of facial tumor disease through nearly the entire Tasmanian population. The spread of devil facial tumor disease is handily aided by the fact that Tasmanian Devils greet one another with bites to the face. Whatever benefit that particular habit has, it seems to have come face-to-face with natural selection (no pun intended).


Without a doubt, the highlight of the day was the kangaroos. Most kangaroos are quite wary of humans, but those at Cleland are quite used to our sort, so much so that our first up-close contact with a kangaroo was when one hopped over toward us to check us out. The kangaroos were actually interested in our feed bags, but it suited us all the same, because we were hand feeding them, which was great. They are sort of like Tyrannosaurus Rex with their tiny little arms. It was so cute, though, because they would put their mini little paws on your hand and then eat right from it. One scene that wasn’t cute at all was this very big, old, slow, male kangaroo that kept trying to mate with this very small, young female. He would take these very slow laborious steps towards the young female, and just as he would reach out his arms to her, she would take just a few, quick hops just out of reach. He would again slowly make his way to her, only for her to hop just out of reach.

Kangaroos are part of an herbivorous group of marsupials known as macropods (family Macropodidae) that have an enormous middle toe that makes up most of their foot (there might be some fused digits in there). The macropods include kangaroos, wallabies, euros, and a few other hopping marsupials. Another characteristic shared by most macropods is a long, muscular tail. We picked a tail up and they are seriously buff. They actually use their tails as a fifth ‘leg’ when they are walking forward, supporting themselves on their tail and two front limbs as they move their enormous hind feet forwards. And, of course, they use their tails to balance while hopping. A hopping kangaroo (or wallaby) is a sight to see. The tendons in their hind legs have developed to be able to handle enormous loads to the point where kangaroos store energy in their leg tendons as they hit the ground and then get that energy back when they hop forward again. This allows kangaroos to hop quite quickly with very little additional energy expenditure; imagine if there was only a very small difference in exertion between running 10-minute miles and 7-minute miles! Carrying a load such as a joey in a pouch also requires very little extra muscular exertion, because the extra weight means extra stored gravitational energy.

I have to add that a marsupial with a joey in its pouch looks sort of funny. We have this idealized impression from cartoons and whatnot that the joey peers over the edge of the pouch with its head out and front paws hanging onto the edge. Well, the head usually sticks out, but so do the enormous hind legs, often right next to the head. It looks a bit like someone took a rag doll and just stuffed it in there. The flexibility of a joey’s spine must be truly amazing…

The birds at Cleland were quite varied. In addition to birds we had already encountered in Australia (like ducks, egrets, and pelicans), there were also Cape Barren Geese with their green bills, human-sized emus, and lots of Superb Fairywrens, which are bright blue and wiggle their tails back and forth very quickly. This behavior has won them the common Australian name of “Willy Wag-tail.” It's a bit tough to photograph a fairywren because they are so small and fast.

We saw lots of other animals including wombats, echidnas, dingoes, koalas, and even a numbat. Wombats look a bit like capybaras and are pretty solid. However, modern wombats are actually the miniature version--one of the classic members of the now-extinct Australian megafauna is Diprotodon, which is essentially a wombat larger than a buffalo (!). On the other hand, a numbat looks nothing like a wombat—it is probably about 1/50th of the mass of a wombat and is actually quite a delicate little rodent. They are actually extinct in the wild in South Australia, like a number of other endemic Australian species. Chelsea thinks their extinction may have had something to do with their name, which really sounds like a combination of numbskull and dingbat. One of my favorite animals was the Spinifex hopping mice, a desert rodent that lives in the protection of the sharp spinifex plant. The spinifex plant (and the mice) are unique to Australia, and inspired the ‘spinifex texture’ that characterizes many komatiites (more on spinifex and komatiites in a future post).

Salsa, curries, and sports involving footballs

One of our goals for our time in Australia is to learn how to cook Indian food. This may seem a bit odd, but if you go to a grocery store here, you’ll understand why. In the US, if you want to cook Indian food, there might be a few options at the store. However, there are pretty good options if you want to cook Mexican food. In Australia (and probably everywhere else outside of the Americas), it is the opposite. There is an incredible selection of Indian food products, and really terrible Mexican food options.

At home, burritos is one of our go-to easy meals, so when we first got here, we got all the fixings for burritos, including some salsa. What a mistake that was. The salsa here is like ketchup with a few vegetables, except it is Australia’s version of ketchup. It is awful, really awful.

On a side note, the salsa had been sitting in the fridge since we got it since we didn’t know what to do with it. Fortunately for us, the Super Bowl provided a great opportunity to use up the rest of the salsa. We made seven layer dip for our Super Bowl watching party, which actually tasted pretty good even though we used the ketchup salsa and avocado delight spread—whatever that is. It had 12% avocado, and the pre-made guacamole only 8%. (Avocados are soooo expensive here right now – at least $3 each, and sometimes more than that). We of course couldn’t find tortilla chips, so we instead ate the dip with chips that tasted like Doritos and the Australian version of Sun Chips.

Watching the Super Bowl was kind of a surreal experience. It started at 10am on Monday morning, and so we went into my office to watch it there. Brad, a Ph.D. student here from the US for a year, managed to rent out the conference room with the TV, so we gathered there to watch. It was strange enough watching the game in the middle of the day at work, but the oddities didn’t stop there. The game was on a bit of a time delay because the US commercials took much longer than the Australian ones. So, during the extra time, the Australia sportscasters were either discussing the game, which was pretty much hilarious, or analyzing the Super Bowl commercials, which was also hilarious. (Every once in a while, they would show about 3 or 4 of the US Super Bowl commercials and then try to explain them.)

There were four of us from the US watching the game, and then a bunch of Australians. Although some of them had vague ideas about the rules of football, it was a new experience for me to feel like I was the authority on the game. Actually, it was pretty easy to explain the game because there were hardly any penalties at all, which are often the most confusing part. However, I can’t say that the Australians fully appreciated the significance of the Saints’ onside kick to start the second half. Right now we’re trying to watch Aussie rules football (called footy, which refers to both the sport and the actual ball), and given how confused we are, I have some additional sympathy for the Australians watching the Super Bowl. Cricket was supposed to be confusing, but turned out to be pretty easy to follow. Footy, on the other hand, seems impenetrable at the moment. It seems to combine elements of basketball, volleyball, ultimate Frisbee, soccer, football, and rugby. There are four posts, no pads, and 18 people on a side. Whistles blow all the time, but play does not stop. Kicking the ball, however, is actually a critical part of the game and scoring points, unlike in American football. At any rate, I was happy for the Saints and New Orleans to win, but I definitely did miss the Super Bowl parties in the US.
But back to the important part: the food. We told our neighbors, Liz and Ryan, that we were going to make an effort to learn how to make Indian food while we were here. They were nice enough to bring us a few Indian spice kits from a place they know in town, and gave us some recipes to try. Ryan’s parents are Indian, and he and Liz have a lot of practice making curries.

Tonight was our first attempt at making chicken curry with the spice pack, except we substituted kangaroo—for the chicken, not the spice pack. : ) I told Dave before he started making the dinner that Liz had warned us to use about half the amount of spice the recipe calls for because otherwise it might be too hot. Part way through cooking, Dave asked me if the recipe meant the spice pack when it said curry. He thought it just meant the curry spice (from the jar and not from the spice packet), so he had added some of that. I told him that it meant the spice packet, and then went back to my reading, thinking he would just add a little of the spice packet, and we’d be fine, since our curry from the jar isn’t spicy.

Well, somehow we had a bit of miscommunication because when I told Dave to use half the amount of spice that the recipe called for, he thought I meant to use half of the packet. So after adding curry from our jar, he then proceeded to add half of the spice pack, instead of the two teaspoons that the recipe calls for. As you can imagine, half of the packet makes for some pretty spicy curry—probably at least 5 to 10 times the amount called for. I ate mine as quickly as possible, blowing out the heat that seemed to be overtaking my entire mouth. I finished and thought I’d cool things off with a little rice and soy sauce. Except that my mouth was still so hot that the soy sauce tasted spicy. I resorted to a few bites of plain rice to try and sooth my mouth.

Dave took the opposite approach and has just finished his meal after laboring through it for about 30 minutes and consuming several liters of water along the way. But, he must be hungry because he’s just told me he might go back for some more. Oh gosh. One thing’s for sure—he can have all of the leftovers.

Anyways, we’ll let you know how our next attempt at cooking Indian goes. Hopefully a lot less spicily, though I suppose it makes up for the ultra-mild ketchup salsa. And, we’ll let you know if we ever figure out how they play Aussie rules football.

Life Around Adelaide

Ok, so my eyes are getting a little droopy reading papers, and since Dave just uploaded some new pictures of Adelaide, I am giving myself permission to write a blog about some of our activities around Adelaide.

We are living in the Adelaide Hills, in Hawthorndene to be exact. It’s an excellent location, especially right now because the Hills are definitely several degrees cooler than down in the city. Although we’ve still managed to avoid the experience of a 40+ degree C day, we’ve still had a few hot days, and we always notice the temperature difference when we get back home after being in the city. We’ve also been cooling off by swimming—Dave found an excellent pool. It’s outdoors and is 50 meters long. We’ve been going in the middle of the day when it’s hottest and least busy. The water is great, the chlorine seems to be at a much lower concentration than in most pools in the US, and it’s really nice to be swimming again.

The pool is right next to the Goodwood train station, which is very convenient for us, since we ride the Belair line to/from our station and the city. The Goodwood station is definitely the most colorful of all the train stations, and has a sign up on one of the posts that says the Church of Scientology has adopted the train station, and that all of the quotes are by L. Ron Hubbard. We’re a bit confused, because the train station is painted with cartoon kids and messages telling people not to do drugs. Hmmm…

We live about a 43 second walk away from four tennis courts, and so we decided to get some tennis rackets. I’d like to say that we invested in our rackets, but they’re about as cheap as you can get here, so it’s hard to really consider them an investment. It’s been great to play, though, and we’re already getting better, which actually isn’t saying too much. However, it seems like the rest of Blackwood (the local neighborhood) is also trying to get better at tennis as well, as the courts are almost always in use. Perhaps it’s a side effect of the Australian Open just having been on—everyone’s sure that with just a little more practice he or she can be the next Roger Federer or Justine Henin. Speaking of the Australian Open, it was fun to watch it live since we’re in the same time zone. Although I was sad that Henin and Murray both lost, we really got to see some excellent tennis.

The Central Market is definitely our favorite place for food—both for produce and for eating out. It’s probably the cheapest place in town—you can get meals for under $10, which is definitely as cheap as it gets here, and they have bagels! Most of the produce seems to be grown in Australia—a lot of it in South Australia for that matter. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about that since it certainly takes water to grow all of that food. I start to wonder about which has the lower environmental impact—taking water out of the River Murray in order to grow food locally, or growing food in wetter areas and transporting it longer distances. Hmmm…. I guess my job is to figure out how to be efficient with water so that there’s enough water in the Murray and for irrigation. And, I hope there are lots of people out there working on developing non-CO2 emitting transportation methods, so that soon, my question will no longer be pertinent.

We’ve also been watching some of the morning and afternoon news shows on television. The news is not really all that exciting, but it is a bit of a cultural experience to watch some of these shows. For instance, we learned that AC/DC is from Australia, and that they fondly refer to them here as Acca Dacca. They really like to put ‘acca’ onto the end of words. For instance, McDonalds = Maccas; anyone with a last name that begins with Mc is called Macca (I think I remember that Paul McCartney was also called Macca in England). Chris McCormack, the Hawaii Ironman-winning triathlete, is widely known as Macca to devotees of that sport. And, now we’ve learned about Acca Dacca, which has to be my favorite.

The other semi-mystery that we’ve just had explained to us today is the coffee. You can get a short black, long black, cappuccino, baby cino, flat white, great white… No just kidding, no great whites. But, lots of other mysterious drinks. We learned today that short blacks are espressos. Long blacks are espressos with hot water (sort of like an Americano, I think, though less water.) Flat whites are sort of like lattes, but with no foam. Lattes have a little more milk than cappuccinos, and a little less foam. Cappuccinos always come with chocolate sprinkled on the top, and so they are my favorite. Even Dave tried one and liked it (!) All of them, however, generally come in much smaller sizes than in the US. One of the cleverest ads I’ve ever seen was a picture of a bottle of Coca-Cola, with the slogan, “The original long black.”

Oh, and one last thing. The backyard birds here are awesome. They’re so colorful and talkative. Just excellent. There are magpies, sulphur-crested cockatoos, galahs, rainbow lorikeets, rosellas…and this is just around the neighborhood. Imagine if the sparrows and finches and jays that fly around outside your window were really, really brightly colored. We’re looking forward to getting a little further afield to see even more birds while we’re here….

Well, hopefully that gives a little more insight into what our daily life is looking like at the moment. And, for those of you who read the end of the last blog, we did recover my underwear from the vacuum. But, all of my clothes that were in that load still have little hairs on them, which are surprisingly pokey. Dave says if I just wear them, the hairs will eventually go away. I sure hope so!

Nine kangaroos, four koalas, and heaps of blackberries.

Yesterday, we had a lovely time picking blueberries and enjoying a barbie* at one of my advisor’s homes, which I’ll talk more about later. We rode our bikes over for the barbie, and went through Belair National Park. Belair would perhaps be equivalent to one of the smaller properties the US National Park Service owns—one you wouldn’t have to pay to get into. Anyways, it’s not a huge wilderness area. But, if you are in the park in the earlier morning or later afternoon, you’ll almost certainly see kangaroos. We in fact saw nine on our ride home. It was so exciting. I can’t really believe these creatures survived through evolution pressures. The way they move is so unlike any other animal I have ever seen. It looks a little painful because they’re so hunched over. And, it really seems like they should put their hands down to help themselves along. But they don’t need to because their legs are so powerful and bouncy. And, they have this huge tail which keeps them from falling forward. They’re really something. I guess kangaroos (and perhaps koalas, too) are good examples of geographic isolation (or some concept of evolution that you bio people probably know by name.)

Kangaroos are like deer. They taste like deer. They are hazardous for cars like deer. They are hunted like deer except that not just anyone can shoot a kangaroo. You have to be a commercial kangaroo hunter. Also, if you happen to run into one with your car and kill it, you are not allowed to take it home with you for dinner. Apparently, this sort of thing is not done in Australia, and so you can imagine the look on our landlords’ faces when Dave asked them if we could do this. If you do hit a kangaroo with your car, you’re supposed to look around for joeys and take them to a rescue center. You are not supposed to take the kangaroo home and eat it. Our landlords indicated that Dave’s query was rather bogan, which is essentially the Australian word for redneck or white trash. Heehee.

Although it seems a little strange, many scientists here are encouraging people to eat kangaroos, and for farmers to switch from cows to kangaroos because they do not release methane, and so are much better in terms of greenhouse gas production. We’ve decided that kangaroo is the main meat that we’ll eat here. There’s a store in the Central Market called Wild Oz. It sells all sorts of wild animal meat, including camel, crocodile, wild goat, and kangaroo. I think we’re going to have to branch out and try some camel next. And, we might start substituting crocodile for our chicken dishes because it, well, tastes like chicken. Here’s an interesting article on kangaroos, camels, and cows, and the methane they produce.

But, back to the blackberries. They are a weed here. I am having a hard time understanding how blackberries are a weed in a place that receives so little rain. Ryan explained that they have very deep roots and so can get down to the water. But still. I’m used to picking blackberries in Vermont, where there’s heaps of water, and it still seems odd to me that there are amazingly tasty blackberries growing here. There’s actually some discussion about whether they should try to eradicate them or not. They’re invasive, but they grow well, hold the soil in place, provide habitat for lots of birds, like fairywrens, and other smaller animals, and they produce some very tasty berries. Of course, the thorns here are sharper than in Vermont. That’s par for the course in Australia, though. We’ve been told that every (living) thing here is just a little bit nastier than what we’re used to back home.

The whole point of picking blackberries was so we could make a cobbler. We brought our favorite cobbler recipe over (thanks, Aunt Judy!), and wowed everyone with a delicious cobbler. We did in fact eat kangaroo steaks and sausages for dinner. (FYI: The trick to cooking kangaroo is hot and fast.) It almost felt like we were back in Vermont with hot berry picking, delicious cobbler, and venison-like meat—but I was quickly reminded of our new locale when we saw a koala in a tree. We actually heard it—they sort of make a purring/grunting sound. They’re exciting to see, but not quite as exciting to watch as kangaroos because they mostly eat, sleep, and poop. Hopefully I’ll see one in action at some point, but so far, they’ve really just been lumps up in the trees.

* Barbie of course means a barbeque, but when I write barbie, Word automatically capitalizes it. I hadn’t thought of it before, but you could probably have some funny misunderstandings with Americans talking about how they used to dress up their Barbies and Australians talking about putting shrimp on their barbies. Heehee.

That’s the end of the blog, but I just have to share the current activity in our granny flat. Dave is vacuuming our clothes. I gave him a hair cut this morning. His shirt was very hairy, and so he stuck it in with the rest of the wash today. He forgot that it was the dryer, and not the washer, that removes all the hair. We let all of our clothes air dry here (there is no dryer), and so they are covered with short, black hairs. Oh no! A pair of my underwear just disappeared into the vacuum hose, and Dave just said, “I’m not sure where they are.” Eek! He just shined the headlight into the inner depths of the vacuum and exclaimed, “I see them!” I’m not sure whether to rejoice or cringe. Perhaps they’ll have to be re-washed. He’s sticking a fork into the vacuum now, but has decided the fork has insufficient grabbing power. He’s moved onto the Leatherman. I’m not going to describe what he just pulled out of the vacuum. Yick.

Also, I promise we'll be better about putting in some photos with these blog posts in the future. In the meantime, you can see what we've uploaded on Picasa here.