New Roommates

Well, I know I already sent an email with a picture of one of the new roomies, but as I was looking through all of my recent pictures, I decided a post might be in order. So here are my new roommates:

This is Jasper. He is around 10 years old, and he likes to come up stairs after his real owner has eaten dinner and settled in to watch the news in his bedroom. He (Jasper) will often come up, and go out on my deck (like in this picture). He will then lay down in the sitting room just outside my office, and wait for me to go downstairs and cook. He will follow me back up to lay at my feet while I eat and watch TV. When he realizes that I am done, and there is nothing for him, he will go down to the second floor, and sleep on the couch, something I guess he only started doing after I moved in. With one person asleep on the first floor, and the other on the third, I think Jasper likes to be right in the middle. Does that remind you of anyone?

I haven't named this guy, but he roams the house at night, running away from me whenever I get near. He cruises the wall that runs from the second to the third floor (here, he is in hiding where the wall meets the roof on the third floor), and after being here for a few days, he relocated to the bathroom at night. I scared him (and he scared me) a couple nights in a row as I went in to brush my teeth before bed. My heart stopped as he ran up and down the wall trying to find a place to hide. Although you can not tell, he is about four inches long. A little bigger that the newts. On more than one occasion I have seen baby geckos, about an inch long, on the ceiling. So maybe this "he" is really a "she." Buster II, anyone?

Haven't named him either. Hope I don't have to. I saw him one night crawling on the ceiling way above my head. The third floor has a peaked roof that is probably 15ft high at its highest point. He was way up there. The next night, I saw him in my office, about five feet from my desk, bur hidden between a beam and the wall in a space about three or four inches wide. I could not reach in there and kill him without fear of missing him and scaring him away. I left him alone, keeping one eye on him for a few hours. He never moved. So I closed my office door when I went to bed, and in the morning he was gone. I haven't seen him since. As you can see, he is mostly legs (long hairy legs), but the area he covered on the wall was about 3/4 the size of a playing card (or a yu-gi-oh card, if that is a better comparison). I am told they are called huntsman, and that they are harmless. They eat bugs, don't make webs, and do not have the tendency to hide in clothes and such. They are wood spiders, and like hiding in nooks and crannies of the house or the woodpile.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntsman_spider
According to wikipedia, they are found all over the world. I keep finding them in my living space. Creepy!

In a final note, the 'Oprah in Australia' shows have begun airing here, and are on four nights in row. I watched last night (The cat is out of the bag), and I learned this much- I don't really like Oprah, but the rest of the world seems to. I find particularly annoying her "Let's get Ready to Rumble" voice that she uses several times on camera while here, speaking to a large crowd. If you see the shows, you will know exactly what I am mean.
However, to be clear, Oprah is NOT one of my new roommates.

Bats!!!

They (the bats of Woolgoolga Lake...that's what I am calling them) flew over my house last night. I got this video of it. It doesn't even come close to doing it justice. For every one  bat I got on film, a hundred more got by without my filming them. Watch the whole thing, and then imagine it going on for like 15 more minutes!. It is crazy- like something out of a Nature video...



The quality of the video is pretty grainy, but if it appears to be black, in the sky and moving, it is probably a bat. And you can hear them, too! Oh, and the occasional truck passing by out front. That happens all night long.

The Long Walk

On the day before the day before Christmas, I walked for what seemed like forever in Coff's Harbour, from the Hawaiian Sands Motel, where I had spent the previous night, to the Coff's Coast Markets on Harbour Drive. Yes, the Aussies add the "u" in words like Harbor and Color, just to confuse. Anyway, I had just embarked on my brief period of homelessness, staying in the motel the night before so as to have roof over my head, and to make seeing the newest Harry Potter film possible. On the morning in question, I was to walk to the Coff's Coast Market, a weekly open air market held on Harbour Drive, a busy street of shops and what not, to catch a ride back to Woolgoolga. I had my bright orange duffel bag (which I had to buy at the airport to reduce the weight of my overly heavy suitcase) and my lap top (which I didn't want to leave anywhere unattended) with me, each slung over one shoulder. My suitcases were stored at a friend's house in "Woopi" overnight. Anyway, I walked from point A to point B, thinking it would be a short easy walk. It turned out to be a long and arduous journey, due to the weight pulling on both shoulders, the rawness on my feet in my new flop flops, and the ever present rain that has so far defined my trip to Australia (Still no flooding though!). Things I discovered along the way: There is a Porpoise Petting Pool in Coff's, and I am totally going to go; The main beach in Coff's, called Park Beach, is never visible from the road called Ocean Parade (which I walked on for quite some time); I hate caravan parks (a long story); one should never buy a new pair of flip flops, and then walk a few miles in them to break them in. I am sure there were other lessons, but these are the main points. I did, however, also bring out the camera on occasion. Here is what I saw:

This cool little spot where the ocean meets the land. I like how it is protected and calm. However...

It does seem to cause this road to flood. I think it is a regular occurrence.

Here is the home of the Coff's Harbour Scouts. I thought you might like seeing this.

Notice that there is a group younger than Cub Scouts here called Joeys. So very Australian! Also, notice the five stars in the Scouts symbol, which are the same five stars on the Australian flag. They represent the Southern Cross, a constellation visible in the southern hemisphere. So that is your social studies lesson for today...  I hope you enjoyed this brief tour of Coff's Harbour, and we encourage you to join us next time, as we explore more of the Northern Beaches, and possibly the Sikh Temple in Woolgoolga.