Merry Christmas. I know, it is still Christmas eve for you, but it is Christmas here; we are 18 hours ahead. We are really having trouble with the Christmas spirit here in Summer. The Australians are not having any trouble however. You know ugly Christmas sweaters? They have the same thing, but in T-Shirts. At least a Christmas sweater (or jumper as they say in UK), is a sweater. Everyone is wearing them. Tacky, or kitschy, I don’t know which. This is a very kitschy town, reminds me of a retirement area in Florida: same coast, weather, homes and people. Before we left the UK, Christmas jumpers were coming out. They are a big thing there. People, men and women, were wearing them everywhere. Here too, it is just T-shirts. And santa hats. With flip flops. Christmas cakes and Christmas puddings are in the markets. A nod to their UK ties. They eat the same heavy meal as us: turkey and ham, and all the heavy carbohydrates. I wondered about that. I was hoping for Christmas shrimp on the barbie.
Aussies are the only people more casual than San Diegans. And they take casual a giant step to the right. Shirts and T’s with flip flops or bare feet. Dressing up is a Hawaiin shirt pulling buttons tight over a beer belly. Still the same flip flops.
We are learning Aussie lingo. If in doubt, shorten the word and add “ie” or is it “ey”. Brekie is the morning meal and they like their egg benny. You guessed it: eggs benedict. Here football (“footie”) is not soccer. It is Australian rules football, which is rugby without rules. There are rules, just no one, not even the referees, know them. Right now in Summer, the sport is cricket. A cricket test (match) can last days; there is no time limit. The batter bats until he gets out. Sometimes they score a hundred points without getting out. A single is only a point, but home runs (they call it something else) are 4 or 6. The pitcher is a bowler, batter “batsmen” (except for females: “batter” or “bat”) and the field is a pitch.
We are house sitting in Hervey Bay, Australia. We are in a traditional Queenslander. Hard to describe in a few words this type of house. All wood, with decorative carving, similar to Victorian gingerbread inside and out. Stained glass is common. Doorways have transoms.They have wide shaded decks. Windows are louvered and placed for breezes to pass through. Low slung, although most are built above the ground, a few feet of crawl space or nearly a story. Everything shakes when we walk on the hardwood floor and you can tell there is not too much between us and the critters under the house. The floor is beautiful however. And the roof is corrugated steel. More about that in the animal section of this letter. We spend most of our time on one of the covered decks watching and listening. It’s warm, but not uncomfortable.
All the birds are different, and their sounds are different. I have not gotten tired of hearing and watching them. There is a flock of colorful lorikeet. We have a family of butcher birds that pester us for food. I sure wish they would teach that baby to forage for its own food. White ibis are the seagulls of Australia; always around people picking up scraps instead of fishing like they should be. They are bigger and prettier than seagulls and funny to watch try to pick up garbage in their long curved beaks. There are bats here the size of dogs – no lie. Not even really small dogs. Cats, they are probably the size of an average sized cat. We have a big old mango tree next to and over the house. Every night they attack the mangos. Mangos fall off and hit the metal roof and make the loudest bang, and bounce a few times before hitting the ground. Usually we are outside under the deck and we often see these bats. Wing spans of about 4-5 feet; they make a distinct whoosh when they beat them taking off with a prized mango. They are called flying foxes; they look exactly like foxes, same color and same face, and almost the same size.
We have an interesting assignment for this house sit. The owner has a second dwelling air B&B that we are managing. It is odd to be on the other side of the transaction. And the other main task is to make sure the dog does not lick any toads. Not a joke, and not an Aussie saying. There is a cane toad that has a toxic secretion on its skin. It could kill a small dog, luckily ours is big. The substance makes the dogs stoned and they get addicted to it. So we really have to keep her away from them because she will seek them out. There are dozens of them around the house at night. Speaking of reptiles by the dozen: there is a big lizard here (up to 3’ including tail) called a water lizard. Odd name since we have never seen one in water. We walked through a pretty park in Brisbane and decided to see if we could count 100 water lizards. We were there for about 90 minutes and counted 94.
Pray for an end to the Australian bush fires. Some of the fires have been burning for over a month. No place in this massive country is devoid of smoke and ash. On top of all the other tragedy and loss, it may mark the extinction of koalas. We all need to do our part to take care of this planet; it’s a beautiful thing.