Thursday, January 21, 2010

A walk around the block

Took myself for a constitutional stroll around the block the other night - it took me two hours and appears to be about 7 km (my 'block' in the old country was about 60 km). I saw wild turkey and Cape Barren geese, and a lot of other birdlife I still need to learn. The parroty things are an experience, but my current favourite is the blue wren - a tiny bird with a blue head and black mask a perky upright tail and an attitude that says... 'I am the avian Zorro!' met my first wallaby too - not sure which species yet... er. They do look overgrown shaggy unkempt rat that bounces. Who fed the rats Disney-tigger pills? I took some sunset pics of the sea-weedy sandflats and enjoyed the tranquility of soul. I didn't see one other person not driving, but I did find a large reel neatly stuck in the fork of a tree -obviously someone's roof-cargo didn't make it through the arch of wind-carved she-oaks. I'll advertise it's finding in the bi-weekly paper, I think. If anyone can tell me the make, and roughly where they lost it, they can have it back.

Our furniture is in Launceston. The local operator says he can see the containers (they split the load in two) from his office window. Oddly I can't eat off it there, and by the time it gets here it'll probably be too late for the boys to be here to help unload and sort and re-assemble computers for us. Ah well, maybe in a week or two or three they'll make the booking for the ferry. The local movers who our not too amazing Elliots have subcontracted have taken about as long to move the stuff from Melbourne to Lonnie - let alone here - as they took pack and move it from Finnegan's Wake to Melbourne. Is this the way it works in Australia? Normally in SA you pay part of the move on receipt, which seems a powerful incentive. Unfortunately international moves have to pay up front. Oh well. We have a house to live in, and my first seedlings are poking their heads up :-)

4 comments:

  1. That reel... when I was young, visiting my grandmother in rural Ohio, I found a rod and reel apparently lost in the trees by a nearby creek. I picked it up and took it to her house, intending to hunt the owner. She looked at it and asked me what I was doing with Jimmy's fishing gear. She then told me that he stored it by the creek so that he didn't have to carry it from his farm and back all the time. I returned it to his storage place.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Heh - this one however was in a fork of a tree just above the road (car roof height), on a public road, and part of the seat is broken - fixable I reckon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your blue wrens are most likely Superb Fairy-wrens, like this one who whose picture I took when I was in Tasmania back in March. http://my.opera.com/kknight/albums/showpic.dml?album=732187&picture=12257183

    ReplyDelete
  4. You are quite correct. One of the locals told me it was a 'blue wren' and I haven't yet got a local bird book. The ones on Flinders of course are bluer and better (or so they tell me) ;-).

    ReplyDelete