Goanna Kind of Day

I went goanna hunting today. I had heard there were goannas out on Tomaree Head so I decided a hike was in order because it was a gorgeous and quite warm day. The hike up to the top of Tomaree Head is a lot of up, up, up, so I was rather gassed by the time I got to the top. Worse yet I did not see a single goanna. I enjoyed the view for a while and snapped off some pictures. At this point I was feeling a bit put-out because I had a beet-red face, was doing my best imitation of a porcine sweat, and was a complete goanna hunting failure.

Trying to keep a positive attitude, I decided I'd at least try to get some bird shots. I'm on the way back down and spot this little bird uphill a bit who is just chattering away. While I'm diddling around getting the camera ready, I suddenly realize there's some movement behind him by the rock. A goanna!!! I could just see him through the brush. I was stoked, but a little disappointed that I didn't really get a good shot of him before he moved out of sight.

I learned goannas on the move are not quiet so I filed that little tidbit away. I got back down from the summit path and decided to take the path to the World War II gun emplacements. I got all the way to the end of the path without seeing any more goannas. Dang! I'm heading back and suddenly I hear something in the uphill brush. I'm looking everywhere for movement and suddenly I see it - my second goanna and even from a distance I could tell he was a big'un! I took a few pictures and realized he was heading down in my direction. I don't know how long I waited, but he just kept coming my way. I kept getting better and better shots and he eventually ended up on the path with me! I followed behind him for a while and marveled at everything. He was around 6 feet long and had the coolest skin and markings. And his tongue and claws - they were something else! I loved the way he walked; each step caused him to twist his body giving him this cool ungainly gait.

I realized he was doing his rounds looking for food. He checked a drain gate, went by a couple picnic tables, and then into an old World War II doorless small building before he headed back up the hill. I got a lot of cool shots that I uploaded here: Tomaree Head Goanna Album.

I headed back down the path and before I knew it I saw a different goanna near the path. Where were these guys when I was going up and needed some encouragement? This one wasn't quite as big, but he was still at least 5 feet from nose to tail. I got a bunch more shots before he headed off into the brush.

I saw two more goannas off in the distance on the way back. The big one was following the little one which made me think maybe it's mating season. They were too far off to be immortalized in my camera because of the obscuring brush, but I figure not every goanna has modeling aspirations anyway.

A goanna is an Australian lace monitor lizard. They can get up to almost 7 feet long which I find hard to comprehend. The ones I saw seemed plenty big so I can't imagine one even bigger. I understand from reading about them that they climb trees. Guess those claws are for more than just looks.

Goannas - check that one off the list of things to see and do.

Salamander Bay

Eric and I have the great privilege of living in Salamander Bay. Salamander Bay is a town of nearly forty-two hundred folks and is a nice quiet town comprised of many retired types, holiday seekers, and those of us somewhere in between. My favorite part of where we live is the Salamander Bay Shops just across the street from our place. We can run (literally) to the store and be back home with our purchase in under 5 minutes! It's convenience you can't beat unless you're looking for good produce. The little market has lots of good stuff, but the produce there isn't going to win any awards.

In one day Eric visited the butcher and the baker. Sadly, they don't have a candlestick maker or he'd have managed the complete set! We've eaten at the Farman family cafe and it truly is a family-run business. The only place I've visited more than I'd like to is the chemist, but then having to get medicines isn't exactly a great shopping conquest goal.

The most curious shop to me is the drive-thru bottle shop. Of all the things one might be in a hurry to purchase, I can't imagine alcohol to be at the top of the list. But I don't drink, so what do I know?

I catch my morning carpool from the bench in front of the News Agency. I enjoy (as much as one can enjoy anything just before 6:00 AM) the rustlings of the bakery starting the day and people stopping by for some brekkie on their way to work or making a desperate run in their P.J.s for some bread for breakfast.

We have just learned that Salamander Bay is a finalist for the New South Wales Tidy Town award. It's a great place to live and tidy, too!

Soccer By the Runway

Well, I finally found some soccer! It's quite a bit different than I'm used to, but I am just thrilled to be playing again. Maybe I should rephrase that - I am just thrilled to be attempting to play again. I thought I was prepared for how bad I was going to be after not playing for 3 months, being completely out of shape from lack of exercise, and recovering from bronchitis, but it was so much worse. It is especially depressing when you imagined you'd be bad, but it was more like REAL bad (just imagine an uncoordinated turtle and you're pretty close). Sigh.

Let's not talk about that sad subject anymore. How was it so different you ask? First off, it's 6-a-side and the games are at lunchtime on the base. The field is much smaller than normal which I greatly appreciate at this point of my out-of-shapeness. So are the goals, but then I rarely remember to shoot anyway so the size of the goal is mostly immaterial to me. The fields are terrible - they're bumpy and have scraggly grass at best (my ankle let me know later how much it didn't like it). Since the fields are right next to the runway, you occasionally have to plug your ears when the fighter jets take off (they are indescribably loud), but I can't blame that for my patheticness (oh wait, I wasn't going to talk about that anymore). They don't play offsides so there are often people up front sharking (that's their word for what we call cherry-picking).

Those who have played with me know that playing at lunch is really not good for my self-image since after I got back to the office my coworkers took one look at my beet-red face and wondered if I was okay. I think they play 15 or 20 minute halves, but it went by so fast I couldn't really tell. It still took me almost an hour after I was back at my desk to stop sweating - so much for cleaning up afterward. It was even longer before my face flare-up subsided.

The most important part was we tied 0-0 so I could at least console myself that I didn't hurt the team---much.

Differences Aplenty

I chatted recently with one of my Aussie coworkers about my spider encounter. As you can imagine, he had much more impressive stories to tell. I will admit I was wowed as much by his "no worries" attitude as I was by the story. I know I would be incapable of that same nonchalance. Matt bought some property south of Newcastle and the previous owner was a hoarder. I guess Matt's property has lots of areas to clean up and he is getting to it as he has time. One day he was running the chain saw to clean up some logs and realized at some point that his thigh was swelling. Since Aussies are experts on spiders, he decided that since he didn't feel the bite it must have been a white-tail spider.

Eric and I recently picked up a free card with pictures and descriptions of some of Australia's spiders on it. It has a handy magnet on the back so we have it on our refrigerator so we can learn what to watch for and to be horrified daily at some of these creatures. The card has three categories: (1) Dangerous and Deadly; (2) Venomous - Poisonous - Painful Bite; and (3) The Low Risk Spiders. Even one of the "Low Risk" dudes has a description of "mildly toxic". Excuse me, how is that "low risk"?

Just so you know, my Huntsman Spider (who has been named Charlotte by Isabelle) was in the "Low Risk" category. On the other hand, Matt's spider was in the "Dangerous and Deadly" group. Matt described how his thigh where the spider must have attacked was raised by 3-4 centimeters. I was just beginning to picture this inch and a half high or so of swelling when he went on to say how later his skin there was kind of dying off and peeling and pretty much being altogether gross. What blew me away was this whole thing did not cause him to go scurrying off to the doctor at a speed-limit ignoring pace. If I surmised I had been bitten by a white-tail spider I would read the description on the card, and I quote, "May cause horrific ulceration to skin of sensitive people" and make a beeline (or should it be spiderline?) to the doctor. Well now I'm back to that shivering that I thought I was getting over since Charlotte has been notably absent.

I guess Matt has lots of spiders at his place so it's just business as usual. It suddenly occurred to me that he has a young boy and how in the world can the poor kid play in the yard? Matt explained that you just have to teach them to check their toys before they start playing with them, call for Dad right away if you see one and don't get near it, and always shake out your shoes. I don't really have any toys to inspect and there's no one to rescue me at the moment, but you can be sure I'm shaking out my shoes if I leave them outside. Actually, I'm beating the crap out of those things before I put them on because if there's a clingy spider in there, I want to whack it into unconsciousness so it'll come out of my shoe when I move onto shaking it. Silly overkill you say? Not to me!

Not So Empty House

As I was walking up the steps tonight to our place after getting home from work, I was thinking about how it was going to be empty like last night. I was completely unprepared to see who/what was waiting for me on the stairs. A SPIDER!!! I got past it safely, but I had the worst case of the shivers imaginable. Suddenly every nook and cranny might hold one of these monsters and you can bet I was on high alert.

After I recovered my equilibrium, I decided I just had to get a picture of this thing. This required that I come back down the stairs which meant I had to go by it one more time. I made it, but had to go through another shivery thing before I could take the picture. Now this is one of those moments when having a camera lens that doesn't require you to get too terribly close is mighty handy. As you can imagine I put the biggest lens I have on the camera and then zoomed all the way in. Even that was giving me the creeps.

I snapped off a few pictures and then realized I had to get past the spider yet again to get back into the house. I did the third set of the shivers after getting by it and shivered all over again when I started looking at the pictures. Man, I do not like spiders!!!

I spent some time trying to figure out what kind of spider it was besides a really big and hairy one. It looks like it is probably a Huntsman spider which is fairly benign as far as Australian spiders go (like any spider could possibly be benign!).

I have been having a great time seeing all the Australian wildlife - up until now. We saw a wild koala before Eric left. Now that's cool. Spiders, on the other hand, not so much.

Now you'll have to excuse me as I go turn the house upside down making sure he doesn't have any friends inside!

Lightning Ridge Part Two

When they mine for opals, they basically pull the entire layer out where the opals are found, roll it around with water in a cement mixer for a few days, and eventually have a look through it. What's left after they look through everything is called the tailings.

At the Walk In Mine they let people look through the tailings for "treasure". We figured the experience could not be complete without spending some time fossicking so we took the few tools and spray bottles we'd got earlier in the day, and got to it.

It's not easy to find opal material or so we found out. I think we'd looked for an hour with zero success before I finally spotted something. I think the jury is out on whether or not this was a good thing or not because we all became invigorated to keep on searching. Not a problem except that at some point during the first hour it had started lightly raining. At first the sprinkles were nothing more than a very minor annoyance, but somewhere along the way, the tailings dirt started to cling to our shoes, tools, and the bottoms of the spray bottles.

We found more opal specks, but eventually started finding that we were getting awfully wet and quite muddy. The wet finally won out and we opal-miner-wanna-be types had to throw in the towel (heaven knows we'd have been wiping, not throwing, if only we'd had a towel).

We had the great privilege of being there for their overnight rainstorm. It was darn wet that next morning as we took off for home.

I figured the trip home was going to be my opportunity to see some emus and take some great photographs of them. With this goal in mind, off we went, and it wasn't long before I was demanding we stop. What we didn't know was how soft things were from the rain and that going on to the shoulder of the road or a driveway isn't a good idea after all that rain. We were suddenly very thankful we have an all-wheel drive vehicle because we were slip-slidin' away. Yikes!

We finally got turned around to get back to the emus, but we found out that non-zoo emus are extremely skittish. Nearly every picture I got was of their backside. All we had to do was slow the engine down and they started leaving. We did get to see an emu family with about three or four young-ins. I didn't manage to get a picture of that because they were even more skittish than skittish (ultra-skittish?), but man it was way cute!

The rest of the drive back was pretty uneventful except for Eric realizing at one point there was a turtle in the middle of the road. He missed it, but we were aghast to realize it was only halfway across. Hope he hurried. Um, turtle, guess that's a no. Well maybe it was his lucky day and everyone who passed by later missed him, too.

Eric left today for a month back home. I guess that means the major sightseeing is on hold for a bit. In the meantime I'll have to see if I can stay out of trouble until he gets back.

Lightning Ridge Part One

Australia celebrates Labour Day on October 4th and I also got Friday, October 1st, off due to my work schedule. With a nice long weekend coming up, we decided to head to Lightning Ridge with one of my coworkers, Marc. We took off early Friday morning because it's an all-day drive.

We swung down south towards Newcastle and then headed west towards Maitland. We'd been to Maitland before when we were shopping for furniture and through it once when we went on the winery/brewery/chocolate factory trip. It wasn't long after we got out of Maitland that we started to hit territory that was new to us. We soon went by some seriously huge coal mining areas. They sure have a lot of coal here.

We stopped in Denman to get a better map, moved on through Merriwa, and decided to stop for lunch in Dunedoo. We ate at an old cafe that had a sign above the counter that said, "We serve good food, not fast food." They were true to their word and, thankfully, it wasn't that slow.

Back on the road, we worked our way through Mendooran and at Gilgandra we made the turn toward the north. The towns were getting smaller and smaller and farther and farther from one to the next with nothing much in between. We had seen a fair number of kangaroos although it was sad to see the inordinately large number of kangaroo carcasses by the road. We also discovered a cloud of locusts doesn't look or sound so good on the windshield - what a splat!

Somewhere between Gilgandra and Coonamble I saw my first wild emu! We saw a few more here and there as we passed through Walgett and finally arrived at Lightning Ridge. That was way cool!

The Lightning Ridge Motel will never be compared to even a Motel 6, but it's about the best the town had to offer. We found ourselves laughing at what we found. Eric said the bed looked like an old swayback horse. It had two serious divots that said just a few too many people had slept here, yeah, like a few thousand too many.

We had dinner and then checked out the social scene - the motel bar seemed to be the gathering place for many of the townspeople. We joined in their raffle although we wondered what we'd do if we won since the winners got either a meat tray or vegetable and fruit tray. We didn't win which was just as well, but it was entertaining. For the record, the meat trays all went before any of the vegetable trays were picked which bore out the sentiment expressed by one winning Aussie bloke who said, "I don't want no ?&$# veggie tray".

The next morning we hit a local cafe for breakfast and pumped the locals for information. We enjoyed talking to them and as it turned out, one of them ended up being our tour guide at the Chambers of the Black Hand Mine tour. He was a character who had enjoyed some success in his many years of opal mining. He said he and his mining partner were called the Holic brothers - he was the workaholic and his partner was the alcoholic! Cute!

We learned that the opals are found about 30-60 feet down at the bottom of what used to be an inland sea. The opals are found in two ways - seams and "nobbies". Nobbies are lump-shaped opals with a rocky covering. They find both white and the more rare black opals in Lightning Ridge. The Chambers of the Black Hand Mine is no longer actively mined and is now full of sculptures in the sandstone that have been done over the last 13 years by the owner. It's pretty darn amazing.

We next hit the Bevan Cactus Garden. Oh my gosh! I was in hog heaven! What an incredible display of thousands of cacti in sizes I could scarcely believe. I chatted with the owner who was a nice lady. She and her husband had done it together for years, but he died several years ago so the gardens are now his memorial. It was impossible to miss the great pride she had (and rightfully so) in what they had accomplished.

That was what impressed me the most about Lightning Ridge. The people there were so proud of their town and incredibly friendly. We had more than one person hint to us that it was a great place to move or retire to someday. We went to the Walk In Mine armed with the inside knowledge that we should ask for "Alex" to be our tour guide. In fact, Alex was the 11 year old son of the owner who has grown up in the world of opal mining and knows his stuff. Alex also desires to buy a Hummer someday and to keep him on the way to that dream, we paid a dollar each for the special tour.

After the tour we decided to try some of our own fossicking in the tailings from the mine. More on that tomorrow.