wombat, we are coming!!

I was told in my visit to parliament last week to come up with short, snappy titles. So I've called this blog entry "quoll sex". We did see some quolls having sex today. Oh, Sha is getting angry with me for not calling this post: "The most wonderful and beautiful, big, fat, wombat" and has taken control of the keyboard and changed the title.

Sha didn't let me spend much time watching the quolls have sex. She said that she thought they needed some privacy, but actually Sha wanted to get back to her new friend. Her new friend is a huge, fat wombat that seemed to be rather fond of her. Sha managed to get the wombat jumping into the air to bang his head on her hand. She also discovered that if she kept tapping its back then it would run faster and faster.

This morning we discovered that our guinea pigs were mutants. Tuan Tuan seems to be growing another fingernail. We took her to the vet who told us not to worry too much. Sha would like to report that both guinea pigs behaved very well and a big dog sat on her foot.

After playing with the wombat (at the Featherdale wildlife park) we decided to drive to Windsor (for no particular reason). We had some coffee, walked a bit by the river and then drove back home.

There are five bush turkeys walking around outside.

In ... ummm ... Canberra

Yesterday I was in the beautiful rainforest. Today I'm on the outskirts of Canberra. I'm in the Hotel Formule X which must rate as Canberra's worst hotel (I won't write what the 'X' stands for in case I get sued, but it is an integer less than 2). The flight was excellent. I arrived early and got moved to an earlier flight. It only took 30 minutes. Then, luckily, I hired a car. Then I got lost. The instructions say: "take Northbourne Avenue. Turn right into Antill Street and turn left approx. 200 m into mote." Assuming that "mote" means "motel" then this seems rather obvious. Actually, you have to drive about 2km up Antill Street to find it.

When you do find the hotel, you discover that there's a reason why it's cheap (all the posh hotels in Canberra are completely full). However, I do have a bunk bed and there is a nice view of the highway outside (and a useful petrol station that stocks shampoo).

Tomorrow, I've been told to get a taxi because there is no parking in Canberra. Here, I have been told that there's no possible way of getting a taxi.

Gosh, I am having fun :P

Fighting lyre birds

Today we took our car for a long drive. We filled it up with petrol and Chinese girls and then drove to Kiama. We didn't take the obvious route. Instead we went inland, got lost (our GPS is completely useless), saw the giant potato, drove down very windy roads (which necessitated winding the windows down for one of our guests to be sick) and ended up at the Minnamurra rainforest. We went for a walk and spotted about 10 lyre birds. The first was just scrabbling around in the bushes. Then we went around the corner and saw a whole flock of them fighting each other, raising their spectacular tails and flying incredibly fast. I didn't even know that they could fly. They looked like small pterodactyls swooping around. It was amazing!!

A few hours later, we got back into the car and drove into Kiama. It was a beautiful day!! Lots of pelicans. The blow hole was blowing. The chips were tasty. Then we drove home and got stuck in a few traffic jams.