A lazy Sunday afternoon, just the right day to hang around in a tree.
As promised, here is the follow-up to my story and photos of the kangaroos I saw at South West Rocks. But be warned, you may not hear what you expected to about our cute little koalas!
Early in August my daughter and her boyfriend moved out of the house they had rented for the last year and of course, mum and dad’s assistance didn’t go astray in helping them move! It was a long, exhausting weekend, but by Sunday afternoon we could see that we had the biggest part of the task behind us.
Just after lunchtime, Ryan went out onto the balcony and when he came back inside he asked me, “Did you hear that bird screeching just then?” I told him that I had, then he said to me, “I think it was attacking a koala!”
“What?! Why didn’t you yell out to me; I could have taken a photo!”, amid thinking “they have koalas around here?!”
And here’s a back view, see its fluffy ears?
Throughout the afternoon we continued to hear the screeching bird, which sounded like a cockatoo. But the weird thing was, we could also hear a pig snorting! Emma wasn’t at all surprised by the pig snort sounds though; apparently at a house nearly, they had a pet pig! (hmm, of course, a pet pig in suburban Gold Coast….why not a dog like everyone else?)
After a while it got the better of me and I told Emma that it was time for us to take a break from the packing and cleaning. Armed with my camera we went on a search for this pig, or cockatoo, or koala….whatever it was, I was determined to get photos!
It didn’t take too long for Emma to spot two koalas up in a tree, just across the road from where they lived. I asked had she ever seen koalas here before, seeing as they had lived here for a whole year I suspected there may have been a good chance they had.
The male koala chasing the female up the tree.
“No, never”, Emma told me. How incredible that their final day living there (when I happened to be there with my camera!) was the day we saw them. This was my lucky day!
Suddenly the pig grunting started again, then the cockatoo screeched! And just at the same time as one koala chased the other up a tree!
Chin up exercises?
What I have since learned is that during the mating season, a male koala will often make a loud grunting sound! Did you know that? No? It was news to me too! And if the female is playing hard to get, or not appreciating the males advances, she will screech like a bird! And here you were all thinking that koalas were quiet little cuddly creatures, weren’t you?
Well, that’s what I thought about them. I didn’t know they even made a sound at all! But they are very cute, rather bulky and fury as can be. These photos are a tad fuzzy as the tree they were playing chaseys in was a distance away from me and with other trees in front of the koalas it was difficult to get a good clear shot of them. I hope you can see them clearly enough though to appreciate just how adorable they are.
They move surprisingly fast when they climb the trees.
So there you are, both kangaroos and koalas do live in the wild in Australia! We may not see them every day, but what a treat it is when we do. 🙂
A typical image of a cute and cuddly koala, just what we imagine they should look like. 🙂
What a treat to see a kangaroo coming up so close to my car!
Around the end of January this year you may remember that I did a series of posts on all things Australian. With Australia Day being celebrated on January 26th each year, it is a great time to take a look at Australian icons, and I really enjoyed sharing some of them here on my blog.
Karma asked if I would be showing you photos of any kangaroos or koalas. I told her at the time that I would see what I could come up with, having in mind that I could take a trip to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, about twenty minutes drive from my home, to take a few photos to show you some of our native animals.
Look, a whole little family!
Well, my trip to the wildlife sanctuary didn’t go to plan at that time, Mother Nature had other ideas for the people of the Tweed and Gold Coast areas. We spent weeks avoiding venturing outdoors, due to the tail end of a tropical cyclone hitting us!
The worst of the cyclone was over by the end of January, but the wet weather conditions continued for weeks. And what I really wanted you to see was kangaroos and koalas in their natural habitat and not in captivity. I’ve heard that many of the people in other countries believe that Australians see koalas and kangaroos regularly, but the fact of the matter is that we don’t. Seeing our iconic marsupial mammals, which is what koalas and kangaroos are, in the wild is a huge treat for us too!
I didn’t forget Karma’s request, although I really wanted to see some native animals in the wild! As usual, The Universe responded to my request, and during the space of just one month I have had the privilege to see firstly kangaroos, then koalas, both in the wild!
I could see they were about to jump away and thought I wouldn’t be seeing them again.
The kangaroos I found at a place called South West Rocks, where my son and I stayed a night at a motel on our way home from our trip down south in early July. Adam had been to South West Rocks with his father a couple of years ago when my husband took him there for a surf carnival. Adam loved the area and wanted us to spend a night there, telling me I would find heaps of very cool things to take photos of. I don’t think even Adam expected to see the kangaroos!
It was late afternoon when we arrived and by the time we had booked into our motel and headed out for a drive it was beginning to get dark, so the top photo, as you can see, has been taken at night-time. Regardless, I was thrilled to bits to actually see these kangaroos hopping around near my car!
Kangaroos legs are incredibly strong as you can see here by the way they jump.
The next morning Adam and I booked out of the motel early, to make the most of our time at South West Rocks before we headed home. First of all we drove to the lighthouse, where I took some photos of the lighthouse and the surrounding ocean. It is indeed an area of great beauty and Adam was right, I found plenty of photo opportunities there.
Next we went to Trial Bay Gaol. I won’t tell you about the gaol or the lighthouse now, but all will be revealed in a future blog post. I will tell you though that the gaol is no longer in use as a gaol!
As it was so early in the day we were the only car in the parking lot and all was quiet around the gaol, as I walked around snap, snap, snapping away with my camera. I walked up to the main entrance of the gaol and as I continued to take photos a movement caught my eye.
They jumped right up to me! Aren’t they beautiful?
At first I thought I was imagining things, but no, there they were, a mama, papa and little baby kangaroo ~ a whole family! All three looked very alert and I knew that they had heard the click of the camera and had seen me there, so I stayed still. Low and behold, suddenly, all three of them decided to come over and say hello to me!
I can’t begin to tell you how beautiful they were, with their big black-brown eyes, and the softest of fur. Well, I couldn’t touch them, they were behind the gate of the gaol, but I have touched kangaroo fur before and believe me, it’s very soft. I think it was all too much for the little joey tough as it quickly scurried into mama’s pouch once they had come over to me. The funny little thing, it didn’t right itself in the pouch though, so if you look carefully you will see one long, thin, black joey paw, peeking out of her pouch!
You can see here the little joeys long black hind leg sticking out of mama’s pouch.
The kangaroos stayed with me for a few minutes. I don’t know if they were expecting food, but I had nothing to give them, so after a short while they jumped away, out of sight.
Talk about magical moments. Anyone would have thought I was a visitor from overseas seeing kangaroos for the first time! It wasn’t just the joy of seeing them though and taking their photo. They were living freely in a wild habitat and not an animal sanctuary, and they trusted me enough to come right up close to me. What a privilege that was.
In my next post I will show you the koalas I saw. There is a funny story to the koalas, and I learnt a lot about them too! 🙂
Winter wattle in bloom at Leura, on the Blue Mountains, July 3rd.
“Sometimes change in our lives is slow and steady, sometimes it happens really fast. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes not so good. Having to adjust to new circumstances, people, or places is never easy and we have to be kind to ourselves and trust that, with time, we will settle in – if we’re in the place we’re meant to be…
I just felt these words were meant for someone – no idea who! But whoever it is, hope it helps…” Sue.
When I read the comment above this morning, written by Sue, a Blipfoto friend, her words spoke volumes to me. I really enjoy adding a photo each day to the blip website, well, most days. I’ve been lacking in motivation of late, for blip, blogging, gardening, everything that I usually love really. My mine has been all a-muddle.
I’ve heard it said so many times before that “life is a journey”; it has become a cliché really. My life’s journey began to steer itself into a different direction, with me controlling the steering of course, about six years ago. That’s when I began to write again, which led me to blogging. That’s how long I’ve been searching for “me”, for the last six years. Many of the posts I have added to my various blogs have started out with me trying to work something out in my mind, to get some clarity on what is happening at that time, to try to learn something new. By the time I have finished writing and have re-read what I have written, I also realise that what I have just said may actually strike a chord with another person too, and that maybe, just maybe, my battle through my confusion might actually help someone else’s muddled brain also. It would be a massive bonus if that did happen.
Once upon a time I wrote a monthly post on another website and my section was called “Freedom Space”. Whilst I enjoyed the website and the community feel of it, I also felt like a fraud and lost the will to write about freedom, when freedom was exactly the thing I was in search of myself. How could I pose as an authority on gaining freedom, when I hadn’t a clue how to get it for myself?
It’s my own doing though, this lack of freedom that I feel. If I had been a more dominant person, if I practised standing up to people who tell me what to do more often than I have done, if I didn’t dislike confrontation so much…..if, if, if….. But I can’t change the past. I shouldn’t have to spend my entire life moulding myself into the person that I’m “expected” to be either, none of us should.
My mother dominated, I rebelled, I felt bad, I apologised, we’d argue, I felt bad again, I apologised again, she’d tell me that she knew what was best for me, she knew what I should have in life. Being such an authoritative figure in my life, I moulded myself to suit her ways, yet it never did quite gel for me, when I realised that I wasn’t my mother, I was me, a whole different person to her.
When I finally left home, (against my mother’s better judgement of course), it was with another dominant person, this time a male. My beliefs being as they are, I would often tell him that he must have been my father in a previous lifetime, as he sure did seem to enjoy telling me what to do. It was like I had jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. He dominated, I rebelled, I felt bad, I apologised, we’d argue, I felt bad again, I apologised again, he’d tell me that he knew what was best for me, he knew what I should have in life – him. Yet he constantly hurt me. I would feel crushed to the core. When he realised that he had gone too far he would comfort me, try to make amends, say the words I wanted to hear. I’d believe him. He’d say things would change. They never did. And so it would all happen again, the arguments, the hurt, the comforting…….
So many times during my adult life I have found myself telling him, “I’m not a female version of you”. Isn’t that silly? Why would anyone want a person to be that much like themselves? Yet it (still) seems to me that that is exactly what he wants from me.
I went away recently for eleven days, eleven glorious days, just my youngest son (he was on school holidays) and me. We drove about one thousand kilometres south of our home, down to Penrith and the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, the area where I grew up, the area I still call “home”. My parents took me away from this area when I was thirteen. I didn’t want to leave. I moved back there when I left home, still a teenager. Twenty-one years ago I moved north again, feeling I had to as my mother was seriously ill. When she was gone, I wanted to go back, he didn’t want to, so we stayed up north, while my heart longed to be down south.
Now that I’m home though, back up north, the muddled mind has set in. Driving north again, as the coolness of the winter air we had enjoyed left us, and the heat of the north set in, I resented the sun and I resented the heat. This is winter, it should be cold now!
I just didn’t want to come back here, but I had to. My son is still at school, he needs his mother still, he hasn’t reached that almost-an-adult stage of his life yet, when he will have his independence and can make choices for his own life.
Please, oh please, my boy, make your own choices! Choose your own life! Don’t spend half a lifetime trying to make another person happy whilst compromising your own happiness; ultimately you will grow to resent them! Don’t make my mistakes! Learn from me, my beautiful son, learn! Feel the freedom! Enjoy your choices!
It has occurred to me recently, no, I’m down-playing this, it actually dropped on me like a bolt of lightning from the sky recently that we are all put on this earth with lessons we must learn. If the lessons are not learned, the problem will carry with you into the next lifetime, again with the same people. You will be given the same lessons, again and again, until you finally get it right. My lesson is that I must learn to walk away from the control-freaks, those who want to run my life. No matter how hard it is for me, I have to learn to walk away, to not fall into the same trap, time and time again, of being dominated, of being told by another that they know better than I do what is best for me.
So, as my blip friend Sue pointed out this morning, the changes may be slow, it may be scary adjusting to new people and new places, but I have to follow my heart over the next eighteen months and find the place where I am meant to be.
Right now, my heart is so torn. As much as I love being at my beloved Blue Mountains, my children would all be one thousand kilometres away. I don’t know how I would deal with not seeing them all regularly. We all have to live our own lives, but it is very comforting, knowing my dearest souls are not too far away.
I have so many photos which I want to share with you all! Yet since I have been home, when I look at the photos, my heart aches for the place I want to be. Is it the place I am meant to be? Time will tell. And I will give myself a talking to and add my holiday photos here for you all to see. How odd that sounds, “holiday photos”, yet they are the photos of the place that I regard as my home. Here, where I live now, I am ten minutes drive away from a world-famous holiday destination, the Gold Coast. It’s all rather back-to-front, really.
This is such a “down” post! Please, don’t let my words drag your spirits down. I’ve written this today to get it off my chest, to “come clean”. My posts are so erratic, I can go for weeks without writing anything, and I don’t ever want any of my blogging friends to think I don’t appreciate them; I appreciate each one of you. Reading your stories helps lift my day more than any of you could ever imagine. But some days I just don’t have the time to write, and if I go to the computer at night, I have been told that I’m spending too much time at the computer. So please, I hope you will bear with me. I’m still here, I appreciate your friendships. You all inspire me so much and for that, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. 🙂
“To hear never-heard sounds, To see never-seen colors and shapes, To try to understand the imperceptible Power pervading the world; To fly and find pure ethereal substances That are not of matter But of that invisible soul pervading reality. To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul; To be a lantern in the darkness Or an umbrella in a stormy day; To feel much more than know. To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain; To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon; To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves; To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching. To be a smile on the face of a woman And shine in her memory As a moment saved without planning.” ~ Dejan Stojanovic.
The first day that a flock of Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos invaded my Pecan Nut Tree was indeed a happy day for this bird-loving, photo taking blogger. For weeks I had listened to their raucous screeching sounds as they flew through the ether, bypassing my garden and heading off to parts unknown.
These are large native Australian birds, and whilst some may regard them as pests, there are many more, including myself, who love the personality, character and appearance of cockatoos.
During one of my early morning photo session I could hear my next door neighbour calling out “shoo, shoo” and when I looked towards her garden, there she was, running around her yard, waving a stick and obviously attempting to remove these angelic beauties from her garden. Not that she had many in her yard, and they were my pecan nuts they were munching on.
I chuckled to myself and continued clicking away with my camera. The cockatoos ignored the stick-waving human. The stick-waver gave up.
We planted our pecan nut tree about eighteen years ago, so you can imagine how large it is now, and we have enjoyed many seasons of munching away on the pecans ourselves. In fact, I’m sure I have a post, somewhere in the archives, of my delicious Pecan Pie…..
“Wanna share….?”
…..Here it is! And look at that, I added the recipe on June, 18th, 2010, almost three years ago to the day! And I’m more than happy to share my pie recipe with everyone, unlike my cockatoo friends, who are very possessive with what they regard as their own, as you can see here!
“Gimme that now!”
During the silence of the early morning, with around two dozen cockatoos breaking open the hard shells of the pecans, the collective cracking of shells being broken open resembles the sound of a fire burning. You know the crackling sound a fire makes when logs are burning in the fireplace? That’s the noise that the cockatoos make with the shells.
Their white feathers are so pristine in appearance and with the birds being so large, between fifteen to twenty inches in length, when their wings are spread they seem to look as I imagine an angel in flight would look.
Oh okay, yes, you’re right, I don’t imagine an angel with a rounded beak and black beads for eyes, but you do get the picture, don’t you? Their white wings look like gossamer, cascading through the air. I suspect in reality those wings hold power, though my heart wishes to believe they are gossamer.
A white flurry of gossamer wings….
Cockatoos can be tamed and kept as pets, even taught how to talk. Apparently they are very demanding pets. I’ve also read that they are very affectionate birds, which doesn’t surprise me, after having been privileged to watch them interact with one another in the wild.
Pretty Cocky!
The long yellow feathers on their head, the crest, has its own set of muscles, allowing the bird to lift their sulphur crest when happy, excited or playful. As I have watched them, I’ve noticed that when something catches their eye somewhere in the distance, they will raise their crest before flying away.
My neighbour, who also feeds the wild birds, (not the stick waving woman!) has a huge pine tree in her garden and the cockatoos love chewing on the pine cones too. In captivity, they can destroy furniture, as they love to chew on wood. Perhaps the stick waver thought they were plotting to destroy her trees…..?
They seem to be quite partial to the exotic orange blooms of my African Tulip tree too. I’m guessing there must be seeds inside the flowers that they enjoy eating. I’ve also watched and wondered, as they shake their heads back when they have a mouthful of delicious orange-ness, just as this next cocky is doing.
I must admit, I wondered whether the cockatoos had left me any pecans on the tree at all! Not that I needed any, as I already have two buckets full on the veranda, waiting to be shelled, so I took another bucket down to the tree last weekend only to find that there were heaps of pecan nuts left for me! These gorgeous white-winged angels are not greedy at all. 🙂
It was only fairly recently that I noticed a new breed of visitors to my garden. At first I thought that my eyes were playing tricks on me, or the varying light of day changed the colour of the birds, as some seemed to have a brilliant blue colouring around their eyes, whilst others didn’t!
With the help of a few Google searches, the mystery was solved. “Honey Eaters” develop the beautiful blue “eyeshadow” when they reach maturity, around the age of sixteen months, whilst the younger birds must stay content with a rather dull beige eyeshadow in their youth.
Whatever did we do before the days of Google for research? (Oh, now I remember, we used books for research! I must invest in a good Australian bird identifier book.)
A young Honey Eater. The day will soon come when he can wear the “adult” eyeshadow!
At the end of June, The “Australian Wood Ducks”, who have chosen my swimming pool as their own personal duck pond, were still rather timid, and all the photos I took of this charming pair having breakfast near to the back of my house were taken through the window, so as not to frighten them away.
Well, the good news is, we are now old friends, and they seem quite content to walk around my paved area, pecking away at the bread scraps that I leave out for them, even when I’m out in the garden with them!
Sir Drake
These two photos were taken as I sat quietly on the pavers, with the pair of them only about three metres away, taking photo after photo! They occasionally looked my way (especially Sir Drake, who is rather protective of his lady friend!) and continued with their pecking.
Mother Duck. Well, she will be a mother one day later this year, when the breeding season begins.
The ducks have become rather possessive of the garden, and seem to think they have first dibs on the bread too. When a pair of “Rainbow Lorikeets” visited last week, the ducks wasted no time in making sure the lorikeets knew who was there first!
Setting the ground rules!
The lorikeets rarely visit my garden, and when this pair dropped by for breakfast I had hoped they would return. Unfortunately, they haven’t, so I wonder what the ducks said to them? Perhaps the ducks offended the lorikeets!
Rainbow Lorikeets
Mother and father magpie have visited me for a long time now. This pair are my “old faithfuls” and swoop down to me when they see me walking out of the back door. They are so tame, have their own individual personalities, and bring me so much pleasure with their regular visits.
Mother Maggie
The magpies brought their three baby magpies to us when they were old enough to leave their nest. I always knew when the babies were in the garden, they made so much noise! My maternal instincts delighted at the sight of the baby birds squawking at their parents, as the pieces of bread were passed from parent beak to baby beak.
The three siblings, who have visited my garden since baby-bird-hood.
If you compare the black of the adult magpies to the black areas of the babies feathers, you will see that the babies feathers are mottled black. The mottling will eventually become full glossy black, but even then, I will recognise “my” babies. They are the birds who know me, trust me, and walk straight up to me when I’m in the garden.
As much as I enjoy using words as a means of communication, and writing words in my blog posts, birds and animals bring something extremely meaningful to my life. It’s a form of communication where no words are needed, yet friendship and trust are developed over time.
All that is needed is a feeling, and a heart. 🙂
One of the young magpies, coming just a little bit closer to the house.
In My World 