Thursday, March 5, 2009

The land 'Down Under'

In today's post, Craig - who has an absolutely delightful sense of humor, re-submitted "Come to Australia" by Scared Weird Little Guys. It's hilarious!



He also included a link to the "Deadly Dozen", and of course I had to follow it*.

[*Here's your link. Now, this'll get you to the general site. Once you're there, click on 'replay "deadly..." gallery' at the upper left. That should do it.]

As I looked all the photos of deadly spiders, snakes, jellyfish, etc. -- and by the way, do you happen to know what this is?


Photos of this creature were shown in the YouTube video you just watched (twice!). But just in case you don't remember, it is the blue-ringed octopus. Ain't it purty? -- I couldn't help but think of Wendy Booker's trip to Australia last November and her subsequent successful ascent to the top of Mount Koscuiszko, #6 in her quest to climb the highest mountain on each continent.


Unfortunately, the skies were not all that clear the day they climbed and they were momentarily uncertain when they reached the top that they had!


How ever did I get from the "deadly dozen" to Wendy Booker?? Good question.

She has her own blog site, and I thought I remembered reading about how she had been bitten by a spider and then incapacitated for a period of time. I didn't think it was Australia, but I had to take some time to go back through some of her posts to check it out. I was right. It wasn't while she was in Australia. It occurred back here in the good old US of A!

But let's get back to Australia. There'll be much more about Wendy in my next post, OK? She's quite a special person!


Just a couple of stories from her blog about her experiences down there in OZ.

One of the animals she had really wanted to catch an eyeball on was a kangaroo. In spite of her many car trips throughout the countryside in an attempt to be successful, alas, there was not a single one to be seen! She describes some of her thoughts on driving and the critters they were alerted to be on the lookout for here.

In another post, she talks about their experiences using the GPS system ... this one in conjunction with trying to arrive at the airport on time for a flight out to New Zealand. She wrote that when they arrived forty minutes late, the person they spoke to - in 'typical Aussie fashion' - said, "No worries, Mate! You're not late. This flight left yesterday and you weren't on it!"

3 comments:

Craig Peihopa said...

What a fun post Goldenrod. You started with what I had and turned it into an evn more interesting post. The problem as I see it, when you want to see kangaroos you should be driving at dusk an at dawn and ask a local where you are likely to see them. The good thing about the drought (only if you want a sighting) is that the critters are coming ever closer to the road. I hit a kangaroo once at 110km an hour it came out of nowhere, one bounce landed it in front of my car and whammo, lucky I was in the 4WD if I was in the audi I wouldn't be here. It was almost 6feet high and made a small mess of the front of my car. If you ever want to come and see kangaroos Goldenrod, let me know!

CRIKEY!

Goldenrod said...

You know danged well, Craig, that I would be there in a millisecond if I could afford the trip!

Tammy said...

I second your thoughts in your comment, Goldenrod! I'd love to just travel the world, enjoying every single moment of every single day... Instead, I travel Idaho. ROFLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Loved this post, Goldenrod. Can't wait to show the photo of the octopus to the girls.