Freaky Giant Shark! Tasmanian Tigers! Drag Queens! To Singapore!

GREAT BIG DEAD THINGS

Lyn had decided to throw a dinner party for me prior to my departure to Singapore. Mexican food is the cuisine most shamelessly and egregiously butchered in Asia, so we decided to introduce our Australian friends to the wonders of chili, cornbread, taco dip and guacamole. We are kind, kind souls. I got the chili burbling merrily away, shed a single tear at the thought of what passes for "Mexican" food in Asia, and departed with Mike for downtown. The Western Australian Museum awaited.

I'm a total museum nut. Wherever there is one, I'm there. Double plus points are added if the museum is old and has a large collection of stuffed, mounted, or otherwise preserved Dead Critters. The Perth Museum, to my immense personal satisfaction, happens to contain all these happy things and more. It is one of the most enjoyable natural history museums I've seen - they manage to do a lot of interesting things with a not so-huge space. As a North American, it's especially fascinating to see a European or American style museum done up with Australia's pertinent wildlife, historical artifacts, and art. The large and aggressively colonial building also has an air about it that simply screams "IMPORTANT ACTS OF NATURALISM OCCUR HERE," which pleases me inordinately. You simply shouldn't miss it if you're in Perth.


I started with the Room of Bones. As previously mentioned, my lovely cousin Laura is a paleontologist in training, with a particular focus on, well, dead stuff. The girl has a serious and life long affection for bones. I also see the inherent charm and pleasing aspects of Dead Stuff, so was inordinately thrilled with this exhibit. How often do you get to see marsupial bones? And stuffed, mounted marsupials with staring little button eyes, begging you from beyond the grave to please please please don't exterminate my species I will be very sad? Not often, that's what. (And too bad about your species, little furry marsupial thing. Terribly sorry).



I had never seen a Koala skeleton before, and I am willing to place bets that you haven't either (unless you're Australian, which is cheating). It is extremely funny looking and a bit unnerving. Just like koalas.

God, screw koalas.



The museum had a superb butterfly exhibit, which I stared at in complete kaleidoscopic awe for a good long while.



I am usually politely ambivalent to butterflies, but an entire wall of the things - and Australia does some funny looking specimens - was completely striking.



I could photograph these all day.



This is a Tasmanian Tiger, which I am entirely certain none of you have ever seen before. This is because, of course, they are almost certainly extinct. The Thylacine was once Australia's biggest surviving marsupial predator, and, prior to the arrival of humanity about 60,000 years ago, ranged all over the continent. Aboriginal people and their dingos eventually pushed them back onto the island of Tasmania, where they lived in relative prosperity and comfort (for a carnivorous marsupial).

This all went straight to hell when European settlers arrived in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The Thylacine was regarded as a nuisance predator and a menace to sheep (and made for a lovely rug), and was wiped out with remarkable speed and efficiency by modern weaponry. Some were kept and bred successfully in zoos, but the species's downfall occurred rapidly and in a time not particularly moved by conservationist concerns: they were extinct by 1936.




In the 1930s, video footage was taken of the last Thylacine, which provides us with an eery and almost unbearably poignant window into the past. The final one died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. Among the animal's interesting adapations was a backwards facing pouch (like the wombat) and a remarkably widely opening jaw, as can be seen in the video. They also possessed the ability to perform a bipedal "hop" in the manner of the kangaroo, and could stand on two legs for a long period of time. They often communicated in reasonably dog-like barks or yips, and possessed a much more mild and retiring attitude then its bad-ass cousin, the Tasmanian Devil.


Some vague hope remains that the Thylacine may still be slinking around remote bits of Tasmania. It's not entirely impossible - if there's anywhere where things can go undiscovered for a terrifically long time, it's Australia - but it's definitely unlikely. Sightings are registered on a quite regular basis, and are written up at this vastly interesting website. I myself am trying hard to keep the dream alive.



I read that comparative anatomy professors enjoy tossing in a thylacine skull with a dog skull in exams, just to catch people. There are minor differences. Laura could probably tell. I sure as hell could not.



The Perth Museum possesses, to my extreme nerdy delight, a mummified Thylacine body. It was found in a cave on the mainland in WA and is thus over 3,000 (4,700 is probable) years old - that's the date when the species was pushed back to Tasmania by introduced dogs. It's a fascinating thing to look at. That is perhaps the greatest appeal of Australia to me and to other zoology inclined minds. Nowhere else provides so many fantastic windows into the past.



HOLY CRAP IT'S A CARNOTAURUS. This was a fantastic display, especially because it made extremely loud roaring and stomping sounds, scaring the ever loving crap out of any nearby children. Note the highly realistic ribbon of drool.



The Murchison Meteorite. Does not derive, sadly, from Western Australia's Smallest Meteroite Crater, which we almost decided to drive out to see, but then suddenly regained our sanity. Meteorites please me, especially the notion that they ever so occasionally whang innocent old ladies upside the head.



Here, have a sign. It'll interpret shit.



There was a great display of traditional Aboriginal foods. Here's a tasty repast. Wichetty grubs, local fruits, and some delicious, juicy Quokka. Actually, I am willing to bet that quokka tastes awesome. Adorable fluffy things almost always do.



IT'S STROMATOLITES! BACK AND BETTER THEN EVER! Well, not doing much at all really.



Yes, it's another Eurypterid. They make my heart go pitter-pat. I think I would probably marry a guy who just presented me with a slab with one of these puppies in it instead of a ring.

Might be hard to wear, though.



The museum has a fantastic Aboriginal gallery, which pays due (and longly awaited) attention to the horrifying treatment Australia's natives recieved at the hands of European interlopers. It's also a great introduction to the incredible continuity of culture the Aborigines enjoy (or, uh, enjoyed). The Aborigines have been in Australia for upwards of 60,000 years and can boast the oldest continuous culture on earth. Some speculate that their religion, art, and beliefs is indicative of what all of our ancestors believed at the very beginning of things. Pleasant to think about, innit it?

I was particularly drawn to these "cave" Wandjina paintings, which illustrate ancestral beings of the Western Kimberley. The eyes are eery. These images now crop up occasionally in graffiti all over Australia. Avid conspiracy theorists (like our friend from Cervantes) may note they look a lot like the "Grey" aliens that so dearly love to probe retired desert dwellers. Far out, man.



Here, have a sign.



The crown jewel of the museum is definitely what I casually refer to as the Freaky Giant Shark. Which is an entirely accurate moniker for the thing. It is in fact a Megamouth shark specimen preserved in some sort of formaldyhyde compound. For reasons presumably known only to the museum, it has thoughtfully been plonked down in a tank outside.



There aren't any signs pointing this out.. To actually see it you must be 1. the type of person who is exceedingly committed to seeing a freaky giant shark and will do research and ask around, or 2. the type of person who will wander with a cup of coffee through the grounds, poke your head into a small outbuiliding, look down, and go, "Christ, look at that giant freaky shark!". It was a very satisfying experience, I must say. The Megamouth is one of only a few specimens preserved for human viewing, and it's a rare freaky giant shark indeed. There's a leaky looking crack in the glass that covers it, but this does not seem to concern anyone much. They'll be sorry when the shark comes back to life and devours half the city, won't they be?



These deeply offputting critters were only discovered in 1976, and have occasionally shown up on beaches since. They also show up occasionally in Asian fisherman's nets, leading to comical situations wherein scientists desperately attempt to photograph or preserve the specimen, while aforementioned fishermen calmly hack the flesh up and sell it for the stock pot. (Presumably megamouth tastes at least decent.) They're completely harmless to humans, surviving entirely on plankton and jellyfish. They are also among the planet's laziest feeders, preferring to float along in the deep ocean with their mouth open, hoping stuff will swim in. I wish I could do that.



After the museum, Mike and I decided to make like a Megamouth and acquire some food, preferably in as lazy a fashion as possible. We finally settled on a sushi place and tucked into some sashimi. The restaurant's outside eating area just so happened to be a front row seat to the Australian Sex Party rally occurring in the downtown square. The rally was helpfully supplied with a lip-syncing drag queen in a flamenco dress and a profusion of people in bondage pants, mohawks, and other "punk" clothing items that are just a few years past uncool in the USA. Bless their hearts.

Aussie elections are going on right now, you see, and they are entirely too complex for me to even attempt to explain (nor, I suspect, would anyone care). Apparently everyone is compelled by law to vote, and also gets TWO votes - first choice, second choice. This allows room for things like the Sex Party. The rally particularly addressed the issue of same sex marriage, which seems to be up for the voters this go round. I do hope it passes. Us dysfunctional Californians finally did it after much sturm und drang, after all. Aussies better step up. The rally did perfectly illustrate what is so pleasant about Perth. It is safe, clean, attractive, and functional, and it is also perfectly willing to host Sex Party rallys, drag queen shows, and all matter of tomfoolery in its public civic areas. How decent. How lovely. It's almost enough to make you want to spit.

I headed back to the apartment for a nap, figuring that it would do to get all the sleep I possibly could prior to touching down in Singapore. Furthermore, I wanted to be on my game for the dinner party. I had lots of guacamole to make.

Lyn's lovely friends came over soon enough, and we dished out guacamole, chili, and incredibly delicious New Zealand wine. My flight left at 12:00 midnight, so I attempted to fortify myself with spicy food. I can think of few nicer ways to say goodbye to an entire continent then with copious amounts of tasty food and wine. There were even mini ice cream cones. My God.



Lyn makes a startlingly good (and bad for you) corn pudding.

We toddled off to the airport (to use an Aussieism Lyn has ferociously adopted) and sat around in the airport for a while, marveling over the remarkable price of Australian books. I finally said a tearful (not really) goodbye to Lyn, shouldered my bag and accompanying whaleshark/pillow, and headed off to Singapore. After being forced to go through security three different times due to offending gel products (which I had packed according to American standards, although THIS IS NOT AMERICA the ever so pleased security guard informed me), I got on the plane. Which no one was on. Economy first class it was, with an entire row to myself. Slept the sleep of death.

The Passion of the Shells, Back to Perth

We woke up to a lovely day. This is always a bit unpleasant after you have driven miles and miles to a nature spot to be rained upon. Nevertheless, we soldiered on.

And now, some art appreciation, as brought to you by the wife and decorator of our cozy little weekend cottage. Ahem.



The mirror reflects our appearance, but the sea-shells reflect our origins. Here, Mindy has attempted to convey the incredible stretch of evolutionary time. Gastropod shells confront homo sapiens here; this is what we have come from, and this is where we are going.



Yellow is a color not commonly associated with the sea, but it is associated with the rise - and set - of the sun. Has Mindy's arrangement of shells here an expression of her own trepidation about the aging process? Does she seek solace in the eternal, physically perfect shape of the nautilus at the center, as a poignant reminder of what she has lost, and what she must face in the near future?



Here Mindy expresses her opinion on the essential emptiness of life, the vast void that is the Indian ocean - a stretch of sea, leading to nowhere in particular. Kalbarri leans out to the wind, and so does Mindy's soul - she wishes to explore, to step across the oceans into the mysterious and perfumed lands of Asia, Indonesia (beyond the churning waters) , but yet her responsibility and her culture holds her back. The sea grasses wave at her, as if they are saying goodbye to someone who has no intention of actually going. Will she plunge into the sea, someday? Is that what this masterwork is attempting to convey?



Oysters are closeted, closed-up creatures, and this floral-style arrangement produced from their shells is a profound expression of the ennui and sexual dissatisfaction of the Australian married woman. They are clamped up and dry, now, but once were moist and....oh god i can't go on make it stop make it stop oh god oh god

We stopped to chat with our proprietor in the driveway as we packed our stuff up. He was attempting to control his son's recalcitrant and violently adorable Lhaso Apso puppy, with little to no success. "So what does your son do?" I asked. He had mentioned the other day that his son was, rather ambigously, in the "outback." Whatever that meant.

"Oh, he works in the mines, way up north, for Rio Tinto. He's a chemical engineer. Pulling down plenty of money. My other son does that too. Five weeks on, make a pretty penny and store er' up, head on back. I did that too when I was starting out."

I had envisioned Working in the Mines as something involving hard hats and impoverished West Virginians with missing teeth, so this was a bit of a surprise to me. "Good lord, maybe I should work in a mine," I said.

Lyn chimed in to mention that even clerical workers In the Mines make somewhat ungodly amounts of money. Apparently there is a vast Australian mining secret that has been hitherto unrevealed to my American brethern.

"They've got five mines just about to open up near here, along the coast," he added. "Geraldton and Kalbarri are just going to explode, you'll see about that. Smart young people should go on up to the mines for three years or so, save er' all up, and buy real estate. I bought this spread for 200,000 and now I can turn it over for 500,000 - yes, real estate's the way to go in WA, one hundred percent. Won't ever go down, but up, and up, and up. The kids these days just want to buy a fancy car and a fancy house, but they should just invest, invest in real estate.."

I internally boggled, as I seemed to recall everyone in the state of California making the exact same claim about two years and then regretting it about as much as anyone has regretted anything. I asked Lyn about it in the car, as we headed to the sea cliffs, and she filled me in. "Western Austalians all seem to believe real estate is incapable of going down."

"Do they ever watch the news? Did they somehow manage to overlook that whole real estate bubble kerfuffle?" I said, all agog. (Great word).


The ocean goes on a bit out here.

Then I remembered: they're Australian. They don't have to pay a lick of attention to our USA affairs if they don't particularly care to do so. Just like us, Aussies take extreme pride in their self reliance, independence, and personal ability to make a dollar or two, particularly in the form of turning over houses.



We turned off to the sea cliffs, which were behaving wonderfully in the absence of driving rain and wind. The cliffs are indeed astoundingly beautiful, and I've never been to a place where one experienced such a visceral sense of being at the literal edge of the earth, the place where land stops and segues (for a terribly long distance) into sea. The sea far below had turned glass clear again, and little brown Australian kestrels wheeled below the outlook. There were no whales. The lighting was fantastic: the sight of the cliffs in the morning made all the rain and ennui of the day before entirely worth it.



"I'm going to invest in real estate," I told Lyn, pointing to the top of the natural bridge. "Going to open a Hungry Jack's and a drive-in motel right there. Make a bazillion dollars and die inordinately happy."



"Yeah, you do that," she said.

Here, have some informative signs. Don't say I never did nothing for you.







We made a last-ditch attempt to catch the pelican feeding that supposedly occurs every morning at exactly 8:45 on Kalbarri beach. There was an older man, doubtless a member of the Old Bastards club, holding a bucket of herring. There were lots of families standing around the Pelican Feeding Official Viewing Ground, eagerly anticipating the arrival of the 5 foot tall winged beasties.


You think you're so great, seagull. I bet you do.

Except the pelicans didn't show, the jerks. You'd think free fish would be enough to do it. As it was, we spent about five minutes dejectedly watching silver gulls squabble over fish, straining our eyes for the sight of a big white pelican soaring over the horizon. Nada mas.

"Back to Perth, then?" Lyn said.

"Seems that way," I said. We headed out of town.

I drove for a short while, which was all right actually, mainly because there was no one on the road who I could demonstrate my tenous grasp on left-right dynamics to. I kept on turning on the windshield wiper instead of the blinker. Stupid down under. The ride back to Geraldton was fairly benign: we passed by the Pink Lake again, which had not declined in pinkness one iota, and the trees were still bent over, and the green pleasantness of spring was still in the air. I went in to buy a Diet Coke at the Northampton roadhouse and was flirted with somewhat pathetically by the counter boy.

"Are you from around here?" he said, hopefully. Perhaps he was imagining a romantic date at the Fish BBQ, or something.

"No, no, I'm afraid not," I replied. No one is, you poor, dear sod, I thought, as I walked out the door.



We stopped at the Dome in Geraldton for lunch, in lieu of paying an inordinate amount of money for nouveau lunch Cuisine.

Dome really deserves its own paragraph, as it is Australia's exact equivalant to Starbucks. For the zoology types, Dome has successfully filled Starbucks ecological niche - Starbucks was unable to make it in Australia, despite the company's doubtless dogged attempts to put down roots in Oz. And Dome is indeed nice. The shops are attractively designed, with a lot of wood and a distinctly Gallic gilded interior. The coffee is good and plentiful, once you figure out how to negotiate Australia's bizarrely obtuse method of ordering. Insofar as I could ever work out, a Flat White is coffee with some milk in it. Don't ask me how this differs from a latte.

The food is all right, cooked to order, and will do in a pinch, which is more then one can say about anything edible Starbucks dishes out. Finally, Dome's parent company possesses the inordinate wealth required to plonk down shop's in exceptionally primo real estate. Geraldton's branch was situated right on the beach, where we could watch the breakers thump in benath a sparkling blue sky.



I had a perfectly serviceable Greek salad....



And Lyn had some microwave-quality cannelloni. Well, you're always in dangerous territory with cannelloni, says I. They're not to be trusted, as Italian foodstuffs go.



We drove on to a nice little beach outside town, con lighthouse. It is the only steel British made lighthouse of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Thought you might care to know. The sigh on the beach warned of rip tides, man eating sharks, deadly jellyfish, and sea snakes, in case you might consider taking a little dip. Oh, Australia.


Geraldton has some big ass cargo ships comin' through. The guidebook said this is in fact one of the primary attractions for locals on weekends. Everybody turn out to see the big ass boat come in! Bring the little nippers! Well, okay, then.

The ride from then on back was through fairly featureless outback, punctuated by the occasional kangaroo corpse and unspeakably terrifying Road Train. Road trains, if you don't know, are pretty much exactly what they sound like. As we got within spitting distance of Perth, in the Swan River Valley, we discovered that it had got quite cold in our absence. It's always a bit of a cognitive dissonance thing when you're indisputably in Australia, yet still freezing your butt off. We entered the bizarrely American style suburbs, and were pretty much home free.



LOOK A WHALESHARK IN SUNGLASSES OH THE HILARITY

Another moment of cognitive dissonance for American tourists here. Australians, especially in WA, love freeways, suburbs, and big box megastores just as much as we do, and construct them in pretty much the same way and in the same locations. This leads you to moments of dozing off in the car or whatever, looking out the window and thinking, "Oh, San Jose! There's the Ikea!" then being confronted by a dead kangaroo or a roundabout or someone in an unspeakable school uniform to jar you back to your senses. It's weird, is what I'm saying.



For dinner, Mike had thoughtfully picked up some uber-delicious Aussie lamb chops. He served this with an equally delicious mustard-shallot-honey sauce, which I need to have the recipe for post haste. I hope you're reading this, Mike.



And we had some asparagus wrapped in CUSTOM MADE bacon. Yum.

In Which We Get Rained On

When we woke up, it was raining sideways.

I believe this kind of rain in coastal regions, especially in isolated bits of Western Australia that no one really thinks about much, is referred to as a "gale". If anything could qualify as a gale, it would have been what we saw clattering outside the walls of our rent-a-cottage. This, needless to say, bode poorly for our planned day of vigorous outdoors activities. As it turns out, there is in fact just about jack all to do in Kalbarri when it is raining sideways outside. But we didn't know that just yet, and were feeling vibrant and optimistic regardless.



We stopped at a nearby beach to look at the water, which could only really be described as "severely pissed off". I am not in the camp that believes in a deeply woo-woo fashion that water can transmit (or care about) the emotions of humanity, but after regarding that water for a while, I was willing to entertain the possibility that it can get *mad*. Anyone who went out in that mess, be it in a boat, a ferry, or on a surfboard, could only be described as clinically insane. But this is the Australian psyche we're discussing here, and we would indeed see a couple of dogged mental patients waiting on wave after wave that never actually came.



We proceeded down the track into the national park, which was also soggy, although the rain had at least reduced itself to "morose drizzle" status. A sign on the way in informed us that the road to Nature's Window, Kalbarri's most iconic site, was closed and would be until the soil dried out and it was rendered safe for vehicular use again, which would doubtless be a while. Hiking was also right out. I spent a few of my tween and teenage years quite ardently engaged in outdoors sports in rocky, gorge infested regions like this one, and Lesson Numero Uno in that department is "If it is pissing down rain, don't go hiking in a slippery, flash-flood prone gorge." So we didn't do that either.



What we did do was batten down the hatches and go and politely observe the open overlooks. These were, thankfully, given a bit of an atmospheric boost by the lingering mist in the air and the crystal-clear droplets hanging from the pines and shrubs nearby. It was in fact quite pleasant, and I wished the weather was good enough to allow me to do some really soul-satisfying scrambling around on the nearby boulders.







Here, have an interpretative sign. Or two.

I left Lyn to read a nearby sign and scrambled tentatively down the walking path, where I encountered a couple of elderly Australian ladies down a flight of stairs. "You're not here alone, are you?" one asked carefully, and I assured her I was not.

(Elderly women in foreign countries, and in fact, everywhere, are eternally very concerned about me. This may be attributed to the fact that I am small, blonde, and distinctly waifish looking, which seems to set off their internal little old lady concern mechanisms with roaring intensity. When I am in places like India and China, elderly women often seize me sternly by the arm and walk me across busy streets, which is among the more humiliating experiences known to a young person in possession of full mental and physical faculties. But enough about me).

They walked up and began chatting with Lyn, and I soon joined them. They were pointing at a group of people in brightly-colored windbreakers, standing in the gorge below us. "We're in that tourist group, but we thought better of scrambling over the river," one said. "Didn't seem like a good idea.

"Oh, lovely," I said. "Where are you from?"

"Well, we're from Melbourne. The tour is all right, but we hadn't known that it would be all young people, when we booked it."

"Yes, quite young people, university types. They were out until five in the morning last night, at the pub. Don't know how they're managing the hike."

"They all looked like hell this morning. Like a truck had hit them. I don't know how they're managing at all."

They grew thoughtful and silent, and Lyn and I looked at them with abject horror and pity.



Consider it. You are a nice old thing from Melbourne who has decided to take a lovely packaged tour up the Western Australian coast. You find a nice looking outfit, and perhaps not being among the most internet savvy of creatures, fail to notice that it caters to a younger crowd, shall we say, in fact the kind of crowd that enjoys things like beer pong, ironic t-shirts, and getting tattoos on their asses. You get on the bus and realize that you have about 50 years on everyone else, including the guide and the driver, and you have already paid up and got someone to watch your Lhasa Apso, and you are just going to have make the best of it, horrible rock-rap music on the bus speakers and technicolored 6:00 AM barf in the hotel corridors and all. Which these commendable women were obviously trying their very best to do. I hope they made it back to Melbourne alive, that's all.

The other thing to consider is that these Young People were out until five in the morning in Kalbarri which boasts, as I perhaps previously mentioned, just about two pubs, one of which is the avowed territory of the Old Bastards club. Logic indicates that kids may be among the most incredibly persistent drinkers on earth. Either that, or I made a gigantic tactical error in going to bed at 9:30 instead of slipping out to Get Down with the spry and winsome residents of Kalbarri. Huh, hmm.


Stand of gum trees in the gorge.

As Lyn and I considered the horror of our companions position, we noticed three kangaroos bouncing majestically through the mist, along the floor of the canyon. "Seeing kangaroos never gets old," I commented, and everyone nodded in agreement.

"Looks like our group is coming back," one of the old ladies said, a bit depressively. "And there's John. Always has to be up front, that one." The windbreakers were now moving towards us.

"Oh man, I think the rain is picking up," I said. "We'd better move along. Lovely to meet you two." We beat a swift retreat to the car.

Well, that accounted for the national park, at least in these conditions. The rain showed no sign whatsoever of letting up, so we decided that it was high time to make for Kalbarri's sole indoor attraction of note. "Let's go see ourselves a sullen and wet parrot or two," Lyn said. There may have been a bit of an edge in her voice.

The Rainbow Jungle proclaims itself to be the top parrot-breeding outfit in WA, which it probably is. It's a nice enough place, featuring a series of semi enclosed gardens and grounds with a dizzying array of parrots. It is probably even nicer when it is not raining a whole lot.



When it rains a whole lot, most parrot varieties do indeed get wet and sullen. They huddle up on their branches and lurk in their little parrot-houses and do not engage in any charming, cheeky, or talkative behavior. Instead they glare at you and suggest with their little parrot faces that you should fuck right off and leave them alone, instead of peering at them through the slats and hopefully saying "Hello, hello!" We ignored them because, well, they're parrots.

Some of the parrots do not respond in this way to weather. Some, like the Australian white cockatoo, see you coming and immediately climb enterprisingly down the wire of their cage, offering you their white and plush looking head, begging you with watery eyes to please please please pet me, just a little pet, a stroke, a fondle, a nudge?

This would be a horrible mistake because white cockatoos (like many kinds of parrot) consider human fingers a delicacy on par with Beluga caviar. Signs indicating this were plastered in obvious places all over the Rainbow Jungle, but I am entirely certain more parrot bite wounds then I am capable of imagining occur there every year, exclusively to the very stupid. This makes me happy. "Fuck you parrot," I said, merrily, as I stood just out of reach. "I know what you're up to."

Outwitting small, reasonably innocuous animals always makes me feel great.



Some lovely multicolored parrots. Don't ask me what kind. Australia has roughly a zillion different kinds of Lovely Colorful Parrot and it would take either an ornithologist or a dedicated dork to tell them apart. Being dedicated, I will doubtless sit down with a bird book and figure this out soon. But not today. Don't judge me.


The iconic Aussie Princess Parrot. Even more striking when they fly above you - incredible looking tail feathers.



Red tailed black cockatoos, regarding us with unnerving intelligence. (Parrots are weird). They're called "cockies" in Australia. Everything in Australian must have an "ie" or a "o" added to it. It's a law. Brekkie, Freo, saltie, surfy, bikie, Rotto, on and on and on.



This sign regarding Eurypterids (ie, GIANT ANCIENT SCORPIONS) made me unreasonably happy .



A GIANT METAL GARDEN EURYPTERID. YES.



Adorable lorikeet is adorable.



Just mentally add in "nom nom nom" sounds and this photo becomes twelve times better.


He's out there. And he's nuts.

The Rainbow Jungle features a nicely sized observation platform, ostensibly for whales. No whales out today insofar as we could tell, but there was one mentally ill surfer out there in the cold, sideways rain, and churning ocean. Lyn was fascinated, and we watched him reject wave after wave for about twenty minutes. You'd think one wouldn't be too picky about waves in this weather, but I guess not.

We went to the Gilgai Tavern for lunch, mainly because it seemed to be the only mid range eatery in town that was not a Fried Counter. A Fried Counter is an Australian eatery devoted entirely to deep fried things, of various makes, colors, and freshness levels. They are almost exclusively take out joints staffed by powerful looking middle aged women. They cater to an optimistic idea of good, picnic supporting weather, which we obviously did not have, and eating deep fried and soggy fish in the car didn't appeal to us much. So off to The Pub we went.

The pub was totally characterless in the way of many such Australian ventures, but at least the counter lady was nice and the menu featured a dizzying array of non-deep fried items. I ordered an entirely respectable flat white coffee and watched a violent American movie on the screen in front of me. I then consumed an entirely respectable grilled grouper, served with an equally respectable salad. Everything at the pub was entirely respectable. This couldn't be where those kids in the group had partied last night, could it have been? (There is another pub in Kalbarri which attempts to look rough and ready and outback-tough, or at least more so then this joint. That must have been the place).


After lunch, we went to the visitor's center. This was partially a hopeful but obviously doomed attempt to see if any sort of tour or touristic enterprise was running (the rain HAD reduced itself to a mere chilly drizzle). I also had decided that I needed a cuddly plush whale shark in my life, and the visitor's center just so happened to sell them. "So are the sunset boat tours running this evening?" Lyn asked the counter woman. The boat ran up the lovely Murchison River Gorge in the limpid cool of the evening, and featured a full audio tour, plush seats, and most pleasantly, a licensed bar. We had tried to book the boat tour the night before, which wasn't running then either.. "They don't want to run it, in this weather," the man had said. "They took some folks out this morning on one of the charters. Insisted they could handle the waves. Ended up barfing all over the boat. Quite a horror, eh?" (Jocular Australian downplay of loathsome events = check).

"Oh, God, no, it's not running." the woman said. "There isn't much going in Kalbarri in bad weather, I'm afraid."
"We gathered," Lyn said.
"Have you tried the Rainbow Jungle?" she said, hopefully.
"Yes," Lyn said. "We sure have."
"Lots of neat looking parrots," I said, trying to be positive. "Wet parrots." I selected a particularly personable looking whale shark from the bin.
"Oh, well, then," the woman said. She rang up my whale shark. We retreated. We had successfully exhausted every single source of rainy day entertainment in Kalbarri. Point, set, match.

We headed back to the cottage, to read and consider the seashell art. There was so much seashell art. I am going to see it in my dreams. (Lyn is an art history major and seemed to find the art actively offensive, as if someone was kicking her in the shin whenever she looked at it. I mostly just found it *hilarious*.)


SHRIMP EYEBALLS

Dinner was at the Black Rock Cafe again. This was because the other upscale restaurant in town was closed, and the other options included aforementioned fry counters, the Hotel Pub (now teeming with randy construction workers at this hour) and something forbiddingly called Finlay's Fish BBQ. The choice was easy.



The restaurant was even more packed then the night before, as Kalbarri's entire holiday population seems to have come to same conclusion we had. I chose the local tiger prawns with scallops and mashed potatoes in a butter sauce. Extremely good, and the seafood was obviously freshly caught and local - the intense taste of Aussie prawns is something well worth experiencing. I also enjoyed the roe on scallops. Why aren't those more common in the states?



Lyn chose the grilled snapper with mash and veg. She said it was good, although a tad overcooked. This seem to be common affliction in Australian restaurants.

An Asian man wearing a windbreaker wandered by the restaurant windows a few times. He was soaked, cheerful looking, and eating a sandwich, and he waved when he saw Lyn. "Do you know that guy?" I asked her.

"I've seen him around everywhere today," she said, waving back. That must have been one wet sandwich.



We shared an excellent fruit salad with ice cream, then headed out into the night and back to our cottage again.