Continuing from my previous post, here are some random other things that I thought I’d share…

Starting With “Food”

Well… food… ok: more like treats, snacks, sweets, chocolate. Meals have been rather normal: porridge with banana for breakfast, main meal at work (they do good food for not much money at the canteen!) and some light and easy-to-prepare food for dinner (read: salad-out-of-a-bag). This worked best for me, as I have several meetings in the (early) evenings with colleagues back in the UK, and even in the US. One thing about porridge: what are called “porridge oats” in the UK, are called “quick oats” here. “Rolled oats” – which I thought was the correct ingredient – will take hours to cook and prepare. Any ideas what to do with the remaining 750 grams of them…?

Back to the chocolate… The first thing my colleagues got me, was a “caramello koala”.

Basically: chocolate with caramel in the centre in the shape of a koala… And very nice it is. People in UK will probably recognise the branding: yep, Cadbury (Cadbury Australia to be precise). And as far as I can taste, it’s the same chocolate. Apparently this is the so-called “giant” size, mainly used for fund raising, which is exactly why they were in the office.

And then the Tim Tam… Again, at work (no fund raising involved this time – just very nice colleagues):

And they are very nice indeed. Apparently, a very Ozzie thing to do, is a so-called “Tim Tam Slam“: basically, bite off two diagonally opposite corners of a Tim Tam, and suck a warm beverage through it. As soon as it becomes saturated with the liquid, “slam” it into your mouth. The trick is to wait just the right amount of time before “slamming” – it should be all nice and warm and sloppy, but shouldn’t fall apart into your drink. After some convincing, I got one of my colleagues to show it to me – shame I didn’t have a camera to hand to let you all enjoy the experience with me…

Pedestrian Crossing

Another thing that caught my attention, are the differences in Australian traffic signs from those in the Netherlands and UK – in particular the following one:

What is going in here? Where is the rest of the body? Is this pedestrian crossing not meant for a complete human being?

Flora And Fauna

Last but not least… Australia’s flora and fauna: very different from “home”. Well known are the spiders and snakes, but apart from the spider that I showed in my previous post, I have no further tales to tell about these animals. The following birds are as common in Australia as sparrows and blackbirds in the Netherlands and the UK:

One of the (many!) quirks of the English language: Miner and Myna are pronounced the same… makes sense, right? Or rather: could be expected. Imagine my confusion when a colleague, during lunch outside, pointed out: “Look – a Noisy Miner, and there is an Indian Myna as well!” I thought she was talking about miners – the people going into mines to distract some useful material – either being noisy or from India…

Right, back to the birds themselves. The Indian (or Common) Myna is an immigrant to Australian soil. By invitation… In the 1880s there was a locust plague in the cane fields in Queensland. The birds were introduced to combat the locusts… apparently that didn’t work out, and instead, the birds are now regarded as a pest themselves by many in Australia: aggressively fighting for nesting sites, thereby evicting native birds from their nests and eating from fruit from fruit trees so the harvest is spoiled…

The Noisy Miner, on the other hand, is native to Australia. Its name is rather applicable: it is very noisy indeed! And aggressive – in Sydney I saw two Noisy Miners attack a Yellow-Crested Cockatoo:

I mean, that Cockatoo was rather dramatic as well: flying to a lamp post to perch, it was putting up a massive show, nearly falling off (well, not really – just doing “as if”), making a lot of noise, much wing-flapping… But then the Noisy Miners turned up, and really viciously attacked the poor “clown”.

Then – take a look at the next bird:

That looks rather exotic, right? When I got to the office the next working day, I was quickly told that this bird is commonly known as a “Bin Chicken”… guess that says it all. It is a bird native to Australia, but apparently, there were no Ibises in Sydney until Taronga Zoo started breeding them and let them roam free in the zoo… The birds seem to like Sydney, so there are now a lot of them about. And indeed, they love to turn over bins in search of food. But also, they rather aggressively hang around cafes and there are even stories that they run up to little children and snatch their food out of their hands.

Finally then – trees:

I mean, I have seen trees back home where the bark has been eaten off by animals, but generally the bark above the reach of these animals would still be on the tree. Here it seems to be the other way around: no bark up high, just a little left around the “feet”. Apparently, these trees shed their bark regularly to keep healthy: with the bark, it also sheds parasites, fungi etc that may live on the bark.

As I’m writing this much later, I could probably add several other things to this category, but have decided to keep it somewhat in chronological order. Therefore:

THE END