By the time you get this in the west around 10:00 AM there, it is around midnight of April 30th, and in just a few hours we will take a ride by car then catch a train to Sydney International Airport and we will be on our first flight back home, starting first with an overnight in Tokyo, Japan.
And the confusion or weirdness begins. For our long travel back from the future into the past begins. I am not looking forward to the long flights, time changes and the dreaded jet lag from passing back into yesterday, sixteen hours later when we have already lived in your tomorrow. I’d love to click my heels three times and have it over.
As we leave The Land Down Under as many pronounce it here OZ-tralia, it does feel somewhat like we are not in “Kansas anymore,” like Dorothy said to Toto. Our time here has been wonderful, but as Dorothy also said to Toto…
“There’s No Place Like Home!”
But until we get back to yesterday, today, it’s Pretty & Cool or Pretty Cool Part III! 🙂
Realy Cool Real Plant Arrangement Three Sisters Mall Store at Echo Point, Blue Mountains, Katoomba, NSW, AustraliaBeautiful Fruit-Like Berry Blossom, Belgenny Farm, Camden Park Estate, Camden, NSW, AustraliaPretty Blue Somewhere in Australia 🙂Pretty & Poisonous Toadstool under shrub at Entrance to Carrington Hotel, Katoomba, NSW, AustraliaPretty Smiley Face Flower, Taronga Zoo, Sydney, NSW, AustraliaA Bud, Taronga Zoo, Sydney, NSW, AustraliaDelicate Texture, Taronga Zoo, Sydney, NSW, AustraliaBlack Swan, Indigenous to Australia, Taronga Zoo, Sydney, NSW, AustraliaNature’s Fractals (Fern), Taronga Zoo, Sydney, NSW, AustraliaCloseup of Nature’s Fractal (Fern), Taronga Zoo, Sydney, NSW, AustraliaBlue-Red, Taronga Zoo, Sydney, NSW, AustraliaCloseup of Blue-Red, Taronga Zoo, Sydney, NSW, AustraliaPeacock, Taronga Zoo, Sydney, NSW, AustraliaCloseup of Peacock, Taronga Zoo, Sydney, NSW, AustraliaPink Hibiscus, Taronga Zoo, Sydney, NSW, AustraliaLittle Flowering Tree, The Chinese Friendship Garden, Downtown Sydney, NSW, AustraliaLilly Pad Flower, The Chinese Friendship Garden, Downtown Sydney, NSW, AustraliaWhite Gardenia, The Chinese Friendship Garden, Downtown Sydney, NSW, AustraliaBeautiful Rose, The Memorial Rose Garden, Camden, NSW, AustraliaSusan, My Beautiful Rose in Front of Waterfall at, The Chinese Friendship Garden, Downtown Sydney, NSW, AustraliaBeautiful Rose Bud, The Rose Memorial Park, Camden, NSW, AustraliaBeautiful Lavender Rose, The Rose Memorial, Camden, NSW, AustraliaThe Money Tree, in a Park Outside of Camden, NSW, AustraliaPretty Little, Lily Pad Pond, The Chinese Friendship Garden, Downtown Sydney, NSW, AustralaiPretty-Cool Whatever it is, The Blue Mountains, Katoomba, NSW, AustraliaPretty Peaceful, The Chinese Friendship Garden, Downtown Sydney, NSW, AustraliaPretty Peaceful II, The Chinese Friendship Garden, Downtown Sydney, NSW, AustrailaPretty Peaceful III, The Chinese Friendship Garden, Downtown Sydney, NSW, Austraila
By 10:00 AM in NY (eastern standard time) today,April 28, 2014 it is midnight of the next day here in Australia (April 29th. Hopefully, I am asleep, for when we arise, it’s packing day, for tomorrow morning we will be leaving the ‘Land Down Under,’ for Japan, and our trip home.
So I, like Tooter Turtle will call upon Mr. Wizard the Lizard to get us safely home.
Tooter Turtle (sometimes spelled Tudor or Tutor) was a cartoon about a turtle that first appeared on TV in 1960, as a segment, along with The Hunter a detective dog, as part of the King Leonardo and His Short Subjects program. “Tooter Turtle” debuted on NBC, on Saturday, October 15, 1960, and ran for 39 original episodes through July 22, 1961. These episodes were later rerun as backups on other cartoon shows,[1] but no more original episodes were made.
The plots followed the same general format. Tooter (voiced by Allen Swift) calls on his friend Mr. Wizard the Lizard (voiced by Sandy Becker), an anthropomorphic lizard wearing wizard cone hat, robe, and pince-nez eyeglasses. Mr. Wizard lived in a tiny cardboard box at the base of a tall tree. The introductory segment had Tooter knocking on the cardboard box, having “another favor to ask.” From inside the box, Mr. Wizard would shrink Tooter small enough to enter through the box’s front door, and invite him in. Mr. Wizard has the magic to change Tooter’s life to some other destiny, usually sending him back in time and to various locales.
Mr. Wizard sending Tooter Turtle somewhere in the past, present or futureTooter Turtle being brought back
As Tooter is doing his destiny, Mr. Wizard narrates about it. When Tooter’s trip finally became a catastrophe, Tooter would request help with a cry of “Help me Mr. Wizard, I don’t want to be X any more!” where X was whatever destiny Tooter had entered. Mr. Wizard would then rescue Tooter with the incantation, “Twizzle, Twazzle, Twozzle, Twome; time for this one to come home.” Then, Mr. Wizard would always give Tooter the same advice:
“Be just what you is, not what you is not. Those that do this are the happiest lot.”
As you are waxing on your Sunday, our is waning in Australia. Soon it will be Monday here. We have only two days left until we leave early Wednesday for our flight to Tokyo, Japan on April 30th. After an overnight night there, we will take a flight to Chicago, IL, U.S.A. on May 1st, fly through yesterday and still arrive on May 1st, catch another plane and be in Rochester, NY around 2:15 PM est, on May 1st. Then it is about a 45 minute drive and we will be home!
This has been an incredible trip to Japan & Australia! There is so much from both countries I still want to share with you.
While still in Australia there was so much more I wanted to share, but the time fails me. I have taken thousands of pictures and many of them are acceptable to my very critical eye. But with the laptop I have been using, problems with my camera, lack of software and other issues, I have been severely limited.
But there are places we went and things we did that I want to share and will, somehow in the future. Here is just a partial list of content I have not posted yet:
• Belgenny Farm (the birthplace of Australian agriculture)
• Out N’ About Sydney, Australia
• Beautiful sunrises and sunset
• Paddy’s Market (downtown Sydney shopping district
• More about Camden, Australia
• Our ferry boat ride in Darling Harbor, past the Sydney Opera House and underneath Harbor Bridge
• Susan’s & Caitlin’s High Tea
• Sea Life Sydney Aquarium
• Taronga Zoo (truly a world class zoo in Sydney. I have so many pictures of animals and we proabably only saw 1/3 of the zoo)
• And so much more!
So, I have loaded over 60 pictures of just what I call in the post, Pretty & Cool or you could also just think of these as pretty cool! 🙂 But these are pictures taken over the month that we have been in Australia. The are pictures of flowers and plants mostly found here. Most of these I do not not know their names are really much about them other than, there are just to me, Pretty & Cool! 🙂
So I will pre-schedule 3 posts for the next three days (including today) and post about 20 or so pictures for each day with some simple captions with descriptions.
If I get an opportunity to post anymore before we get home to The Gathering Place, I may? I will try and continue posting about our trip when we get home ASAP. But, we have much to do when we get home for the month of may and June, but I will do the best that I can, when I can.
Thank You for your patience and understanding.
Dahni
A neighbor’s tree on Little St., Camden, NSW, AustraliaA rose of many The Rose Cottage, Camden, NSW, AustraliaCamden, NSW, AustraliaCamden, NSW, AustraliaBottle Brush Tree, Camden, NSW, AustraliaCloseup of Bottle Brush Tree, Camden, NSW, AustraliaEven after the colors fade, the Bottle Brush Tree is still interesting, Belgenny Farm, Camden Park Estate, Camden, NSW, AustraliaCloseup of faded Bottle Brush Tree, Belgenny Farm, Camden Park Estate, Camden, NSW, AustraliaJust another ‘Pretty,’ in Camden, NSW, AustraliaGorgeous Rose, Somewhere in AustraliaAnother ‘Pretty’ Taronga Zoo, Sydney, NSW, AustraliaBird of Paradise, Taronga Zoo, Sydney, NSW, AustraliaInteresting hangy-downy-thingies somewhere on an Australian tree 🙂A pretty lorikeet eating pretty red petals, right outside our living room window on Little Street, Camden, NSW, AustraliaCloseup of pretty lorikeet eating pretty red petals, right outside our living room window on Little Street, Camden, NSW, AustraliaThis cactus at the end of the street, budded shortly after we got here. There must have been over a 100 buds. Only 1-2 bloomsCloseup of bloom and budsThe blooms only bloom once and only two buds blossomed and as of 4/26/14 this is how the cactus now looksAll the buds and 2 blooms disappeared. This little red I saw the morning of 4/26/14
Guhday mates and mate-esses or Sheilas, from Australia 🙂
After the flight in from China and stowing our suitcases for the next month at Jonathan’s & Caitlin’s and baby Felix’s place in Camden, we instantly set out to discover this new country and experience what it has to share to share with you. It did not take long!
You might think, Oh yes, English speaking after Japanese, yes, yes, yes! But let me say this, you have to be a born and raised Australian to understand what some of them are saying sometimes! “Huh, was that English you just spoke????” 🙂
But yes, mostly it is nice to be able to understand and communicate in a language I am mostly familiar with.
Quite a contrast here to Japan which is just now starting to heat up into their spring. Here down under the equator where the water spins counter-clockwise, they are into their fall. Fall of 70-80 degrees Fahrenheit by day and mid sixties at night. It has been raining slightly for the last couple of days and everything looks lush and lovely. It was dry today and with the humidity of over 90%, it was hot, but we get a lot of the cool sea breezes.
Camden is about an hour from Sydney. It is considered the country. Those in the city call this the ‘bush’ but those that live here say the ‘bush’ is somewhere else. We are not far from where kangaroos roam freely. They are overpopulated and used for food. It is considered the reddest and leanest meat you can eat on the planet. Jonathan grilled some last night for us and well, it was DELICIOUS!
Camden is a quaint community of around 80,000 or so. People are genuinely helpful and friendly. Jonathan joined a community band and they had a concert this morning outside of the local library. Music is a universal love and they played many familiar tunes, even dedicating one to Susan, Jonathan’s Mom from the USA and another to a Belgium couple. We met for the first time a couple and they invited over to their home for lunch, coffee, tea, wine and desert. The world is, truly becoming, a global village. People really are, quite the same everywhere. We all just want to find our voice and our place in the world, love, be loved and live happily ever after, at least once in awhile. :).
Everything we need or could desire is only about a 7 minute walk to town. You walk past huge gum trees where they seem to be growing without bark. They are and the bark has just fallen off. They call the bark ‘fuel’ because, this is what it is used for. You pass home after home with mostly tile roofs (some metal), which are so built because, it keeps the homes cooler inside. It can get pretty hot here and stay this way for quite some time throughout the year. We are told that fall is the best time to be here and here, we are! But when it reaches a certain temperature, the humidity is just burnt off leaving the environment hot and dry, but again, cool breezes come in from the ocean regularly.
But oh, the birds of paradise! It is almost like a dream that we have traveled so many thousands of miles away from home to the other side of the world and now, almost to the bottom of the world. Our lunch hosts had recently been to the literal bottom of the world in Antarctica and showed us some incredible pictures of their time year. Their suggestion was to see the movie, ‘Happy Feet’ as the landscapes and the penguins including their personalities is just about how it really is. I also sometimes call new baby Felix, ‘Happy Feet,’ because he is always moving them like he’s dancing! 🙂
But anyway, birds of Paradise. For the most part where we are is, tropical. There are palm trees here and flowers and birds I have never seen except in picture books or movies. Some are similar to Florida USA or the country of Jamaica, but there are species here that exist no other place on earth. The streets are lined with color after color of sweet fragrant roses. But besides Lily of the Valley, my favorite flower is…
…Bird of Paradise
It was so nice to be able to snap this picture just a few minutes away by foot on my mini-walkabout. 🙂
Then, there was another bird of paradise just outside the living room window where we are staying, eating at the feeder.
Another Bird of Paradise
I hope to be able to capture and record and share with you the beautiful bird-music by day and night be here just outside, as well as, the other birds of paradise that live here. I feel like I’m in paradise here. If I am not any more colorful or beautiful here, I am at least surrounded by color and beauty. Maybe, just maybe, some of Australia will wear off and into me? 🙂
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