Fresh Eggs

One of the professors in Ben's department studies sexual selection in chickens, which means he has a lot of chickens. And chickens lay eggs. And the prof doesn't want any more chickens, so guess where the eggs go?!? That's right - to us! And they're free!! We just recently got added to the "Egg list," so now this guy comes around every so often with little bags of eggs for us. They're on the smaller side, and I think they get some cement in their diet because their shells are hard! But free, fresh, delicious eggs - what a deal!

Temperature

Yesterday the high was 93F. Today it was 66F.
Not sure why, but the weather likes to jump around a lot. If you click on the title, it should get you to the observed temps for this month. I'd rather it just stay warm.

Port Kembla

We’ve headed north, we’ve headed west, can’t really head east in our car… so today we headed south in search of a new dog beach. We set our sights on Port Kembla, just south of Wollongong, and managed to sneak into town through the ‘scenic’ route – smokestacks, warehouses, a refinery – you know, all that pitcturesque industry stuff. And we forgot to take a photo! But then, 100 metres further, we were in a whole different world – gorgeous shoreline. The beach stretched on forever, and was incredibly empty. So Ani stretched her legs, and chased seagulls and waves, and used up energy… and so did we!


And then, in a split second, the wind changed and we got this strong, icy breeze blowing off the ocean, whipping up the sand to give us a full-body exfoliation. Hike and spa, all in one - the down-side is that we all had a fair amount of sand in our ears. We ducked off the beach and did some bush-whacking through the sand scrub, where it was a little less windy. (The pic below is showing the dry sand blowing across the wet sand... and into Ani's face.)


Then we detoured west to find a different way home, and passed through this beautiful rolling countryside with lots of free-range cattle (Ani tried to blame a few off her farts on the cows…). It kinda reminded us of parts western Colorado or the Nicoya peninsula, Costa Rica. From there, the road climbed to the top of this plateau – nice twisty road, lush vegetation, even a little waterfall. But we couldn’t find a lookout anywhere, so at the top, we turned on to the first (dirt) road we found, and discovered this amazing lookout point. But it would’ve made your knees weak, mom!


On our way home, we came across a cute little town with a row of shops that had homemade gelato and local cheese and all kinds of good stuff. We decided to try apricots and figs stuffed with marscapone cheese - SO rich, and so delicious!

Galahs

Yep - another cool bird! They're a little more skittish than cockatoos, and their call is a little less obnoxious. But they're pretty common hanging out on front lawns, and I think they're just so cool!

I'm famous!

Our place is just at the top of the hill behind me, so I get to revel in my fame daily!

Kangaroos!

No, we haven't seen any kangaroos, yet. But we've eaten 'em! There's a section at the grocery store labeled "Fresh Kangaroo Meat," and we just had to try it. Tastes like chicken! Well, actually, it doesn't taste anything like chicken. It has a stronger taste that we were expecting - kind of gamey. It's incredibly lean, and they advertise that it is good for both you and for the environment. Now we just need to see the live version...

Ku-Ring-Gai National Park

Today we went for a hike with one of Ben's lab-mates (Fernando) and his friend Sasha-the-Priest. [When Fernando invited us to go, his exact words were "My friend's a priest - don't be scared." We're not sure why we'd be scared.] Fernando is from Costa Rica, and Sasha is from everywhere. We went to Ku-Ring-Gai National Park, which is just north of Sydney.



It was a nice, mostly leisurely hike, and an absolutely perfect day. We started up along a dry ridge with great views, then had a fairly steep drop down into a more lush ravine, and popped out on this secluded little beach. We hung out there for a while and ate/swam/slept/tide-pooled (sure, that's a verb)/sunned/explored as we wanted. Then we popped over the ridge to look at another beach (not nearly as nice as 'ours'), and headed back up to the top and out to a lookout.

Poor Sasha quickly realized the draw-backs of going hiking with a bunch of biologists, but he tolerated us quite well. We stopped to check out all kinds of things. We found a cool cockatoo (yes, they're all cool), two different kind of carnivorous plants (which we barely managed to escape!), and a few goannas (we can't say it quite like Steve Irwin, yet - nor can we tackle them like he could... Speaking of the Croc Hunter, though, one of Ben's other lab-mates used to work at Steve Irwin's Nature Park).