New Neighbors...they're Black

We have the most gorgeous new neighbors - Red-Tailed Black Cockatoos. A flock has been hanging out at the cemetery across the street for about a week or so. A few came to the gum tree hanging over our yard yesterday.
They are much more skittish than the ubiquitous pink and gray Gallahs. Gallahs watch you walk right up to them and then, they tell you off.
These RTB's flew off just because my camera made a tiny "bee-deep." They were a good 20 meters away at the time.
Thus, I have few photos and none of them good. Come on, black things just don't photograph well.
Their awesomely bright red under-tail patches show up for about a millisecond when they take flight and they are always flying AWAY which isn't the pretty red side.
These dears don't usually come to town. We first saw them at Ross River Resort our first Christmas when we still misunderstood the word, "resort."
Their noises are raucous and beepy. That's what first made me look- to see what the new bird sound was.
They're BIG - about the length from my elbow to the tip of my fingers. That's just a guess because, as I said, you can't get too close.
Remember, I did my best with the photos.

Our Church

We're Catholic. Our church in Alice is Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, called "Olsh." It is a fairly new building and quite beautiful of red sandstone and tile. The kneelers are 2 by 4's. NO cushions.


Mass here is far more optional than what I am used to. The priests seem to still have the missionary attitude to be just grateful when people do come rather than being demanding at all.

That's Bernie. She got into a few pics. Nice lady, helps run Vinny's (St. Vincent DePaul Soc.)



Dress is really casual, too. A baptism might be find the parents and godparents in jeans and boots or flip-flops. Notable and stunning exceptions are the African ladies. Man! I wish I could dress like an African. The Indian women are stunners too.


I believe priests were first sent here in the early 1900's to tell the Aboriginals about Catholicism along with the Lutherans and Uniting Church and Baptists, but the Lutherans seem to have been the first and best at it.


There are many Indian, Filipino, African and Pacific Islander members of our church and town. Most have tight communities, except the Americans for some reason.

Pope John Paul II came once.


Early religious set up schools and when public schooling came along, there were already so many religious schools teaching kids, the government decided it was just easier to fund them along with the state schools.
So, a Catholic, Lutheran or other Christian school will get hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from the government right along with the public schools.

Bet you've never seen an Aboriginal Madonna and Child before.

Just Some Cultural Bits

At aqua aerobics at 9:30 this morning, there were 2 middle-age blokes sitting in lawn chairs poolside, in their akubra hats and stubbies (short shorts), drinking beer and enjoying the show. That's Aussie.

This past weekend, there was an AFL footy game in town (national teams). No boxed wine nor fortified wines were allowed to be sold all weekend in hopes of keeping the crime and fights down.
Guess it worked. There was only 1 arrest out of 4500 people. 15 litres of alcohol dumped out and only 20 or so taken into protective custody.

The culture of the Aboriginal people restricts whom they can marry, touch, even talk to, by their "skin name" which is kind of like a family line. That is, someone can be the right skin for you or the wrong skin. Some young people do not follow these rules any more, some do.

There is no Australian equivalent of Kool-Aid.

I've had about 4 RBT's Random Breath Tests in the past year either taking Thomas to school or on the way home: 8-9 a.m.

Everything is closed on Good Friday.

King's Canyon in February

A less-known place, catty-corner to Uluru, is King's Canyon. Stunningly beautiful without all the hype. Click on any photo or page to pause.

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We paid 7.00 for a can of Pringles and about 8.00 a gallon for gas, but otherwise, it was a great time. A tour bus or two was at the resort. This was a REAL resort with a pool and restaurant, but also with native bush, goannas and dingos.
Anyone coming to visit?

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Well, we are back from New Zealand.
If you didn't know, we were there from January 10-28th. It was a bus tour around both the North and South islands (that's what NZ is made of) and not so much like what I expected. Your tax dollars flew us there and I am not ungrateful.
It's just that New Zealand isn't there.
It has been replaced with 30 million acres of American pine trees, Indian shrubs, blue-grass pastures, English gardens and Chinese herbs.
Sorry, but someone also thought it a good idea to bring rabbits to hunt for fun, stoats (like weasels) and foxes to kill the extra rabbits, traps and poison to kill the stoats and foxes before they kill all the kiwis who thought they had no reason to be able to fly and the bird song you wake up to is English house sparrows.
The bus tour would give us 2 hours at a vineyard but 10 minutes at a rainforest. An hour at a MALL, 2 hours at a castle, but no whale-watching. By day 3, I was looking for a way out of the contract; by day 12, I was resigned to the life-style.
Our fellow captives were all so nice. The food was really good and if we had been left to our own schedule, we'd still be about a mile from the airport, staring.

Enough. Just look at the 186 photos and enjoy.

Oh, in Queenstown, Tom and Thomas went on the Shotover River jet boat ride. Proof is here:http://www.shotoverjet.com/?estory_id=197919
I went looking for wool. Found a nice possum blend.

There was Perth

I went to the state of Western Australia for a week in early October for the Southern Hemisphere Felters Convergence. Just me. Flew to Perth for a couple days and then a 2 hour drive south to Bunbury. It's right along the left bottom edge of Australia where if you fell off, you'd have to swim to Africa and that's really far.

I've never been anywhere so beautiful in all my life. No disrespect to Rainbow Valley or the prairies of Illinois or a Virginia woodland in April; it was just prettier.

and I was all by myself which was great most of the time but hard by day 4 when I missed my baby and really hard when I took Cave Road and went into an enormous cave and had no one to point at things with.
I let the Indian Ocean lick my ankles. I wondered why no one was in the water but took it as good advice.
I was in Bunbury to make felt and learn about it and meet 150 other felters and see their gorgeous art. I got to live in a dorm at the Cathedral Grammar School with 7 other crazy broads.
I made friends and walked in woods and said I hoped I saw a possum before I left and one was outside my window the next morning.
It all worked and the spell hasn't broken yet. I'm creating and making notes of ideas and selling my work and stealing other ideas and enjoying it immensely.
I will take my men there in 2012 and I hope they love it as much.

PS I've left room for photos if I can ever access them. White sand, blue sky. Possum like a big-eyed, really soft cat in a tree. Pine forests underlain with white calla lilies and circled by screeching egrets, pelicans so big they could swallow a child, sunsets like crazy.