Belated Easter Eggs

Great Barrier Reef, Cairns, Daintree Rainforest, Waterfalls

Lotsa pictures! And some videos!

These three are courtesy of Agnes, French fry extraordinaire. I stole them from her blog, which you can access via one of the links on the left side of my blog. See "Other Blogs." Anyway, these are from the Grampians trip, where we were all forced to sing our national anthems. The Americans did pretty well, considering Francis Scott Key was a $*&^% for setting his lyrics to such a difficult song. Cedric got up, after singing the French national anthem with Agnes and Maud, and did a ditty of his own. I think it's called L'hymne breton.



Also had a didgeridoo player who demonstrated how versatile his instrument is, with a little imagination. Here he imitates a kangaroo.



Agnes also got a wombat hopping about on camera. Those huge birds in the background aren't ostriches (wrong continent), they're emus. Closely related to the cassowaries I saw in Cairns. Both have incredibly sharp talons and no sense of humor.



And this last clip is very recent. Yesterday afternoon I went to a footy game with German Christina. "Footy," or Australian rules football, is just like American football, except without padding and or any discernible rules. The point starts when the ref throws the ball into the ground and any number of players try to catch it or bat it away on the rebound. No more than 18 players from each team are allowed to participate in this organized chaos at any one time. Players tackle each other all the time, and generally treat the green like one big Slip 'n' Slide. Final scores were Fremantle 21.11 (137) to Melbourne 13.14 (92), capping off two hours of total bewilderment on my part. (I would have tried to learn the rules, but I don't know American Football rules, so comparisons would have been lost on me.)

I WILL talk about Australian culture and Melbourne...I swear. So, my one faithful reader, keep hanging in there.