Preparing to Go "Down Under"

Forgive me that the offerings on this blog have been somewhat slim of late but it is because my mind has been elsewhere. Some 10,000 ,miles elsewhere, in Australia. For we are headed around the world a week from today to joyfully reunite with our daughter who will be on R& R from Afghanistan. She has been working with Aussies there and even with cyclones, floods, natural disasters coming on like clockwork, she would brook no refusal- Australia or nothing.

Now as a naturalist and a Mom, this will be a trip beyond my wildest dreams. However, I have a confession to make. Being a devotee of Bill Bryson, years ago I read, “In a Sunburned Country”. It’s a book chronicling his adventures there, and although he clearly loves the place, he also loves painting vivid pictures of the many ways you can “Come a cropper” in Australia, from the array of venomous creatures,
to rip tides, to man-eating crocodiles etc.

The type of images that give one pause. Of course I had to reread it, and to listen to it on tape, cementing each little portrait of a swallowed person down deep in my subconscious where I can pull them out at a moments notice. But ridiculous! If nothing else, what a natural end it would be for a naturalist. To cure myself of that, I got a Field Guide to Australian birds and now try and replace lunging crocodiles with Sulphur-crested cockatoo’s, Kookaburra’s and Fairy Wrens. Plus, all those marvelous marsupials, really! It will all be so amazing.



The second part of the confession is that I couldn’t seem to tear myself away from images of a flooded Australia, a hit-with-the-biggest-cyclone in their history, Australia. But all the more reason to go and add our few shekels to their coffers which will be so hurt by all of this. And my daughters are engineers. Our youngest daughter is also coming along and she is particularly interested in the water and flood control side of life so “bring it on” is her motto.

My daughter who is deployed, the one who set this all in motion, plans on getting her diving license there, and has booked us on a 3 day 2 night trip on the Great Barrier Reef-also incredibly amazing. I used to work at Sea World and here will be that amazing cast of characters from the Reef without the plate glass between us.
Praying mightily that the cyclones will hold off for the week we are there, even though this is the Wet season. How many major storms can hit in one season after all? And wouldn’t that make a memory if one did while we were there.

So, it’s all good, “No Worries”! Bless them that that is their National Motto. And I am trying valiantly to make it mine. T-6 and counting. So, if I don’t manage to blog much in these last hectic days, forgive me. But just wait for the flood of “IT WAS SO AMAZING” stories to follow. Told hopefully, from outside a crocodile’s stomach.