The most common activity from Stanwell Tops
Thanks Wilso :-D I was hoping you'd come and tell us about where you live. Great pics, but you'd never see me in one of those things. It's a heights thing.
Most popular animals, Gezzy? Domestically, cats, dogs, horses, chooks (chickens), budgies (budgerigars), cockies (cockatoos - CRUEL) and all the usual suspects you see in all western countries.
Some Oz native fauna CAN be kept, with a permit, but pretty much all are protected. Some seem happy enough to be kept - but it is uncommon.
Because my best friend as a child's family were prominent naturalists, I was, in fact, fortunate enough to grow up with various rescued fauna that were looked after by them - including various reptiles, lots of birds (including a stormy petrel!!!) and several of the cuter marsupials - such as pigmy possums, various wombats and suchlike. This was fun, but unusual. I really cannot get across to you people how very urbanised Australia is! We live in cities, cities, cities - less people now live in the bush than ever before.
Adelaide, where I live, is small, but (as I only really discovered when I went overseas) very cosmopolitan for its size. We have something over a million people - sadly very spread out.
Our state, South Australia, is in decline economically - so we are not growing much any more.
Mine is the dryest state, in the middle, at the bottom.
Adelaide - which dominates the place - is indeed very liveable. You can still get around pretty easily in cars - though this is gradually getting harder - and, if you live near the city centre, as I do - it is easy to access everything. I can walk easily into the CBD, to the centres where most of the best restaurants are, to theatres etc.
We have lots of lovely old suburbs, with beautiful turn of the century homes - beautiful to walk around - varying from the old workers cottage areas of the city and Norwood, to the stately home areas.
Housing and living is cheap here in comparison with Sydney and Melbourne. My old house - a two bedroom 1912 return verandah maisonette (duplex?) in a very desireable inner city suburb with a lovely little garden recently resold for $340, 000. Where I live now - a 4th floor 2 bedroom modern apartment with park views, a stone's throw from the CBD is worth - hmmmmmm - hard to say - around $260, 000? We are in the midst of a nation-wide property boom, and Adelaide prices are very unpredictable.
The city stretches between lovely beaches to the west and the hills to the east. In the hills, people DO have lots of koalas in their gardens! There was a male looking for a mate last year, which strayed onto the main road where I work - eight lane highway - and had to be rescued - with great difficulty- they are feisty buggers! The freeway to Melbourne, and the east generally, winds through the hills - and there are little koala ladders spanning the concrete road dividers - because those boys WILL go wandering!
Because this is a very leafy city, there tend to be lots of birds - though native species struggle with the exotic invaders, like starlings and sparrows and the bluddy pigeons - however, you can still see many native species of bird - many are very beautiful and spectacular - from the lovely little techni-colour musk lorikeets, flashing past like so many greeny opals, to the honey-eaters, quarreling and yelling in little flocks, to the glorious, outback black cockatoos who used to visit every year in a little flock to eat the neighbour's almonds - (I hope they still do, too, cos they are very endangered, but i moved and no longer see them.)
Adelaide is a foody and winey city - lots of good restaurants. Our best known city chef, Cheong Liew, who hails from Malaysia, but has been here forever, created the modern Australian cuisine - fusion - which interprets the best of Asian and European traditions.
My state produces the bilk of Australia's wines - in areas like the famous German settled Barossa Valley, the Clare Valley, the Southern Vales and the hills. These are all quite close to Adelaide- and offer cellar-door tastings, beautiful country-side, and good restaurants. You can do stuff like spend the morning tasting wine, have a lovely lunch, and then go down to a white beach stretching for miles and swim or surf.
We have a cafe culture in the city - and love to go and spend hours talking in outdoor cafes and restaurants.
A major resident and tourist attraction is the lovely, ancient volcanic area of the Flinders Ranges, a half day driving north of the city. The landscape is incredibly beautiful and magical and people go to camp and bushwalk and climb all around the region. It is wild enough that you can get lost and die, although well serviced by camping grounds and tourist accommodation.
Kangaroo Island is another lovely area to visit - although it is on the day-trip tourist track, so your quiet communion with the lovely, wild scenery (there is a colony of sealions amongst whom you used to be able to walk on the beach - but so many nutty tourists got themselves bitten by marching up to these wild creatures and trying to pet them, that the humans are no longer permitted so close ...grrrr!) is liable to be interrupted by busloads of tourists from all over the world - on a day trip, forsooth- when the island and most South Australian wild treats are best appreciated by spending a bit of time quietly walking or camping in them.
We do, indeed, have outback and desert aplenty for those wanting these things, and lovely peninsulas with wild beaches.
Our museum has a huge Aboriginal cultural heritage collection, and a major Aboriginal art space - Tandanya.
We also have some of the most disadvantaged and roughest areas in Australia - to the north and south and west of the city. I know - I work in one of 'em! So, we have reasonably high crime for an Oz city - nothing like the murder rate you will find in the US, for example - but still, you need to watch yourself in some areas and lock everything obsessively.
I am happy to try to answer questions, but i ain't gonna know everything!
LOL! He complains about heat in summer, too!
I can still see this forum guys!
Wilso
LOL! So what do you consider cold?
budgerigars doesn't help me any more than budgies does. Though, I guess I'd find the creature, whatever it is, on google better if I used the proper term.
Hang on Kris. I should be able to help.
Awwwww!!!!! Isn't he cute :-D
And the bird is pretty too ;-)
This is an adult male. The gender can be told by the blue colour of the nose (brown for females). The fact it's an adult is indicated by the plain colour on the forehead. When young the stripes across the top of the head extend all the way down. The bird is about 30% larger than a canary. All in the wild are green like this one, but breeders have produced domestic birds in a variety of colours. There are millions of them in the Australian bush.
ah! thanks.
And, I assume you didn't notice the posts to you after you left the FGs. We'll miss you!
Miss him? Where's he going?
What's going on!?
What have I missed?
Wilso - what was in the box that now shows a red X?
Where is Wilso going?
I sneak in at lunch for a quick look and confusion reigns!
There's still a budgie in my box.
wilso isn't going anywhere!
