Last November my husband and I were lucky enough to go to New South Wales, Australia to visit his sister, Emily, who lives there. She lives in a small beach town north of Sydney called Woy Woy. There is a large inlet and estuary nearby and we spent a lot of time walking around, looking at birds, flowers and other signs of spring. Yes, that’s right. November is the beginning of spring in the southern hemisphere. Sort of a disconnect for people from New England!

After leaving the Sydney Airport we drove for many miles through the lovely jacaranda trees that look like puffy clouds of lavender bliss all through the landscape.

We traveled to the Blue Mountains, visited Sydney itself and many other cool places. It’s much too much to put in one post so I’ll be posting more over the next few weeks. This is a quick overview.

I didn’t expect to see pelicans in Australia but they are there! These are huge pelicans and are called….wait for it…..Australian pelicans. Go figure.
Magpies, called maggies by many Aussies, which is what magpies call Australians, by the way, are everywhere. These smart relatives of crows are noisy, assertive and clever. Many of the ones we saw already had young ones that were chasing their parents for food. One of my target birds for this trip was the kookaburra, the largest kingfisher. These are crow sized birds and have a call that sounds just like a cackling laugh. This one I photographed in my sister in law’s neighbor’s yard. Turns out they come in for bird feeders and are frequent park visitors. We did see and hear them in the woods as well. Lizards were everywhere. We didn’t see any snakes, however, which was just as well since so many of their snakes are poisonous. There may be no bird as ubiquitous in this area of Australia as the lorikeet. There are several different kinds but this one hung out in the bushes by the front porch daily. At night they gather by the thousands to roost in certain trees. The racket they make is unbelievable. Although koala bears can be seen in the wild we did not see any wild ones. This lazy koala was taking a little nap at a reptile park we visited. We did see wallabies and kangaroos in the wild. This guy was grazing in a field that was part of a ranch, hence the fencing, but it was not a pet or livestock. Ranchers and farmers in Australia are not overly fond of these trespassers but it did give us an opportunity to see them. The best time to go looking for them is just past dawn and just before dusk. This was an early morning shot.We came home and it was time for Thanksgiving and then all the holiday madness so I never got around to posting any of my photos, etc. Over the next few weeks I will post more about our trip as well as the drawings I did in my journal while we were there.