Today was our first full day in
Australia. A fairly prosaic day. We went shopping for groceries in
the morning and, in the afternoon, I walked down to a bush reserve to
check out a little climbing crag. Seems commonplace enough, but
already I notice huge differences between Canada and Australia.
In Australia, you go to a bunch of
different shops to buy your groceries. At the supermarket, you can
get dry goods and dairy. Then you go to the butcher for meat and
chicken, the fish shop for fish, and the green-grocer for fruit and
vegetables. A lot of people have these super handy wheeled shopping
carts so you can do what we did – walk to the stores, load your
groceries in your cart and wheel it home (you drag it behind you).
Very convenient and so awesome to be able to do everything without a
vehicle.
After lunch, I walked a couple of
kilometres through residential streets – amazing flowers in all the
gardens – to where a fire road (looks like a BC logging road) led
down into a bush reserve. Australians call anything remotely forest
like “bush”. There was a small stream with some billabongs
(small pools) running through the base of the reserve and the most
incredible vegetation everywhere. Big tree ferns, huge eucalpyts,
orange, pink, white, yellow flowering plants (none of which I know),
and big Gymea Bay Lillies with their huge red flowers atop a 6 metre
stalk. The air is full of the sound of bird-song – from the
raucous cries of cockatoos to the delicate ringing of the bell-birds.
Superb.
Looking forward to climbing some
Sutherland Shire sandstone tomorrow.
Gum tree reflection
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