G'day mate - pick up your rubbish!

Today we're travelling north, back to Brisbane, to be ready for our flight tomorrow to Perth. It will be a 5-hour flight from the east coast to the west. We know there will be differences in the climate, but it will be interesting to see if there will be cultural differences too.

In our neighbour's front garden
at our most recent house sit

We experienced a cultural difference at our home yesterday. Let me backtrack. There was a fallen frond from a palm tree on our beach in the morning, noticeable at low tide. Greg wanted me to text our homeowners to ask whether we should move it and, if so, how we were to dispose of it. I said no as they'd be home the next day so it could wait. Wrong answer!

In our front yard at
our most recent house sit

In the afternoon, we noticed a barge coming into the canal, stopping at one or two places. Watching it as it was stopped at the far end of the canal, I saw they were cleaning up the beach there. They then came to our beach. As it turned out, they were "canal maintenance"; a little like refuse collectors for the waterways.

In a friendly but firm manner, we were told it was our responsibility to always clear any dead palm fronds from the beach before the tide came in. They pointed out that if they weren't cleared, they would travel down to the property at the far end. They then went on (and on) and showed us the four big bags almost filling the barge, which were the results of clearing that end property. Greg politely tried to explain that we weren't the homeowners, but that didn't seem to count for much. However, they did take the frond, which took up most of the length of the barge.

Moral of the story for me? You can make up your own mind on that one!

My final plant and flower photos are of a tree in our front yard. All four photos are from the same tree. I was fascinated by the different forms of flower and/or fruit. Nature amazes me at times.

The flowers are difficult to see against that wall,
but there are only about three blooming

The fragrance was beautiful

As it dies off - you can see at the core,
where it's yellow and spiked

If I've figured it out correctly,
this is the final stage, as the yellow core develops

One of our favours signs of nature here in Eastern Australia is that of the lorikeet, a bird seen in our yards for the past two house sits. It's native to Eastern Australia and is a relatively common sight. Just beautiful.

My camera just can't do them justice, so I borrowed from Google images. Although noisy birds, their colours are phenomenal, seen up close in your own yard.

As we leave our house sit today, I'll leave you with a photo of one of the yard decorations at this home.

There are three black sheep in this yard. One of the homeowners is a Kiwi (New Zealander). New Zealand has twice the number of sheep per person than my home country of Wales. For Greg and I, as "Have Sheep, Will Travel", they were so appropriate :)