Totally hot freelancer

What would you do if it was a weekend and it was a beautiful, sunny, cloudless day of 40 degrees? (that’s Celsius, for anyone who is more familiar with Fahrenheit). Beach sound good? Or cocktails by a pool? Ha! Those are all so .. 2010! No, 2011 is the year of WORK! So I have been INSIDE at the computer, translating my little heart out. But before I got started, I took a mini-break in the backyard. Here I am, typing away so you have proof that I do sometimes actually do work. Of course I could have taken a photo in the house, but that’s not exactly atmospheric. So I posed myself under this tree for you instead.

Do you recognise the Tshirt?
Here are the sights I took in on my little holiday, prior to practically chaining myself to the table indoors.


Those of you from overseas might not have heard about this plant, it’s called a kangaroo paw, for fairly obvious reasons…


Speaking of kangaroos, here’s some of the wildlife that visits the garden from time to time… (if you’re expecting kangaroos, you’ll be disappointed, I was just trying to do a bit of a segue. Although there are some about 20 minutes down the road, and they’re getting closer, as I have seen a few dead ones near my house when I’ve been driving).

The sulphur crested cockatoos are regular visitors and get extremely impatient when they want food. Some of them are escapees, they have bits of chain left on their legs, poor things.

These rainbow lorikeets are very impatient too. They’re very beautiful but also noisy and aggressive and have no problems taking on the cockies, or in fact anything, even if it’s ten times their size. They love to grab other birds by the tail, although sometimes it backfires as I have seen a crow dangling one of them by its tail after it got a little bit too cheeky.
There’s a slightly better pic of them here, I just wanted to show you how many of them sometimes visit (up to about 20 at a time, it gets VERY noisy).

Sometimes ducks visit too! Here’s Mr and Mrs Duck.


My favourites are the king parrots though…they are very tame and will even sometimes eat from my hand.

I know, I shouldn’t encourage that, but how gorgeous is this guy!?

He’s married with a wife and kids, but I do find him very attractive.

There’s plenty of action after dark too, thanks to the possums. Here’s mummy possum with her baby clinging on to her back for dear life. It’s hilarious when the babies start to get too big for their mum’s pouch but still try to get back in all the same. Bits of tail, leg, etc are left sticking out everywhere.

Oh, overseas readers, how I wish I could capture the dulcet tones of possums in disagreement to replay for your enjoyment, but it’s something you just have to hear for yourself to get the full experience (if any of you have Australian friends, ask them to recreate the sound for you, but warn the neighbours before you do so).

There are a lot more birds and animals in the garden but I’ll save that for another time. Hope you enjoyed a little slice of Australia on your screen! And if you’re in Australia, well, Melbourne at least, it’s going to be another hot one today, so here’s a heat safety message from Suki.
Enjoy the sun, but be sensible about it!

Drink lots of water!

And keep cool however you can!