Who have read The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) and imagined the vast wild lands of Australia?
Australia is separated from the rest of the world with its unique and weird things. From the slow-living to the way of English. My friend, an Australian from birth, blurted, “Australian English is not English!”. Not to mention the funny way people here name everything. That can be said, the weird sense of humour makes Australia.
~ 85% plants, 84% territorial animals, 45% birds, and 89% aquatic animals in Australia are endemic, meaning, you cannot find them anywhere else. Among 25 most venomous snakes around the world, 21 are present in Australia. Notwithstanding, people in Australia are scared of the magpies in their mating season which like to swoop the pedestrians or cyclists. Many places in Australia are marked with the warning signs “Swooping birds in this area”, which, funnily, I misread in my first days in Australia as “Pooping birds in this area”. Well, you can see ‘that one’ around the signs anyway.
Again, when I first arrived here, I thought about a common advertised “Foster the Australian beer”, yup, this brand is really a rare thing in Australia, if not to say any bartender here would know it. There are, in fact, hundreds of Aussie brands of beer. Numerous local beers are really wonderful, and to be honest, it would be a wasting if we just stick to one brand everyday.
Everyone knows Australia is in the southern hemisphere, thus December is in mid-summer. Thus, in Australia, Christmas is celebrated with T-shirt, short pants, beach thongs, and sunscreen, on the background music of frozen snowy winter. Be careful, ‘thong’ in Australia means a footwear, not what Americans think about.
The photos phots below are taken along the Great Ocean Road, one of the seven most wonderful travel roads of the world.
