The title refers to the fact that, once again, I am trying to write this after taking my ‘night time drugs’. Please excuse any brevity or incoherence.
And since many have emailed/texted me, the drugs seem to be working and I’m optimistic for a full recovery within a few days!
Now on to the business I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s entry. It concerns this man:
Just a few days ago he won a Letterpress game by playing the word ‘gromwells’. Yesterday I innocently asked him what it meant. Not only did he not know, he didn’t even remember playing it! Turns out that this clever shark was utilizing a dictionary while playing the game. I ask you readers, is this fair play?
Sue picked me up this morning, and we spent a few hours driving around the city and visiting Blackbutt. The shot above is the Pacific Ocean view from the Newcastle cliffs. We also went to see the newly renovated ‘Bogey Hole’ (a colonial ocean bath):
As you can see, it was a beautiful day.
Blackbutt is a free nature reserve in the heart of the greater Newcastle area. It’s changed a lot since we were kids, but I’d not visited since the last major renovation after the Pasha Bulker storm.
That’s a pair of Emus. As in ‘eem-yous’! They’re big and scary, and at Blackbutt you can buy food in an ice cream cone to feed them. Here’s proof:
Look at that! It’s almost as big as Sue!
Although I am the image of bravery in the picture, I’m not afraid to admit I was a little bit scared of the big bird. This is half because I’ve always been leery of emus, and half because of:
That’s a bush turkey. It’s not very big, and when I spied him on the way to the emus I felt generous and offered him some food. Moments after this photo was taken he hammered down on the cone, knocking all the food out, taking off a chunk of the cone and nearly making me wet myself with startlement! And then he walked away from the food scattered everywhere. Silly turkey!
Some of the new displays at Blackbutt include a nocturnal quoll house, some frogs (as shown above) and an improved wombat house. They also retain their great Koala habitat, which also houses many birds including the tawny frogmouths:
The afternoon was a mixture of resting, used bookstore shopping (including finding some gamebooks I didn’t have!) and my eternal favorite: window shopping the weird and wonderful Australian produce and grocery stores. For instance, this was at a butcher today:
I can’t think of anything that would make me eat that!
Last but not least, a photo for my brother. Do you recognize this place?
Quite different, isn’t it?
They removed the trees!?! What a shame.
And I can’t believe you found game books you didn’t already have!
They’ve cut the trees but not removed the stumps, strangely enough. The street is closed as well.
The gamebooks came from Rices, but I also found some cool stuff at Cook’s Hill…