A bit of a scary day!

Today I was rudely awakened by Rusty again – at 6am!!!  I opened the balcony door and stuck my hand out to test the temperature, it felt a bit cooler.  Feeling unusually awake for so early in the morning, I decided to go out walking for an hour to get some exercise.  I had been feeling a bit frustrated because it is too hot to exercise outdoors here and the gym is prohibitively expensive.  I set off around 6.45am (the time is relevant, you will see later), walked along my street and took a circuit around the city for an hour.
 
These are some photos taken on my walk:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Orange Footed Scrubfowl
 

The last two photos are of Orange Footed Scrubfowl, which are are mound-builders or incubator birds. This means that they don't sit on their eggs to incubate them but bury them in a mound to keep them warm. Then the chick breaks out of its egg with its claws and tunnels up through the mound to the surface.

 

When I got home from my walk and looked in the mirror, a dripping wet, bright red tomato looked back at me – I looked like I was going to explode!  No wonder everyone was staring at me on the way home!  And this was on a very slightly cooler day.  It took at least 2 hours for my face to return to a normal hue.

Later on I walked to Woolies to get some milk and the Saturday paper to look for jobs.  On the way in there was a man collecting for the blind and he had a big white Labrador which reminded me so much of one of my three doggies back home in Spain that it brought tears to my eyes.  The man took pity on me and suggested I volunteer for the RSPCA in Darwin, which I thought was a great idea.  I could do it at least until I could find a job.  The only problem is that it is out near the airport and I don’t have transport.  I will have to check the bus routes or look for a bike.

 http://www.rspcadarwin.org.au/pages/Volunteering.html

I found out today that the budgerigar, or budgie, is native to Australia and is commonly known as the common pet parakeet or shell parakeet.  Their natural colouring is green, yellow and black but in captivity they have been bred with blue, grey, yellow or white colouring.  The budgie is the third most popular pet in the world after the dog and the cat.

 



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223299/A-beautiful-plague-Australian-outback-town-invaded-swarm-colourful-budgerigars.html

 

"The skies are thick with budgies"

Budgerigar in Aboriginal apparently means “Good Tucker” meaning nice to eat!  The aboriginals would track the breeding patterns of the budgies and when the fledglings left the nest and were nice and plump, they would catch them before they started to fly and cook them in the same way they would cook kangaroo, by burying them under hot coals.

Male budgies rate among the top five talking parrot species, which include the African Grey, the Amazon, the Eclectus parrots and the ring-necked parakeet, and are able to learn up to 100 words.

When I got home from the supermarket I logged onto Facebook and saw a post on the Nine News Darwin page that made my hair stand on end.  At 6.45am this morning a man attacked a woman in my street, right next to where I live and dragged her down a side road.  Luckily some quick thinking café workers witnessed the attack and immediately called the police, who managed to arrest the offender.

All in all a bit of a scary day.