28/12/02
HOME SWEET HOME
MELBOURNE, VICTORIA
So after over 5 months without my own bed to sleep in,
i settled into Michael and Michael's place in Upwey, a suburb of
Melbourne.
Melbourne's weather is quite unlike the weather in the rest of Australia.
It's often very cold here, and even though it's summer
i find myself wearing a jumper (sweatshirt/sweater/jacket)
and pants.
It's known as being able to have four seasons in a day.
The days are sometimes incredibly hot and the nighttimes incredibly
cold.
Our house is nestled in the Dandenong Ranges, not quite mountains,
but pretty steep hills nonetheless.
It is surrounded by Fern Trees, my favorites.
I used to work with Michael (#1) up in Brisbane when i first came
to Australia in 1996.
Now, he can't shake me.
We live with Floyd, a dusty bluish-gray cat,
who fiercely detests the magpies in our front yard.
Our yard is also filled with kookaburras, noisy kingfishers that
sound like screaming monkeys.
The only drawback here seems to be the extremely irritating bush
flies,
which relish in flying into every orifice on your head.
They especially like it if you have bags of groceries in each hand,
making it
impossible for you to perform the bush salute, a spastic
waving about and smacking
of your own head to dissuade the flies from violating.
Bill Bryson describes them exactly in his book, In a Sunburned Country,
"Flies are of course always irksome, but the Australian variety distinguish
themselves by their very particular persistence. If an Australian
fly wants to be up your nose or in you ear there is no discouraging him.
Flick at him as you will and each time he will jump out of range and come
straight back. It is simply not possible to deter him...
An Australian fly will try to such the moisture out of your eyeball.
He will, if not constantly turned back, go into parts of your ears that
a Q-tip can only dream about. He will happily die for the glory of taking
a tiny dump on your tongue. Get thirty or forty of them dancing around
you in the same way and madness will shortly follow."
The Housemates
|
|
|
|
Michael Clough
|
|
Michael Chalmers
|
|
|
|
|
Mick Walsh
|
|
Floyd
|
Around Upwey
|
|
|
|
Our humble abode
|
|
Out front of the house
|
|
|
|
|
The Dandenongs
|
|
The view of Melbourne City
|
|
|
 |
|
Our street, Mast Gully Road
|
|
The main street of Upwey
|
Home