Here I am in beautiful tropical Mt Martha for a couple days. Just me and my hot water bottle. Sitting in front of the fire and looking out the window a lot. I didn’t even bring the laptop! Just the iphone with it’s adorable little wordpress app. My main concern is that even though I have taken the occasional walk, I have seen not a single beast. Not one. Zero. I have been serenaded by crows ( I am very fond of crows), saw a pigeon or two and some dogs. But no beasts that I would describe as Animals You See While On Holiday. No possums, bunnies, rats or marsupials of any kind. There was a cockroach on a log destined for the fire so I put it out the door (the cockroach, not the log – it was one of those charming native bush roaches not one from the telly). But you wouldn’t even bother blogging about a cockroach unless you were desperate. I know Mt Martha is not the proper bush but there are trees everywhere and the beach and stuff. I mean really, it’s a bit like The Road except it isn’t because there weren’t pigeons in The Road. And I reckon the coffee they got in their post-apocalyptic nightmare was better than the chalky warmish fluid they serve in Mt Martha. However, I digress. The score so far: Concealed Beasts 1, Holidaying Cartoonists 0
I have included some photos including one of the Temple of the Fat Gecko which must have been drawn from memory as there are no geckos of any size in Mt Martha because they do not like the coffee.
5 Comments
Dear Firstdog,
I’m disappointed! I shouldn’t need to remind you that there are no crows in Mt Martha – only ravens, as you sagely observed in your December ‘08 missive on the White Winged Chough. For shame!
But I forgive you, since you included a crested shrike-tit in your speed-dating cartoon. Along with the chough, that gives you of my top 5 all-time favourite Australian birds! Now if I can just get you to blog on malleefowl (they are so wonderful: look up http://www.malleefowlvictoria.org.au and you’ll see) and grey grasswrens, and I’ll have the full set.
Enjoy your holiday…
P.S. Yes I realise that’s only 4, but with about 800 birds to choose from I have to keep my options open. Actually the 5th spot is reserved for the mallee emu-wren (stipiturus mallee) but I can’t count it because I haven’t seen one yet… :-)
[Firstdog - Crows, everywhere crows!]
I’m devastated! FD – had you winged it 90 mins out of Melbourne you’d have been here in Hastings Point, paradise of the nation. A smorgasbord of tamed and wild magpies, currawongs and eastern seabord birdlife PLUS estuary creatures never seen before in ‘your neck of the woods’! Now & then I’ll send the pix of paradise lost…and next time think outside the state you’re in – we do have a teeny insight into IT telecommunications. Admittedly its crummy.
hello firstdog!
i felt compelled to register an account on the crikey blogs network in order to make this comment. i apologise that it has little to do with colourful little houses or geckos.
i was recently in my kitchen, reading my calendar while waiting for the kettle to boil. i made some tea and brought it to my homeofficebedroom, where i now sit. anyway, what i want to say is congratulations on your political insight with regard to flapdoodle the 13th of june!
This is what you missed on holidays:
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/rare-white-wallaby-captured-in-snap/1543943.aspx
Clearly under-employed it its current role, just mooching around the snowfields like many others who can and should have better things to do.
I think he’s well suited to a senior role in firstblog enterprises.
Is there a vacancy?
I’m just so over the date this was published. All I wanted to say is you would have a better chance of communing with nature as it starts to get dark or AM when it starts to get light.
A warm, cosy pup-tent, a V V warm sleeping capsule, two-three thermos-flasks of what you like imbibing, some really thick and yummy sandwiches go down a treat, a torch-so you don’t trip up, a book for when nothing turns up and instructions to the family not to allow the animals out of the house-for they will find you. Perhaps something a tad larger than a pup-tent?