Driving on the left and other forms of excitement

Who needs coffee? Driving on the left in a big city on a work day is a rush not to be missed. We were headed west to the Blue Mountains, and started out headed east, couldn't figure how to turn around, finally did, wrong turned into the Cross City Tunnel, where we were charged a real toll as we passed a virtual toll booth for which we lacked the requisite digital account, and eventually, after several near misses (why are these drivers making such crazy turns?), got out of town. I felt much more confident on the way back, after practice on country roads, until, once again in the city, realized that dutifully retracing our route as we left town was only going to duplicate the error we made on the way out. Map reading skills and marital relationship put to severe tests before regaining the rental yard.



In between, full days of new birds and new plants in new landscapes. From the east, the Blue Mountains present a front of box canyons eroded into an uplifted sandstone tableland. It took the new colony 25 years to find a way across. We did it in 2 hours. The towns on the tableland live in mist and rain this time of year, not what we expected after all the stories of red dust storms in Sydney from last month. Many kinds of parrots and cockatoos and honeyeaters to be seen. The parrots and cockatoos are especially widespread, in forests, farmland, parks. Brilliant splashes of color.

We happened to meet a couple of guys starting an arboretum west of the Blue Mountains, who heard our accents and wanted to talk redwoods and sequoias, which are centerpieces in their new project. Their arboretum borders a lake that is used as a cooling water source for a coal-fired power plant. The lake sits on the site where Charles Darwin collected platypus on one of his expeditions.

Oh, let me report that kookaburra does in fact sit in the old gum tree. Actually, kookaburras, in family groups, sit in gum trees, and make the most outrageous cackling and ooohing noises.