Pictures
I was fairly snap-happy over the last week-and-a-half, but a selected few photos should do the job. Rather than editing previous posts, I'll just stick them up more-or-less chronologically for a flavor of the trip.


A lookout vantage over the Barossa Valley, where our wine tour took us, outside Adelaide, which we shared with a woman from Vancouver, making for a most enjoyable day, particularly since she knew all the right questions to ask at each stop.


Greetings from Kangaroo Island.


Well-trained kookaburras. We had one on Mom's hand at one point, but I think she deleted the picture.


The penguins come ashore at night after days at sea, eating, and for their shore leave, molt. Because their eyes are adapted for underwater vision, white light bothers them, so the guides use red filters to show them up outside their burrows. Not even knee-high.


The Remarkable Rocks, as they're prosaically known, are a jumble of sea-and-air shaped free-standing boulders, very "Picnic at Hanging Rock" in effect as you wander among them.


For the tennis, we walked each morning along the Yarra to the show courts, along with many others from all points of the city. Later, we found out there was a special tram.


Alize Cornet lost last night, unfortunately, but we did get to see her in her round 2 match. She did pretty well, though.


We also got to see the Williams sisters in a doubles match, although we had to sit through a preceding match, after standing outside show court 2 for an hour, while a Serb and a Croatian fought out five sets, a match featuring some bad behavior by their supporters, a few ejections, and, when the Croatian won, loud singing and fascist salutes. What's with these creeps? They should be banned for life. From everywhere. Not the Williams, the Croatians-Serbs-Bosnians.


(Who are these people?)


I never got the story about the giant gold bees all over this building. There's a really big one up the top, too, and a bit of a swarm along one wall. Next time I'll ask.


I know what the latin says, but I reckon Melbourne's trying to tell us they built their success on wool, whales, beef and boats. I like the kangaroo rampant.


Our trip along the Great Ocean Road was very nice, and the driver even stopped when we spotted a koala along the way. The trees in the vicinity are badly denuded by mistletoe and hungry koalas.


This formation used to be connected to the land, but not anymore, not since 1990, when a collapse left two or three people stranded. These formations are largely limestone and sandstone, all being eroded. A rise in sea levels would cause further and dramatic alterations along this coast.


On our last day + 1, Mom & I visited the State Library, to see Ned Kelly's armor, among other things. The reading room was designed based on the famous reading room in London's library, and that of the Library of Congress. Australia did a lot of that sort of thing, combining the best features of the U.S. and the U.K. to achieve something new and remarkable in the world. It often works.