Urban Penguins

From time to time we marvel at how close we are to the Antarctic. Here in Melbourne we are closer to the South Pole than we have ever lived to the North Pole. As evidence of our proximity to the World’s bottom, the southern coast of Australia is home to the world’s smallest penguin. Most of these penguins reside on islands off the mainland, but one exception are the St. Kilda Little "Fairy" Penguins,which not only make their homes on the continent, but a mere 15 minutes from Downtown Melbourne (about 15 minutes from our house). We visited them recently during a warm winter evening because like every other interesting animal in Australia, the best time to see them is at dusk. (Ironically, not because they're coming out to eat like all the other animals, but because they're coming back to their burrows after a day out in the water.) We spent a few minutes playing footy on the beach until the sky looked like this:

Then we walked down the pier and onto the breakwater where, from a wooden platform (no child-safe rail here - Steph was totally loving that) we could see the penguins swim up to the rocks in which they nest.

The penguins at St. Kilda do not waddle up on the sand like they do on the more popular (for tourists) Philip Island, but hop from rock to rock. But they're a lot closer and cheaper - just right for the Fairbanks family.

Supposedly, the penguins do not like camera flashes so most of our pictures look like this:

But it is impossible to remember to turn the flash off for every photograph.

Of Bikkies and Brekkies

Australians have nicknames for everything. It is a defining characteristic of the Australian vernacular. Football is footy. Mosquitoes are mozzies. The grocery store isn’t Woolworths; it’s Woolies. Some of these diminutives really make us giggle, like when the radio talk show host was complaining that it was so cold that he had to sleep with a "hottie" in his bed (see the previous link for translation). This nicknaming extends to Australian wildlife as well. For example, the largest predator on the continent, the saltwater crocodile, is a “salty.” Even knowing this, we got a really good laugh out of this recent headline:

I guess until this article came out I had supposed the world’s biggest wedgie would be found in some school building between the cheeks of the unfortunate victim.

To learn more about Aussie English, click here. And here's some more slang, just because it's fun. I challenge you to use one new word or phrase in conversation today.