Koala 'bear'

Koalas aren't bears. They're marsupials. I took this photo at Healesville Sanctuary a few weeks ago.

Koalas have two thumbs on each hand. You can't see both thumbs in this picture, but you can see the very long nails on the hands. They use these nails to help them scoot up and down trees. Koalas seem quite lazy, really, except for when they are whizzing up and down trees. They eat only one kind of leaf (how boring): the eucalyptus leaves below the koala in this picture.

One of the interesting things about koalas is that they have a hard pad at the base of their spine, around where we have our coccyx. This hard pad is what they sit on, in the crooks of trees. It's like a built-in cushion.

Pretty darned cute, isn't it? (Particularly the ears.)

CookSister

Dusty and Neats have the cutest little Yorkshire Terrier called 'Cookie'. Weighing in at under 2 kg Cookie is big enough to play on the beach in Dubai and even venture into the sea.

Cookie is called 'Cook' for short. Not bad for such a little dog who is almost the same size as a 'Koek'sister which is a South African doughnut - a deep fried twist of dough which is then submerged in a sugar syrup.

Lagos

I spent the last 4 days in Lagos, Nigeria on business. Lagos is one of the fastest growing cities in the world and is definitely one of the most populated. It takes about 6 hours to fly from Johannesburg to Lagos which has temperatures of between 28 and 32 degrees all year round. There are two seasons - a wet season and a dry season.

Its oil reserves has brought great revenues to this country.

Nigeria is the most populous county in Africa and is the 7th most populous county in the world.

Do you know that 1 in every 4 Africans is a Nigerian?

Grindelwald 1965

Melbourne is in the grip of the first winter chill. There is snow on the nearest ski-slopes, about three hours' drive away, and it is wet and grey and windy in the city.

So my thoughts have turned to Heidi's and my first encounter with snow. In 1965, Mom, Dad, Heidi and I went to Europe with Bop and Ganan (Roy and Jessie Sater, Mom's parents). Heidi was eight years old. She took photos and kept a journal, and here's what she wrote about Switzerland (unedited):

On the 20.10.'65 we flew from Venice from Zurich over the alps. We went two trains before we arrived in a place called Grindlewald. The first day we went by funicular railway up a mountain called 'The Jungfrau' wich is over 11 thousand feet high and covered with snow. We went into a tunnel which was 7 miles long through the mountain. We climbed up on to the Plateau. Then we went into Ice Palace where we saw a motor car, a piano and a tea room made of ice. We went on the chair lift. It was wonderful to hear the cow bells tinkling on the cattle below us. The grass was stil very green. We stoped half way and went into the forest. We saw a chalet named Heidi. We then travelled through Switzerland down to Geneva.

Eight-year-old Heidi took four photos in Switzerland; also in the journal are a number of postcards of 1965 Switzerland. (Dad: did you know that you can click on any photo on the blog to make it bigger and see more detail?)

Here is Heidi's photograph of Grindelwald ...

... and here are two postcards of Grindelwald. That's the Wetterhorn in the background, according to the caption on the postcard. (Don't you love the cars?)

Heidi took three photos of the Jungfraujoch. The postcards, which follow Heidi's photos, say that the view is of the Jungfraujoch 'mit Aletschgletscher'. According to Wikpedia, the Aletsch glacier is the largest glacier in the Alps and has been a World Heritage Site since 2001. (Hope it survives climate change.)

And here are the postcards:

Postcards of the Ice Palace on the Jungfraujoch are also in the journal. The top one is captioned 'Schlittschuhbahn', which Google tells me means 'ice-rink'. Fantastic! Imagine skating in the Ice Palace!

Heidi doesn't mention the Eiger Mountain but the railway tunnel that she does mention runs inside the Eiger, from Kleine Scheidegg. Even in 1965, the Eiger would have been famous for the many climbers who had died trying to climb it. Here is the 'Station und Hotel Eigergletscher' (another glacier!), followed by 'Alpenhornblaser mit Eiger':

Now let's leave the mountain and descend back into the valley by chair-lift ('Grindelwald: Firstbahn mit Wetterhorn'), where we can hear the tinkle of cowbells and see a chalet (possibly named Heidi).

Well, that's it for our little tour of the Bernese Alps. Dad, hope these bring back some good memories of 1965 Switzerland!

PS Now, where shall we visit next, on our 1965 tour of Europe? Our choices: Rome, Venice, Paris or London.

Lights, camera, action!

Dad and I have organised for one of his 16 mm films to be converted to DVD. He shot this particular film in 1960, the year in which I was born.

The person doing the conversion has just emailed me these frames from the film. These frames show: (1) Mom and me (and someone in the background with a dog); (2) Ganan (Mom's mother) and me; (3) Mom, Dad, Heidi, me and Bop (Mom's father); (4) Grandma (Dad's mother) and me; (5) Heidi; (6) me, Bear and Heidi the Fairy.

Can't wait to see the movie.

Baby wombats

Wombats are large, ungainly animals which do little but dig burrows and eat grass. But aren't these baby wombats gorgeous? We saw them at Healesville (Wildlife) Sanctuary last weekend.

Actually, probably the most interesting thing about a wombat is its rather unusual pouch. A wombat, like a kangaroo, is a marsupial. Like kangaroos, wombats keep their babies in a pouch. But the wombat pouch faces backward. If a wombat was a kangaroo, standing on its hind legs, its baby would drop out of its pouch. Being wombats, however, they don't stand up on their hind legs. They burrow. So the baby in the pouch -- which faces backwards -- doesn't get a faceful of mud when Mother Wombat digs into the ground.

Isn't Nature wonderful?

Wind walkers

A crazy physicist called Theo Jansen (or a normal artist, it's debatable) creates enormous wind-powered "animals", which he lets loose to roam the beaches of the world. His website with some videos and info is here

http://www.strandbeest.com/index.php

It is well worth a look.

He recently released some more sensibly-sized versions of his Strandbeests (beeste?) which I bought for Lisa. Here is the first model:

And a video of it in action:

The second model:

Video:

Desert Golf

Dustin and Don played a round of golf at the Al Bahdia Golf Course, an 18 hole championship course in Dubai.

It was a bizarre experience -  40 degrees Celsius, pretty humid, beautifully green fairways and putting greens, running streams and amazing small lakes, abundant bird life, all in the middle of a desert!

The highlight of the day was on the 10th, a par 4, when Don's second shot stopped 150 mm from the hole.

Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day in Australia and so of course our thoughts turn to Mom. I've chosen some photos from two different sets for today.

The black-and-white photos below were taken around 1965. Dad and Heidi would remember the verandah outside the lounge that many years later became the bar! In the second photo, that's Timmy Nash and me, with Mom, Dad and Jessie Kathleen Margaret Ireland Sater aka Ganan (Mom's mother and our maternal grandmother). Jessie was born in 1900 so she would be about 65 in this photo.

These photos below were probably taken about ten years later, around 1976. Mom loved her daily swim -- and may well have been remembering these days when she always talked about having a swim in later years.

Happy mother's day to all mothers!

Beer SpecTAPular

Our friends Susara and Anton are visiting from Pretoria, and we have been sharing a whole range of different Melbourne experiences. Last night was the start of a beer festival and the opening event was the 'Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular', a celebration of craft beers and brewers. There were beers on tap from 60 microbreweries in Australia and New Zealand, and food from a number of Melbourne restaurants.

Susara and I are not madly keen on beer but we kept Smuts and Anton company -- and besides, it was held at the Royal Exhibition Building. It's a lovely building. It was built in 1880 during the gold rush (yes, Melbourne had one too). Now it's one of the world's oldest remaining exhibition pavilions and has World Heritage listing. As you can see from the photos below, it's very pretty both outside and inside.

There was a live jazz band and a fun, relaxed atmosphere. Not a bad way to spend a Friday night!

Birthday Arnold

Arnold Etter -- father to Rene and Marcel, and our paternal grandfather -- was born on 7 May 1896. That's 116 years ago today!

Here is a selection of the photos that I now have. Rene and Yvette have shared what they remember about them. We think the photo on the left was taken around 1915. Thanks to the photographer's branding, we know it was taken in Weinfelden, a town north-east of Zurich. Weinfelden in the Appenzell, as is Herisau, where he was born. The photo on the right is a later one. Our guess is that it's around 1920. Look at that wonderful moustache!

This photo was taken around 1940, at The Hill, where the Etter family lived a few years after they arrived in South Africa. That's Dad on the left and Rene on the right of their father. According to Rene, he built this German baby glider plane out of balsa wood and silk, painted with thinners and cellulose to tighten the silk. They would go out on to the Heidelberg Road to fly this plane.

These photos were taken (by Rene) around 1945, at The Hill. It was at this time when Yvette met Rene and his family. Yvette says she remembers Arnold pruning the fruit trees on the property.

This photo was taken at a dinner party in the later 1950s. Yvette says this is how she remembers Arnold: exhaling his cigarette smoke very slowly, savouring it to the full.

This is the last photo that we seem to have of Grandfather Arnold. It must be around 1960, because Heidi is about two or three in this picture. I love the attitude and the clothes!

Food, Food, More Food

Dusty and 'Neats' (Anita) took Don and I to lunch at a restaurant separated by dancing fountains from the Burj Khalifa - the tallest building in the world. What an amazing spread which took us a good few hours to eat.



Burj Khalifa - not only the tallest building in the world (828 m), but also the most number of stories in the world (160).



Starters of parma ham, buffalo mozzarella, prawns, calamari, octopus, fried brinjal ...



And main courses of more octopus, salmon, scallops, lobster, prawns ...