The sounds and smells of Australia

So the team has been posting photos on facebook and writing about our experiences on the blog but there are some things words and pictures cannot describe.

As I write, my host Alastair is cooking breakfast of onions, mushrooms, eggs and beef sausage links.

Perhaps the most unnerving sound I have experienced is that of the call of the kookaburra. The first night I work up at my first host's home it was around 6am local time. My body has adjusted to the clock and I get up at 6am here no matter what just like I would at home. So imagine it's your first night in a home, you're in the semi-awake state, it takes you a few seconds to figure out that you're in a foreign country and all of a sudden it sounds like apes and monkeys outside your window. It was still twilight, I was half awake and it sounds like monkeys are going ape out there! And it's quite loud so my instinct tells me two things: these monkeys are big and they are close. I stay in bed.

At morning tea (breakfast) I ask about the "monkeys". I was genuinely concerned because our first night in Sydney we saw these very large bats which the Australians call flying foxes. The wingspan is HUGE and they were hundreds of feet in the air. In my mind since the bats were huge, so too were the monkeys.

I was informed it was a bird. Thank God! Screaming monkey alarm clock sounds make me a little nervous.

We have moved to our third host club of Boonah which is an hour or two inland from the coast and it feels like home. Winding roads, rolling hills of pasture, crops, cows, are all here as are all the familiar smells that go with it. They neighbor was mowing hay the other morning and you could smell it across the field. Not only does it look like home, it feels like home. My hosts Naurelle and Alastair hosted my teammate Beth and her host Joy for evening tea (dinner) last night and Beth, Joy and I did the dishes. Naurelle doesn't have a dishwasher (familiar to me) and so we hand washed and dried...just like home.

I have only seen one snake since I've been here. My hosts strategically placed rubber snakes outside on window sills to get my reaction. I only noticed them when Beth, Alastair and I were returning from a walkabout on their 40 acres and Beth screamed and jumped. I quickly see the snake and jump also! In all our prep for the trip everyone says "Oh, you gotta watch out for the snakes..." I saw one snake slither away in a garden...otherwise I've only seen them behind glass at a zoo. My hosts got a good laugh. They were waiting to see how long it took...sounds like something I would do...just like home.

I would have to say my favorite sound is that of an Aussie talking. It is so distinct and captivating at the same time. I learn more from these people but simply sitting down for a cuppa (cup of tea) than anything else. We all speak English but there are some vocab issues every now and then. Sometimes but not often it's the accent, most of the time they use some abbreviated form of a word. Brekki is breakfast, Cuppa is cup of tea, and so on and so forth.

And when we eat...which is another source of great smells here...they'll call it a feed. When it was about time for lunch yesterday, the hosts say, "Well go and have a feed before we go back." I'll say this, in the States the livestock feed and humans eat. As well as I have been eating here...I might be swine.

G'Day USA,
Nick