Nearly all names for things are shortened, and then an ‘O’ or a ‘Y’ are added. So Jack and Steff are from Carbondale, now Carbo, Lew and I are from Westy, a friend is from Pottsville, or Potty. It seems like I’ve said this before, but we really could live here among the rather casual, but thoughtful, friendly and really beautiful place these folks call home. The weather is fabulous, the people aren’t on edge, or angry, accusing anyone of anything. They don’t talk about the government excessively, or their taxes. People nod and wave and say hello to us and each other with smiles for strangers.
They work light days — the construction next door to our condo here at Kirra at the beach is building two giant skyscrapers all day every day. (within a few yards of our place) It’s not a terrible problem, even though it is ongoing. They all are walking away in their neon green jackets at about 3:00 in the afternoon. We suppose it’s part of that Work/Life/Balance thing. Lots of walking about people.
Food — it isn’t the same, even though we all speak English, sort of. The hot dog is called a snag, and it’s not really a hot dog, and it’s not in a bun, but wrapped in white bread. There is this Chicken Parmy, it’s a chicken schnitzel covered with tomato sauce, and ham. Then there are curries, curried sausages, Yorkshire pudding, bangers and mash, and an as yet unidentified something called rissoles, which I think are like large meat-and-something-else balls. Quite a bit of Greek food, Mexican food (why here?) Turkish food, Asian food, mostly Thai, which makes sense. Lots of burgers here also, fish burgers, made with Baramundi fish called Barry, beef burgers, chicken burgers. Most restaurants offer Haloumi (?) and we’ve not been able to locate Iced tea. They have a syrup tea, but not anything recognizable as unsweetened iced tea. We’ll have to make our own. Deserts are in so many forms one could fill a room of sweet tooths. There are lovely cakes and fingery things, ices and pies, beautifully made and calling out from cases that all sell pastries to go with coffees. OMG !
We were invited to be on a boat along with some friends today, and we went out to look for whales. Eight of us all pointed at whitecaps most of the time, until we looked under the water right around us, and there were dolphins swimming in pairs through the waves. It’s like being kissed by ethereal beings to watch dolphins!
When we looked up we saw a humpback blowing his breath, and we were all in a frenzy of excitement to watch and be in the water with a pod of these three or four giant peaceful beings. When they moved on, we tried to locate them, and stay respectfully ‘around’ but turned off the motor so we wouldn’t disturb them. At one point we looked up and they were directly in front of our boat. We watched awestruck as they played, and dove together, roaring out their vocalizing, blowing and waving their tails. The whales were white under the water most of the time, and most of the time we watched their flukes wave as they dove back under the surface. We decided we weren’t whale watching at all, but fluking.
I have really bad, useless photos trying to catch one sweep of the live-action. The lesson for me is that just be in that moment, and not try to capture something so primitive, sensitive, and wild with something as human as a camera.
But I chanted thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, for the magnificent gift.
Today is done, I am falling asleep, but I am still buzzy. I haven’t felt so much pure joy as I do when on the water like that, in a very long time. It was perfect. Of course, I would have liked to be in the water with them even more, but…
Thanks for letting me rattle on.