On our first morning in Australia, I woke up to the most interesting sounds. I have never been a bird person, but I am completely fascinated by the birds here. The back of our yard is lined with wetlands that are full of trees so we have no shortages of birds and they make the most interesting sounds! We kept hearing something that sounded like monkeys and couldn’t figure out what it was. Turns out, it was all the kookaburras in our trees. People here talk about the sound as laughing, but we both still think they sound like monkeys. They are beautiful birds and I’ve now learned that they kill and eat snakes, which makes me like them even more! Another new sound for us was the Curlers, a bird we think sounds like dying cats, even though Australians describe them as sounding like crying babies. Joining the Kookaburras and Curlers, are the crows. The crows here are massive and they’re the birds that we would describe as making a laughing sound. We also have rainbow lorikeets – they’re gorgeous! But my goodness, are they noisy! So far, I’m still loving the noise of all these different birds. It’s actually peaceful to just relax on the patio and watch and listen to them all in the trees around us. They’re difficult to photograph but I did manage one picture of a kookaburra:
We spent our first few days here trying to organise appliances and amenities for our house. Who knew buying a fridge would be so stressful?! The one and only fridge we’d ever bought was a cheap scratch and dent that we figured would help us get buy when we first bought a home together. We kept that fridge for 17 years! I was initially excited to buy a new fridge, but I was quickly overwhelmed by all the different choices. That poor sales guy must have thought we were the most indecisive people he’d ever met! But we redeemed ourselves when it came to picking out a washer and dryer.
We are slowly getting used to the emptiness of our house. It is feeling a little less huge and I’m no longer getting lost but we are both looking forward to finally getting our things so we can fill up some of the empty spaces and walls. We’re also adjusting to some of the other smaller things, like remembering to turn the plugs on when you want to use them, seeing kids in the shops with no shoes on (though I’m not sure that will ever feel normal!), and all the new slang and vocabulary.