Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Animals, Conversations and Sunshine



Echidna on the beach!!
Originally uploaded by Choconancy1.
I had this crazy idea that I'd be able to blog every day on this trip. Typically optimistic of me. NOT! I woke up at 5:30 am to blog, and got drawn into three skype conversations. So here I go for a very quick post, a sort of placeholder for stories and memories, of the last few days. Plus there will be two more, one for each of yesterday's gatherings/presentations.

First, the tourist stuff. On Monday Brad and Bronwyn Beach of Kuramburra (did I spell that right?) hosted us out in South Gippsland. We went to Inverloch to the beach and saw this lovely critter, an Echidna. Echidnas are one of two monotremes, egg laying mammals. (The other is the platypus.) Larry had walked on ahead of us down to the beach, and at first thought some giant fuzzy sea urchin had washed on to the beach. What was this little ant eater doing on the beach?

We walked amongst the tidepools (lots of pictures on flickr) and heard stories of the poisonous blue ringed octopus but didn't see one. Then we drove into Kuramburra to Brad and Bron's lovely new home and were treated to a great dinner and stories of Brad's community theater antics. In the morning, we went to a wildlife refuge and I saw KANGAROOS! (plus a bunch of other lovely critters.)

Then we came back into Melbourne to the Shawn and Sheena Callahan's home where it was time to do my "homework" of preparing for the upcoming presentations. The work was blissfully interrupted by yummy dinner with the Callahan family. That is much more fun than a hotel evening!

So that's the short, sweet tourist side of things. Next, presentation updates!

4 comments:

Vivian Evans said...

Hi Nancy,

Great to hear you are getting to engage in home living and country life in Australia :-)
I am looking forward to seeing you next week in Sydney Elearning 06 and engaging in the 'new to you and me' mobile connections beforehand... I myself live on a bush block in a solar powered log cabin and Australian wildlife is forever intriguing me. Last week I encountered a koala in our bush... see my digital story http://vivevans.wikispaces.com/Publishing+digital+stories and yesterday I took my parents and children to a wildlife park in Gunnedah, NSW and saw a koala drinking out of a bowl of water!! I thought they survived off gum leaves for moisture.. I may need to put out water now that the drought is with us! Looking forward to meeting and hearing you speak :-)Cheers Vivian

Unknown said...

Hi Nancy. I attended your Wednesday VPSCIN presentation, up in the sky above Melbourne. I sent a a big email to your hotmail account as a result of what you sparked in me. Thanks. You have made a fan out of me! I appreciated the depth of knowledge you have about the social space. Also, I liked the way you could take complex concepts and explain them in a few words. API! Ha. You are a model presenter.

Warmly
Dennis

http://metanoia.blogspot.com said...

Hi Nancy, Great to hear you're here safely and are enjoying the gifts of linkages made years ago. We can't wait 'til you get to Launceston. :o)
See you soon
Jo

bradbeach said...

Hi Nancy

You nearly got Korumburra spelt correctly. :-)

I think you make a great effort with a very difficult name. :-)

Brad :-)