Didgeridoo, wow!

Today we went to the Market Hall, which was a wonderful experience again. Thanks to "Antti" taking me there. A looots of different kind of fruits, veggies, cheese, bread - the biggest water melons I have ever seen and custard apples and apple cucumbers. I have never seen those and did not know what they were. And all the veggies and fruits are fresh, juicy, quite cheap and from Australia.  (Not improted, which is a great thing.) I just enjoyed with my eyes, and sadly cannot bring any food with me from here. (Pasi, sorry, but you are not getting kangaroo metwurst, although I promised to bring, it is against the Finnish law.)

After that I went to Tandanyaka Aboriginal Art Gallery and saw very nice aboriginal art. (Aboriginals are those people who lived here before the Europeans came in the mid 1800.) There was a man who played didgeridoo and explained how it is made (a hollow tree, eaten by termites) and how to play it (with your cheeks, and sort of circular breething... the musicians might know how, I do not, I just enjoyed the magical sound.)

I also visited the Immigration Museum which told stories about immigrants. I spent there 3 hours, it was so interesting place. This country has a very colourful history, and I learnt so many new things about history. And so many Finnish people have also moved here after the WW2.

The statue in the front of Immigration Museum.
So many people have left and found a new life here.

Also few Finnish names were found in the names which were printed
in the revetment of the Immigration Museum.

A didgeridoo player on the street of city centre.

Aboriginal dot painting.

Aboriginal art.

Another piece of art.

And I nearly forgot, the was a tiny little gecko in the kitchen wall yesterday morning. I could not believe my eyes when I saw it there. It stayed there for a day and disappeared during the night. Hopefully the cats did not have it as a breakfast...

A gecko in the kitchen wall. small, just  3-4 cm. Scared, poor creature.

What a size!

The water melons were soooooo huge.

Another animal in the City Centre, so tick the box...

The autumn is starting to change the colours of the trees.

These kind of colourful birds you can see here nearly everywhere...

Just nother shopping archade in the city center.
Beautiful buildings they have got here.

School boys in their uniforms......so lovely hats.
I also bought that kind of Aussie hat and shall wear it back home (at least in the summer cottage...)

Tomorrow is my last evening here and I am not going to spend it in a computer. So this is my last writing from Australia. Hopefully you have enjoyed my photos and writings. I have had just so good holiday and there will be thousands of lovely memories in my mind for the rest of my life. And I hope, this was not the last time I visit Australia. This was just the beginning.

Special thanks to my lovely friends for this opportunity to spend time in your comfortable house with your lovely and lively kids and with yourselves in this Amazing Australia - KIITOS, Antti and Al! Waiting for you to visit Santa Claus' s home country one day...

Meeting with a kangaroo.

The Southern Ocean. Next stop Antarctica.

One day I want to come back to this beautiful country.

Thank you and bye bye!

Skippy is yammy in a grill...

Hmm.. now  I have tasted skippy ie roo ie kangaroo meat. Al did a bbq food yesterday and went to supermarket to get some roo meat. So I have eaten kangaroo.

And how was it: tasty, strong, not fat, like a wild animal meat. Very good. Thank you for a cook!

In the evening (after eating roos...) we had a nice 2-3 km evening walk out in the bush in the dust, and we saw many kangaroos in wild hopping and eating. I felt a bit odd when thinking of that I have a piece of kangroo in my stomach and now I am watching them hopping. But such is life: someone is someone's food as my sister's son wisely said one day when he was about 10 years old.

On our bush walk we also saw (again) some fire burnt black trees. Bushfires are so common here in this very dry country. There are everywhere signs warning people not to make fires in the bush. But it is not only people, also lightings may start a fire. And they may be destructive.

But the Australian plants also survive quite well after small fires and recover and start to grow again. Amazing thing for me to see because not just a thing ahppens in Finland, or only very small fires sometimes.

(Poor) roo, this is how it looked like the grill...

And in the wild park. You are not allowed to shoot a roo without a permit.



They let us come very close before hopping away.

A bush fire burnt gum trees recovering.

There is also crocodile meat for sale..
I did not buy, I just discussed with the butcher about it.



Winetasting in the Barrossa valley

Greengs from the Paradise of Eden! We had a wonderful weekend just three adults (the grand parents came and looked after the kids! Thank you very much for them) We travelled to the South Australians famous wine paradise: The Barrossa Valley. What a beautiful and sunny place!

There were thousands and thousands of wine trees growing everywhere and  so many vineyards. We just stopped in some of them and had wine tastings (me, for the first time of my live, now I know how to roll the glass and put your nose into the wine glass to have a good smell...). These wines are famous everywhere around the world and surely some of them are also imported to Finland, like Jacob's Creek. I'll check it after coming back. We also visited well-known famous cook Maggie Beer pheasnat farm and a shop. Lovely tastings of all kind of small food and sauces  and jams - yammy yammy!

And went to Farmers market to buy bits and pieces and all kind of juicy and cheap fruits for example five kilos apples was 5-6 dollars (4 euroa!) And how juicy all the fruits are. You should see the supermarkets and their juicies: orange juices,pure, are sold in 3 liter bottles and they are so good.


So here we are just heading to autumn, yes autumn,  and yesterday we moved our clocks backwards to the winter time. (Not forwards as you did a week ago.) Autumn here is just like the best summer days in Finland. Today was just sun shine for the whole day and +28. So, hopefully these weathers are arriving to Finland soon to get rid of the snow and too long winter...

Charles Menson wineyard

Yammy...

Just a small view of some wineyard

A picknick out, a platter of german sausages, cheese, some bisquites and almonds.
Under a plam tree in a sun shine... this is life : )



Famous cooks Maggie Beer' s pond where we saw some tortoises swimming.

Do you know what is the difference between turtle and tortoise? I know, now, thanks Alan.



A evening party in the wineyard, a band playing and people just enjoying the warm evening in the park.

Pumpkins for sale in the Farmers Market

.. and german sausages. The first wine palnts were originally brought
from Germany in 200 years ago. So there are German names in some streets and towns.

Juicy and cheap.

The Quilt Gallery, amazing fine works of art.

An Aussie X-mas quilt

An Austrlian wildlife quilt, wonderful work.

A great day as a zoo keeper!

I had agreat and remarkable day as zoo keeper in the Adelaide zoo today. I spent 7 and 1/2 hours working there as a keeper. WOW!
And what did we do:

• cleaned the hippo's cages (dirty and huge poos!)
• cleaned the giraffes cages (small poos but hundreds of them everywhere)
• gave showers to hippos and fed them with carrots and "washed" their teeth with a water (no toothpaste used)
• fed giraffes with leaves and carrots (they have blue and loooong tongues)
• fed simpanses with sultanas (lovely animals)
• fed lemurs who came to sit on our lap (so close, so long white-black tailes, wonderful)
• fed lions and African painted dogs with a horse meat (poor horse), the lions were roaring, I was a bit scared...
• scratced a tiger (so wonderful fur she has)
• fed the small monkeys (the one that Pippi Longstocking has) with living worms (the monkeys just sat on my shoulder and munched the worms just in the side of my ear...), I was not scared but I felt that some of the worms crawel under my t-shirt...

What A WONDERFUL gift this day was. I am so grateful, Thank You, my dear friends!

Carrots, and some more carrots and MORE CARROTS...

These nice little fellows were so cute and well-behaving friends:
they are lemurs from Madagaskar

500 kg is being set on this one foot...

These were greedy to have their lunch

Even some animals The Finns might have seen in Finland:
the otters, the right one is blind fellow but can live a good life in a zoo.

This used to be a horse...

The zoo vet was doing some surgery for a emu-look-like-bird called bustard.

Sultanas given to a close relative of humans...

This little fellow was one of my favourites.

Stop using palm oil, otherwise we'll lose these wise, rare creatures! Read more (in Finnish)

Kangaroo Island - a gorgeus Easter holiday

Happy Easter to everyone!
We had 5 marvellous days in the Kangaroo Island, which is an island in South Australia.

We went:
- to the beautiful beaches where there was jsut white sand and blue-green sea and waves, I and kids went to swim, although the Australians seem to thinks it was a bit too cold, only +20 degrees, but had a great time int the waves
- we saw maybe 150 seals wild in the nature, playing in the sea and even the baby seals, so great thing to see them in their natural surroundings
- also saw maybe 30 seal lions in the beach, huge and lazy sleepers, and the babies were having fun when playing in the sea
- saw koalas (17) up int the trees in their natural surroundings, and they were quite hard to find, they climb up to 10 meters high gum tree and just stay there for hours
- saw an echidna (=nokkasiili) just so close when he or she was just on his way and stopped to dig with his nose, a funny animal, and not often seen so close in wild
- did NOT see the Easter Bunny, but he visited the garden and brought nearly 20 easter eggs to us and we went to look for in the Easter Sunday morning
- I went horse riding to the forest with a huge Clydesdale horse, called Mathilda, what a marvellous 2 hours riding tour we had there walking int the gum tree forest and in the fields

So we have had so many nice days during the Easter holiday and there are still many days to come. These are so lovely and generous people, my friends, I am so happy to be here as their guest. Hopefully I can offer to them one day as great experiences in Finland, as they have offered to me here. THANK YOU!

Just now I am "baby sitting" these kids while their parents went to have a dinner out on their anniversary day. We have had a good time watching movei together. If I were younger and had not my family, I really would like to work for awhile as an au pair in their house. I just love these kids and I learn so many new things when I am with them. : ) But, dear family and friedns there in Finland (and friends here in Aussie): do not worry, I' ll travel back home in 2 weeks.

Tomorrow I will cook the dinner, I thought of making something finnish, so it will be smashed potatoes and meat balls. Hopefully I ' ll find all the ingredients needed and the family enjoys the dinner.

I have not spoken a word of Finnish in 8 days and have learnt a lot of new words and funny rhymes the kids are teaching to me. So having a good time here. (Thank you for my Finnish family for the nice Skype phone call we had today. It was lovely to hear your voices and have an hour chat with you.  I miss you...)

A meeting with a wallaby, on of the kangaroo type, there are
lots of different types of kangaroos. Many of them I sadly hit by a car
and you can see dead kangaroos on the highways, they are called road pizzas...

The Southern Ocean, next stop Antarctica. One more ocean where  have
been swimming (but not on this rocky place)

A seal mum and a baby, breast-feeding the baby. They were so cute.

The Ramarkabale Rocks, huge rocks by the sea, beautiful placein KI.

The KI ie. Kangaroo Island -  a lovely place

A koala in a tree, not asleep,
they were hard to find in the beginning cos they climb very high.

They have soooooo many lovely beaches here.
I wish I could pack one of them in my suitcase and to bring with me.

Holding a koala, or actually a flat koala...
hopefully not a road pizza koala...

Me and Mathilda, what a lovely horse

Horse riding in a gum tree forest - one of my dreams came through.

A Little Sahara and people sandboarding, funny thing to do

The sand was a bit too wet, not slippery enough.

Sigh, what a view!

A man feeding pelicans.

A letter box and a tube for the paper.. so funny!