What might an honest in-flight announcement sound like?

Here's a hilarious article from The Economist making fun of these announcements.

I list some excerpts here, you can read the full article here:

"At Veritas Airways, your safety is our first priority. Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing. "

"Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero."

"Please consume alcohol in moderate quantities so that you become mildly sedated but not rowdy. That said, we can always turn the cabin air-quality down a notch or two to help ensure that you are sufficiently drowsy. "

Read the whole thing if you have the chance, it's really funny ;)

Insects of Australia

 

Birds of Australia

Here are some striking pictures from our travels - I'm especially proud of the first one - it's a kestrell flying next to our minivan as we were driving through the Atherton tablelands.

 

The rainforest plants

 

Wild camels

Australia is now the only country in the world that still has a population of wild camels.

They are not native australian animals, but descendants of the Afghan camels that helped the early colonists cross the barren, hot interior desert.

Once the big railways that cross the continent were in place the camels were set free and they now roam the desert.

Altough, to hear the australians they're not doing good things since they crowd out the local animals in the fight for scarce resources and sometimes even attack humans in their quest for food - see article here.

Still, we've heard only good things about the camel meat, apparently the filet mignon is exquisite. I'm still trying to find some camel meat down here in Melbourne and I'll let you know. But if you go in Alice Springs, by all means don't repeat our mistake and go and eat camel in the many restaurants there that offer it :)

 

Pythons

Another regular inhabitant of the rainforests is the python.

What you see here is an amethyst python in doing his siesta on the banks of a lake (incidentally it's the same one where the turtles were swimming ;) ).

The second picture is a zoom on it, you can see the head of the snake if your eyes are good enought ;) it's right in the middle of the picture, under the yellow leaf that is pointing to the ground.

The third picture shows another amethyst python, this time sleeping in a tree overlooking the Daintree river, yep, the one with the crocodiles ... what a nice place to be, hein??

And the last one, i'm sad to say, it's not one of my pictures but one that i took from this ABC TV site. It shows how strong these snakes can get - this olive python saw a dead kangaroo in the water and tried to pick it up. The picture was taken in the Kimberly national park in Western Australia.

Just impressive!!!
 

Turtles in the rainforest

These nice looking turtles that you see here lazying around in a cozy little lake in the Atherton tablelands have one amazing super power ...

Non, they don't know ninjutsu and they don't eat pizza - they have something better: they can breathe through their ass !!!

Yep, they manage to extract oxygen from the water that passes through their cloaca and this allows them to stay under water longer ...

Luckily they still have to come out and breathe 'real' air from time to time so we could catch these pictures.

Crazy, eh ?!?

Spiders spiders everywhere

How could you imagine a tropical rainforest without some nice big spiders ??

Here are two of them that we found on the Atherton Tabletop plains. The second one was at the entry of the girls toilet ...
 

4WD Country

Now this wouldn't be Australia if there weren't some big, serious cars out there :)

Just look at the first picture to see how small Eva is compared with that car.

As for the 2nd car, you can see the snorkel that allows it to go into rivers, a bit like a submarine ;)

 

Dolphins - Up, Close & Personal

Some of you may remember that we spent a few days in Monkey Mia, a magical place on Australia's west coast where dolphins like to come & play with the tourists.

Here are some really close-up pictures.

Now the dolphins come so close to the shore in the mornings foraging for food. You can see in the 2nd picture the one happy dolphin with a fish in her mouth.

Yes, her mouth. Apparently the fact that humans give fish in the mornings is a well kept secret in the dolphin community. Only female dolphins come here. And when they have calfs, the'd only bring here the young 'girls', never the 'boys'.

Now this is really unfair ;)
 

Driving @ night

Driving at night in Australia, especially in the west, it's normally a lonely time.

But that doesn't mean at all that one can just happily speed on his way home.

As soon as the sun sets, all the animals come out to 'play', like this kangaroo here that was lucky enough to pass the road before us without harm.

We've been told that a kangaroo or even an emu is enough to damage your car to the point of leaving you stranded in the middle of nowhere.

But we've seen better: imagine cows standing on the road, sleeping. Apparently they like the warmth radiating from the asphalt.

But the animals are not the only danger - the road trains continue on their long voyages across Australia at night.
 

Road Trains

Whenever you'll be driving down under, especially in Western Australia you'll hear warnings about the road trains.

These behemoths can be up to 53 metres long, they go @ 120 km/h and stop for no one. They are one of the main reasons why there are so many kangaroos laying by the side of the road.

You can't imagine how it feels to have these guys thundering by you.