AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD

I thought I'd do a few articles on Australia because so many of my visitors are from countries in the northern hemisphere.  Many of you will already know a lot about Australia, but there may be some who don't.

Here it is, right at the bottom of the world

It looks like a fairly big continent, and it is, but with much of it desert, the vast majority of the 23 million inhabitants live in the cities marked on the map below.  Going clockwise - Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth.

I live in this quiet corner of Canberra, which is the national capital. We don't have the brightest Federal Government at the moment, but we do have a lot of lakes!

With only 360,000 pop., it's quite a different scene from Sydney, seen here below, where the main character in my Fitzjohn mystery series, Detective Chief Inspector Fitzjohn, lives.  Sydney is a busy metropolis of 4.6 million. I took this photograph, last week from one of the pylons on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Did I mention I don't like heights?

Here it is from ground level

But, before we travel on to the other cities, let's talk about our wildlife, a few of which HOP -

kangaroos, wallabies
koalas
black swans
emus - large flightless birds

and the ten most dangerousbox jelly fish
taipan snake
salt water crocodile
brown snake
stone fish
blue ring octopus
red back spider
tiger snake
great white shark
funnel web spider
So, quite a few creepy crawlies to avoid when gardening, sharks to avoid when swimming in the ocean as well as box jelly fish and that octopus.  In rivers or on their banks, you might meet a crocodile, and watch out where you tread when taking your morning walk.  You don't want to step on a snake!

Sounds dreadful but it isn't.  I've only ever come across the brown snake and the red back spider, and the following friendly wildlife while on my morning walks.

Captivating isn't he??

Emu - flightless bird

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