Gulls of Rage Island

Argh. I'm so annoyed.

All the video I took of the Thai boxers making Manwich out of each others' abdomens is gone. I don't know what happened to it. It may have been a memory card failure or maybe I accidentally erased it.

Either way the data appears unrecoverable and therefore unpostable. I suppose you'll have to go to Thailand for yourself to see what all the excitement is about.

Ever since the Bangkok trip finished Amy and I have been looking forward to going home. I suppose it's because we've done a lot of what there is to do around here, and are a little secluded from all the major cities on the east coast. There's one more trip to Melbourne coming up in June, but beyond that it's going to be a long session of Perth winter (rain while the sun shines) before our triumphant cross country expedition to the Great Barrier Reef, Sydney and New Zealand. We miss our friends and families, and how we can understand people when we talk to them. Weirdly enough I miss the cold weather. It's not really cold here at all, only getting down to 10 degrees at its nadir so far. Without it, the delight of a hot bowl of soup noodles isn't really the same. It is pretty funny to see all the locals here go on about "the cold". It's 15 degrees out and I saw someone wearing earmuffs. EARMUFFS.

I miss a proper transit system that runs more than once an hour, with passengers who ignore you instead of trying to convert/squirt sunscreen upon/shoot spitballs at you (all this has happened in the 4 months we've been here). I miss the food being the right price. I miss being able to file taxes, eat out after 5 on a Sunday and care about local news. And what is with these ringtones? Why does everyone feel the need to set their phones on a volume setting somewhere between "max" and "ear hemorrhage"

On the other hand, I know as soon as I get back to Canada I'm going to start pining for the things I had here. Being able to ride transit to work is nice in that I get to read my ebooks on the way.  Everybody at krav maga is smaller than me and I'm the best at everything, including full on ferocity. The Australians take a relaxed approach to their defense which is a stark contrast to what I learned in Toronto, which is he who aggressives hardest aggressives best. What? Don't like spittle and screaming in your face? S'krav maga, bitches.

Also, movies open here first instead of North America. I know, I was surprised to. For this, we have no one to blame but good old North American movie piracy. Well pirated, good sirs. Well. Pirated.

We saw Star Trek before anybody else did and it was great. Assigned seats, and nobody cared that I ate like two boxes of contraband triscuits, an experience entirely unlike the one I had in an Ontario theater. (Jim at the Waterloo Cineplex. If you're reading this... you suck. Also, if you morons sold bananas in your theater I wouldn't feel the need to bring my own. Think on that.)

And although it's been no trivial task to get familiarized with how Australian doctors make money, the clinic here is by far nicer than any Canadian clinic I've been in. Sure, I pay steep overhead but in the end, I think it's worth it to pay someone to do childhood immunizations than to have me do it. Kids can be fun but when they're terrified of you or screaming in your ear, you wish they would just age twenty years already.

In the meantime, we've been trying to make do with whatever local attractions have come by to pass the time. There's a ferris wheel we've seen the first day we arrived which we haven't been on yet, and also Penguin Island, which is a nature sanctuary of sorts.

Starting out with a trip to the Ferris wheel and a day on the boardwalk...

It's safe as long as an adult is watching. Surely a disinterested parental gaze is adequate insurance against any child cervical spine injury resulting from this twenty foot pending lawsuit. And bonus for the wood chips. Heaven forbid a playground structure be DANGEROUS.

An amusement wheel of the Ferris variety

A replica pirate ship where they loot your wallet to go on deck.

Find the hidden fish

Fish tank in the fish and chips shop. The potato tank is a lot lamer.

Fishing vessels in the harbor.

Fish tank in full view of the menu and grill. It's like Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

Tunnel under the roundhouee

Another frigid Fremantle winter oh the humanity the humanity

Bather's Beach at sunset

These huge cranes are being shipped in one piece to China. Watching them being transported by boat reminds me of when you'd build a massive Lego fort in the middle of the room and then your mom needs to vacuum you'd have to move it somewhere else and it took you and all your siblings to move it except someone tripped and it smashed all over the linoleum floor and then a Lego gets vacuumed up and destroys the vacuum so the moral of the story is don't vacuum ever.

Cat on a hot tin roof

Get your bust carved here and he'll add a free mustache.

A solar plexus sized watermelon in my mouth. It was the most expensive watermelon I ever had but it was pretty good.

Fremantle/birthplace of evil at dusk

Next we embarked on a trip to Penguin Island, where they have a colony of fairy/blue/little penguins and a whole lotta seagulls. Also, a Game Of Thrones lookalike.

Birdwrench on the way to Penguin Island

On the ferry to see penguins, a metric ton of seagulls and several metric tons of seagull poops.

My first attempt at taking a picture of the Joffrey Baratheon lookalike on the ferry.

It's hard getting a good shot of someone surreptitiously.

But we got it eventually. Just seeing his face makes me want to slap him angry dwarf style.

The island is called Penguin Island, although it seems all the penguins turned white and started flying.

Hard to make out but there's a massive colony of gulls on the rocks in the distance.

Must have been nesting season because these birds were FEARLESS. They would lay their eggs right next to the boardwalk and not even budge when you came up to them unless you were a threat. Then they go bonkers.

Like this guy. He saw this other gull and just lost his birdy little mind.

Eventually he chased away his competition.

And took notice of us.

He's so pissed right now.

This wing display is the seagull equivalent of throwing a drink in your face.

Look at that killer instinct. If I were a discarded frankfurter I'd be shaking in my casing right now.

CAW 

CAW

CAW

That's your answer to everything. CAW CAW CAW.

Seagull chick. Very well camouflaged.

I forget what these plastic bins were for. The only context I know them from is when we used to use them to hold compost and in the sushi shop when we got our pickled ginger in bulk containers shaped like these. I don't think these birds make sushi or compost. At least not intentionally, anyway.

  

Penguin Island coast

Angry birds indeed.

This bold little fellow dive bombed us a couple times before telling us off. You'd never see such rude behavior from a Toronto seagull.

Blue penguins in blue penguin rehab.

(it's not really rehab more like an old folks home but don't tell them)

These penguins were all taken in when they were sick or injured or in a situation which was otherwise unsurvivable.

Some of them have been around a long time. The one in the water is at least 20 years old, which far outstrips their average wild life expectancy of 10 years.

That being said, the 20 year old penguin was pretty blind. The feeder kept pelting his head with fish to get him to eat but he didn't know they were there.

Chasing down a fishy lunch.

This chubby guy couldn't get enough camera.

Penguin videos to follow.