After having a great time at Rocky Horror Picture Show, a New Year's party, and seeing a local band, I headed off to woop-woop (Aussie slang for the middle of nowhere). I travelled 3.5 hours by bus to a small town called Yarram where I was picked up and travelled another hour to the house. The hosts I'm staying with are Leon and Cathy. Cathy is a fellow Midwesterner, hailing from Chicago, while Leon is an Aussie through and through. They live on about 85 acres of land, most of which they allow nature to take its course. They've got a fairly expansive garden, which is where I've been weeding and clearing away brush for the past couple days. Their house is pretty neat. It is off the grid, using hydro power for electricity and collecting rain water to use. Leon and Cathy are both very interesting people, I can learn a lot from them.
Their house sits in the hills of the Strzlecki (or something like that) Range. From atop the Range it is possible to see the Bass Strait, the body of water separating Australia from Tasmania. The wildlife is in abundance. There are countless birds around, and since Leon knows a bit about birds I quiz him everytime I see or hear one. Wallabies are a common sighting too. On a trip into town I saw an echidna, a fox, a yellow tailed cockatoo, several wallabies, and a koala sleeping in a nook of a tree. The koala was by far the highlight of the town trip.
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