Hard to believe, but this is installment #19 from my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
Ooh, how the glaring glared when I started up the vacuum cleaner.
The ostentation was ostentatious for sure.
A sleuth sleuths slowly.
Touch an electric fry and you’ll fry.
The posse shot the posse and ate it.
The sedge hid in the sedges.
Answers:
Glaring member, Kanchanaburi, ThailandOstentation, Atherton Tablelands, Queensland, Australia
Admit it… you’re a little afraid to find out what this one is…
Here is installment #14 from my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
An aerie lives in an aerie.
I found the idea of eating a possi impossible.
The lap did laps.
The whisker’s whiskers quivered.
The wedge flew in a wedge.
Does a chine have chins?
Aerie member, protected islands off the coast by Esperance, Australia
This is installment #10 from my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
He parceled out food to the parcel.
The bob bobbed.
I added an herb bouquet to the cooking bouquet.
The pack thinks this part of Australia should be called the Outpack.
The pace set a slow pace.
How the charm charmed me!
Parcel, Chin village, MyanmarI’m a pack member, mate!
Answers:
Parcel of pigs
Bob of seals [1]
Bouquet of pheasant
Pack of dingos [2]
Pace of asses
Charm of hummingbirds [3]
Parcel partBob, protected sea life islands near Woody Island, Esperance, Australia
In The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough vividly depicts a turn of the century sheep ranch in the Australian Outback. The hardships of working an unforgiving landscape, conditions that seem too extreme to be real, and the isolation are all accurately portrayed.
You’re already yawning, right?
All right then, how about this? In The Thorn Birds, young heroine Meggie and the priest Father Ralph de Bricassart, many years her senior, fall in love. Their life long passion is both forefront and backdrop to the fates of a family in the Outback.
That caught your attention!
I’m not usually one for the guilty pleasure of romance novels, but this one works on so many levels that it’s irresistible. Whether as romance, family saga, or historical portrayal, The Thorn Birds is a great read. It’s also accurate to a fault. As you read this book, you experience Australia’s hard climate along with McCullough’s characters.
Uwe and I drove through a small portion of the Western Australia Outback. Our goal was the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie-Boulder and we had a long, stop-every-3-hours to stretch our legs drive to do. The Coolgardie-Esperance Highway goes on with no bends or turns (and very few trees).
We halted briefly in Norseman
Norseman, Western Australia
and purchased sandwiches and drinks for a planned picnic stop. But there was a problem: no picnic tables anywhere. We drove and drove. Why, on such an endless highway, were there were no facilities?
We finally gave up and pulled over to the side of the road.
At least there was a tree and some shadeNote the deep red soil
I got out of the car and spread lunch on the hood. I was too hungry to wait for Uwe, so I unwrapped my sandwich and yummy cake, and gazed out into the endless empty brush.
The Indian Ocean is somewhere on the other side of those mountains
Every fly in the endless empty brush left wherever they’d been snoozing. Within seconds my eyes and mouth, my hands and arms, and my lunch were engulfed with fat hungry insects. My sandwich was rendered way beyond salvaging; it had vanished under layers of crawling flies. I wrapped everything back into a bag to throw away later and contented myself with a piece of fruit (eaten in the car, with the windows all closed).
In case you’re eating your own lunch as you read this I won’t tell you what it is in The Thorn Birds that’s covered in flies. But man, that McCullough sure can write!
(All photogaphs can be enlarged by simply clicking on the image.)