Stories

Our English journalist friend, Tom, came and borrowed the kettle again this morning.

After making his very strong brew, he told us a few more stories (journalists have to be good at telling stories, I guess).  He and his girlfriend were coming to the end of their visas in Australia when he saw a job advertised for the Manjimup local paper, a small town in south west WA.  He applied and got the job and sponsorship for permanent residency.  Apparently it's a lovely area if very quiet, so he and his girlfriend keep themselves sane by getting out and travelling around every few weekends.

Big news in Manjimup is a cat stuck up a tree, which doesn't happen that often. Tom was sweating about what to put on the front page the other week, delaying the apologetic phone call to his boss in Bunbury, when a local lady walked through the door, announced she'd just been attacked by a kangaroo, and asked if he wanted the story.

"Yeah, absolutely" he replied, and she proceeded to show him the stitches around her ears and on her back and tell the story of her rescuing her dog from the clutches of a large kangaroo which had attacked while they were walking in local bushland.

I'm not sure if you noticed the story in the paper a few weeks ago.  I had because it just seemed a silly thing to do - wrestle a huge kangaroo to save your dog, but Tom wrote the story.  And as he says, "it went viral".  A larger WA paper picked it up, and foreign papers, WIN news interviewed the lady and various radio stations took up the story.  he said he even managed a follow up story in his paper about the media attention the lady had gotten.  Sounded like one of the highlights of his time in Manjimup!  Although, after speaking with Tom, I'm sure it won't be long before another adventure finds him.

While everyone was busy school working, blogging and oil changing, Cooper found some scissors and cut his hair.  A lot.  He looks like a little Friar Tuck.  I cut the rest of his hair to try and bring it all into line, but I didn't shave it all off.  A haircut completely changes the way people look!  Mrs Chris next door said that it's only a couple of days between a good and a bad haircut.  I said it would probably be a bit more than that!

Trying to fix up Cooper's hair

We headed off to the shop before lunch, basically because we had nothing left to eat.  Now that we know we'll be here a week we bought food for a while.

The Brumby's here doubles as a cafe, with milkshakes, sandwiches and hot chips for sale.  We've been buying the occasional bread rolls for lunch, which are nice, and today we treated ourselves with some hot chips.  A lot of the businesses seem to need to double up to survive.  The kitchen shop I looked through sold bathroom and baby things as well, and the Auto Pro shop Grant went to was also a mechanic and a front for car rental.  The hardware store sold goldfish and pet food.

Later this afternoon we went back down to Turquoise bay and Grant tried out Mr and Mrs Chris' waterproof bag for our phone.  He managed some successful video of snorkeling underwater, which was fun.  It was a bit murky today, though, and harder to see distance.  Hence I didn't last long when my turn came, and I watched a few fish that looked like a cross between a black catfish and an eel and then got out.

Another stop at the big sand dune on the way home, this time with Oskar's full support.  I walked up the beach watching all the turtles sitting in the shallows, while the others rolled and jumped down the sand dune, using up lots of energy.  There were a few unusual birds around today that I haven't seen before.  A weird tall bird with a black "do" on his head and long legs, and a nervous black and white bird with a bright red "needle" beak and red legs.  On my walk up the beach it kept watching me and changing direction every time it thought I was heading it's way.

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Vicki