I saw a lovely red fox with a white tipped tail today in a small park near the ATM I visited.
People were feeding the little fella McDonalds.

Also, trying to watch telly with three people shouting at someone in Utah on Skype: decided I'm really not a multi-tasker. Not even close!

Harry fecking Potter all over again.

Here I am back at home. It's the house with the misleading palm tree in the front. This palm tree has coped with serious frost for the last several years. It's not a normal palm tree. It does n't belong there!

This is the bedroom I spent 6 months in when US immigration decided that my visa "needed further processing".
My brother added a picture on the left to make it less like an apartment in East Berlin.
Tomorrow I get up  early to exercise with the other young pioneers. Death to fascism!

Packed and ready for Round II: The European leg including London, Italy, and Croatia. Flippers, and snorkel replaced with down-jacket and wooly hat. This should be fun:

Last one from Australia. This is a car license. Awwww.....

Last day in Australia. Just about to pack for the 16 hour flight. Here's a picture of breakfast. Had this most mornings in Australia. What a civilized bunch:

And here's a moon jelly in the harbour. There are thousands of them, but apparently they are too weak to sting a human:

Walked across the harbour birdge last night:

Tip: avoid the expense and ear injuries of the great barrier reef and take photos in an Aquarium. 

Here's a few from Sydney Aquarium:

Here's a lady duck-bill on the surface of the water. She was having a whale of a time spinning around and diving to the bottom.

Here's Queen Vic lording it over the ozzies outside the Hyde Park Barracks Museum:

This is the top floor of the museum. This used to be the asylum. Loads of people slept int his room in hammocks and were mental in the head. When it got crowded they put another level of hammocks above these ones. Hammocks might seem fun in the summer then this sort of thing happens:

I was n't the first Costello in trouble with the Antipodean  constabulary (my dad spells his surname costelloe: it's a long and boring story):

Could n't find a doctor at 9pm on a Friday night, so ended up at Saint Vincent's hospital. 

There was a drunk Irish lad who kept complaining to the nurse about the coffee machine and how it was n't working last year when he was there. He disappeared into the toilet for an hour and a half.

This is me after being given painkillers: you know, the ones that make you look cross and stare-y:

Road signs!

I remember them being like this in England. Come on, you can't just scale the whole thing down and expect to get a smaller child. Leave that to the 11th Century Greek Orthodox icon painters. And is she off to see the school nurse with that broken arm?

Again with the arm. Did the driver hit her while weaving all over the road in a drunken stupor?

And the car looks like a monkey tried to draw one of those 1970's citroens (it's actually more like a Peugeot. Still, nice try monkey)

Here's two pictures showing the blue thing I mentioned. I am in two of them. Can you tell which ones?

On the trail up from the falls we stumbled on this female bird:

It's the superb lyre bird of course. The male copies all the other birds, even making SLR shutter and motor noises as well as chainsaw noise. More from Sir David Attenborough:

Click fo Sir David Attenborough link

Unfortunately, the blokes only partake in all this malarky when they're after the ladies: she was already paired up with a lad nearby.

Went to the blue mountains yesterday. About an hour outside Sydney with speed limits on the motorway of 40, 60, 70, 110, 100, 110, 60 again, 70, oh make your bloody mind up.

It's called the blue mountains because the trees give off some sort of dust that makes the distance look very blue. At least that's what I read somewhere.

Here's a cave where aboriginals mixec up ochre and spat it hand covered walls:

Love their signs. Looks like he was hurt, but did n't go down. Good job fella!

One of about 30 stunning waterfalls:

The walk down. At the turn of the last century some man and a gang of Irish lads chiseled a staircase into the mountains just of the fun of it:

Another stunning waterfall:

Sulphur crested parrots. They flew around all squawky and parity. That seemed like a good use of their skill-set:

A skink. I kept calling him a skunk. He did n't like that:

And another:

The kangaroo in my ear started to kick a bit.
Painkillers and ear drops from the doctor.
Thanks Great Barrier Reef. Thanks!

Oh, and by the way, these are the last three tim tams in Australia. I ate the rest :(

Not a clear picture, but on the left a Royal Caribbean cruise ship and on the left, the Sydney Opera house. Those ships are bloody huge!

Went wandering around the botanical gardens after a trip to the opera house. The deformed ducks from yesterday are actually ibises. They are like big bloody bent billed pigeons. Leave anything unattended and edible on a table and there's a full scale riot while chips and burger buns are devoured:

Here's Sydney observatory. Captain Cook only came to Australia as he was already at Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus in 1789. The spire on the top is a time ball like the one at Greenwich in London. They drop it at 1pm every day and fire a canon (just like in Greenwich) 

Me and the telescope in Sydney:

Went for a run after we arrived. Around a little bit Sydney, a bit of the botanical gardens, and the harbour. Here's some stuff I don't usually see running. 

A deformed duck:

Jacaranda trees (I actually do, but these are the proper ones and very pretty):

A deformed seagull:

And me 3 miles into a run:

Left Cairns today at 11ish.

Arrived in Sydney at 4ish

Hired a car and drove to the hotel. After Cairns: traffic was a nightmare. Lots of one way systems. Parking was a bitch. Sydney is just like a proper city!

Here's the view from the hotel window. It's not Sydney harbor.  It's a small harbor to the left on the map (your left, not mine as I'm in the Southern hemisphere):

Hired a car yesterday and drove up the hill in the evening with all my telescope stuff to look at the stars. The German lad came up too. It was cloudy when we got there. Turned around and went home.
Bollocks!

I forgot to mention:

All the guides insisted on calling the clown fish "the Nemo".
Hollywood (or Emeryville), what have you done!

Here I am at Cape Tribulation. This is where Captain Cook crashed his boat and had to stay for 48 days. This is quite the historical place. 

I think this is where they explained to the aborigines that if you stick a flag in a country, it's yours:

 Swimming was not really an option. Still, vinegar  is a better option than piss:

Swimming in a water hole. No crocs we were told:

So there were more kangaroo events. Here's me feeding a small big-red. Apparently, he gets quite lonely, and sometimes grabs the tourists and tries to have sex with them. It's probably a prison thing:

Here's me giving them their orders regarding which tourists they should hump first:

They put crazy-glue on the food bucket. Very cruel to see the tourists just look on and take pictures:

One day off the boat and I still have "Mal de Debarquement Syndrome" or land sickness. Sitting still or standing in the shower,  I feel like I'm still on a boat: everything pitches. I looked it up on the internet:

"The most frequent sufferers are middle-aged women who have been on at least a seven-day cruise."

Today we went to Daintree rainforest. Here's the back of a saltwater crocodile. They eat people, dogs and cows. Pretty much anything that they can grab. A few days ago one of them grabbed a kid

On a boat again:

This is an Australian Frogmouth sitting on it's chick. Pretty well disguised:

This is a saltwater crocodile. It is not disguised because it does n't give a shit:

Here's a really happy dog just inches away from being a snack. The croc is on the sandbank behind the boat. Please don't jump in:

Went out last night for some beers with the boat people, none of whom were vietnamese.
The japanese lad had the biggest bbq-ed ribs I'd ever seen. Guess he got his land legs back

Here's what the top deck of the boat looked like:

Here's me jumping in the water with a tank of air. Everything is metric here so I have no idea how deep I dived or how close I was to running out of the stuff in the tank on my back:

Just before sinking to the bottom and looking at stuff:

Cuttlefish, Moray eels, reef and white tip sharks, rays, turtles and fishes

We did eleven dives over three days, and my right ear feels like someone shoved a tiny kangaroo into it.