I found the Bat Cave!…sort of!

We've had a fairly warm winter here for the most part, with high temperatures even reaching up into the 70's! But the end of winter has been pretty rough. This morning I awoke to 40 degrees! That may not sound cold (it doesn't to me after Milwaukee) except that the friary here isn't well insulated. With nothing but bricks and cinder blocks, the cold seeps in and stays! Few of the doors have that strip along the bottom that seals the inside in and the outside out. Cold air just pours into the friary!

Further, August is generally considered the windiest month around here. The August winds have been gusty, I would guess to around 20-30 mph! Here is a shot of a large gum tree (eucalyptus tree) that lost half of itself this past week with the gusts (1). It's a huge tree. I hope it can survive the loss! It makes it hard to get out and do anything when the weather is so blustery. You know what they say about August: "in like a lion…" (Naw. I just made that up about Aussies saying that!)

We had a lovely sunset on Thursday. Here are some shots (2-5) as the sun dipped behind the Blue Mountains in the distance. I love the way the light changes everything. Once the sun set, the clouds turned a blue grey and pink (4-5).

My favorite find this week is where the bats hang out: Parramatta Park. I helped with Masses in this place about 20 minutes away. On the way back, I decided to go for a run in Parramatta Park the last time I had been to this park, I could only see a bit of it as I was with my friends and it is pretty big. Anyway, I ran around nearly the whole park when I came across a strange sound that reminded me of parrots, but not quite. It was a large bit of chattering. I also noticed some large flapping, like a big bird taking flight. But then on closer inspection, I saw they were bats! Just look at this shot of a few trees (6). See those things that look like fruit…they're fruit bats! And they weren't just in one tree, but a whole grove. Probably as many as a thousand, just curled up there resting for the "night" which is our day.

They are sooooo cool and sooooo creepy all at once! This fellow is stretching a wing (7). This one is impersonating Count Dracula (8). Here I was able to catch one landing on a branch (9). This guy is scratching an itch (10). And this guy is either sleeping with his eyes open or just upset that I would take a picture of him without permission (11). Either way it was seriously disturbing. You can see why they became the stuff of our nightmares. Still, they were very neat to watch. So very many and so unbothered by the people in the park.

These last shots are of "corellas," a mostly white parrot with blue around the eyes and some pink near the beak and under the chin (12-17). A huge flock of them had also settled on the park grounds! They each seemed to have their own personality!