Trees, and bushes, and high grass...

...And go wacking away in the sand with a tire iron. Oh, yeah! Great fun!

If you don't know where that's from, go check out Robin Williams' skit on Golf. Best skit ever!

Speaking of trees and bushes and high grass though, since my camera card seems to not be woking as such, and some of my pictures and videos of the botanical gardens are now missing in action until I can get another opinion from some data recovery specialists, I will have to attempt to describe what it is I saw through my meander into the jungle in the middle of suburbia, or urbia, as it was downtown.

Ahem!

Well, to start off I guess would be the general overlay. These are the Royal Botanical Gardens, if I'm not completely mistaken with the name. They're actually right next to the opera house. Well, that would actually be lying, somewhat. The gardens actually run a really long distance, but one of the main entrances to the gardens is down by the far side of the opera house, coming from the city. The gardens are really quite a bit bigger than I originally had thought. When we refer to botanical gardens in Canada, the biggest I've seen might be an acre or two, maybe three if you're lucky. But this place, well, I bet you could fit a minimum of 10 football fields in there. It's really more like a national park, including special greenhouse areas, outdoor jungles, copious amounts of wildlife, and open areas more like parks.

In the very center, or what I percieved to be the center, there were three buildings each shaped slightly different and made almost entirely of glass. Greenhouses, to be precise, parts of which were underground and parts above ground. Even just walking around outside was quite the experience, looking in on all the varieties of plants. The architecture alone fascinated me, as one of the greenhouses was shaped like a great pyramid of Egypt. Quite astonishing, really, and even more so from the inside. If you get the chance while you're down here, definitely go to the botanical gardens greenhouses in Sydney. They only cost $5 to get in, but the experience is definitely worth it. Once you're inside the greenhouses, they have each building turned into a specialized climate; one for high altitude, one for tropical, and one for native Australian. Alright, so I'm not that sure about the last one, since my pictures and documentation are currently in a state of limbo, but I know the first two are right.

And of course, this foliage is from all over the world. There's giant picture (pitcher?) plants like the ones back home, except these hang from vines and are at least twice the size. Then there are Venus fly traps, creeping vines, high-altitude moss (whoopie), and even tropical plants with broad leaves the length of my arm or even longer, and wider than my body. I think some of the plants might have been poisonous, I don't know, but at least I didn't try and find out. But each area was climate controlled, irrigated, and designed with regards to the specific climate. The high-altitude one was smaller, but steeply terraced, which the tropical one was mainly flat, lots of water, and plenty of tall leafy trees. Quite the spot to play hide and seek in, if it weren't for the damn spiders and all that. I swear, if it weren't for the fact that almost anything around here can kill you, Australia would be paradise on earth.

Oh, then there were the bats. If I ever get my data back from the SD card, we'll be all set because I even took videos to show you where I was walking and all that. But for now, we'll deal with the Flying Foxes through prose and literary means. I'm pretty sure I just made a big boo boo there in terms of grammatical structure and context, but frankly, I don't care at the moment. Take our local bats, then put them on steroids, and picture something out of an Indiana Jones or a vampire movie, and yeah, you're got the size of these things. And they were everywhere! One of the attendants of the park said there were about 20,000 of them. Unfortunately, as much as it's rather cool to look at them, they are causing a lot of damage to the trees and surrounding area, so now they're trying to get rid of them. Apparently, they even put sprinklers in the trees. Unfortunately, that didn't work. Resilient little buggers, aren't they? Still, quite cool looking, all red and fuzzy. Definitely cooler than our local bats which just look too small to be of any real interest.

And of course, there's the birds of the area. Cockatoos, and, well, a huge amount of other local birds I don't know the name of. They're everywhere! But, the real stars of the bird kingdom in that area have to be the Cockatoos. On top of being very tame, well, tame enough to be fed, they would even sit on people's arms and allow people to pick them up for a time. Some of the other birds would do this too, but not with as much frequency. They're really like giant, colorful Grey jays back home. Very intelligent, but very calm as well.

Oh, as I side note before I clue up, I went to see the Book of Eli last night...but I changed my mind and went to see date night instead. To be honest, it was kinda contrived, and definitely only a one-time viewing. It's not something to own, that's for sure.

Right then, I'm off to plan my day for tomorrow. Working, following up on leads, all that jazz.

Later days,

Neal

P.S. If you have an interesting topic you want written on, just let me know, and I'll see what I can do. Always looking to flex my linguistic muscles, that's for sure. This piece was rushed, definitely. No flow. Blah!