Bats

Hi! I have just seen a lot of bats flying through the city tonight. They look very cool and they move in large groups. Below you see them hanging in the tree in the Royal Botanical Garden. They sleep and hang during the day and go look for food at night. When they fly they have a cool batman silhouette against the night sky. Luckily they only eat fruit. I think. A cool site on bats is sydneybats.org.au, read their article by clicking here.

To get you started, here are some quotes from sydneybats.org.au:

"Flying-foxes groom their fur frequently with their claws and lick their wings. They urinate on themselves to wash and in the summer they urinate on themselves, then fan their wings to cool down."

"Do flying-foxes drink? Yes. They swoop down to belly-dip in rivers and dams. They then land on trees and lick the water from their belly fur."

"Can I have one as a pet? No."

A house in Sydney...

Aloha! Here some more on how I am doing in Australia. First of all, I just found a room, which is nice. I will be moving out of my hostel and into my room on Monday. The room in located in Leichhard, an Italian neighbourhood about 10 minutes from the city centre and university by bus. For 150 dollars a week I will have a small room in a student housing facility. It comes with a bed, a desk, a closet, internet and breakfast: just about everything you need. It was formerly run by the academy of music, but now by the church next door. Because of the fact that it is ran by the church you are not allowed to drink alcohol on the premises, but I can live with that as it is clean, quiet and relatively cheap.

Besides looking for a room I visited the NSW gallery, the botanical gardens and the Opera House. The gallery was good: located in the park and with no entry fee it is definitely worth a visit. They show a collection of modern art from the European renaissance up to contemporary Australian. While the European renaissance collection was not as nice as you can find in Europe, the contemporary Australian collection had a few surprisingly good artists.


The Royal Botanical Gardens were very cool. The gardens are large, with great greens, very cool Australian plants, great views of the city skyline and harbour There were also some cool birds flying around and big bats hanging in the trees. The Opera House is located at the end of the botanical gardens. It was nice to see, but I found that it looks better from afar than up close.


More pictures will follow on my Flickr account, listed and linked below, in a while. Cheers!