Signs and wonders around town

I’ve seen a few marvels around Newcastle lately.

My first pod of dolphins. Ace surfs with them almost weekly–it happens so often during his pre-work surf that he doesn’t usually bother mentioning it any more, but I never get to the beach at sunrise when the local pod comes past. Until last Saturday afternoon. They were tiny and far away, but beautiful nonetheless, arcing through the water, briefly rising for air on their long swim down the coast.

Not to discount my gratification at finally seeing dolphins, but the most intriguing sight at the beach was probably this guy:

Luring worms out of the sand with a bunch of rotting stingrays tethered to a skewer. The man would wipe a chunk of rotting fish over the sand, then grab the mouth end of whatever worms came to feast. With a little gentle persistence up to a meter of worm would appear doing the universal flippy worm dance, then be dropped into his milk jug belt. “They make the best fishing bait.”

Grevillea in bloom. One of my native favourites.

Look again. I did. The wet floor signs here are monolingual.

At long last, the first image for my unsightly Australia collection. Burned out van at the park! Adjacent to a really lovely bike path, where we felt perfectly safe biking with small children.