A visit to Old Parliament House today, and a guided tour. Australian politics seems to have been a rumbustious high-risk affair, with some Prime Ministers remaining in power for no more than 5 minutes or so. Lunch with a friend of Tricia's, who passed on handy tips for our forthcoming trip on the Great Ocean Road, then, with the sky clouding over and a lively wind, on to the highly aromatic Botanic Gardens situated on Black Mountain. How many kinds of eucalyptus are there? Answers on a postcard please.* We had to watch out for the highly venomous Eastern Brown snake, but had to make do with brightly coloured parrots, much jollier, but not so exciting. Some unseen bird has a loud sheep-like cry: "Ma! MA!" but you could tell that Ma wasn't listening. My camera battery died; the charger is in my unreturned luggage. The luggage that I waved goodbye to on March 27th. The luggage that British Airways has kidnapped but can't be bothered to issue a ransom note for.
Home again to find, infuriatingly, only the first few words of a message on the answering machine from the airport luggage service (Menzies Aviation, if you want to start a campaign on my behalf); no clues as to whether it was failing to convey good news or bad about my case. Despite my having made sure my mobile number was to be used, there has been no attempt on their part to use it, preferring to ring the empty house. I can only assume, despairingly, that they will continue with this great avoidance technique during our 8 days' absence from tomorrow. And as there is only a recorded message to ring in order to shout abuse in purple-faced rage, I have resorted to ringing British Airways' main Sydney number, and guess what? It is perpetually engaged. Tricia thinks they have the phone off the hook, and I would suggest that maybe that is their safest course of action. Whingeing Pom? Not half.
* Between 600 and 700. That's heaps! And koalas only eat 4 different varieties. That's pernicketiness!
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