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birds of a feather ….

Another day of road tripping across the great Aussie countryside and I was struck by so many things.

The fact that the landscape seems to change so dramatically every few hundred kilometres,
That the difference between NSW and Vic is minimal….yet he difference between NSW and QLD is vast.
That we have SOOO much spare space ( yet why are we worried about refugees?… but this is not political forum ..so forget I said that)
That every square kilometre is beautiful.
That we really ARE the LUCKY country despite our State or National politics….

BUT on a serious note … I have been wondering about birds. With the wide open spaces and huge skies, you can’t help but notice the small things. One of which was the formation… and flight of flocks of birds.

Now I am not an ornithologist, so I have no idea what kind they are….. but on our drive from Swan Hill to Beechwood today, we were entertained by many flocks of birds that looked like they were in training for the synchronised swimming events at the next Olympics.

At first it was like seeing sign-writing in action, soon we realised that it was in fact birds…. and I couldn’t help but wonder WHY???

Who is the leader? how does he/she decide the formation? What happens when they get tired …and WHAT IS THE POINT???

As entertaining as this whole thing was…. I really want to understand the purpose….and what happens when one or more don’t want to play ?? where do THEY go??

I wonder …..?

Tags: 50something, Australian outback, Australiana, bird watching, birds of a feather, nonsense, observations, sky writing, writing

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the sky’s the limit

1 Feb

Yesterday I was driving between offices when I noticed some graffiti going on … Not on a fence or a wall but on the clear blue sky. The perfect background became the canvas for a touching and personal message to D.K, who is clearly no longer with us… BUT it immediately struck me that sign-writing with a jet, is a rather extravagant and inexact way to get your sentiment across.

The more I watched it unfold (while driving carefully of course) my mind began to boggle.

How DO they do it ? I mean it’s hard enough to write straight on a piece of paper without any lines ….so imagine being in a plane and trying to get your letters to line up, and be legible.

Then there is the timing …if the message is long, the start is almost ‘on its way out’ before the sentence is finished…and what about the wind ?? It would really give you the shits if you got half way and the wind picked up and blew it all away.

What fascinated me even more with this particular message was that while it was being created it looked like group of horizontal lines one above the other …THEN 5 minutes later when I arrived at my stop and looked up it was clearly visible across the sky as “I’ll be missing U”.

HOW ? did the wind blow it into position? or did the earth rotate in that 5minutes? or did I just move to look at it from a different angle?

I have NO idea how it works … but I guess the dear departed D.K is lucky to have someone creative, clever and wealthy enough to make such a grand… but temporary statement on the sky.