No, not sheila's. Birds. And Aussie birds are the best - even the ones who ruined a full months sleep. Kookaburras, Lorikeets, Ibis(s?), Galah's, Cockatoos, Lyrebirds...they're all class. So many crazy looking parrots with every possible colour. And the ones that just look brown and boring have the most amazing songs or cackles. Even the common-as-a-pigeon Aussie magpie sounds great. There're plenty I've only ever been able to hear, and listening to some Whipbird or Kookaburra with the strong smell of eucalyptus in the air after the rain makes Australia feel so authentically exotic.

Ok, I owe the rats an apology. It seems they haven't been scurrying around the attic at 5am every morning, chewing on wood, waking us up and causing us to gradually go insane. This is despite a pest control company having come out on site and setting up rat bait traps. We asked them whether it could have been other animals, having noticed holes in the eaves of the roof from outside. But they assured us that the traps would help the situation, and that the rats were probably coming inside during the coldest part of the night for warmth. Well now it turns out it was the birds! The feckin birds... These guys are in every tree in the neighbourhood and make up for their noisy cries by looking amazing. The sit sunning themselves on the building tops in the mornings and have no problem relaxing on balconies and our drying clothes. The pest control company spoke to some bird experts and I'm not sure exactly what happened but we came home the other day, saw that the roof hole was covered, and we've been sleeping through the night since. What a joy to sleep through the night.

It looks like the Aussie spring has lasted all of two weeks. It jumped from 18 to 30 degrees in the space of a day which was pretty impressive. Unless this IS the spring, in which case I don't want to know what summer is like. Last weekend we were strolling around a few parks in the city centre and managed to grab some snaps of what would be considered pretty exotic birds back home..