Saturday, January 1, 2011

Consider the goannas of the field when you take the long way home


Happy New Year!

Sloth has certainly undone me today. Sadly, at 8 in the evening, I am still in my pyjamas and smirking inwardly at the high point of today's activity being the consumption of a full bag of violent yellow cheese puff things.

They were delicious.

Yesterday I visited my mother who lives about up on the tip of the Central Coast, just below Lake Macquarie. It was a very hot day so we decided to take the long way home to see just how hot it actually was.

Conclusion: very hot.

We stopped in the middle of nowhere to stretch our legs.
Here we were greeted by a local who measured about two metres from the tip of his snout to the end of his tail:


Isn't he wonderful? He'd been sunning himself near the fence when we arrived and made a graceful exit to the nearest tree when he saw my camera. I've heard that in open country goannas will run up the nearest vertical structure if they are frightened. If you can make out his claws in this photos you can see why I took my snaps from a distance.

I wasn't dressed appropriately to chase goannas but perfectly for the forty degree Celsius heat.

The silk dress is by Sarah Jane (a lovely local designer who has a great outlet store in Newtown), the silk-cotton cardi (chosen to protect my shoulders from the sun rather than modesty) is from Lee Mathews, the Raybans and the thongs are from New York. The necklace is a favourite - freshwater pearls strung on a length of suede. Apologies for the distant shot. I would have taken another one except I was expiring from heat and irrational fear of being shredded by a nervous goanna.

3 comments:

  1. That is some big lizard indeed, Baxter. What do they eat? It looks as big as a housecat!

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  2. Pretty dress. And a monstrous lizard!

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  3. They're bigger than a house cat, Charlotte! Goannas are about six foot long and are very solidly built. They're carnivorous and eat birds and eggs as well as insects and mice.

    They are monstrous, Shybiker, but you can't help admiring one when you see them close up. This one had green markings!

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