At Home In Australia

I often get asked what our living conditions were like when my wife and I called Australia home.  It was actually quite good and we enjoyed every day we lived there.  We lived in very rural part of the Australian state of Victoria just north of Melbourne:

We lived in a older house, but it was more than nice enough for my wife and I:

The house was quite large with four bedrooms and a large living room and kitchen:

The front yard of the house wasn’t very big, but was nicely landscaped:

I really liked these flowers that grew in our front yard as well:

We didn’t have much grass in the front of the house, but it was enough to attract the local wildlife for a bite to eat:

These large birds are called emus and they can be found all over Australia, from the rain forests to the deepest Outback and obviously in my front yard.  Emus are the world’s second largest bird behind only Africa’s ostriches, but I do think they should have the honor for being the world’s ugliest birds though.  The adult emus may not win any beauty contests, but their babies are cute though:

The emus are also very curious animals which was evident when one time I heard my wife screaming outside.  I opened up the door to see an emu trying to get inside the car with her:

Another time I was watching TV in my living room when I heard the screen door open and I looked behind me to see an emu looking into my home.  The emu had opened up the screen door with his beak.  The emus are usually harmless, but if one got mad at you they could hurt you with their hard beaks so it is best to treat them as the wild animals that they are and give them their space.

Our front yard may have been relatively small, but our backyard was absolutely huge:

So big in fact that the local kangaroos just loved hanging out in our backyard:

This is an Eastern Grey Kangaroo, which can get up to 6 feet tall and 145 pounds size.  This kangaroo that used to hang out in my backyard was darn near that size:

Here is a smaller kangaroo that used to hang out in my backyard as well and he spent most of the day sprawled out like this sleeping, he was actually quite funny to watch at times:

The good thing about the kangaroos is that they kept the grass down, which meant I didn’t have to mow the grass:

If you look at my backyard in the above picture you can see a number of tree branches thrown around my backyard.  These branches are from the massive gum tree that grew in the backyard.  For whatever reason the cockatoos used to break the branches off with their beaks and literally throw at me when I would work in the backyard:

The cockatoos are large and extremely intelligent birds that love to entertain themselves sometimes at my expense by doing things like throwing branches at me:

The cockatoos that used to hang out in my backyard are known as Sulphur Crested Cockatoos due to the yellow crest they display on their heads:

As you can see I had a whole flock of these chicken size birds that loved hanging out in my backyard:

The cockatoos weren’t the only birds hanging out at our home as a variety of colorful birds call Australia home and they all seemed to end up in our yard:

I also had some colorful flowers growing in my backyard as well:

Then finally in my backyard we also got to often enjoy colorful sunrises:

As well as sunsets:

We obviously had a great time enjoying the scenery and wildlife around our home, which unfortuately our current home just can’t compare.