Today, I went to the zoo :)

I stand corrected. Each of our provinces does have a Queen's representative - the Lieutenant Governor. After this was pointed out to me, the faintest tingling in the back of my memory tells me that maybe, maybe this was mentioned briefly some time in social studies. But it obviously didn't stick. :p

Here is an assortment of fun facts for your reading pleasure:

- The elephant at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney understands English instructions to lift his feet, turn, move over, back up, etc while being hosed down.

- A very amusing zoo keeper showed us a bunch of large and venomous spiders... - Funnel-web spiders are the most dangerous spiders in Australia (land of the dangerous spiders ... also snakes...) - and the most dangerous of the funnel-webs? The Sydney Funnel-web. What is more - they're very common. As in, you're usually only a few metres, tops, away from one. Awesome :p
-Including the tax in the price on tags is a fantastic idea, and I will miss that upon my return to the land of home...
- Not only are the trains double-decker (two story trains), but some of the stations are also double, even triple (okay, one of them was just people, no trains) stations ... rails running bunk-bed style!

I've never seen a bird sit like this before

- Central station has no fewer than 25 active platforms.

there's something about that corner...

- The Sydney Harbour Bridge was painted grey because that was the only colour of paint they could get in the quantities they needed.

That is a bear. In a hammock. A
non-cartoon bear, in a hammock.
I didn't realize such things actually happened...

- The Dodo was a type of (really big) pigeon.
- A grocery cart / buggy from home is a trolley here and occasionally was a trundler in New Zealand. (Trundler! Still makes me chuckle, don't know why :p )
- We've all heard of a murder of crows, but what about a mob of kangaroos?
- Wollemi Pine trees were thought to have gone extinct before the age of the dinosaurs... until 1994, when someone found 8 in an isolated area of the Blue Mountains.
- Kangaroos can hop up to 9 metres in one jump (not from a standing start, but still!)

These guys were ridiculously agile!

- Some lizards, like the (this is actually the name :p ) Scheltopusik, don't have legs and look like snakes, but they're actually lizards. I'm not entirely clear on how you tell them apart :p ... Lizards have ear openings, snakes do not... Lizards can move their eye lids, snakes can't... lizards have short bodies and long tails, snakes long bodies and short tails... snakes have forked tongues...
- Tasmanian Devils can chew through cow hooves. Also kangaroo skulls. And their entire species is threatened by a type of contagious cancer because their dna is all so similar (not a very big gene pool to draw from).
- The spider keeper at the zoo brought the spiders out to show us in a Spiderman cooler.
- There is such a thing as opalized fossils... and dinosaur bones which are actually opals! Opals are formed by silicate under pressure, so if a silicate solution seeps into either an impression left by a bone/shell, or into the bone itself before it decomposes, and then goes through the regular opal-forming process, bam! (Now draw that "bam" out over tens of thousands of years...) Opal dino bones. Huh. Also these are apparently scattered throughout veins in the Australian Outback (which has red dirt) and people will dig big shafts down into the earth in search of opals (regular or fossilized). Then leave the holes behind when they're done. Don't fall in! ;)
- Australia has 11 of the world's 15 most venomous snakes, 4 of which are common throughout the blue mountains.
- Chocolate is "choc-ies" and candy "lollies"
- Most of the trains have the seat backs attached to little hinged arms at the sides, so you can switch which way the seat faces (since they don't turn the train around, just keep a driving car at either end). Also the trains are electric. The ferries (which are also part of the transit system - that's how I got to the zoo!) are also double-fronted - no need to turn around!
- The book I'm reading used the word "restive." Which does not mean restful - rather, it means restless/uneasy. But thanks to the GRE prep-book I was using last spring, I knew this. :p
- Razor scooters never lost popularity here.
- Sunscreen is awesome. Apparently at least 2 in 3 Australians are expected to develop some form of skin cancer by the time they're 70. Not good.