Wombats taking shelter from a Melbourne day full of on-off rain and wind. They all looked so cute snuggled up together underground in their burrow, not that the sand and ground looks very comfortable but at least it's dry! My boyfriend played the role of my photography spotter, pinching my arm and pointing out interesting things for me to shoot. What a sweetheart. I did take some nice photographs of the wombats here but I missed the one on the far left rolling over and scratching itself and the flash gives a very different colour of the fur of the wombats compared to those taken without the flash. I always have a lot of fun with him when we go out to tourist places and I get to bring my camera along and he doesn't mind. What a shame he doesn't like to be a show pony and pose for me. 
A water fountain light up by lights brought a lot of attention to the dare devil boys among the group; daring to run across the width of the water feature and risking getting soaking wet for the next hour and so and putting up with the shame and soggy trophy of wrinkled clothes.
Last year my ex-hippie and eccentric Literature who my class suspects of once coming to teach us young impressionable youths while under the influence of some illicit drug (and who might have forgotten to teach us a few times due to this troubling problem as well) while lecturing us about Edwards Scissorhands gave us all this little gem of wisdom: Every village square, in every corner of the globe sees the life of an actor on screen and aspires to have the life they lead and live glamorously and comfortably. Of course due to my memory mimicking that of a goldfish (I don't even remember what I did three days ago) and the fact that anytime she lectured our class on anything we had difficulties comprehending what she was saying and I am paraphrasing; she had a point. My short little tourist stint in Hollywood taught me three things: there are many eccentrics and weirdos in Hollywood, the people in costumes expect money and can get aggressive and that some of the most beautiful houses are in Hollywood.
I was absolutely thrilled when I went to the Melbourne Zoo with my boyfriend- it was my choice of location for the date as a way to make up for being an hour late for the last date. I don't make a very good girlfriend sometimes though; if there's a camera around my neck I'm asking him to open up sealed bags of 120mm slide film that I can't manage and I generally ignore him until a.) I run out of film using an analogue camera and b.) the batteries on my digital camera give out on me. 
He's lovely though and manages to put up with me when I'm being a pain in the butt, as a good boyfriend should be. These photographs are from our mosey around the native Australian animal exhibits so there were lots of kangaroos and emus. 
Another wonderful thing my boyfriend does when he's with my and I have the camera around my neck is that he will gently tap on my shoulder and point in front of my nose- I nearly missed a great big brown kangaroo that was right behind us and casually hopped past and under the fence. You can see the arm of my boyfriend in the photograph with no zoom, it was that close to us. He was worried that it would take an interest to our bags since we had brought food from home that we had made in the kitchen with us. The kangaroo didn't seem very interested though, he was really laid-back. There were kangaroos of all shapes and sizes there, even some little grey coloured joeys were out and about. Although there wasn't a lot of sunlight for them to enjoy and bask in.
The many various and beautiful lizards of the reptile house in Melbourne Zoo. Being a lizard would be terrible because it would be like having seasonal affective disorder all the time and being weird colours and scaly. It has suddenly occurred to me that if I am to become a veterinarian and work with animals, some of those animals are going to be lizards. Oh dear, I don't mind reptiles and I can handle snakes because they're actually quite nice and interesting. Reptiles just look a bit complicated though.
