Under and Over with Denise Rossetti

I thought you might like to see some real Australian animals.  I’ll tell you more about Broome and the Kimberley in another post - or several. Big subject, that!

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know I was invited to present a couple of workshops at the Romance Writers of Australia Roadshow in Perth, along with the amazing Keri Arthur (woot!) and the delightful Kelly Hunter, who is also our Madam Prez. I did a workshop on Deep Point of View and another on how to write sexy, which the organising gals called The Sealed Section. *snort* I had a load of fun and I learned lots of useful things. Hope everyone else did too. Hmm…

My Beloved and I had some spare time in Perth. Now Perth is a truly beautiful city. I love the wide Swan River and the fresh vibrant ambiance of the place, but… When we were there, the city turned on the worst weather EVER! Perth is always windy, but it was almost gale-force, honest. The rain blew in horizontal sheets. It was foul.  Also cold.

So what did we do? We went to the Zoo.  It’s a fabulous zoo, with all sorts of exotic animals, but I thought some of you might be particularly interested in Australian fauna.

This elderly dingo was off on his daily constitutional with his keeper. The ones we saw in the wild in the Kimberley didn’t look anywhere near so prosperous, just lean and mean.  But it gives you a good idea of these beautiful animals. Sadly, the station-owners lay baits for them, in order to protect their cattle and sheep. What that means is that the surviving dingoes often have to hunt alone rather than in a pack. So they can only prey on smaller animals, like bandicoots and numbats and other little furry critters. No wallabies or roos. The little guys have a hard enough time with feral cats and foxes. Not a good situation if you’re small and tasty and endangered already. *sigh*

This is a life size statue  of a Red Kangaroo in Perth. (Yeah, yeah, I know I promised real, but if you think I’d be snuggling up the real thing, you’re nuts!) I thought you might like to see the size of it. This is about as big as they get. Mind you, I’m not especially tall at 5ft 3in, but it’s impressive isn’t it? Gives a whole new impression of cute and cuddly roos. A big male like this can jump over 30 feet in one bound. You can also see how windy it is! Sunny Perth-  huh!

More on the Kimberley later. Don’t won’t to overload you with too many pictures of red rocks just yet…