Our morning walk today netted us two new bird species to tick off our Australian bird list. There's a small park with flowering trees about 1km away from the marina on the way to Burnett Heads which seems to be a Mecca for all types of birds, especially lorikeets. Whole trees seem to reverberate with their shrieks and squawks. They sit on boughs, hidden in the trees' foliage and chatter away to each other while nibbling on seeds and blossoms. Their bright colors give them away and provide a focal point for the camera when they finally do emerge for a photo opp. Across the street from the park, there are telephone wires that other birds seem to enjoy lighting upon. We've seen honey-eaters, bee-eaters and cockatiels perched there with the blue sky providing the perfect background.

The marina offered a bus to the Shalom Markets today. Quite the oxymoron, Shalom College, where the markets are located, is a Catholic college...go figure. A fresh market is held on the college grounds every Sunday and it's a good one. We came back loaded with fresh veggies at great prices. We haven't had fresh broccoli or cauliflower in ages and tomatoes were 70 cents/kg (33 cents/pound!!). We passed up the papaya and bananas (still OD'd on them from Vanuatu) and opted for fresh mandarins, avocados and a new type of melon for us called a Beloro which was absolutely delicious.

They also had a snake handler there talking about Australia's venomous snakes in the Queensland area (and there are lots of them), how to recognize them, avoid them and handle snake bites, just in case. There was also a "bird man" there whom we found quite fascinating, selling baby ducks, chickens and all sorts of local birds like lorikeets, galahs and cockatiels. The usual flea market tables seemed to stretch on forever. One fellow sold handmade rocking horses; another had carved wooden clocks. One booth offered Indian spices and others were set up with tacky, jeweled kangaroos, plastic jewelry and used books and clothing.

Back at the boat, David managed a couple of hours on deck work before it was time for a P2P rally BBQ on the marina lawn. The fare included kangaroo steaks for dinner. Marcie doesn't eat red meat, but wasn't sure what category "marsupial" fell into. What wine do you drink with kangaroo anyway? She opted for grilled fish as an alternative, but did try a bite of David's steak. It did NOT taste like chicken. David liked it just fine. Interestingly enough, as everyone sat down to eat, two large kangaroos hopped by in the field behind us. They must have known what was going on.