New Perspectives

These are a few of the things that we’ve seen that are new to us. Notice the crosswalk warnings painted on the sidewalk? I think when I was growing up, we were just taught to stop, look, and listen. I don’t think I was ever taught to think… (oh, wait, except for debate, Mr. Harens!)

The trees are really interesting and beautiful. When we get the camera replaced, we’ll take some pictures of the Norfolk Island Pines that are so prominent here. When I saw these trees below planted in the street, I thought that perhaps they were already there and the city decided to widen the street. Rather than cut down the trees, they just paved around them. I thought that, until I saw other trees planted in pavement and decided that maybe this is not an unusual practice. (?)

We have already gotten mail delivered to our new home. Our bankcards were the first mail we picked up from our mail slot. Today we got our first piece of political mail from a candidate for Minister Parliament and addressed “To the Voter.” Unfortunately, that’s not us and if we lived here, we probably wouldn’t vote for this guy because he’s in the Liberal party. (More on politics as the election approaches – but if you don’t know, “Liberal” is basically Republican and "Labor" is basically Democrat and "Greens" are Greens.) They just set their election date last week to be on September 7 – woohoo! just 4 weeks of campaign ads! They vote on a Saturday here, and it’s compulsory. We’ve had interesting discussions about the pros and cons of that!

Back to the mail. Mailboxes here are usually slots in the side of a fence with a little tube beneath them for flyers. However, most mail slots also have a sticker that says “No junk mail.” I asked a friend if that sign was effective, and I learned that the “posty” (as seen in the photo below) doesn’t typically deliver sales flyers; stores hire people to walk around flyers and place them in the mail tubes. This doesn’t seem very efficient, because by my observation, 9 of 10 slots request no junk mail. I wonder if the people who distribute sales flyers are offended by having their work called junk. Anyway, our posty rides the scooter up and down the sidewalks, dropping mail in the slots.

The last new thing I’ll share in this post is this very cool maze. Lake Pertobe is a lake (originally a river marsh) inside what is described as a 20 hectare playground with mini golf, tennis, play areas, a caravan park (campground), and this maze which I’m going to take a try at one of these days.

We were told that the playground once had more adventurous activities, like a zipline, but the days of litigation have put an end to that. I found this picture from back in the day - yeah, that looks like an accident waiting to happen.