Tax, Native Flowers, The Second Goodbye and BBQ Time

What a long title ... hehe

I am blogging between helping Mr Sparky fill out his online tax (meaning doing it for him). I have yet to get onto mine ... anything is better.

Friday morning saw me scoping local streets for some pretty native flower to share.
On Wednesday one of the things the Nova student and I talked about was the Australia's floral emblem was Wattle which is why the sporting team colours are green and gold, just like the flower.
So I promised to try and find some wattle or another native flower knowing that wattle is a little hard to locate here.

I didn't find wattle as expected but I easily found some Bottle Brush and Grevillea. The bottle brush amused the student no end who decided it's name suited it because it looked like a Bottle Brush for washing up. She hit the nail on the head there and her humour coming through, yet again, was refreshing.

Our last day's lesson was mainly about the differences between Australia and Japan as well as a little bit about Australian foods. Already knowing this I was prepared with some ANZAC Biccies (bought, slap on the wrist) and Vegemite.



 The student and our new M2 tried Vegemite for the first time and first tastes saw neither impressed but the student persevered and decided that you get used to the taste after a while.

We also went off track like usual (I was told that this is the best thing, and it is) and looked at the Australian flags: Australia, Aboriginal and Torris Strait. The student informed me that Japan has only ONE flag and Australia has too many (said with a smile). I then explained we have even more flags than that including state flags and the Eureka flag. How many flags can you think of?

While the student did her 'test' I doodled, drawing some of the flowers we had talked about for her to keep.



After her test and presentation it was time to head off for our farewell BBQ, another goodbye for this week.
But while we were packing up we got side tracked (meaning I sided tracked us by looking out the windows) and we saw the Navy coming to town ... okay so coming into port. It was very interesting to watch those little tugs guide that rather large ship around.

We did make it down for our BBQ though and we were all hungry. The cruel thing about a BBQ is the yummy smells and a hungry tummy, urgh.



  We had a little kangaroo steak, some sausages and onions and the student helped with the very difficult task of food watching.




I on the other hand was boat watching as well as being main BBQ chef.
Fishing trawlers were in at the wharf. 

Having never lived on the coast or by a busy port I am finding the boating traffic very interesting plus it is good for sidetracking my mind from my hunger while smelling those delicious, smokey BBQ smells.

We really enjoyed our little feast, tucking in as soon as it was ready.
We had some other visitors come by who thought they might enjoy our BBQ as well.

Our BBQ place down by the wharf is such a lovely area to sit, chat and eat. The weather was a bit windy this week but the view was as good as ever.

After cleaning up the BBQ and our mess the student and I had a little walk on the fishing pier which had the dredging barge tied up that I saw last time.

The pier has information about the fish you might catch and the habitat they live in. I love the fishy cut out signs along the way.

What a lovely finish to a great week.
I didn't want to see this student go with her sense of humour and eagerness to try new things and learn EVERYTHING she could about Australia.

Oh Mr Sparky's tax is done minus some important missing paperwork that need put in later ... Yay!