This guy has a lot of cheek - it's less than a metre from my phone lens to its eye, but the attraction of the nectar far outweighs any fear factor. These wattle birds - this is a baby - are actually a mixed blessing, because they are very aggressive and keep smaller native birds out of the garden. We've planted a few trees/shrubs to try to provide protection for the smaller birds, but as yet the surviving ones aren't big enough. Someone in the neighbourhood has spotted some fairy wrens, so there are smaller birds around, if you're lucky.
Here we have the interior of the Nowra cinema. As with most cinemas, the original interior large scale cinema no longer exists, and has been subdivided into 5 smaller cinemas to provide a wider variety of viewing. These have been retained (I guess - somebody might have gone out and bought them, I suppose). It's a pity not to be able to find a way to display them more sympathetically.
Anyway, it's a perfectly adequate cinema, 15 minutes walk into town.
More Nowra colour, somewhat obscured by the fact that it is technically night time. The phone does a pretty remarkable job of capturing anything at all, under the circumstances. The moon is not full - that's my hand shaking. There are a lot of these trees all over the Shoalhaven. Interesting note: people call it "The Shoalhaven" - a somewhat idiosyncratic use of the definite article. I was teaching the principles of this only last week. I would have made the analogy with "harbour", myself, thus no article, but it appears to have followed in the footsteps of "The Shire". Or maybe it's "the Shoalhaven district". I will have to update my lesson notes for next year.
Finally, a present from students on the final day of class. It's a rather elaborate and extremely rich cheesecake - enjoyed by all. I haven't tried to play the decoration yet.
It's one big big bonus of the job - not the cheesecake, so much, but the warmth of the student body. In the "closed classes" (5 or 12 week periodic entry only) everybody builds up very strong bonds. Well, more or less everybody.
First exam is today - fingers crossed!
