Just a few interesting observations

A three hour commute (90 minutes each way) isn't such a drama in an actual city - it felt like a real barrier back in Victoria.

There don't seem to be Galahs, Cockatoos or Rosellas around here feasting on grasses and seeds,much. [EDIT: two Galahs spotted in the park foraging on the ground on the way home one night this week.] But there are plenty of Lorikeets, although they don't hang around to be friendly. Instead they flash past at warp speed, if you are lucky you see a flash of color. Mostly you just hear them, or catch a glimpse of colour in the gum trees.

There are also Kookaburras in the trees in the park and around the school and neighbourhood ! Millions more Crows too, and Ibis (Bin Chickens). I haven't seen any Ibis scavenging on the ground, but they look very elegant as they fly overhead morning and evening on their way to their hunting grounds.

People's gardens and parklands are a constant explosion of colour. So many trees and plants to learn the names of. Wattle, Bouganvillea, Silk trees, Eucalypts, Jacaranda, Poinciana, Frangipani (in way more colours than I thought there were)...Grass is green.

#52Ancestors, Week 30, Colourful

Fire engine red, flaming red, red, ginger, orange, auburn, chestnut, strawberry-blond, pink

Shades of this hair colour run through my family, linked to the recessive gene MC1R. It is mostly in my maternal family.

Two of my cousins have it, my brother, my mother, her sister and both their maternal aunts and their mother too.

Going back further it seems to have been in my maternal great grandmother’s family, even in black and white photos you sense some of those cousins and siblings shared the gene.

I have a feeling that I have heard that my other maternal great grandmother also possessed these gloriously coloured locks.

I love it, I wish I had it. I hoped (long ago) when I was pregnant that if I had a girl – she would have it. But no. We do both have some “warmth” in our natural hair colour, so maybe it is still lurking their in our DNA.

Of course, with it, come freckles, fair skin, generalisations about temperament and flippant insinuations that “it’s because you’re a redhead”.

Maybe I will get it one day – out of a bottle. I can always go back to the dark side if it truly isn’t me.