At Terry’s high school reunion for Lauriston Girl’s School in Melbourne, she met Josie Browne who offered us a chance to stay in her Lourne, Australia beach house. The house was designed by an architect for himself and it has unique panoramic windows that give the sleek modern interior a feeling of being open to the environment. Josie was incredibly open and sincere, we both liked her immediately. Apparently her husband is her polar opposite, being loud and always seeking to close the next big deal. The family dog is an incredibly intelligent sheep herding dog. His greatest joy in life is retrieving a tennis ball that Josie tosses down the beach using a plastic sling. The house isn’t right on the beach but up a steep hill. The second floor balcony allows a sweeping view of the ocean over the neighboring roofs.
Josie’s daughter was back home and working long shifts at the restaurant in a hotel at the bottom of the hill. Her love is animal husbandry and someday she may fulfill her dream of living on a farm with plenty of horses. As Terry and Josie talked about Lauriston, a Sydney horse race was on the telly. Horse racing is huge in Australia. It became a national past time right after the gold rush and money from the races helped build the city infrastructure.
At the restaurant at the bottom of the hill there was outdoor seating. Signs of the railing around the dining area said, “Don’t Feed the Cockatoos”. The entire trip Terry had been looking for cockatoos because she missed our pet cockatoo named Zorro. As we ate dinner, cockatoos landed on the railing to watch us eat. If you turned your back for a moment they would swoop down and grab some of your food. At a trash can by the beach, cockatoos had pried the lid off and were rummaging in the garbage. I put some of the trash back and scolded a cockatoo as if I were talking to Zorro. A few minutes later, trash was once again being thrown to the ground. Come to think of it, Zorro never obeys either. The cockatoos also chew and destroy any wooden surfaces on buildings. To say the least, cockatoos are considered a pest in Lourne.