Yes, We Have No Turkey. Would You Like a 'Roo?

Aussies don't do Thanksgiving. And given the price of turkey here, I don't blame them. VERY expensive. Plus, the Pilgrims never made it quite this far anyway.

So with our Thanksgiving day, we did something different. Instead of gorging on the bird and searching in vain for an (American) football game on television, we went out to Namadgi National Park, about 30 miles south of Canberra, and looked at some very cool old Aboriginal rock paintings.

And we looked at kangaroos. Lots of kangaroos. Easily over a hundred kangaroos, in ones and twos, and some in big clumps.

They stare at you with their beady little eyes as you walk past, ears perked and rotating to keep on you even if they look away for a minute. The joeys (it's spring, and the babies are big) also look out of the pouch at you, except one that we saw standing outside the pouch, with its head IN the pouch!

Occasionally, they make a weird cough/growl noise at you. You can get kind of close - we were within five feet of one 'roo and joey, mostly because she was behind a bush as we rounded the curve in the trail.

But you know, those big male kangaroos look tough, with big nasty claws. So we kept a distance. And when one male took a step towards us, we started off down the trail again just in case he got antsy.

They may be cute and vegetarian and all - but they're still way bigger than me.