Dubbo, Australia--Sydney, Australia--Day 64

I woke up this morning and headed straight to zoo after hitting up McDonalds (again) for breakfast. I went back and rented another bike so that I could get straight to the hippos. I have to admit that I was struggling a bit to get up the hills to the hippos. I made it though and spent the next hour and half watching them and reading my book while I waited for the keeper to come at 10:45 to feed them. I was able to take a few pictures of the some of the hippos getting in and out of the water because I think that they were getting antsy about wanting to be fed! So there were several times that I hopped up to grab a quick photo and then sat back down to wait for the keeper, which got several weird looks from the onlookers as well as the hippos who were defiantly watching what I was doing!

There were six hippos, Nile, Susie, Mana, Rumbin, Mafuta and Happy. The males, Mana and Happy, were separated in their own enclosure and Susie herself had her own since apparently she was getting aggressive towards the other three females. Nile was the smallest of them all and Susie by far the oldest, with the keeper estimating that she was at least 35 years old! I spoke with the keeper for a little bit while getting plenty of wonderful shots of the hippos feeding out of the water. Mana was especially cute since he has a huge tooth sticking out over his lip. I also got some great shots of the habitat, which had been called “Hippo Beach” and of people watching the hippos.

Afterwards I returned my bike and stopped to get an ice-cream before calling a cab to the airport. I was happy with the photos and was going to transfer the photos onto the computer when I got back to Sydney. My ride to the airport was quick and I made it to the tiny airport with plenty of time to spare. Over the phone, the Quantas people said that I might have to pay a fee for changing my ticket but when I got to the airport, they were more than happy just to put me on this later flight without any problems at all.

My flight back to Sydney was just fine and I was proud of myself for making my way back into the city without Emma to help me! I stopped off to check my email before catching the bus back to Emma’s place where I was going to meet her after she finished work.

I started out transferring the photos from my memory sticks to my computer without any problems but had quite a difficult time trying to open my photo program and rotating some of the photos and all of a sudden my computer froze. I tried to restart it and when I did the worst possible thing that could have happened did.

My computer ate my hippo photos.

I honestly do not know how it happened but when my computer came back on, they were gone. I could not believe it! After several hours of trying to fix what happened and pinch myself to remind myself that yes, this is actually happening; I just had to turn off my computer before I went nuts.




(c) 2004 Sarah Galbraith. All Rights Reserved.