Too far away for the bed sadly, but am fascinated by your blue tongued avatar. What nature of beast is that?!

 

The Eastern Blue-tongue lizard. Native to the east coast of Australia in a variety of colours, usually silver-grey with broad dark brown or blackish bands across the back and tail. Those on the coast usually have a black stripe between the eye and the ear. There is also a dark chocolate brown to black one with large pink, cream or yellow blotches on the back.
It can grow to 600 mm in length. When frightened / threatened they stick out their broad blue tongue. A bite from an adult blue-tongue can break the skin and leave a bruise but there is no venom.
I think you guys call them a skink, although these are bigger than most.

 

Nature never ceases to amaze. We've lizards, but ours seem dull in comparison. Our snakes put on more of a show.
Cheers.

 

We've got the snakes, the non venomous can be quite spectacular but the venemous ones are normally just dull and deadly. You can't give nature a break, it just takes over. Our salt water crocs were endangered many years ago but now they are spreading widely. They grow fat on tourists who can't imagine a croc in waterholes miles from anywhere.

 

My sister lived four yrs in Alice Springs with her family; she invited all to visit but it was an inopportune time in life. My brother in law, erst while Marine turned Sgt Mom, travelled widely and told stories particularly of the fresh water crocs. I believe you, breaky of tourist. Most of our poisonous are noisy, fortunately, nothing like yours.

 

The Alice, an interesting place. Pity it wasn't convenient to visit, it is one of the iconic places albeit not for everyone. Your Brother in Law sounds like an interesting guy. Travel is one of the great levellers and more of it is good for the world, you get exposed to enough different cultures to put your own into perspective.

 

Couldn't agree more about travel. The B in L has been to all the continents except Antarctica; I've had a little more restricted agenda: Europe, Africa and North America. But I was lucky enough to live a year in Belgium with host families at 19. One of the wonderful programs of Rotary International. Changes your prospective about yourself and your country. Good and bad associated with being the brute on the block. Going forward, plan to spend a couple months at a time travelling the US and our neighbors to the North. So much to see, people to meet.
Discovered your avatar name is the species name of the Eastern Blue Tongued lizard; doubt many outside Australia catch your reference.

 

The invisible man behind the lizard avatar........ You have had a good life getting around. I haven't been to the lower 48 but did spend time in Canada. We had a guy from Toronto stay a while earlier this year. Met him in Norway 5-6 years ago. We always do our best to have some basic language for where we go so I now have the ability to get coffee / cake / wine and groceries in quite a few languages. Pity it doesn't extend a lot past that but I did get fluent in hardware speak when we lived in Germany. Seemed every other day we had to visit Toom.

 

Alright, I'll bite. What's a Toom??
From YouTube Norway looks spectacular. Never been but I'm not dead yet either!
If you make it to the desert, let me know. I can help you with the language here, mate.

 

toom is one of Germany’s leading DIY brands (a Baumarkt), (maybe a Walmart or such) with more than 300 stores. It's what you get from travel, the names of other countries popular stores.

Big tick for Norway, really enjoyed each time, been several times.

I'll be in the desert soon enough, but my local one, don't have to sardine on a plane to get anywhere. I have worked with enough of your countrymen to get a feel for the language distortions, we are probably one up as we get saturated with US made TV so there isn't too much we miss in the dual meaning words.

 

I forget Hollywood products travel the world, part of what I meant above 'being the brute on the block'.
Cheers

 

We once had a pretty vibrant TV industry but in more recent times it has been producing a few gems and a lot of low brow trash so our escapes are either the proliferation of US made programs, some being repeated for the 100th time in 40-50 years or a more recent invasion of Euro / Scandi films which I actually really like.

 

Can you suggest a Euro-Scandi film you've liked recently; I quite like a good film and fear I miss much of what's made outside the US just due to lack of penetration of our market. I've recently been enjoying rewatching old Jimmy Stewart films, perhaps my favorite actor, although Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, John Travolta all have good bodies of work. Probably favorite Aussie actor:
Toni Collette.

 

Just finished watching a TV series, Black Sand from Iceland. Highly recommended. To contrast also just watched the second part of the KISS documentary. I was very impressed with the candor and acceptance of their errors and it took me back to crossing the Gulf of Carpentaria in the 70's and carving a Kiss Guitar from drift wood for my daughter. Still got it. That's a deviation from your question.

 

I'll try and find Black Sand. Two things about the guitar: if I remember correctly at least one played flying 'V' shaped instrument. Was your carved guitar full sized? Playable? Bet she loved it.
(In the mid 70's I was playing a Fender Jaguar in a garage band; I still have that bad boy, a pre CBS 1964 instrument. )
Secondly, I'm old, but if your daughter was old enough to enjoy a guitar in the seventys, you must be older than dirt, fella.