Closing in

We are now closing in on the final days of fall and entering into the winter season.  We don't think that any of the indigenous trees drop leaves in the fall, but some of the imported ones do.  We have seen a couple of trees with no leaves, but we have not seen a tree that has fall colours.  The closest we have seen to a tree that looks autumnal is some kind of import, pictured below (we don't know what kind of tree it is).  We have also noticed that the Frangipani trees drop their leaves, but they don't change colour first.  One day there are leaves, the next day, nothing.  The whole "fall" thing just doesn't happen here.

"Fall" Colours

Frangipani trees with no leaves...the other trees don't seem too concerned about autumn

In addition to "fall" not meaning the same thing here as it does in other places, we were also confused last week by the end of the world on May 21. The world didn't end (obviously) but was that supposed to be May 21 at noon GMT?  Maybe noon EST?  That makes it the next day here, so we are going to need some clarification on this.  Maybe the doomsdayers could let us know what time the world is ending in each country and make it clear if the world ends at the same time everywhere or maybe at the same time in each time zone, so that the world would end in Brisbane half and hour before it does in Adelaide, but an hour after Sydney.  Let's just make sure that we are all playing the same game here!

And speaking of playing games, last Wednesday was the first game in the three game series "State of Origin" rugby match.  This is a three game contest that takes place every year between the best players born in Queensland and the best players born in New South Wales.  Before game one there were all kinds of commercials about "winning this one for Locky" or "let's do it for Lockyer".  If you cast your memories back to early in the year, the Lockyer Valley was one of the areas devastated by floods.  We thought that the match was raising funds for relief efforts, or something like that.  No.  Not even close!  "Lockyer" is the name of a player for Queensland who is retiring and this is his last series.  Talk about mis-interpretation!  We were laughed at severely for even suggesting it.  At least we know what "fall" really is.