Aussie Sync Summit ... Kind of ... And You Just Couldn't Make This Stuff Up if You Tried

Me, in the jaws of a croc and PsoNik
 trying to get it to let go

Entry ticket with time and date
we entered the park

While the other Sync-heads on the other side of the world had their 
Sync-Summit in Olympia, Washington on 8-9/8,

me, PsoNik and Howard decided to meet up on 6/9 at 
Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary and have our own sync summit get together.
And if you are laughing at the 6/9 date for the get together, you can stop that now, because I'm straight, for the record:-)

Howard and PsoNik
with their rented van in Oz

 PsoNik and Howard were staying in the Byron Bay area on that weekend and suggested we meet on the Gold Coast somewhere, since they weren't coming to Brisbane (my hometown) this trip to Oz.
I suggested the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, because I had some vouchers for the park and could get us all in for half price.
We decided to meet between 9:30-10:00am at the main entrance to the park at PsoNik's suggestion, and I said I'd aim for 9:30am.
Unfortunately, I got held up in traffic and didn't get there till around 9:45am.
I thought maybe I'd missed them, but as I was about to cross the zebra crossing outside the park, who should come past but, Howard and PsoNik in their little green machine.

I was wearing my Cronulla-Sutherland polo shirt, which is a Sydney club, so it is unusual to run into shark supporters in Queensland, but the guy who sold me my ticket into the park told me he was a shark supporter, but wasn't game to wear his supporter's gear after the season Cronulla had this year. 

Howard on the Beach, not far from
where a man would die days later

On the subject of sharks, here is a rather dark sync.
PsoNik posted the above photo on his Facebook feed of Howard on the beach at Byron Bay on either the Thursday, or Friday just before we met up on Saturday.
I got a bad feeling about this photo and wrote back to warn them that there are a lot of sharks and stingrays swimming around just in front of Howard.
I just thought I should warn them, even though heaps of people swim in those waters everyday without any incidents of shark attacks happening.
Then on Tuesday I see this story on the news -
Byron Bay shark attack: Swimmer dies at Clarkes Beach

"A 50-year-old local man has died after being attacked by a shark while swimming at a beach at Byron Bay in northern New South Wales.

Police said the man's wife was on the beach when he was bitten on the leg about 15 to 20 metres off the shore at Clarkes Beach about 10:45am (AEST) on Tuesday.
Beachgoer Mark Hickey pulled him from the water and onlookers unsuccessfully tried to resuscitate the man.
Mr Hickey said he initially thought the attack victim was a turtle.
"Then I looked closer and there was a lot of blood in the water and there was a shark circling, and I recognised that it was a person," he said.
 "I ran out to about chest-height in water and grabbed the guy and dragged him into the beach."
Mr Hickey said it appeared the man had bled to death in the water.
 "There was a big gash out of his right leg, above the knee," he said.
NSW Police Inspector Bobbie Cullen said the man's wife was on the beach at the time.
"Obviously the witnesses are extremely distressed," she said.
A spokesman for the ambulance service said it was likely the man went into cardiac arrest when he was in the water.
 He said lifeguards rarely saw sharks in the area.
But a senior lecturer in marine biology at Southern Cross University, Daniel Bucher, said there were currently many sharks in the area."

Oops! That should be spelled CLARKE'S Beach. My bad

These kinds of shark attacks are so rare
 that it made front page of the paper

Clarke's Beach is where I picked up the feather the day I had thrown my wedding ring in the ocean, which I wrote about in this post-
A White Feather on a Byron Beach?

Maybe the feather was a sign of what was going to happen on this beach in the not too distant future the week my English friends would walk on this beach, and another Englishman would tragically lose his life in a freak shark attack?

We had also had a 57 year old man killed by a very rare crocodile in Oz, not long before the shark attack took place.
Part-albino crocodile shot after fatal attack was '1-in-100-million rarity'

 "An albino-headed crocodile that killed a man fishing on a Territory river has been described by an expert as a one-in-100-million rarity.

The distinctive 4.5m saltwater crocodile - known locally as Michael Jackson - was hunted down and killed a few hours after the 57-year-old fisherman was taken when he ventured into the water to retrieve a snagged fishing line on Monday evening.
Its head was pale while the rest of its body was normal in colouring.
Crocodile researcher Dr Adam Britton said while albino crocodile hatchlings were not uncommon, for an animal to survive into adulthood was highly unusual.
"This croc's head was hypo-melanistic, which means less melanin, causing a tendency to blonde or yellow colouring."
Dr Britton said albino colourisation meant the animal "does not benefit from camouflage"."

Luckily the crocs at the wildlife sanctuary were behind fences.

The croc behind the fence at the
wildlife sanctuary on Saturday

I was daring PsoNik to run across this crocodile's pit for five bucks on Saturday, but he wouldn't be in it for some reason or other;-)
And then I see this story about a woman who kills herself five days later at a place like this in Thailand.
Thai woman kills herself by jumping into crocodile pit in Bangkok
" A Thai woman has committed suicide by leaping into a pond of crocodiles at a farm popular with tourists on Bangkok’s outskirts, police told AFP on Tuesday.
The 65-year-old woman reportedly took off her shoes and jumped from a resting point on the walkway into the middle of pond, which contains hundreds of adult crocodiles, Preecha Iam-nui of Samut Prakan police told AFP."
Then I see a link to this story when I'm reading about the lady who jumped into the croc pit - 
Monster croc snacks on surprised shark

Take that, Jaws?

"This large bull shark might have thought it was safe to go back in the water. But he didn’t count on Brutus, Adelaide River’s most famous and fearsome resident, who showed the shark who was the true king of the waterway.
Brutus, who is thought to be more than 80 years old, is also known for his missing front leg. The story goes that the limb was lost in a shark attack.
 Yesterday, in front of about 25 passengers on the regular 11am cruise, Brutus took his revenge. The moment was captured by Sydneysider Andrew Paice, who is travelling around Australia with his wife Nikki Beaumont and their daughter Madison, 6."

The feeding platform over the crocs
 at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary

The handlers at the sanctuary told us that crocs wouldn't attack humans if we were swimming in their water hole because of our size, but I somehow feel this was just a big load of croc after reading stories like this one and the other story above -
Alarming footage shows tourist stalked by crocodile in Mexican waters
"Bone-chilling footage has emerged of a tourist scrambling to swim back to shore while being stalked by a crocodile in Mexico.
The tourist is lucky to be alive, thanks to an helpful observer who intervened by throwing an object at the hungry American crocodile, who was just metres away from striking in the waters of Sian Ka’an."

My calendar hanging above my computer had this picture of an emu as this month's picture and I found this quite amusing as an emu took a fancy to PsoNik and started to stalk him in the sanctuary, but unfortunately I didn't get a photo of this happening on the day, so you will just have to take my word on this story.

Emus with baby emu at Currumbin
Wildlife Sanctuary on Saturday

Howard standing next to a
Big Red Kangaroo at Currumbin

Note to other Sync-heads, notice the two numbers that make up the postcode of the suburb the wildlife sanctuary is located in on the Gold Coast? 
 4223 (42/23) 
42, the answer to life the universe and everything, and the 23 enigma combined in on number.

On a personal note, the 23rd of September is my birthday, as well.
Spring Equinox in Oz.

A sculpture at the Currumbin wildlife
sanctuary I snapped on Saturday

Koala Dreamtime
I told PsoNik and Howard how the koala was natures stoner, always doped up on eucalyptus leaves, which is their major food source  
(click link to find out more on that topic).  

A mother and baby koala that
I snapped on my visit

While we were at the dingo enclosure a lady had her baby next to the fence and the dingo was sniffing at it.
I then told PsoNik and Howard about the case where a dingo was supposed to have run off with a baby in the outback years ago, and then the next morning (Sunday) I see this picture on the front page of the Brisbane newspaper -

Azaria Chamberlain’s half-sister Zahra training to be a dingo handler
"A DINGO took the sister she never knew but Zahra Chamberlain, 18, says she loves the native dogs and wants to protect them. 
The half-sister of Azaria Chamberlain – the nine-week-old baby snatched from her tent at Uluru in 1980 – has become a passionate dingo advocate and is training to be a dingo handler.
 The Year 12 student has been flying to Queensland from her home in Lake Macquarie, NSW, to support a dingo sanctuary.
Now she has spoken for the first time about her love of the species that father Michael and his first wife Lindy fought 32 years to prove was responsible for their baby’s death."

The sanctuary is famous for its lorikeets

A cassowary and a lorikeet at feeding time

The sanctuary is famous for the feeding of local lorikeets, in fact it used to be known as the Currumbin Bird Sanctuary, until it picked up all sorts of creatures and was renamed the 

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.
 I took Howard and PsoNik up to the cassowary enclosure to show them one of the weirdest birds to be found in Oz.
They are as big as emus but have big deadly feet, which is why visitors don't get to walk among them like you can with the emus.

The cassowarys were being feed when we got up to the enclosure and there was one lorikeet and a crow waiting to be feed as well.
 I consider the crow as my totem animal
The Crow: I Just Knew It
 and the lorikeet has played quite a bit as a sign in my life as well.

Rainbow Lorikeets on My Father-In-Law's Back Veranda

After Death Communication? Part 1
(Birds, Butterflies and Bows)
And on a strange note, on the way home at about halfway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast I saw for the first time in my life a lorikeet squashed all over Highway 1.
The only way I could recognize that it was a lorikeet was the colour of the feathers on the bitumen.
This seemed like a bad sign to me and I'm still wondering if it relates to a future event still to come into my life, or not.

PsoNik found another cassowary
in Sydney later on, too

Cassowary Dreaming?
PsoNik and Howard couldn't stay for the afternoon feeding of the lorikeets, as they had to be on their way for the long drive to  
Coff's Harbour, and we arrived too late for the morning feeding of the lorikeets.
So, it was a pity we missed out on what has been the highlight of the sanctuary for generations, but such is life I guess.

The statue PsoNik gave me sits
above my computer monitor now

When we parted ways in the early afternoon PsoNik gave me this weird Easter Island type statue with metal parts inside it to generate Orgone energy.

Goodbye tiger?

On Sunday, just before I set out to see Into the Storm at the cinema. 
PsoNik posted this photo of him running into a guy in a tiger suit in Sydney on his Facebook page, which set me off on the book and movie The Life of Pi.

Then to be funny I said "The Life of Pie?!
What did I eat for lunch on Saturday at the zoo?" 
and I sent him this picture of a guy in a boat eating pie.

Hiroshi Watanabe Sync
After all that I set off to the cinema only to do a double take and turn my car back round to go and take a picture of what I couldn't believe I just saw.

 An inflatable tiger slide someone had put up in their front yard for a kid's birthday party.

I had just finished reading Richard Clapton's book, 
The Best Years of Our Lives and I had been playing my favorite song of his (Deep Water) over and over while I had been reading it.

I decided to track down what album the song was off, and you'll never guess what it was called?
Goodbye Tiger!? 

Richard actually sang the song Goodbye Tiger the night I went to his talk in Byron Bay, the weekend of the Byron Writers Festival, but I never knew it was off the same album as the song I like the most of his, Deep Water. 

More Storm Syncs?

The double rainbow I snapped after a
storm leaving work today 25/9/14

Like I said, you just couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.

Oh ... one more thing.

I told PsoNik and Howard about seeing the movie A Trip to Italy with my brother down in Byron Bay the day I threw my wedding ring in the ocean
Love on the Rocks ... A Fool's Journey?
and how synchy I found it on the day, especially because it was about tracing Lord Byron's footsteps in Italy..

I told him it starred Steve Coogan and PsoNik told me Steve lives literally round the corner from where he lives in England.
Small world?

UPDATE: 27/9/2014
 WTF!? 
Good-bye Tiger? 
27?
The Life of Pi?  

27th of September?

A zoo in western Canada is mourning the loss of a rare Amur tiger after a staff blunder allowed the old cat to enter the cage and confront two younger felines.
"It is with great sadness that the Assiniboine Park Zoo announces that one of its Amur Tigers, Baikal, passed away," said a statement posted on the Winnipeg, Manitoba zoo's website overnight.
Baikal had entered a new tiger enclosure that housed two young male tigers, Samkha and Vasili. The brothers had been transferred from the Calgary Zoo to the Assininboine Park Zoo in January.
Officials said a gate had been "mistakenly left unlocked," allowing Baikal to pass through a corridor from his pen to the new enclosure.
"This resulted in a confrontation between Baikal and Vasili, one of the young tigers, that ultimately resulted in Baikal's death," the zoo said.
Amur tigers, also known as Siberian tigers, are one of the rarest sub-species of the endangered big cat.

Zoo visitors had not been put in any danger by the blunder, the zoo said. It is the second tiger death at the zoo in two years, according to Canada's public broadcaster CBC"
Rare tiger killed by other tigers in Canadian zoo