Where the kangaroos come down to drink

I ate lunch with Kyle today. He is a designer I know from my two years in Australia. He kept a surfboard in the back of his car, and would surf before work.

After we'd caught up, he began talking about architecture, how he wanted to build his dad a house.

"My dad's got this bit of land out near Mudgee," said Kyle, drawing with a designer's ease on the whiteboard. "It's quite good -- gum trees, wombat holes everywhere, and a bit of river where the kangaroos come down to drink." The house had an outdoor fireplace, glass walls, and a roof like gull's wings.

"Draw a kangaroo," I said.

He drew a little kangaroo, like most people draw a house, the skill preserved whole from childhood. "I couldn't draw these even as a kid," he said, beginning with the leg and adding a long tail. "I could only draw the back end, and then I had to add the top." He drew the kangaroo leaned forward, doe-ears up, arms bent, ready to drink.

He spoke of kangaroos and wombats the way I talk about deer and raccoons -- as regular, familiar animals.

I played on the Nullaburra ice hockey team. In a particularly random bit of trivia, I am a New South Wales State Champion. My coach was the zookeeper of walruses and seals at the Sydney Zoo. He took me on in once, and let me pet the walruses. On the way, we stopped in a small staff room, in between zoo exhibits. It was a plain room, with a couple desks and cupboards. But overhead, the space had been filled with a maze of home-made square tunnels, crisscrossing the ceiling and lapping over itself.

"Those are for the platties," he said. "They like their bit of tunnel." The zookeepers had noticed that the platypusses were shy, and preferred a place to hide. So in their spare time, they had built this whole bunch of tunnels -- which would never be seen by the public, and through which no one could see the animals -- just because, "The platties like their bit of tunnel."