Magpies

Hello!

First of all, I want to say I feel super happy from all the warm messages I got telling me you liked my posts. It really helps to motivate me to keep writing 😍😍😍.

This week I am gonna take a short break from my Bali Story. I am gonna tell you about one of my first experiences in Australia, where I moved to one month ago.

A Picture

For starters, a little picture about the place I live in. It is a small rural town called Murray Bridge, about 70km from Adelaide. Australia is divided into 6 territories: Western Australia (WA), Northern Territory (NT), Queensland (QLD), New South Wales (NSW), Victoria (VIC) and South Australia (SA).

Adelaide is the capital of South Australia and one of the biggest cities here. SA is known for its wineyards. Areas like the Barossa Valley and Adelaide Hills produce some of the best wines in the whole Australia. The landscape is mainly composed of big hilly fields with some huge desert-like areas.

Because this is one of the first thing I noticed in here: everything is bigger in Australia. The roads are wide, distances endless and food rations are humongous (especially compared to Bali).

The Rural City Of Murray Bridge is a good example of this everything big feeling. MB is a town in the middle of this desert-like are. It reminds me a lot of Albuquerque, the New Mexico town featured in Breaking Bad.

Everyone seems to own giant houses and drives giant cars. There are no apartments: all houses. Big houses. The typical suburban neihborhoods like the one where the Simpsons live in Springfield.

Obviously there is more supply than demand of housing. This makes for extremely low prices. I have seen three bedroom houses for 120k AUD (1 AUD = 0.6 EUR). I am guessing prices are cheap because not many people want to actually move in here.

Why? Because honestly, not much is going on in this town. The population are mainly older and retired people. All small life happens near the river. Walking along the river or swimming in it in the summer. Murray Bridge has a famous rowing club which I am gonna try joining soon.

The quality of life, although boring, is high. Most people work in factories or in harvesting fruit and vegetables in the region. This and the fact most of the population is older makes for a super quiet town. During the day there are barely people walking outside. Everyone drives cars because the distances are huge.

My story happened in one of these still empty mornings...

Running and running

In one of my first mornings in MB I decided to go running. I wanted to run next to the river, I thought it would be nice. From my house to the Murray River there are 3km.

So I started running from my house. Sun was shining, sidewalk was perfect for my feet. People seemed surprised to see someone running! One girl said "Hi!" while another guy cheered me up "Come on!".

After five minutes I found my first obstacle. Because most people used cars, I realized what the sidewalk was mostly used for:

One. Two. Three. Four. A stream of seniors coming and going with these electric wheelchairs. And believe me, these fuckers go fast. The sidewalk was not runners' or walkers' territory: it was a circuit for wheelchair racers.

After having to step out of the sidewalk and almost being run over a few times, I got the message...

I finally reached the riverfront. Bordering the Murray River is the Sturt Reserve. Basically it is a huge park with benches to sit and watch the water pass by. It is also home to some restaurants and the aforementioned Rowing Club.

Running next to the river I saw two things that caught my eye: (asian) people fishing and birds. Lots of birds. Too many birds.

The Birds

I have rarely seen such variety of birds. I saw pigeons, seagulls, white and black swans, and even fucking pelicans chillin' in the river. Pretty nice sights while running I thought!

As I was jogging along, I realized the path ended and I was reaching the end of the park. There was only grass and huge trees. Some birds were also on those trees, but they were far up. I couldn't even see what kind of birds they were.

Turning back the path I came from, I heard some noise in the trees. Looking back, I saw a fucking bird twenty centimeters away from my face! Scared and surprised, I panicked. I sprinted as fast as I could.

Was that motherfucker attacking me?

Still jolted by this weird encounter I continued running. Thinking: what the fuck? Did he want to attack me? Why? What bird is that?

Lost in thought and with the adrenaline rushing, I felt a weird presence behind me. No. It can't be. Turn my head again: there he was. This time I clearly saw him trying to attack me with his open claws and coming closer and closer with his beek.

This shit was scary. It was not like in the movies where you hear the bird coming for you and the poor person screaming, maybe some dramatic music and some onlookers coming to help.

No.

All this happened in the most absolute silence. This flying bastard did not make a fucking sound. It was like a stealth combat plane...

Now I was on alert. Still running, I was turning my head every thirty seconds. This time I saw him coming. It was the same bird as the past two times. In five seconds he was again next to my head attacking me for a third time.

Luckily for me some car came from the opposite direction honking like crazy. This anonymous good samaritan scared the bird away from me. Laughing, I made him the (y) sign with my hand and smiled. He is still probably laughing while he tells the story to his relatives.

Back home, I could not stop thinking about this incident. As I got out from the shower a quick Google search gave me all the information I needed about these fuckers:

The Australian Magpies are hugely territorial birds and incredibly aggressive as well. Apparently I entered their nesting territory and one of them decided it was not OK and wanted to kill me. Fair enough.

Magpie attacks are a serious issue in Australia. There is even a website recording these kind of attacks.

This video is a good representation of how these attacks are:

As a goodbye note: next weekend is the AFL Final. West Coast Eagles vs. Collingwood.

You know what the Collingood team is called?

Collingwood Magpies!