Moving seaward silently, at a snail's pace

I really need to begin this post with a piece of news from the Sydney Weekend Telegraph. It's about a week old, but you might be interested.

"Three strange shapes (pictured here), viewed at Shelly Beach, Manly last weekend, have still to be positively identified. Seemingly human-like, they shocked local residents who were out enjoying the unseasonal winter sunshine.

"At first glance," said Tommo 'Schooner' Riley, veteran sticky-beak, " they looked just like you and me, but when you got closer, Jeez."

This reporter pressed Mister Riley for more information - What were they, mate - mermaids, dragons, ghosts?
"Nothing at all like that, blue," insisted Mr Riley, adding that they seemed to be a queer sort of
mongrel he'd never seen before, not even on TV!
"Not true blue at all," he said.
Despite the growing crowd, nobody who was present is able to agree on a clear description of the creepy creatures, though all agreed that each one was different from the others even though they all moved together.
"Marvellous to look at," said Mrs Kazza Bungle, a Cabbage Tree Bay sunnie entrepreneur.
Asked to describe just one of them, Mrs Bungle's reply was a chilling,
'It's beyond me, darling.'
Others, though, were more forthcoming. Ibrahim Boticelli, proprietor of the nearby Bella Kebab Hot Ice Cream restaurant said,
"It was a Saturday, so there were a lot of people around to see the things. It was warm, too, for July, and business was slow because nobody wants to buy our tasty gelato and red onion pitta-pockets when the sun shines. I remember that the three things moved down the beach slowly - all together, though - and went into the sea, you know, carefully."
When quizzed as to whetheri anybody tried to talk with them, or if the creatures talked among themselves, Mr Boticelli became definite.
No, he said, they didn't talk, but the noises they made were not disturbing, more like muffled squeals, particularly as they moved towards the deeper water."

What do you think?

I'm interested because Faith, George and I went snorkelling in Manly the same weekend and we didn't see anything strange. Maryam stayed on the beach, too, but even she missed the spectacle! Faith's had a lifelong fear of putting her face underwater, so it was a real surprise to turn around and see her paddling about with us. She'd been so thrilled to see fishes swimming about at her feet that she braved all and found that snorkelling is not at all like trying to keep on your feet and in your depth. Now, there's no holding her back. We've had to go on a trip to the Sydney Aquarium to identify what we saw - mostly Gropers, Leatherjackets and Toadfish - and she can't wait to go back to Shelly Beach at least once more before we leave Sydney for the much less marine Alice Springs (though I did suggest that she could try snorkelling in the Todd River).

Our next adventure is an excursion to Parkes to see THE DISH. George has gone on ahead to do his stint searching the sky for pulsars, but he reports that there are lots of dead kangaroos along the road. This is a worry because I've just read the following report on the MSN (Au) website:

SYDNEY, Australia - Forget cute, cuddly marsupials. Paleontologists say they have found the remains of a fanged killer kangaroo and what they describe as a "demon duck of doom."
Professor Michael Archer said Wednesday that the remains of a meat-eating kangaroo with wolflike fangs were found, as well as a galloping kangaroo with long forearms that could not hop like a modern kangaroo.
"Because they didn't hop, these were galloping kangaroos, with big, powerful forelimbs. Some of them had long canines (fangs) like wolves," Archer told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.The species found had "well muscled-in teeth, not for grazing. These things had slicing crests that could have crunched through bone and sliced off flesh," Hand said.

The team also found large ducklike birds.

"Very big birds ... more like ducks, earned the name 'demon duck of doom', some at least may have been carnivorous as well," Hand told ABC radio.

Let's hope that the demon ducks and the killer kangaroos fight it out among themselves and leave us timid travellers to slip across the Woop Woop unnoticed.

Finally, the Mexicans have arrived in town, by way of this splendid tall ship here, called Cuautemoc. By chance, we were there to see them tie up and make fast, which they did to rousing Latin American music. Maryam shyly waved at one of the matelots, who was reefing a capstan or splicing a yarn or some such task, and got a flashing smile in return. Since then we've seen groups of the crew wandering about in the city in immaculate nautical uniform and Faith and Maryam have needed to be physically restrained on a number of occasions.