Mandy Herriot, Phil Ware. My new best friends. Altona, a western suburb of Melbourne. 21 kinds of birds in one day. Cannot make image links to all. Here is list.

Galah
Black Swan
Chestnut Teal
Pied Cormorant
Australian Pelican
Crested Pigeon
Willie Wagtail
Sacred Ibis
White-Faced Heron
Marsh Sandpiper
Variegated Fairy-Wren
***ROYAL SPOONBILL***
Dusky Moorhen
Purple Swamphen
Black-Winged Stilt
Pacific Gull
New Holland Honeyeater
Hoary-Headed Grebe
Pacific Black Duck
Great Egret (not quite the same as ours)
Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo

My Guest of Honor speech/reading SRO. "The Heart of New Orleans" reads well, I think.

Also, chocolate-chili-flavored Tim Tams.

(5:39 PM Melbourne time)

... here's the text of my GoH speech, more or less:

( With apologies to Garland Robinette )

And then I read "The Heart of New Orleans."

(11:42 PM Melbourne time)

Continuum 3 probably the nicest and most tolerable convention I've ever been to. I can't help contrasting it to the last, awful U.S. conventions I attended in the mid-'90s, where guys in homemade Stephen King T-shirts and ill-considered facial hair sat in the bar sneering about how goths and homosexuals were ruining horror. Well, I'll never have to see a single one of those pinheads again, but I'd be pleased to return to Australia and see beautiful young (and old) people who adore me. It's much better for the ego. It was also wonderful to see Neil, who's one of those rare friends I can just pick up and feel totally comfortable with even when we haven't seen each other for years.

Tomorrow morning I leave for Cassowary House, where I'm not sure how the Internet connection will be. "Talk" to you when possible.