Our Local Environment: Stonington, Connecticut

Dear Mr. Salsich’s class,

I found your video fascinating. The Atlantic Ocean is certainly quite a distance from where I am but we do have some similarities.

The town I live in, Merimbula, is a coastal tourist town half way along the coast between Sydney and Melbourne. It is popular with tourists from the state of Victoria. Perhaps some of 2KJ and 2KM have visited here during their holiday break.

Between south-eastern Australia and New Zealand, we have the Tasman Sea. Because of where my town lies, if we were to take a boat due east we would just miss the top of New Zealand and end up in the South Pacific Ocean.

Like you, our town can get pretty hot in the summer. We also have swimming, fishing and boating plus surfers like to catch the waves.

Around my town there are three national parks and a nature reserve. This allows for hikers like me to get out in the open and enjoy being away from cars and crowds. On my regular walks, I often see kangaroos, wallabies, and parrots. Sometimes I see wombats and lyrebirds plus the occasional snakes (yes they are poisonous so I leave them alone).

Mystic sounds very interesting. In the next big town south from here, Eden, there is a large bay where the fishing boats moor. It was once a whaling town and now has a museum to show the town’s history.

Whales can sometimes be seen in the Twofold Bay. When they come, a siren is sounded so people can come to look. The most regular whales are humpback whales which migrate north to have their young in winter and back to Antarctic waters for summer. Orcas also are in our area and are known to hunt the humpback and other whales.

Mystic has an ice cream shop? We do too. My favourite flavour is macadamia. The macadamia nut is native to Australia although it is grown widely in Hawaii too.

Our seasons tend to be milder than yours. Summers can be very hot with temperatures over 100F (38C) at times. In winter, it can get very cool. I sometimes wake up to see the sports ground across the road from me covered in frost but we don’t get snow in this town.

Most Australian trees are evergreen and don’t lose their leaves in autumn but we have introduced trees which do. In my yard is a Japanese maple. It’s green now as we are nearing summer but in autumn, the leaves change red and golden colours before falling.

I like the stone walls. They are interesting. We don’t have any here. We do have places where there are traces of where the Yuin people lived their traditional lives before the coming of Europeans. Their culture is one of over 200 Aboriginal cultures that once existed here. Unfortunately some of the cultures have been lost forever but the Yuin language is still strong around here.

I have had family in this area since 1847 when my ancestors on my mother’s side first migrated here from Scotland. My father’s side of the family had arrived as settlers in the 1800s but they had settled around Sydney.

Yes, there is a convict in my family tree. He was sent to Australia from England because he had been found guilty of stealing. He arrived on the second fleet of ships in 1789. He, unlike most convicts, could read, write and do arithmetic so he was given an office job. On completing his seven years, he was given land, something he would never have had in England so, in that way, crime did pay.

Sorry for such a long comment but I found your video very interesting.

Ross Mannell (teacher)
NSW, Australia