Flat Stanley's Australian Adventure! Part 1: Flat Stanley Arrives

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Flat Stanley arrived at 51 Hibiscus Circuit in Fitzgibbon, a northern suburb of Brisbane, Australia on the 13th of October. His trip, as far as we could tell, took about 4 days. At least, there was a postmark on his envelope for October 9. Stanley was in good spirits and eager to see the land “down under”.

Flat Stanley was greeted by Ann and Kevin. They knew he was coming but they didn’t know when – or there would have been a party. As it was, they all had supper then Stanley and Zelda took naps while Ann and Kevin did the dishes and discussed what they would do with Stanley.

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“’Stan the Man’ should go to work with us,” Ann said. “It is either that or spend his days at home with Zelda. She’s getting too old to play ball all day. She depends on at least 20 hours of sleep.”

“Yes,” replied Kevin as he reached down and rubbed Zelda’s tummy. She rolled over and let her tongue fall out to the left. “But, we’ll take him to see the sights around Brisbane on the weekend. It is too bad that he isn’t able to stay longer or he could have gone with us to Sydney, too.”

So, Ann took Stanley to work with her. Ann is a veterinarian. She takes care of dogs mostly, and some cats, and every once in a while there’s a rat or a mouse or an injured or lost bird. Stanley particularly enjoyed playing with the puppies

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and feeding the tawny frogmouth chick that had fallen from his nest.

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Ann also took Stanley to visit Kevin at his work. Kevin works in a big office building in the Central Business District of Brisbane.

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All the cool people call this the “CBD”. He is a teacher – a teacher of adults who want to learn more about computers. Stanley played online for a time,

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but was happy to leave with Ann to walk up to the Queen Street Mall. Ann had to go into the city to get her hair cut – so Stanley got to see a bit of the city.

Ann and Stanley stopped in at Border’s Bookstore. “It’s just like being at home!” Stanley exclaimed. “Yes, but look at this,” Ann said and pulled out a book and pointed to the funny words – like tyre (tire) and kerb (curb) and torch (flashlight) and lift (elevator). “Australians speak English like Americans, but they have different ways of saying words (different accents), different spellings of common words, and different names for common things.”

“But, you don’t sound funny,” Stanley said.

“No. Kevin and I moved here from Ohio, too. We used to live in Cleveland.”

Stanley smiled. He knew about Cleveland.

Ann then took Stanley to City Hall

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where they visited the Museum of Brisbane and the museum store to pick up some postcards to take home.

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