Leeches

We went for another walk in the royal on the weekend but did not have much time as we had to do some tilling in the bathroom. Therefore we chose to do the forest loop walk, which is at one end of the lady carrington drive. I have done it a few other times and do remember there being a few leeches on previous occasions but not as bad as it was this weekend. Still although I got about 20 on my shoes they were not quick enough to draw blood, although they were successful with my walking companion. On the other hand I did manage to get bitten between the shoulder blades by a bull ant.

Wandering in the Royal

Sunday was hot and I was sporting a headache so we decided to go for a walk along lady Carrington drive. The birds and reptiles were out in abundance and a light coloured goshawk even flew over but did not linger long enough for me to confirm the identity.


Golden Whistler


Variegated Fairy-wren

Long weekend holiday

Adelle and I decided to take an extra two days off over the long weekend and go on a road trip.

On the first day we drove to Willie Retreat in the Macquarie Marshes. It was a nine hour drive which is quite reasonable by Australian standards and leaving Sydney is always a pleasant experience. I had been to willie retreat before but it was in winter so didn't previously get to experience the green tree frogs and geckos.







The next day we went to Gundabooka NP where we met up with Allan and Gemma. Lots of birds were seen with the highlights for me at least being the crimson chat, crested bellbird and the chestnut-breasted quail-thrush.


Gundabooka, it a nice walk from the look out to the top of this and back provided you have a compass and a spare day.


Lots of Shinglebacks about as well as bearded dragons.


Traumatising lizards

Still next time we go I'll make sure I take a few extra days off as 1,950 km in five days is a little bit too far.


Living the dream.

Lots more photos can be found here.

Cycle Sydney

Adelle I and 10,000 or so other punter did the Sydney spring cycle on the weekend.

It went well and despite having a gammy knee seemed easier than previous years. I also cycled home afterwards while Adelle got the train and despite taking it very easy at just over an hour to cycle home I still managed to beet Sydney's public transportation system quite easily.

Cape soleander

Managed to cycle from Marrickville to Cape Soleander and back on Saturday. Did not see any particularly interesting birds unfotunately but it was a reasonable ride none the less at just under 70 km. Which is next to nothing by Tour de France standards where most of the stages are nearly 200km long but it is a start and should help prepare us for the cycle Sydney which takes place on Sunday.

Barren Grounds

I went for a nice walk in the Barren Grounds Nature Reserve on the weekend. The park is very nice and rarely has an over-abundance of annoying tourists.



Also being spring the wild flowers were out.




I did the Griffiths trail and Kangaroo ridge walk which combine for a nice 20 km outing, but with wide grassy tracks where you only need to look down when snakes move from just in front of your feet it was a pleasant day out. That is if you don't count the 4 hours spent driving there and back.



Also to top it off I managed to flush 2 ground parrots (on the kangaroo ridge walk section) and got a photo of one, although it is a pretty poor photo as I lack the power of the bigma.

Yet again to the capertee

We hadn't been camping for a while so it was decided that it was time to go to the capertee again.
Escaped from Sydney prior to rush hour which was good as some less fortunate people got stuck on paramatta road for an hour or even took a tour of bilpin courtesy of their tomtom.



We even had a display of what passes for winter in Australia with frost early in the morning. Mind you it still got into the high 20s during the day.






Would have been a nice photo if it wasn't for the twig blocking part of the shot.

Cycling

We have been doing quite a bit of cycling recently due to Adelle purchasing a new bike.
A few weeks ago we cycled from Marrickville to Sydney Olympic park and back and then last weekend we went from Marrickville to nearly Kurnell and back.

Got married

Thought I better throw in a token post.



Unfortunately any photos involving "crowns" have been permanently misplaced.

Honeymoon part XII

The final part of the honeymoon saga.
After spending most of the first day at Uluru it was time to visit the Olgas/Kata Tjuta.
The olgas are a great place and have a reasonably good walk called the valley of the winds which is well worth doing.

From Honeymoon

There were even wild flowers.

From Honeymoon

The rock was also a nice solid conglomerate unlike the flakey stuff on Uluru, would be quite good for climbing although rather unprotectable short of wacking a few good bolts in.

From Honeymoon

Keen tramper.

From Honeymoon

Some valley of the winds scenery.

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

Honeymoon part XI

The saga continues with more photos of Uluru.

These were hard to get as I had a 70-200 lens on a 1.6x body so that I could only fit half of it in from the sunset viewing location.
Luckily I found a good programme on Linux that makes it easy to join it all together.

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

After the rain there was a nice sunset.

From Honeymoon

Honeymoon part X

When we finally made it to Uluru it was raining rather heavily which turned out to be a good thind as that way we got to see the waterfalls running down it.

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

Honeymoon part IX

Even more pictures of things seen around kings canyon and on the way to Uluru.

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

Desert Oak

From Honeymoon

Black breasted buzzard

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

Mt conner

From Honeymoon

Honeymoon part VIII

Even more Kings Canyon since I could not fit it all in the first post.

From Honeymoon

Western bowerbird with bower, seen near the garden of eden on the rim walk.

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

Spinifex

Honeymoon part VII

Kings canyon was the next destination. It has some great sites but unfortunately like 99% of the outback every second stone is sacred which means the areas that the public are allowed to go are very limited.

From Honeymoon

Crater rim walk.

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon

There were flocks of spinifex pigeons everywhere, quite lovely birds actually.

From Honeymoon

From Honeymoon