Wattamolla

On the weekend Allan, Adelle and I went for a we stroll in the Royal. We started at wattamolla beach and headed south to a lovely rock pool and waterfall that is a few hundred meters up Curracurrong creek.


There were plenty of large eastern water-dragons around.


This one was quite friendly or thought it had found a giant grub to eat.


The waterfall.


Yabbie

Bees

Had a few native bees on the feeble collection of weeds that grow on the balcony. Better than caterpillars at least.

Marley track

I did the Marley track twice last month once with Allan and once with Adelle, but it is a nice little walk so well worth the repeat. Deer pool would also be worth a visit in the warmer months.

Spotted Pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus)


White's Skink (Egernia whitii)

Shanes park bogan retreat

Iain keeps dragging me out to Shane's park so often that I am getting the impression he like the place. Sadly we didn't do very well there as far as birds are concerned but that may have been due to the large number of people riding around on motorbikes.

Magnificently feral

Perrys lookdown

Perrys lookdown is well renowned as a good place to stretch the legs so a fews weeks back in some reasonably mild weather Allan and I went went for a wander up and down it.
Didn't see much in the way of wildlife but there were plenty of other punters out for a brisk stroll.

Hamilton Island

Adelle and I went to Ojia's and Adam's wedding a few weeks ago on Hamilton island. The island is quite developed but there was still some wildlife left in places and we managed to see a green turtle, a monitor, a green tree snake a few birds, some live coral and a heck of a lot of dead coral. There were also golf buggies to drive around the island but unfortunately ours malfunctioned so we spent most of the time walking.

Orange-footed scrubfowl are timid little buggers.


A considerably friendlier Helmeted Friarbird (Philemon buceroides)


Green tree Snake (Dendrelaphis punctulata)

Mt Banks

Adelle, Bill, Allan and I went for a lovely walk in the blue mountains a few weeks back. After considerable deliberation on the way up we decided to go to Mt Banks which turned out to be one of the best walks that I have done in the blue mountains.

The view from the top of the mountain is not that spectacular but it is possible to walk round to the cliffs overlooking the grosse valley and get some good views back towards Blackheath and down the grosse valley.




Chestnit-rumped heathwren

Barren Grounds

Went to barren grounds nature reserve for what wil probably be the last time as Allan finally managed to see the ground parrot. Sadly I didn't get any good photos of the parrot but did get a reasonable one of the beautiful firetail.

Whale watching

Twice a year the whales migrate past Sydney and put on quite a good display. We decided to go to kurnell and have a look. There were a few hundred other punters there but the vast majority stayed within 50 m of their cars so the cliffs were pretty quiet which meant we could do a bit of bird watching as well. In the end we saw 2 or 3 humpback whales and more importantly a magnificent male southern emu wren.


Humpback whale

Barrington Tops National Park

Over the long weekend last month, Allan, Gemma, Adelle and I headed up to Barrington Tops National Park. Despite the cold the Polblue camp ground was reasonably crowded with large 4WD vehicles and there unique occupants.


It was also rather cold for most of the days we were there and when it was it was not cold it was raining so it reminded me of home which was nice.

Just to prove it does snow in Australia.

Wildlife was pretty sparse and you probably could have counted all the animals we saw in the national part on your fingers. On the drive out we saw quite a bit more with lots of kangaroos in the fields. We were lucky enough to see some horses in the park.


Not bad for a feral animal.

Wentworth falls - National Pass

A few weeks back my parents visited so I decided to do a walk which Allan had be talking about for a while. The weather had been rather wet for the preceding week or so which meant for the first time since I arrived in Australia that when I went to see a waterfall there was actually water falling rather just a couple of stagnant pools. Just to prove the point for the doubtful septics here is some photographic evidence.

There were also some nice steps for the punters to enjoy.

A few birds were seen along the way as well including this extremely friendly rockwarbler, which despite it practically landing on my foot I still struggled to get a photo of.

Enjoying the weather in the yengo

After considerable effort I managed to convince Allan, Gemma, Iain, Emily and Adelle that a weekend in the Yengo NP would be worth the trip out there. People in Australia don't seem to like going out in the rain for some reason. Turned out to be pretty reasonable weather in the end and a few nice birds were about but the only nocturnal wildlife consisted of one frog.

Olympic park again

A quick wander around Olympic park a month ago produced spectacularly little.


This eel was rather friendly though.

Kayaking

We went for a kayak a couple of weekends ago in Bundeena with my father. Saw a hobby which was good as it was about time. Also got some very good views of an azure kingfisher.

Climbing at Mt York

Making the most of the Monday public holiday over Anzac weekend Adelle and I went for a climb at Mt York. It had been a while but I eventually remembered how too lead and managed to get up 5 climbs, albeit rather short ones.


The obligatory arse shot.

Box

I measured the box and it came to a glorious 55 m2. Not too bad for a peasant like me but it would be nice to have something a little larger. Sadly everything in my price range tends to be one and a half hours commute from work such as this gem. Might just have to wait till the market collapses or just move back to NZ.

Leechey Easter

Over Easter Adelle and I decided to do a three day walk in the blue mountains. Sadly with the first 4 hours being a leechey, nettley hell my keen tramping partner became phenomenally less enthusiastic. Mind you the leeches were considerably worse than I have ever encountered before with half a dozen crawling over your shoes at any moment and a bit of blood was lost. Therefore, we decided to cut out a day and just camped at frying pan flat. The next day we pushed out to the end of breakfast creek passing some confused punters that thought they were walking down the Cox's river and headed up ironmonger spur and out, stopping only to fall over a few times.

We jaunt in the royal

Making the most of our annual pass it was decided that we should go for a we walk in the royal a few weeks back. With Bill, Allan and Adelle along it was a pretty good turnout. We went from the forest path car park at one end of Lady Carrington drive up the couranga track to where it meets the uloola track near waterfall and then followed that down to Audley for a few Ice blocks to stave off the hot conditions before wandering back up Lady Carrington drive to the car. The wildlife was quite sparse but otherwise it was not a bad walk.

Forest loop again

Went for a week walk around the forest loop last weekend with Adelle, Ruth and Nicola. There was not much wildlife about so we spent most of the time getting attacked by leeches and clambering over rocks and logs.

Barren

Allan and went for a wander around the Barren grounds nature reserve on Sunday. The weather was perfect with low cloud enveloping the reserve ensuring it was nice and cool and allowing us to do a 20 km walk without the threat of heat stroke.

Sadly the only things we saw were a few tadpoles and a bassian thrush.


Christmas Bell

Too hot in the Royal

My brother and his family drove up from Melbourne a few weeks ago for a quick visit on their way up to Queensland for a holiday.

Sadly while they were here the weather was horribly hot and sticky but we did go for a picnic in the Royal National park and then did quite badly at trying to find a beach.

South

Over the Australia day long weekend (it was a long weekend if you took the Monday off) Allan, Gemma, Adelle and I went down to the Ben Boyd national park for a few days followed by a night at Kosciuszko National Park.

The campsite at Ben Boyd was very nice and although it was full the people there were all pretty quiet.



Ben Boyd

Kosciuszko NP on the other hand was possibly a little more scenic but as people had mentioned previously it is utterly devoid of wildlife.


It is the slight bump in the center of the photo.

Birdperving in the heat

On Saturday morning most of us were ready to go at the relatively keen hour of 8:00 am.
First up on the list of places was windsor downs, where looking at the oversized houses provided significantly better entertainment than looking at the birds. Mostly because there were no birds to see, it was also starting to get rather hot.
Next we went to Bushell's lagoon and didn't see the grey plover or wandering whistling ducks. But did see a nice cuckoo and plenty of mud. Sadly there were no snakes about, but maybe it was the wrong time of the day.
After that it was off to pitt town lagoon for another failure and more wandering through long grass hoping not to get bitten by a snake.
Lastly we popped in to scheyville NP where we mostly saw a lot of country folk (euphemism for bogans) disobeying the park rules.

Christmas in NZ

Adelle and I spent Christmas and new years in NZ over the holidays and it was lovely with nice mild temperatures and very little time spent in the city.


Christmas at Nana's.


Raglan's new years parade. It was substantially better than standing amongst the sleazy sweaty throngs of subhumans in Sydney in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the spectacular waste of money that is the fireworks on the harbour bridge.

As usual there was plenty of things happening on the farm to keep one busy.




We were also kept busy horse riding, birdwatching, go karting, site seeing and fishing.











For more photos please see this link.