Going slowly

It is about time I posted something although I have not gone anywhere interesting for a while. Here are a few photos from a recent foray into the bush behind my house.


Frog


Australian Brush-Turkey (Alectura lathami)


Bossiaea obcordata a very elegant member of Fabaceae.


Thelymitra ixioides

In non-wildlife related matters the garden is progressing despite the weather's and the wildlife's best efforts to exterminate it, and already managed to produce some corn leeks and tomatoes.

Family visit

Back in September my sister and her family came to visit.


Claire teaching her cousin to read.

Since we had some time to kill, it was decided (not by me) that we would go for a harbour cruise to look at the navy 100 year review. It was rather crowded in sydney but we eventually made it to the wharf after a quick stop in the museum of contemporary art to see some dirt in large steel containers and what every else passes for art these days. I guess you get what you pay for and the museum is free. After that it was just an hour and a half of chaotic queing in the hot sand and we were off on the cruise just a mere hour after it was meant to leave.


Hoards of peasant teaming on the steps.


Rusty boat


One of Australia's many non-operational underwater tubes.


Unimpressed


Way more impressed with some seaweed.

Wandering in the trees

Claire and I went for another walk/picnic along the Benowie walking track.

As always there was plenty to see, both flora and fauna.




Isopogon anethifolius


Lewin's Honeyeater


White-naped Honeyeater

Getting fatter

A much enlarged baby at 2 and a bit months old. Thought I would try out the tripod I got for my birthday as well, the photo is still blurry though showing that tripods don't help that much when the subject is moving.

Froggy

This little bloke was hopping across the lawn the other day. There are also some tiny brown frogs around from time to time but I have not managed to get a decent photo of them yet. The blue tongue has also been back a few times which is nice, and sadly so has the possum to eat my vegetables which is not so good.


Litoria phyllochroa

Disgusting creatures

A friend of the family chainsawed up the stump of the tree that was remaining. That just left some rather large sections to be split up. One of the sections was comprised of two trunks which had become fused together as the tree grew. When I split this it was strangely full of massive leeches that were hibernating there. At the time I thought I had managed to dodge all of the vile creatures but one of them must have been attached to my shoe and when I put it on again a few days later and then spent a day gardening I did not notice it. However later that night I was reading a book to Claire and lying on top of her bed and when I got off there was a monstrous leech that was bloated with my blood.


Technique leaves a little to be desired.


It was at least as long as your forearm if my memory of the horrid thing remains intact.

Alexander

Another financial burden has appeared.

This one was a little heavier at least but still over 1.5 kg lighter than his cousin whom is nearly a month younger.

Animals in the garden

The garden is slowly getting better and the weeds are being eradicated although it will be along time until they are all gone. There is plenty of wildlife still but I need to get some more bushy shrubs into provide some more habitat now that most of the weeds that were the previous groundcover has been eradicated.


A Kookaburra on a Acacia implexa.


A pretty good sized huntsman on some Livistona australis.


A blue-tongue in some weeds.

Ow

The mother in law dropped her on the bath. Luckily she has a hard head so did not break any bones.

Iain and Emily's wedding

It was the only day of really good weather on the entire trip and luckily it was also the day of the wedding. It started off with a beautiful frosty morning and with it being autumn Arrowtown was looking its best.



The church was also very nice, I was most impressed with the two very large redwoods out the front of it.





The wedding itself was very good and the bride and groom did a great job remembering their vows. The reception was also a top notch affair as it was in millbrook resort.

Ben Lomond

The day after going over sugarloaf pass, Gemma was in town and up for a walk. I was undecided on what to do, but since I was in Queenstown and had not done a lot of walks in the area as I had always considered it an overcrowded, tourist riddled hellhole, though it might be time to try some of them out. One of the longer day walks there id the trip up to the summit of Ben Lomond and since the start of the track was right next to Gemmas hotel we decided to give that a go. I was soon regreeting it though as the track initially goes through a lot of really ugly douglas fir forest. It then opens out on to a very well worn track above the forest, but since sheep are grased on this land in the summer it is also pretty ugly. There were also quite a fer goats around to add to the ugliness. To make things worse it was cold with a lot of low cloud and we could not see anything, and I was starting to worry that I would be wasting Gemmas only free day in NZ by taking her on a horrifically ugly walk. Luckily though a bit higher up we broke through the clouds and were greeted with a lovely vista of mountains, which made it all worthwhile. It is so much nicer when you are on the top of the mountain with cloud below you and all you can see is other peaks sticking out.


Speargrass, a plant that lives up to it's name.


Schist


Above the clouds.


Bit chillier than Sydney, a lot prettier too.


The summit was a nice place to have lunch.


A friendly guest on top of the summit.




Filthy animals


Filthy trees

Sugarloaf Pass

This is a pass that I have always wanted to do but had never had the opportunity. We skipped it on the way to the Olivine Ice plateau many years ago as the weather was atrocious and we wanted to avoid some river crossings. Having now done it in the rain we probably would have been alright but going up the rockburn instead that time we managed to see some blue ducks and that is the only time I have been lucky enough to see them so it was a good decision in the end. None the less it meant that it was something that was certainly outstanding on my list of things to do and since I had a day to myself even though the weather was bad it was well worth it. The DOC website has some more information on it if you want to do the walk although I would caution that there are a lot of beach roots to scramble over on the walk. Also I would like to thank the two lovely ladies from DOC who gave me a lift up the road from the lake sylvan carpark to the routeburn carpark when I was throughly drenched after walking in the rain for 8 hours.


South Island Robin (Petroica australis australis)

The wildlife is a lot better than I remember it and certainly there were plenty of traps about to kill off any mustelids that might be about, which was great to see.


I'd missed my mossy nothofagus.


There was not a lot to see on top of the pass unless you have a fascination for wet tussock.


Pretty waterfall.


More moss and lichen.


Lake sylvan


You could just about see some mountains.

Pesky critter

Along with magpies, noisy miners, kookaburras and the odd pied butcher bird these are the most common visitors to our garden. This one wanted a few grapes that I was eating.




Rainbow Lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus)

A little home maintenence

Have been very slowly getting the garden into shape. There is a little bit of bush at the back with a few nice blackbutt trees and a few manky wattles, which was infested with camphor laurel, loquat, privet, cassia, cotoneaster, Ochna serrulata and oleander and many other weeds particularly small groundcovers, grasses and vines. I have mostly got on top of the weeds now but it was a spectacular collection. I have also finally put in a few garden beds and a compost heap that took an embarrassingly long time to build.



There was also a hideous large gymnosperm outside the front of the house which while it provided a nice screen of the neighbours house was very large and for some reason I had always hated it. Mostly because it was not native and did not provide overly good habitat for the local fauna. Anyway after 4 days of sawing with my little handsaw I have finally managed to reduce it to a rather large stump.





The hard part was getting it to fall in the right direction as I did not want to squish the neighbours house. The top was easy enough as you could cut sections of the many trunks down and push them in the right direction as long as they were small enough. However it got considerably harder closer to the ground.


Finally mostly gone.