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.