Clovelly Bay down under

After the dry outback it was time again to find the tight-tight speedos and get wet. The walk towards the Clovelly carpark didn't exactly make me or Yiing, who I picked up at the busstop, believe that we were going to have a blast of a dive: The water was rough, it nearly started raining and a good wind blew from the East - Like a Danish summer day except for the direction of the wind.
Luckily, Clovelly pool was close by, when there is a low tide the partly man-made bay is very well protected from the surf and despite looking a bit cold it was definitely our best option. Down under the surface it was absolutely amazing; it looked like all the fish had gone for refuge in the bay as well and with very clear water I was able to take some great pictures ... until the battery ran out of juice.

From Clovelly Bay 18-04-2009

It was my first sighting of Moorish Idol here in Sydney and also a Numbfish was new to the list, however the sighting of the numbfish was a slightly sad story, it had died from trying to eat a Three-bar Porcupinefish killing both of them in the process.
Please feel free to take a look at all the pictures in my Picasa album:

Clovelly Bay 18-04-2009

Big Easter - Mungo and Hattah-Kulkyne

5 Days, 2 National Parks, 2380 Kilometers and 1300 photos, what a Easter :-)
Taking advantage of the long Easter weekend Gemma and I snuck out of Sydney Wednesday evening straight after work, trying to beat the Easter-traffic-mayhem expected to hit Sydney roads the following day.
What a great idea! We had an absolute amazing Easter with excellent camping, stunning wildlife and a lot of CousCous meals.
I had hoped for lots of reptile action in the dry end of NSW unfortunately we saw very little of such, instead there were a lot of annoying birds around, I noticed a few that I don't see around Coogee, including;
Major Mitchell's Cockatoo
Regent Parrot
Blue Bonnet
Bourke's Parrot
Chestnut-crowned Babbler
Gilbert's Whistler
And the various Thornbills, a Whiteface, wrens (not the Mallee-emu), Honeyeaters, Robins, chats and predators that like the dryness. All in all there were probably up towards 30 birds that I haven't seen before, but who is counting ... ;-)

At the moment I am trying to select the better pictures and will eventually put a couple of albums up on my Picasa account, you are obviously very welcome to take a look when that happens. Here is a few "teasers";

Edit: The pictures are now up on my picasa account, please feel free to take a look:
Mungo NP:

Mungo National Park 2009

Hattah-Kulkyne NP:

Hattah-Kulkyne National Park 2009