Final Perth Post - A Farewell With A Walk And A Sunset

The sneaky long weekend escape to Perth was coming to an end, what a great holiday! Before getting airborne our fast walking hosts invited us onto another great walk along the river.

The target of our march was Tranby House, Peninsula Farm, a historic farm cottage established by the Hardey family, who had departed England and arriving in the little township of Perth 1830 to start a new life. The house was named after the ship - the Tranby - that had brought them halfway around the world. It seems the lure of water views existed even in those days or floods were more severe(?), the Hardey family had to rebuild their farm twice loosing the first two attempts to the river. The 3rd house finished in 1839 and is the one still standing there today.

Wildlife along the river included many of the expected water loving species. The constant flow of people along the river and a natural boundary between the path and the wetter habitat has over time taught the feathered inhabitants that they can safely continue doing their birding things without needing to take notice of the human shenanigans going on just few meters further ashore.

Surrounded by cyclists, runners, walkers and screaming kids I managed to get my closest close-up ever of a Egret, the photo above is taken at a puny 230mm not even using half of the zooming powers of the Bigma :-D

A welcome change to a typical Sydney walk was that the usual army of New Holland Honeyeaters were replaced with White-cheeked Honeyeaters instead, a great bird that is not super common in the Eastern states. Despite of having multiple specimens darting around I did not manage to lure one out into the light, so you will have to do with the shadow shot below.

What a absolutely fantastic holiday! :-D Perth and surroundings had really delivered and sitting in the plane trying to clock up a few hours of sleep before having to go to work the only worry was "how am I ever going to get all this onto the blog" ;-).