Sydney Olympic Park

Pu-ha! It has been a few busy weeks :-) First of all; to all those who have signed up as followers of my blog: Sorry for the lack of excitement on this site lately, however, since approximately 100% of my "followers" - that is you Jarrod - are fooling around in the red desert of Australia twitching grasswrens and trying to make storks fly in the Macpac honeymoon suite, I thought it would be just the right time to go exploring a bit instead of just writing about it ...

From Sydney Olympic Park

After having hit a bit of winter laziness I finally got my bum of the sofa and made my way out to Sydney Olympic Park (SOP) to do a bit of nature-photo-walk combo, I really enjoy these outings guess the only way of increasing the enjoyment would be to somehow get a bit of snorkeling, camping, electrochemistry and ice cream in there as well ... that would require a bit of inventiveness.

Approximately 50 meters after leaving the Magna I saw a Striated Heron. Camera in bag, lens cap on and the setting from the lightening shots I had done the night before was shutter speed priority set at 30 seconds, needless to say I did not get a usable photo :-) Never seen that bird before, but who is counting(?)

From Sydney Olympic Park

Had a absolutely fantastic day in the park, used about 4 hours - partly because I got lost - and took lots of pictures. I have selected a few and uploaded them to my Picasa account, feel free to follow the link below. Again SOP proved to be probably the easiest place around Sydney to get good bird in flight (BIF) shots. With the cormorant passing more frequently than aircrafts landing in Kingsford Smith, you either have to be blind or have a Canon camera to miss the shot ;-)

From Sydney Olympic Park

Sydney Olympic Park

Big Rain in Coogee

Various people have asked me lately how the Magna was doing(?) I was slightly puzzled by this concern for my Australian build piece of Japanese machinery, apart from being surprisingly clean Sunday morning when I used it for my weekly trip to some bush (entry will follow soon) I had not been concerned.
After taking a look at Sydney Morning Herald I suddenly understood - Coogee had a bit rain Saturday evening!! :-) Actually we had 77mm of which most came between 7 and 9pm. That is a lot of water and living at the bottom of the hill, means that not only do you have to cope with the 77 mm coming down from the sky. You also have to take into account the flood of water that comes rushing down the street up from Randwick.
See the story in SMH here: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/water-issues/surfs-up-at-coogee--for-cars-20090503-argl.html

I had actually noticed that the amount of water coming down was slightly on the generous side, so had a little go with the camera in Havelock Ave. Nothing near what was apparently happening a few streets away but still a bit of fun, here are some of the pictures:

From Big Rain

From Big Rain

From Big Rain

Mogo Creek Camping Bonanza with Dr J. Amoore

Friday afternoon, not that many seconds after 4pm, I jumped into the Magna and pointed the sparkling bright white bonnet towards Yengo National Park, where I would be spending the weekend camping with Jarrod. Racing North out of Sydney on the Pacific Highway on a Friday afternoon means traveling at a leisurely pace of approximately 30kph - Sydney is such a vibrant place :-)
Met up with Jarrod at the campsite just as the sun was going down, it looked like we would be the only happy campers there that first night. Sorted out the tent, got hold of some firewood and got some water boiling. About 3 hours after leaving work I was sitting in the "wilderness" eating CousCous, having a glass of wine, watching the fire, chatting with Jarrod and just enjoying life - An Owlet-nightjar sitting in a tree 10 meters away tried to spoil the serenity by calling out loud, guess that is just one of those incidents you have to accept when you make your way out into nature .. ;-)

Had some fantastic walks Saturday and another cozy evening where Jarrod decided he wanted to try to melt the iron BBQ at our campsite by making the biggest bonfire ever seen in Yengo NP. The BBQ is still there - dented from the heat - but still there, it was a great fire though :-)

Sunday morning we left early, being very confident of the V6 performance of the Magna I left campsite and Jarrod (who was fiddling) not expecting to see the Mazda more that day. However, I underestimated the power of love!! The usual well-balanced, careful and responsible Dr Amoore had been missing his soon-to-be wife in Sydney so much during the weekend, that he decided to set aside all rules and hoon his way back home to Sydney. During a road work section of the Freeway with well signed "80" speed zones the love sick happy camper blasted past me doing at least 83kph - I frantically pushed the "Acc" button of the cruise control (once) but had to stop the chase before it even started - I was doing 81. As the Mazda disappeared into the horizon - with about 33.3 meter per minuet - It actually made me happy! :-) In a week, I'm going to Jarrod and Adelle's wedding and I am as sure as one can possibly be that it is going to be the start of a great marriage!

I have included a link below to a few extra pictures from the trip, feel free to follow the link (press the little picture) to my Picasa account. Cheers Allan

Mogo Creek, Yengo National Park

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

Blue Mountains, bush bashing around Katoomba

Zhengli had volunteered to take the Reimer's group out for a bit of bush bashing! We started out from a little sneaky free car park only few minutes walk from Echo point. After admiring the view towards the Three Sisters we started out down the mountain.

Zhengli and Sören

Yiing and Thomas

Superb Lyrebird, this one looks like a female. We saw 3 of these very close to the path in some dense bush. I tried using the flash for a couple of pictures, but a more "natural" look was achieved by pushing the ISO sensitivity up - this is taken at ISO 1250.