Thursday, 28 November 2019

Dramatic Landscape Change



Don't worry! Despite the above title, Armidale hasn't been swamped by a sea-level rise. Nor have we suffered an earthquake.

But I was out for an early morning walk today when, at 10 minutes to 7 am, I came to the junction of Stony Ridge Road and Blue Wren Road 2.5 km or so north of our home. And, as I looked out from my high vantage point northward across the fields I noticed that two major features of the landscape had disappeared completely. One was Mount Duval, c. 1400 m (c. 4600 feet), shown here. The second omission was the Guyra plateau, which has approximately the same altitude, but rising to c. 1550 m at  Ben Lomond (5000 feet).

Image result for Mount Duval Height

The next two pictures, taken with my mobile phone, show (a) Mount Duval and (b) the Guyra Plateau. In this first image can you see anything that looks like Mt Duval above? No you can't.


And here's a view of the Guyra plateau.


What's gone wrong? The answer is easy. You're looking at a thick smoke haze from bush-fires still blazing in the world heritage listed sub-tropical rain-forests lying to the north-east of us. Despite some decent rain in the last few days, the fires are still blazing and, today, the N-E winds were blowing the smoke directly at us.

This didn't seem to bother this pod of kangaroos I saw from the same vantage point:


And here's me with the Guyra plateau somewhere behind. If the 'roos looked quite at home in the smoke, I was becoming worried as the wind began to pick up and the smell of smoke became stronger. So I picked up speed as I headed for home, a journey that still lasted nearly 30 minutes. Perhaps I shouldn't have been out at all. Many of the walkers I see almost daily were absent today as they hid indoors!

AS

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