Itching to see the Countryside

These days we spend most of our time at home, even though COVID-19 has barely emerged locally. Well, today I decided on a short drive and went to the nearby Dumaresq Dam. It's a pleasant spot that the Armidale Regional Council wants to upgrade to a tourist resort, although in the past it was constructed to supply water to the city. Apart from providing accommodation, better roads, tracks and so on, there's also talk of raising the dam wall.

Anyway, it was a cold and imminently wet day, so I didn't want to stay long apart from looking at the mountain view and the dam wall. By the way, it only took an hour or so to move from Summer temperatures (c. 19 C) on Friday to a chilly maximum of about 10 C today (Sunday).

You can see the great view from the shore-line where I parked my car and, despite the intense 2019 drought the water level was high. Here's Mount Duval in the background - maybe 3 km away. Existing paths cover both sides of the lake providing ever changing visions of water, forests and water.

From this spot, I took an image of the dam wall and, as you can see, the water is nearly lapping the top of the wall.

The wall worried me a little as it seems so thin. Still, it has been in place for a long time and shows no wear. Nevertheless I recalled the Dam Busters movie I first saw in about 1960 when my grandma took me to the pictures in Brighton. And the mess that British bombers did to Ruhr Valley communities when the dam walls were demolished was massive. I'd hate to think of the same thing happening locally!

I took the path that leads to the bottom of the wall, and this is what I saw - a rocky valley.

After looking around a bit more I headed to the car for the c. 14 km ride home. En route I took a detour to the back of the University to have a look at the solar farm it has constructed to power the campus.. As you can see, it's massive and has hundreds of closely aligned solar panels. By then, the dark clouds that had seemed threatening at the dam had largely cleared. However, when I returned home it was only an hour so before torrential rain started. At least it wasn't snowing!

AS