SpringSprung20

 I love this time of year. After several cool and sometimes dreary winter months, things are warming up fast and nature is taking heed of the opportunity to renew itself. As I write this, we're heading to a maximum of 26 C today - the average Armidale temperature for mid-summer.

Yesterday, I ambled around our garden and took pictures of all the plants and shrubs in flower. And I was amazed by the range on offer! The only thing I don't like about this time of year is being dive-bombed by magpies seeking to defend their territory. I choose my walking routes carefully to avoid them!

So, have a look at the flowers in out garden:

I'm lucky that Dot is enthusiastic about tending to all the bushes, shrubs, bulbs and other plants we have. She does a wonderful job.

AS

Gorgeous Country

Please excuse my pun! This is about a trip today to see one of Australia's greatest gorges - Wollomombi Gorge and waterfall. It's a lovely spot, but one I have not visited in a long time. It was also an opportunity to have a longish walk and view the landscape from many different perspectives. The stroll involved a lot of downhill and uphill sections, whose difficulty rose because of the lovely hot weather we are having right now. Today reached 26 C (79 F) despite it still being early Spring. That arose from gentle winds and cloudless skies. I might add that forecasters are now seeing a stormy and wet summer here, which gave today's walk a greater imperative.

This is what I saw on my walk to the top of the Wollomombi falls and on to overlook the impressive Chandler Falls - albeit with little water cascading down after several weeks of fairly dry weather. The top of the gorge is c. 907 m (nearly 3,000 feet) and the Wollomombi falls overall have a drop of about  200 m (660 feet) with the last vertical drop being about 100 m (330 feet).

So here are views of the gorge, although today there was little water dropping to the bottom.

I have now reached the point on the trail where it crosses the Wollomombi river just before it reaches the final 100 m drop into the deep gorge. As you can see the river is sloping downwards, but without much water in it. By the way, you can see that the river some yellow deposit in it

And here I'm looking down into the nearby Chandler River Gorge which also has negligible water flow.

Walking back to car park I spied some great rock formations.

I couldn't resist taking a selfie. Getting home I realised that I was walking topless because of the heat and my shirt was rather soggy! Oh well, there wasn't anyone to see me. Although there were heaps of people in the national park today, I only saw 4 other people on my entire one-hour long walk. So I don't think I embarrassed anyone.

Towards the end of the walk, I crossed several small creeks like this one, none of which any water flow at all.

Anyway, I enjoyed myself and proved I could still bush-walk safely through hilly terrain.

AS