Mother of Ducks Lagoon

Some 35 km north of Armidale, and adjacent to the small town of Guyra, is the Morth of Ducks Lagoon which I visited today to explore for the first time in 50 years! I have seen it many times from afar, but never explored it closely.

Today was an excellent opportunity on several grounds. We have had a lot of rain so far this year and I thought this would show up clearly over the large area of the lagoon. Secondly, the weather was fantastic for mid-Autumn - bright sunshine and warm temperature . Believe it or not, the temperature was about 18 C  (64+ F) despite the lagoon being about 1350 m (4430 feet) above sea level. Has the top of Ben Nevis in Scotland ever recorded 64 F there in October (mid Autumn)?

The pictures show what I saw. Basically, the lagoon is fairly shallow and, instead of a large surface area of watre, much of the lagoon has plant-life covering much of the surface. This leaves a network of channels of water like those shown in many of the pictures.

This photo looks southwards from the viewing platform and also shows a lovely cloud pattern.

This picture looks south-west from the same spot and show a little more water.

And here's a heron stalking the edge of a rather larger body of water. It was rather nervous of my arrival but eventually accepted my presence without flying off.

The observation platform had a display of the birds traditionally found on the wetlands and this looks rather like the previous photo.

Living up the lagoon's name, I saw a pod of ducks ... is that the right term? Anyway, I have often passed ducks on Armidale's waterways and these nervous creatures flee easily if  disturbed. That precisely happened just after lucky me took this photo.

And this view of the lagoon was taken looking northwards. As you can guage from all these pictures, the lagoon's area is quite extensive.

And, finally, here's the viewing platform from which I took most of the previous photos. There were quite a few people around who were drwns to the site.

All up it was a lovely trip. 

If you think I was exceptionally lucky with the temperature, we have been advised by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) that Armidale's Tuesday temperature will likely reach 24 C (75 F). That's almpst the mid-summer average .

AS