Morning Walk

I frequently go for a long walk early in the morning, especially at this time of year when the minimum overnight temperature is still over 10 C. My fast walk often takes about an hour and can cover something like 6 km or so - or getting on for 4 miles. Here's an example of what I often see on my walks, with the pictures taken just this morning on the last day of summer. Today is the 28th February, but with daily maximum temperatures still around 25 C (77 F) this would be counted as high summer in Britain.

The first thing that struck me as I walked along nearby Rockvale Road at dawn was the beautiful cloud formations illuminated by the rising sun.

And this is the view of Rockvale Road looking northwards.

After about 1.5 km or about 1 mile, suburbia gave way to lightly forested vegetation and I often recall seeing kangaroos in this paddock - but not today.

This part of the walk takes me past rural residential subdivisions where houses are located on large blocks of land - often about 5 ha. or c. 12 acres. Here's one of many I saw. And a little further up the hill I saw a paddock with a small dam on it to provide water for stock - sheep or cattle. However, in the past I have also seen kangaroos roaming around on this property - again, not today. I also know that koalas live in the vicinity but none were in sight.

While this is the land of rural residential properties, I walked past this entrance to a nice little residential subdivision. No, the camera isn't slanted. The hill I was walking up is quite steep.

More pasture and woodland mixed up.

I'm now out in open country and this is the first farm I came across on Blue Wren Road. Apologies for it being a little dark.

And a little later I turned off the unsealed road on to Stony Ridge Road which is also gravel and unsealed. Now I was really out in the countryside with a sweeping vista in front of me. The hill in the distance, Mount Duval, is about 1400 m high (4,600 feet) and this landscape is typical of the land around Armidale.

The view along Stony ridge Road, and again a view to the northeast in the New England High Country.

Again, this area also has hobby farms or rural residential dwellings.

And I've now turned on to Arundel Drive. The people who named this road must have come from West Sussex. The top end shown here rural residential and pretty, but the bottom end merges into Armidale's suburbs, with some new home construction going on.

A house in a nice rural setting and, below, a touch of horsey-culture with the animals wearing coats as the nights get cooler.

And, on the way back near home, I pass Ben Venue Primary School which both our daughters, Emily and Rebecca, attended when young.

And so to home, where we're infested with Corellas, who come for the seed we put out for the other kinds of parrot, magpies and crested pigeons. Armidale has thousands of these large white parrots, which we rarely saw in earlier years! They also tear branches off our trees, and these litter the ground each morning.

I love walking through this kind of country and take different route each morning - I have about 10 options. And, by the way, I saw a recent article listing something like 20 of the world's most pristine wildernesses and one was right on our doorstep - the Gondwana World Heritage Listed rain forests and uninhabited gorges lying just to the east of us. Put your hands up if you like to come and stay for a while.

AS

Last Week

I haven't done anything really exciting and photogenic just recently but there's a few events for which I have photos and some of them might interest readers. First up, I attended our annual district Rotary dinner held out at Armidale's local race-course. Don't worry, there was no horse meat on the menu as far as I know!

It was an enjoyable night among interesting people, many of whom I already knew. I'm getting to know how to take a good selfie with my new mobile phone. A couple of days later I attended the usual Thursday morning coffee session with a few colleagues, this time (a) at a coffee house called 'Altitude'

and (b) with one colleague who had just migrated to Fingal Head on the far north coast of NSW. He's enjoying his new location, but equally meeting up with us again.

A few days later I went to my office out at the university to do some printing of documents and collect mail. On my way there I noticed a strange vehicle lumbering up Elm Avenue towards our administrative HQ. I suddenly realised what I was seeing, swiftly parked car and ran uphill to take these photos. Guess what! You're seeing a practice run for UNE's new driverless bus service - due to start shortly and perhaps the first in Australia. I can guarantee that there was no-one in the driver's seat - just a couple of blokes lounging in the back.

I've been waiting around for a long time for these pictures,  but was never in  the right place at the right time,

The next thing I've like to mention is our weather. Armidale may have had the hottest January ever with temperatures mostly in the low to mid 30s C and a peak of 36 C a few days ago. Plants have been wilting in the heat ... along with us. And much of the grass in town has turned brown, except for where it's been watered ... including our own. We had a massive storm which I reported a short time ago. It deposited 40+ mm in a couple of hours, but seemingly had little impact on the colour of grass given the heat!

Well, last night we had a similar event and in an instant - about 1 hour - we received another 35 mm. So that's 75 mm (or 3 inches) in c. 3 hours over two days. From what I recall from the weather statistics for the south coast of England, they receive about 30 inches a year. With rainfall the same intensity as we've just had, the UK would receive its annual total in a little over day and the rest of the year would be dry. I ran out to take a few photos of the event amidst peels of thunder!

The rain had only just started and you can see how quickly the water built up. Alas, the heavy rain stripped a lot of flowers from our crepe myrtle - show below.

And the next photo looking northeast from where we live shows the grey rain-leadened sky. The rain came in from this direction and, driven by a strong wind, it drenched the wooden platform where I was standing. By the morning, all the accumulated surface water had dried off, which is hardly surprising since the minimum overnight temperature was just a little under 20C (68 F) - a good summer maximum in Britain.

I know people who had moved from Darwin to Armidale to escape the summer heat and humidity there. Yesterday, Armidale was hotter than Darwin, 2000 km to the north and just as humid. Ouch!

AS

Wild Weather

January is statistically the wettest month of the year in Armidale, which gathers rain from the warm waters of Australia's east coast mixing with occasional fronts coming through from the south-west. Average rainfall is c. 104.5 mm (or c. 4 inches).

This January there has been hardly any rain where we live, though fleeting storms passed east and west of us. Worse still, it has been unusually hot with daily maxima mostly ranging from 28 C to 37 C, especially in the last week. That compares with a January average of just 27 C. Our lawn was rapidly turning brown as the result of both heat and lack of water and Dot was beginning to lose some of her lovely plants, whether in the garden or in various pots that dot our patios - apologies for the pun!

Anyway, today repeated the usual weather pattern we've been experiencing, with the maximum reaching 36 c ... or almost 40 C when I got into one of our cars in late afternoon. At 5.30 pm the weather was still hot and sunny, but then a few dark clouds began to appear. Just after 6 pm thunder, air to ground lightening, and the patter of rain began to envelop us as we looked on in amazement. And then the rain began to fall faster and faster. Within about 45 minutes we received over 40 mm (1.6 inches) of rain or roughly 40% of the January average. It was torrential - about the heaviest I've ever seen and marvelous for our garden. In the last week I had watered our lawn and shrubs with our sprinkler systems and that gave us some of the greenest grass around.

Our friendly neighbourhood birds, and especially the magpies (Pied Currawongs) loved this watering because the rest of our neighbourhood had grass with consistency of concrete. They spent hours pecking at our lawn for various grubs, but never flew away as I approached. Instead, they looked up with the equivalent of a smile on their faces saying "thanks for your efforts on our behalf".

AS

Central Tilba and Mystery Bay

One of the great things about the NSW South Coast is is its diversity of landscapes, into which nestle often pretty and historic little towns. There are many farming areas hosting livestock on green pastures, vineyards, along with vibrant fruit and other horticultural production. The landscapes include numerous broad river estuaries; lots of rocky headlands separated by lovely curved beaches of white sand; great waves for surfing and other water sports like paddle-boarding; coastal forest with towering trees; and mountainous backgrounds. Some of the little villages are home to alternative life-stylers with their craft industries, arts focus, trendy dress codes, micro-breweries and other food producing businesses, cafes and restaurants, and maybe a hint of drug availability. One such town is Mogo on the Princess Highway - which links Sydney and Melbourne via the coast - which I included in an earlier post. This time we visited Central Tilba an hour or so to the south. It's a period village that's National Heritage listed and we liked what we saw.

Central Tilba is located amidst lovely scenery.

Many buildings have their biographies posted on their walls:

The journey then took us north along the coast amidst some lovely scenery, taking in serially Mystery Bay, Montague Island offshore, Narooma - astride the Wagonga Inlet, and the coast around Dalmeny.

Here's the coast around Mystery Bay and, if you look closely at the first photo you might just make out Montague Island.

The next few photos show Wagonga Inlet with Narooma on the southern shore.

These Pelicans posted nicely for me.

Narooma on the southern side of the inlet.

A couple of guys scanning the lake-bed.

And the coast looking north towards Dalmeny.

Lovely, eh?

As