Canada - Lake view July 2010

Around the corner from here in the deeper water, we saw loons who are marvellous to behold. A few days earlier people saw a bear swim across the lake so I kept a watchful eye!

Parramatta Station

On the way to the Sydney Writers Festival....

Lake Parramatta again - May 2010

Lake Parramatta - Last day of July, 09

It's winter, but tell that to the honeyeaters who think it's spring. I guess that's a very unscientific statement. Okay, they were feeding, chasing and telling everyone THIS IS OUR PATCH - piss off. At NWG Inc we are in Haiku producing mode - and so I decided to get busy with the images on the bush tracks but I failed to capture the honeyeaters' vim:

Walking around the lake/ hear the honeyeaters sing/ do not linger here...

so I wrote a sleepy one

Branch over water/ two little cormorants doze/ full of live breakfast...

Fairy Toadstools - April 09

Bruce took this photo (at my insistence:) near the Cassins hangout up the Blue Mountains. I thought they were artistic flights of fancy - but no - they're real. Not trying to cook one though.

Home Beauty - South Coast

The cattle are just beginning to notice us, but can't tell the difference between gawkers and farmers with hay. We were kind of glad there was a fence because within seconds of the first picture being taken the herd was trotting quite quickly in our direction...
Feeling guilty we drove off.

Okay, so I'm no photographer! But this beautifully marked little beastie captivated me. At a Ballina roadstop on the way home from Brisbane - same one where Bruce took a picture of an ibis at take-off in 2005.

My Mum (right) and my aunt Gwen on horseback up in the timber country Murrindindi, Victoria. They are both gone now, but soon many of us are visiting their remaining siblings (the youngest Jacksons born to Evelyn and Harry) James and Margaret, both living in Qld. Should be a merry old time. Thanks to Gwen's son, my cousin Peter for this photo.

Lake Parramatta on a grey day

This place deserves a better photographer then me - Fida Haq for instance - but I'll return for another go.

Snowy Mountains

No botanist, I can't identify anything in this intriguing tangle of low grasses on the site of an old gold-mining town (Kiandra) in the Snowy Mountains. Rolling, deserted, grassy hills, great places for skylarks and pipits. Deep set stream running nearby.

Jacaranda Carpet in Parramatta

Every stage of these trees is beautiful. When they start to lose their purple crowns they decorate the street and lawns below.

Tide's out at Huskisson

Pity you can't actually see the tiny crabs that race around the feet of the mangroves at low tide!

Shoalhaven River NSW

Cliff on the Shoalhaven River upstream from the Nowra bridge. Very peaceful. Didn't bother to fish. Watched the fish jumping instead.

Sawn Rocks Mt Kaputar National Park June 07

Sawn Rocks. These stone pipes look very like a towering pipe organ and the valley it's cathedral. Lots of angophoras posing as eucalypts along track from the car park - an easy walk. [3km North of Narribri, turn off North East towards Sawn Rocks in Mt Kaputar NP 34km out.]

Old Coolibah on Longreach Common

An old Coolibah tree in the Iningai reserve, an area of Longreach's extensive town common fenced off with support from council, ag students and community members. This very old specimen was hard by a creek which was the dwelling place for aboriginal family groups in centuries past. Since European settlement, this area of common had been devastated by grazing goats and stock from the nearby stock route but due to the fencing is regenerating into woodland and grass meadows. Popular with the babblers and zebra finches, white-plumed honey-eaters, black-faced cuckoo shrikes, peaceful doves, jacky winters and weebills, we also heard brolgas and saw plenty of kangaroos. Bob and Scotty were our informative guides.

Darling River, Bourke

Despite the muddiness from recent rain, and the long term effects of drought still visible in the trees' health, this river (above the weir) shaped up as beautiful and supporting a fine array of birds. Most evident were the whistling kites, corellas, egrets (great and intermediate), a white-necked heron, a white-faced heron, a lonely yellow-billed spoonbill who perched on a dead tree beside the river near the tourist boat for a good hour and a half. There was a thrush at every creek and waterhole, martins and swallows and the ubiquitous black kite who flashes his forked tail just often enough to identify him.

Gathering from my grandfather's vegetable patch up in the Victorian tall timber. My grandma Evelyn Jackson and my mother, Phyllis.

Guerilla Bay down the South Coast - taken by BJC Feb 2007. Peaceful.

Farewell Felicity

Our cat Felicity (No. 2) died on the surgeon's table at age 19 - not bad for a cat who slept outside in all weathers. She went in for a bad tooth but cancer was the real curse. Her history was interesting. We bought her half grown from the RSPCA and many cat lovers will know that it is rare for kittens that age to be on sale. The cute little babies go first and the older strays and throwaways usually have to be put down. But Felicity was an exhibit in an animal cruelty case and when she was no longer needed for the case, the vets were not about to put her down. She had received two operations to mend a broken leg and was obviously fussed over at the RSPCA centre because she was an affectionate pet. One of the best kind of cats who retained her mighty independence yet related closely to family and selected friends (eg the neighbours who fed her when we were away!) She loved our company and we miss her.

Jervis Bay

Bleached bloodwood at low tide, near Hole in the Wall.