Hot and Cold

Gosh it's hot!

Here's grim determination coming up towards the finish line of the Airlie Beach parkrun. Vicky's seventh parkrun here and her third best - not bad considering it was such a hot morning. She's done 141 parkruns in total so should reach 150 by the end of the year. I also suffered in the heat but sneaked into the top ten finishers. Airlie Beach is a tropical parkrun, it's about 500K north of the Tropic of Capricorn which bisects the Australian coast just south of the small town of Yeppoon. So we'll have to have a go at the Yeppoon parkrun sometime in the next year or so - watch this space!

Oooh it's chilly!

And here's the same young lady seven days later. After several weeks of warm weather in Queensland we headed south to Canberra for a couple of days and then hit the high road to Jindabyne which is close to the highest parkrun in Australia, not only is it 950 metres above sea level it's a lot colder than Airlie Beach - there was over 20 degrees difference!

So just where are the Spanish ones?

And a third shot of the same delightful lady in a more relaxed frame of mind meandering through a grove of birch trees at the Canberra Arboretum. This arboretum is like no other that we've seen, usually arboreta are areas of parkland with individual specimens trees dotted around - some of them are quite splendid. Canberra is different - they decided a few years ago to plant mini forests of trees of the same species, some of them threatened or vanishing species. OK you might say - these look just like ordinary birches in this photo, but these birches are sheltering a rare variety, the Spanish Birch, these are disappearing in their native home - once the Spanish Birches become established here the regular birches will be sacrificed - it's what you might term a far sighted long term project. Very impressive and a joy to look at!

Ozzy Birds!

Let's  get cracking.

Managed to get a nifty photo of an Eastern Whipbird snuffling about in the undergrowth in the Mount Tamborine rainforest at Eagle Heights. This little blighter is often heard but seldom seen, I caught a glimpse of something beneath a bush beside the pathway and kept snapping away hoping that I'd get a decent picture and here it is. The call of the Eastern Whipbird is an unmistakeable drawn out note followed by a crack not unlike the crack of a whip - hence the name.

Grub up?

Quite pleased with this pic of two Kookaburra's perching on our balcony in Airlie Beach, the young one on the right was very tame whereas the adult kept flying away then returning to check on its offspring. We figured out that somebody had been feeding the youngster on a balcony similar to ours and the little bird thought we would be another source of grub (or grubs). Kookaburra senior was obviously concerned about possible violations of child protection protocols.

Not my photo but such a pretty bird it was! We took a stroll round Lake Jindabyne in the New South Wales highlands and spotted this chappie fluttering around - it wouldn't pose for us though apart from a flash of its unmistakeable tail. We were aiming for a pint at the Banjo Patterson Inn but got caught in a violent freezing hailstorm which completely soaked us - so it was back to the apartment for hot showers and a change of clothes - not the sort of weather we are accustomed to in OZ.

Chances of further scattered showers according to accuweather.com forced us to take the car up to the Jindabyne Brewery Tap - this was no great hardship!

Enjoying the warm weather - wish you were here!

Isn't she lovel

Well guess where we are again? This is Bredl's Country Farm, a delightful place out in the sticks of Northern Queensland. Lots of kangaroos, huge crocodiles, wombats, snakes, large lizards, etc. And what a very entertaining informative day we had. However it was dry, dusty and hot - by 10 am the temperature was already climbing towards 30 degrees and shade was at a premium. We were a little acclimatised as we'd experienced the heat a couple of weeks before at the Hidden Vale Trail Race many miles west of Brisbane. Vicky, Lyndall and myself all won age category prizes. In other words, to use a dreadful aberration that I heard recently, all three of us 'podiumed'!

It might seem a little odd to be winning cycling jerseys although they are rather nifty. However the trail race was the precursor to a weekend of mountain bike racing and my 11.5K race and the girls' 5K race were over the same terrain that the cyclists used later on - dry, dusty and hot and with lumps in the middle of the trail. I was rather jet lagged and losing concentration towards the end and managed to hit one of these lumps, found myself in a heap and had to avail myself of the first aid support at the finish - ouch! Our Lyndall managed to survive the run without mishap and the following day completed the 55K cycle race in fine fettle - cold beer was in order that evening.

The weekend after this we hit the St Lucia parkrun by the river in Brisbane, as you can see I was modelling my stylish trail race running vest. After many weeks of drought Brisbane welcomed a rainy morning and we got absolutely drenched during the race director's briefing - soon dried off though!