A stroll round the bridges of Queanbeyan

This snip from Google Earth shows the Queanbeyan River snaking through the middle of the town (OK, I know it is officially a city, but part of its charm is that it has the feel of a country town).  At times of flood, which happen every so often, it cuts the town in two, largely because there are only 2 vehicular bridges across it and a big flood cuts them both.

The centre of the town is a pleasant park with a fair sized lake caused by a weir (of which more anon).  The weir originally had a water supply function but is now 'just' decorative.  It is well supplied with ducks and is a  good place to see platypus. (I didn't see a 'pus today but a water rat Hydromys chrysogaster swam past.  It dived before I could get a photograph.)  I recorded 20 species of birds in total in the 45 minutes of this walk.
 Carrying on South I got to the suspension bridge.
 The original bridge was built early in the 20th Century to allow the nuns to cross the River other than by stepping stones.  That was washed away by a flood and the current bridge built in 1938 at a cost of Stg400!

The view is quite rural looking upstream!
 Crossing the bridge I got back to the main bridge leading to the main street.
I have commented before about the appearance of metal out poetry signs around the area.  This one gives a pronunciation lesson!
The poetry is close to a new coffee shop.  It is rumoured that the whole place can be swiftly dismantled and moved in case a large flood is evident.  This is possibly part of a push by the Mayor to make the centre of Queanbeyan a more enjoyable locale.  (To some extent it seems to be working with some outdoor eating facilities appearing, and being used, in the Crawford St 'lifestyle precinct'.)
 The weir itself.  The flow is surprising considering the low rainfall in recent months.
Another bit of beautification.
This is the third bridge, the low level crossing at Morisset Street.  This was under 4m of water in the last flood.  The image seems to me to capture the dryness of the area at present.
 There is n point being too active when fishing.  Putting your chair in the middle of the River seems like a good idea.  I have spoken to fisherpersons in the past and been told that it is possible to catch good native fish in this stretch, unlike the carp infested ACT watercourses.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I recall years ago driving al
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the birds: The view from the top of
Read more