Yellow is the colour of my Nature Park's weeds

This morning's dog walk was one of our longer efforts, covering 10km in a lap of Mt Ainslie .  We started from the car park at the Campbell Park offices , noting with surprise the number of cars already there at 7:15.

The first outbreak of yellow was Saffron Thistles filling the paddocks between the Nature Park and the Wonderful! New!! Improved!!! Majura Parkway. (I shall return to this road at the end of the post.)
Of course the thistles, being plants, don't have the mental capacity to recognise the fence is a Park boundary and are naughtily invading.  That will cause trouble, as the Park is the natural domain of St John's Wort.
Interestingly neither of these nasty species were really evident when we got on to the suburban Ainslie side of the hill.

There were very few native plants in flower along the way.  As we climbed up to the saddle between Mts Ainslie and Majura there was a fair bit of blossom on some Acacia  (probably A, implexa).
Frances spotted one flower in a pad of Astroloma humifusum.
It was pleasing to see that the local graffitists  had ignored the warnings by ACTEW and decorated one of the water tanks along the way.
As this was an exercise walk I didn't stop much to check birds.  However seeing the breeding success of the White-browed Woodswallow colony in Campbell Park did need a photo (and marking off as Bird of the Day)!  Note the lurid adult male and the drab chick.
Getting back to the Parkway.  In the late 1980s as Noweto (the North West Township, aka Gungahlin) was being set up there was consultation about how to get people in and out of the place, as there would be no employment (other than building trades) there.  What everyone recognised was that the obvious thing to do was to duplicate Majura Lane: this was not a NIMBY reaction but a NIABY  - Not In Anyone's Back Yard - reaction.

This was ruled too expensive , so large areas of Nature Park were trashed for the Ghastly Dumb Extension.  Move forward 30 years and here is exactly the road that was ruled too expensive.

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