Meanwhile, back at the ranch ....

No, not really back at Carwoola but back in Canberra.

We needed to come back to register the Pajero and came up on the Saturday to see balloons lift off on Sunday morning.  This also meant we'd be around for the Skyfire display which finishes off the Enlighten Festival.

The first evidence of the Festival was the caring ACT Government having closed off Parkes Way, so that it took 15 minutes, rather than 1, to get from Kings Avenue to Bunda St.  Why they don't just close the road completely is a mystery.  (Actually it isn't a mystery: its the only East West route in North Canberra.  The real mystery is why they allow so many events that require it to be closed.)

Just before 7 PM and right on schedule, a Globemaster did a fly past.  I thought this a nice shot of it coming past Bugs.
Then it did a level flight over the Lake.
As darkness approached - 1930 - we headed off down to the Lake.  We took Tammy as she's pretty deaf and doesn't seem to worry about thunderstorms.  She greatly enjoyed the walk down with lots of people to look at.  We got a spot right on the Lake - sitting with our legs dangling over the edge.

The Carillion looked Enlightened!  Incidentally that is how I have always spelled the word.  As it caused the spellchecker to have a hissy fit I have looked it up: buggrit, only the first "i" is needed!
Looking back towards Commonwealth Avenue.
As the night drew in the various lights people were wearing were apparent on Regatta Point.
The fireworks started with some loud bangs and a good lot of fire in the sky.

In contrast to our expectations Tammy could perceive  the pyrotechnics well.  And did not like them.  She was very scared so I carried her back towards home while Frances stayed for the show..  Once we'd got under Parkes Way Tammy settled down and while she sniffed this and that I took a few more photos.


This was the finale, by which time we were back near the Convention Centre.
The next morning I took Tammy over to Glebe Park for irrigation purposes.  There was quite a wind blowing, low cloud and drizzle.  The cloud is apparent in these shots towards Mount Ainslie ...
 .. and Black Mountain.
So at 0620 I checked the Balloon Fest site and the Director had cancelled this morning's lift off.  We went back to the Lake to view any tethered balloons and none were visible.  The wind had died down and the cloud lifted, so I suspect flying was possible.  However, the Director had to make his call an hour out when things looked less viable.  Imagine the shit that would fly if he'd said "OK" and one (or more) crashed.

Surprisingly a few minutes after returning home Frances spotted one coming by from the direction of the Airport.  Eventually 6 lifted off and drifted West over the City.
 From looking at this one I wondered if the pilots had decided to fly without passengers
 But this basket looks more populated.

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