The House(s) of Fran_mart

Early on Christmas morning I saw a condensation trail overhead ... .. and wondered where it was going.  Flight Radar revealed it was a Jetstar Flight headed from Sydney to Launceston. Looking more closely at the image positioned the plane over Nadgee, roughly 18.5 km away.  Converting the Imperial measure, the height of the plane was 10,980m and given this made an angle of 90 degrees meant I could use a website to draw a triangle to figure out that a direct line to the plane was 21.5 km and I was holding the camera at 30.7 degrees  I shall wait for a non cloudy evening and repeat this exercise with a Hobart to Sydney flight, which uses a more Westerly flightpath, meaning the trails we can see are somewhere near Bonang, about 150 km away.

 On the 15th we started with a walk in Commonwealth Park as it is a little longer than our walks in Reid and we wanted to do most of our outdoors stuff before it got hot.  On the way we noted this new crane, which looked very colourful against the blue sky. In the park this tree appealed.  I suspect it is some form of smokebush. The traffic seemed busier than it has been recently.  Canberrans must be coming in to their office for Christmas parties!  Comments at the Croquet Club also referred to heavier traffic and on16 December the Target carpark was full for the first time in many months.  I thought this to be an interesting art installation.  On closer inspection I think it was a planted tree that had blown over but left in this manner: perhaps art baisse? The next image shows where the top of the falling tree ended up. To avoid the worst of the heat we went to Kelly's Swamp.  There were lots of baby fowl around.  The first is an Australian...

Our stay in Canberra continues.  On the morning of 13 December we went for a walk around Commonwealth Park.  For the first time in about 6 months we found it unblocked off!  I expect NCA feel we should be grateful for this, rather than urging Ken Behrens to support candidates for any office who include abolition of NCA in their platform.  Unless said candidates are from Clive Palmer's mob or are Zed (who should be put last). Anyway here is a photo of a fence free park. I'm not sure if this counts as a fence or not, and cannot work out why it is there.  Perhaps the workers fell insecure without some access preventing material, and this is trying to wean them until the drug-fests  concerts start again in 2022? The fruit bats are back! I was quite impressed with this image of one in flight as it was taken with my phone. I thought this is a NZ Christmas bush.  I am now advised it is a Feijoa (thanks Sandra). Later in the day I went to Kellys Swamp where bi...

This is the start of a series.   After much drama about my denture going walkabout we are back in Canberra. This does not mean my denture is badly fitting in my mouth.  What it means is that Star Track have registered the parcel containing it into their warehouse in Sydney but (when the dental person's person last spoke to them on Thursday) they had no idea where it is therein.  We hope they have found it and sent it on.  A fitting is scheduled for today (Monday 13 December). The start of the drive up was a tad fraught as a bunch of pelicans under contract to Rural Roads Victoria (I think) sprayed tar on a stretch of new road surface near Genoa.  This led to quite a few people getting their  tyres - and a few other bits of their car - coated with bitumen.  Claims against the pelicans and RRV are in progress.  In over-fairness, RRV got another crew out within a few hours and put a heavy layer of stone on the road so the tar wasn't an issue....

 If I was to say "flying visit" people might think I had contributed to the Alan Joyce Memorial Fund but he doesn't fly to Mallacoota.  So this was a quick zip up to Canberra on 30 November and back on 1 December.   This photo was mainly taken as an aide memoire to recount the annoyance at the Genoa roadworks where the horny sons of toil usually close the road if there is anyone in hiviz within about 50m of the road.  On this occasion they had left it open while two large machines drove down the road, with traffic coming towards us overtaking.  If the small blue car hadn't done an emergency stop I think there would have been a great unpleasantness. On a happier note Forests NSW have built a new dunny at Imlay Creek.  Note the log truck barelling down the road in the background. We couldn't spot a track to the rock pool so bush bashed through this.. The creek was running nicely. Then we looked a little to the West and there was a nice wide gravel path!...