Excuse the boring title but that was all I could think of. Dawn on Sunday gave a nice view of Mount Ainslie to the North.
The light also revealed interesting marks on the window. I assume these are bumpers on the swinging stages as the guys remove and replace the cladding. Probably not a good idea to wash the windows until the cladding project if finished.
Our morning walk started with a pretty Magnolia in Glebe Park.
Passed through an alley in Reid (notable for the signs about dog poop) ..
.. and past some good topiary in a garden in the Northern section of the suburb.
Frances returned to Lifeline Book Fair while I went for a walk to Justice Robert Hope Park. Few birds around but it was good to get three species of Acacia in flower in one image. I think they are
A. ulicifolia; A. baileyana and
A. melanoxylon.
Bad news for the local frogs!
A flowery street scene in Watson. Note that the heads-up display on my windscreen shows the 50kph limit and the 0 proving I was stationary!
Back at the apartment and the morning gathering of tents and stalls was closing down. I don't know what this was, other than one of the stalls having a Sea Shepherd logo on the roof, so presumably a fairly progressive gathering.
On the Monday morning the sunrise to the NE was shaping up well with the floodlit War Memorial also visible in Campbell.
It was still quite dark to the West with the nearly full moon lighting up a cloud and Black Mountain Tower clearly visible.
We braved Commonwealth Park which is still shut off for Floriade. They can't shift the fence along Parkes Way since that would interfere with the concession tents.
Getting down towards the Lake many metres of prohibitory bunting have been erected to keep people off the grass. I presume they have taken the words of the song "
Jobsworth" as an objective rather than satire.
Colourful catkins on trees at Lake level.
There were several Red-rumped Parrots on the lower parts of Commonwealth Avenue Bridge, including this pair who were making sufficiently nice to be counted as a Courtship breeding record.
Definitely not nice was this mess at Acton Beach. The ACT Government has $$$ in their eyes in getting some extra land to sell to the dodgy developers (excuse the tautology). I can see the naff restaurants and sleazy apartment blocks rising as I type.
Getting back to the apartment I was appalled to see all these scooters dumped here. These things are a blight on the area.
n the afternoon I went for the medical needed to renew my drivers licence. No problems with that - in fact a quite interesting set of tests covering (inter alia) peripheral vision, strength of foot pressure and grasp reaction time. I didn't realise how useful a ruler could be! The entertainment begins with the online renewal process, which will be the subject of further posts (and, probably, correspondence with at least one of our MLAs).
Tuesday had the makings of a busy day with packing to leave for Mallacoota, a couple of games of croquet and the drive back. And so it was.
One of the better things we have purchased - following a suggestion by our daughter - is small cart for wheeling 'stuff' between the apartment and the car park. Before getting this device - I'll include a photo of it loaded in a later post, but this is from Office Works, where we acquired it.
In the past I have taken up to 5 trips in the lift to do the needed schlepping to the basement but for this trip only needed 2. It should be noted that:
- two cases of books from Lifeline had been left in the basement cage! and
- one of our criteria for the new car was large volume of luggage space.
The croquet games were played and I, in particular, enjoyed my games. The second game was a singles match - against a very pleasant opponent - with very variable scores though the match. I remember the following (my score first) 2-1; 2-5; 4-6; 7-6. It was particularly pleasing to win hoop 13 with a jump shot from about 1.5m out and my opponent's ball in the jaws.
A quick return to the apartment for final cleaning and packing and we were on the road by 1308. The drive out of Canberra was unremarkable apart from a few folk between Royalla and Bredbo who couldn't drive a nail in a plank of wood (which is not unusual). A large plume of smoke indicated someone burning off near Jerangle.
It seemed that a few of the other drivers were reluctant to overtake gravel trucks etc but fortunately another of our criteria for our car was good power, so I was able to demonstrate the required procedure. One of the cars that ended behind me after Bredbo was a 2 door Mercedes. I noticed that pull over as we climbed the hill out of Cooma. I was a bit surprised to see it had caught me up again as we passed Imlay Rd (about 120 km later). In the interim we passed through Nimittabel where I had guessed the temperature at 9C (it had been 12C when we left Canberra, which surprised me as I'd been comfortable playing croquet in shirtsleeves). It was only 7C as we passed Lake Williams!
No great excitement for the rest of the trip and home just after 1700 hrs. It is interesting that we now done the trip twice in the Mazda around 4 hours whereas the Jetta or Pajero have taken 4:15 - 4:30.
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