Thanks to daylight savings we now have ample time to begin poking around the local area.
About twenty minutes drive from where we live is a spot called Plenty Gorge Park.
Now I haven’t been down there so taking my youngest, I went for a walk.
To be totally honest the spot we chose is not the most beautiful, but there were a few things worth sharing.
The scrub here is fairly open and made up of predominantly mixed species of Eucalyptus trees.
This piccie shows how the warmer weather as summer is coming is beginning to burn the countryside to the more familiar Aussie colour palette. It’s a marked difference to the green of only a few weeks ago.A close up of this tree shows one of the interesting features of the Aussie landscape.
The bark on many of our trees goes pink in spring and early summer. Then the bark splits and sheds revealing a fresh skin.Tucked into a hollow in the ground is the old Hawkstowe homestead.
Down behind the homestead lies this pond. Around this little patch of green we found an assortment of wildlife.
This heron was busy trying to look inconspicuous. 
I tried stalking nearer to get a better shot, but he or she spotted me when I got about 4 metres away and shot off across the pond.
My daughter borrowed the camera stating that she would get closer and went stalking, but our heron wasn’t having it and shot away to another corner of the pond.My girl, not to be disappointed, took this shot of a damselfly that caught her eye.
A moment later we noticed this mother grebe with two chicks.
Then with a splash she was gone diving down to retrieve some morsel to feed a hungry mouth.
Walking back out of the park I paused to shoot this lovely old bluestone and iron farm shed.
A quick postscript on Joe. Greg saw him in hospital yesterday. As I said both his legs are broken (both femurs fractured) nasty injuries. Joe was apparently very happy to see a friendly face. He has only had one other visitor a RDNS nurse who does outreach work around the city (she is a regular at our service and is worth her weight in gold). A side benefit is that for the minute at least Joe is receiving good care and we and the RDNS are going to push hard that he gets more support on discharge. Given his injuries we are going to have weeks to hopefully get some wheels in motion.
