Flowers and rain

Well I was home just before dark this evening (one of the nice things about spring is the days get longer).

I noticed the rain on our seaside daisies, so I thought I would have a go at capturing it. 

It was really a bit dark but I was happy with a couple of my shots. What do you think?

Seaside Daisy (Erigeron karvinskianus)

 

When things (Al) gets hairy.

Well this morning was wet as so much of the weather has been recently. But the forecast was for clear weather this afternoon. So Deb and I took the opportunity to get out and about.

As we often do we headed for the mountains - our ultimate destination a waterfall.

 We took a detour to check out a granite outcrop with the rather unusual name of “Seven Acre Rock”. 

Despite the sun it was surprisingly cold (my breath was misting) so Deb stayed in the car with her knitting while I made the climb up to the summit.

The view up there was fairly spectacular, although it was a bit hard to see through the haze. But the amazing thing was not a single cloud.  The dead trees are a legacy of the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires.

I decided to set up my tripod for a self-portrait and as you can see I’ve grown a beard!

Then it was back to the car and off to another section of the ranges. At our second spot it was still cold and the mud from all the rain was enough to see Deb stay with her knitting again.

So I did the walk through the bush myself.

My target the Toorongo Falls which are flowing beautifully not only with rain, but I guess with snow melt coming off the flanks of Mount Baw Baw.

What to do on a rainy day?

Well as usual I was looking forward to the weekend.
I had plans of being out before first light to catch piccies of the dawn.
With a late winter dawn I have been seeing some beauties on my way to work.
But when I woke in the early hours it was to the sound of heavy rain.

Believe me I was disappointed, but I thought “Ah well, it’s been a rough week at work. I could do with a sleep in.”

So I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Three hours later it was still pouring.
Deb and I pottered around the house until after lunch.
Still raining! And cold with it!

Eventually we headed out regardless.

Because while getting wet and cold isn’t much fun -
Rain is great for waterfalls.
Our destination was Sailor’s Falls near Daylesford about 90 minutes’ drive away.
Last time I was there they were basically dry.
This time

well the piccie speaks for itself.

As you can see the stream divides above the gorge and tumbles down in two separate falls.

The left fall is pretty enough

But I think the right one is more spectacular.

I had to get closer so I climbed down into the gorge and across the stream to get some closer piccies of the larger of the two.

I am kind of happy with these, but they are kind of “ruined” because although the rain had finally stopped, there was so much spray blowing off the fall my camera lens was covered with droplets
 
 (you can see some if you click on the piccie to enlarge it.)
By the time I climbed back up to the car (where Deb being wiser than me was comfortably knitting) I was cold.
So Deb and I beat a retreat to Daylesford where in this café

We had coffees

(You can see Deb is bundled in multiple layers against the cold)
And shared a savoury muffin

Then as we left in the last light I snapped a pic of the town hall across the road

Wet Wet Wet

It seems that our wet and flooding summer has turned into a wet and flooding autumn.

Much of Oz was cursed by floods through the summer as we ended a long period of drought. The wet continues.

Yesterday we had our wettest April day in 35 years. Yet strangely even with all this water around, Melbourne still arguably has a water shortage.

Oz has a climate that typically swings from periods of wet to periods of dry. A few pictures to illustrate.

About 18 months ago we had a picnic at one of Melbourne’s medium sized water storages Sugarloaf Reservoir and I snapped these piccies.

As you can see the water was low.In fact because of over a decade of drought the reservoir (and Melbourne’s overall water supply) was down to under 30% of capacity. Had rainfall continued at that rate we would have run out of water in another two years. This former island went back to being a hill.Regional Oz towns have run out of water in the past, in fact one of the towns we lived in some years ago got so low (below 5% capacity) that they actually went to water rationing, even basics like bathing were limited. Not fun.

Melbourne like most of Oz has huge storage capacity because of this kind of risk.

Things are a bit different now. With all the wet Sugarloaf has changed, these piccies taken a couple of weeks ago show how much water has flowed in with our flood weather.The island is an island again.Melbourne Water has taken advantage of flooding in the Yarra Valley and pumped water to Sugarloaf reservoir which is now at 87% capacity.Yet despite this Melbourne’s water supply is still only at 53% capacity.

So poor sun loving Al has to say bring on the rain :-(

Democracy Rules!

Well the result is in!
Fourteen good people have cast their vote.
The results:
Abstentions = 1
Cockatoos and Parrots = 2
Raging Water = 11.

Well that looks like a landslide waterslide for a post about raging water.

Sorry Cockatoo Lovers, you’ll have to wait for another time.

So here we go, on Sunday Deb and I drove out to the old Maroondah Reservoir, near Healesville in the Yarra Valley.

The reason we went was that with the flood rains we have had recently the lake has filled and for the first time in over a decade water is going over the spillway.

From where we parked the car we strolled through the gardens. Spring has sprung (so to speak) and the Rhododendrons are in full bloom.A close up.Past the blossoms we heard the roar of water.

Here was the cause, an artificial waterfall that shoots the water from the dam’s spillway back to the valley floor.
I could get very close to the bottom section of the cascade.Normally there is a path open across the weir to the base of the larger fall But at the moment it is closed because it is too wet and slippery.

Another angle on the lower cascade.Deb and I began the walk up through the gardens towards the dam wall.
We paused to grab some photos of this port-wine magnolia. Then again to have a seat in this summer house. The view back down the stairs towards the valley floor.Through a window in the garden you get a view of the larger waterfall.We crossed the dam wall, and a bridge over the spillway.This fallen tree trunk trails a finger in the racing water.We climbed the path up to the look out. You get a view down over the falls.I took some shots of wattles flowering in the bush. After Eucalyptus trees, Wattles are perhaps the next most widely spread group of plants in Oz. They range in size from small shrubs to substantial trees.

Most varieties flower in this typical yellow colour. The flowers are tiny, each about the size of a fingernail.

Some species have a white flower.I haven’t got any shots, but in spring whole areas in the bush can be golden yellow with wattle blossom.

As a total by-the-way, Australian wattles (which are Acacias) are called wattles because early European settlers used them in the construction of 'wattle and daub' walls in their first houses.

A final shot of me (courtesy of Deb) at the look out. I think I look tired, not from the walk, but from the hectic week I had at work.
Thank goodness for spaces like this near Melbourne so I can unwind on the weekends.

Sunday Swan Watch IV: The Washout

Now before I start don’t panic, today’s post has a happy ending.

I was up early this morning and soon after I headed out hoping to get some piccies of “our” swans.

This morning was bitterly cold (by Aussie standards anyway), intermittently raining and blowing a gale. In fact we have had atrocious weather all week, flooding rains right across the state and damaging winds in a lot of areas (it’s been Ok here in terms of wind).

Because of the weather I drove down to the swans’ pond. When I arrived I couldn’t see any sign of our family.

The only water fowl I could see was a solitary coot.More concerning is the pond has seen a rise and then fall in water level with the rain. This piccie shows a lot of reed debris left as the water has risen and then retreated. Somewhat concerning to me the swans’ nest has been destroyed by the minor flood. These short reeds are the ones that their platform was tethered to. As the water has risen the platform has been floated off and then broken up.

Interestingly some large water-bird has begun building another platform just nearby. I guess it isn’t our swans, but who knows.

As I said I couldn’t see any sign of the swans. I wasn’t really worried because the weather was awful and I guessed they were hunkered down somewhere keeping the babies warm. So I began walking around the perimeter of the pond, planning to check it and the ponds nearby.

But that was not to be, it began to really rain, so I beat a retreat.

A bit later looking at the weather I got the impression that I wasn’t going to be able to get out to get any piccies. I guessed I would have to post an up in the air post for today’s Swan Watch. Deb and I decided to go for a drive.

We drove up to Ballarat (about 90 minutes away) to have a look at Lake Wendouree, the lake is a shallow volcanic crater lake that lies in the heart of Ballarat. We wanted to have a look because with the drought we have had over the past few years the lake has been totally dry.

Until this week that is, we have had so much rain in the state in recent weeks and especially this week that the lake has begun to fill up again.While we were at the lake I braved the rain to grab a few shots of another swan family (I figured they would make a consolation prize given I couldn’t post piccies of ours).

The cob was keeping a close eye on me to make sure I didn’t get too close.He is the proud father of five cygnets. As you can probably see they are quite a lot larger than “our” babies. I’d guess these guys hatched three or four weeks ago.

Now to the happy ending.

When I got home this evening my daughter Io said the weather had improved for a while this afternoon. She and her boyfriend had gone for a walk. They saw swans grazing near the pond.

Very kindly they took some photos on a mobile phone (hence the quality).
In this first you can see some wood ducks and a couple of swans.Getting a bit closer they got some pictures of our babies (see the fuzzy grey blobs), before the cob told them to move on.
So all is well with our swans :-)

Nothing Profound

I thought I’d share a little of the weather we have been having over the past week.

Late the other afternoon we had a huge storm blow in from the North-East.

It was still well and truly daylight but in an instant it was half-light.

You’ll have to excuse the poor quality of these photos, but I was trying to prevent my camera from getting too wet.The wind, as you can see was driving the rain across our neighbourhood. Inside a minute of this rain and our gutters were overflowing like crazy.In the North of Oz when it rains it tends to pour. Cloudbursts aren’t as common down here in Victoria, but we certainly have our share.

The sound of a downpour like this on a steel roof has to be heard to be believed.

Then, as usually happens with this type of storm, it was gone.

An hour later the clouds now moving away to the West gave us a pretty sunset.

And Now for the Weather

No I haven’t fallen off the edge of the world.
It seems an age since I last posted.
Yet now I check it is only five days.

We had a long weekend here in Victoria: Monday was “Labour Day.”
Pretty much every state in Oz celebrates the holiday but they all hold it at different times of the year.

I have had a busy weekend, my brother Mike and his wife Caro came down to visit from their farm in Northern NSW.
On Sunday we went for a drive down to the Mornington Peninsula. Surprise, surprise I took some piccies down there, I hope to post some of them later in the week.

Now for the weather.

As is traditional we seem to be swinging from a drought cycle to a flood phase.
For hundreds of years droughts in Oz have ended with flooding rains.
This year seems to be no exception.

Up north Queensland seems to be half under water.
While we in Melbourne have had to contend with local flooding and hail.

To put it mildly it has been bucketing down.

In between showers yesterday evening I went out briefly to have a look around.
As when I go almost anywhere my camera went with me.

I stopped to snap these two shots of an impressive skyscape. As you can probably see from the clouds it was blowing a gale.

These benches are in a local park.
As you can also see it is a bit wet.

Then another piccie of the rapidly changing sky (where the cloud was fast eating the blue) before scurrying home to get out of the rain.
If you are interested the ABC (that would be Australian Broadcasting Corporation) has a site with a lot of topical piccies. Topical for Oz that is, at the moment they are featuring a lot of flood piccies from QLD and Victoria