Sunday Swan Watch VI: The Swans Are Back in Town

I had an uber-stressful week at work this past week. So I am pretty tired even at this end of the weekend.
I won’t say any more about that now because I have much cheerier topics to talk about (maybe I'll say more later in the week).

As I said in my last post, my number two daughter Io reported to me that our swans were back in their usual haunt. As soon as I got a chance I went down to have a look for them.

Initially I didn’t see them, but there was an interesting visitor at the pond.
A pelican was passing through.
He/she is a species known as an ‘Australian Pelican’.
They are large and quite spectacular birds.
This one was busy fishing on the pond.
Anyway, after snapping some piccies of the pelican I resumed my hunt for the swan family.

Eventually I found three of them on a lawn not far from the pond.
The two baby cygnets and one of the parents.I couldn’t work out whether it is the cob or the pen with the babies. Usually I tell by the fact that the cob is larger and more aggressive towards interlopers like me, but with one around I’m not quite sure.
The cygnets have grown amazingly in the three or so weeks since I last posted piccies of them.
I would guess they have at least doubled in size, but the babies are still disgustingly cute.
They waddle a few steps across the grass before flopping down and biting off a few blades.
Their necks are beginning to get longer, just hinting at the graceful instruments they will be one day.
Next time I hope to post about what Deb and I have been busy with for the rest of our day.

A Record Short Post

My number two Daughter Io saw most of our swans today.
To be precise she saw the two babies and one of the parents.
Hopefully I’ll catch up with (and photograph) them later in the week.

Continuing with the wet theme:Agnes Falls in Gippsland.

Wet, Wet, Wet.

First up some house keeping -

Welcome to any who have found their way here through Karen G’s Labor Day BBQ Blog-o-rama.

Second: My Sunday Swan watch will have to be temporarily suspended. It isn’t through a lack of trying, but our Swan family are not at the moment to be found.
Don’t panic, I doubt anything untoward has happened to them. Rather as I’ll point out below the weather down this way has been very suitable for swans, ducks and the like. This has meant the nearby area available for our swans has gone from probably 20 acres of wetlands to hundreds of acres. This is due to higher water levels allowing them easy access to other channels and ponds. I have hunted for them on a number of occasions as has my daughter Io, but with no results.

Finally: Thank you to all who expressed concern for Deb after her fall. She is almost entirely better with all aches and pains pretty much gone.

Now on to my post for tonight…

Poor Victoria has been lashed by torrential rains over the past twenty-four hours.

On top of an already wet winter this has meant significant flooding in the north of the state.
Again – don’t panic, down in the south - central where we are, the rainfall has been much lower with only nuisance localised flooding.

As is usual Deb and I were out and about. We headed in the direction of one of our favourite haunts, the Upper Yarra Valley.

Well the Yarra River has burst its banks.
Back in February I posted this piccie of the river.Today from the same point the scene is a bit different.I didn’t post this picture, but it shows Deb’s brother-in-law David and our niece Kennedy on the same day.They are sitting at a picnic bench in a park near the river.

I don’t think we’d use the bench today.But for many local residents life goes on as normal.

The Happy Wanderer is showing its first flush of spring flowers.This big gum tree will be happy at a good drink after so many years of drought.And these Sulphur Crested Cockatoos weren’t bothered by the rain, but they only put up with me getting so close before flying off.On our way home we paused so I could capture some shots of people driving on moderately flooded roads.

Some being sensible, took it slowly.While others raced through the water (today we saw one person flood their motor this way).

I guess this farmer won’t be getting machinery on his field any time soon.One last shot of more flooded paddocks I took on the way home. As you can see from the clouds it looks like we are in for more rain.

Gippsland

Once again it is longer than I would have liked between posts.

I mentioned that Deb and I drove across to Gippsland (the eastern section of Victoria).
Well one of Deb’s colleagues owns a holiday house at Cape Paterson and she kindly lent it to us for the weekend.

As you can see the road out front is very wet, it rained for much of our trip down. We have had a really wet winter, with rain more often than not. We were worried that it would rain the whole weekend, but it cleared up soon after we got there.

The house is right across the road from the beach. After we got the car unpacked we went for a stroll along the beach in the evening light.

I loved the waves breaking over these rocks.As we walked further along the beach I took photos back towards the East


The waves have carved this rock full of holes and basins. These couple of piccies feature the rocks and in the distance Cape Liptrap.At the tip of Cape Patterson is a reef that extends out into Bass Strait. Bass Straight lies between the Aussie Mainland and Tasmania.

We happily strolled across the rocks of the reef. The light was painting the rocks gorgeous colours.About now we had a near disaster. They didn’t look it, but many of these rocks were treacherously slippery.

As Deb stepped from one rock to another her foot skidded and she fell straight down onto the rocks on her front.

I raced across to where she was lying; it was a terrifying experience. I had thoughts of Deb suffering concussion and broken bones.

Fortunately, things weren’t as bad as they might have been.
She slightly grazed her chin and hands. Her worst injury was to her shoulders. She jarred both as she threw her hands out to stop her face smacking into the stone. Poor Deb has been stiff and sore all week.

Not surprisingly that put an end to our walk. We went straight back to the house where I lit a roaring fire and made Deb a hot drink. Once we got warm Deb felt a bit less sore and sorry and we had a evening watching movies and planning our next day.

A Birthday

I thought I should post about a little date of local note.

Today (30 August 2010) is my adoptive city Melbourne’s 175th birthday.

So on this day in 1835 settlers who had sailed from Tasmania (now our smallest state, back then the second British colony in Australia) came ashore from the schooner Enterprize and began clearing for vegetable gardens and buildings.

Since then Melbourne has grown to a city of 4,000,000 souls.

One of Melbourne’s icons is the tram system, featuring modern and not so modern trams.Melbourne is a mix of old buildings and new.

In any area you can see a palimpsest of old and new.
The old is valued for its own sake and there are strict heritage laws to protect buildings of cultural or historical value.Of course sometimes this can cause problems for developers. For example this old factory (a shot tower) was where a developer wanted to build a new shopping centre.But then again, with a little creativity you build around the old (without harming it) and end up with something interesting.

Sunday - But no Swan Watch (Sorry)

An extremely quick post tonight.

For those of you hanging out for a dose of cygnet cuteness I have to say sorry.

I did try to catch up with our swans on Friday afternoon, but I got chased back inside by cold wet weather before I found them.

I have been away all weekend in Gippsland (eastern Victoria), and didn't get back until after dark.

So all I can say is I will try to catch up with them during the week (weather permitting).

Now as a slight consolation: a piccie I took at dawn this morning down at Cape Patterson in Gippsland.
Time allowing I will post about my Gippsland trip this week. I've come back with 600 odd piccies and once I have sorted them I will share more.

Ghosts

You’ll have to forgive me but the tone of this post is a bit somber.
On Saturday Deb and I went for one of our weekend drives.

As so often happens we drove out into the mountains to the east of Melbourne.
We decided to head up to Lake Mountain to see how the snow is going in the tail end of the season.

The road to Lake Mountain passes through Marysville which was devastated in the Black Saturday bushfires back in February last year. Across the state of Victoria 173 people perished in the fires.

We paused in a valley behind Marysville where I grabbed these piccies.

What was a lush valley of Mountain Ash trees is a stark graveyard of greying ghosts. The reason these trees are grey is after the fires the burnt bark has fallen from those that have died.The trees covered in a green fuzz in this piccie are the ones that pulled through the fire. Normally after a bushfire you would see the bush bouncing back and all the trees except a few would have come through. These fires were just too hot.

Back on the main road we drove further up the valley.
In places low clouds softened the ridge-lines covered in dead trees. The Aussie bush is not deciduous, these trees are bare not because of winter but because they have perished.
Finally on the high ridges ahead we saw what we had come for: Snow