Raining Today

We had some light rain yesterday and the mother peacock was standing in the rain and her babies were sheltering underneath her, looked so funny seeing all those little legs.

NEW BABIES

Two weeks ago my peahen hatched 4 babies aren't they soooooo cute. They are 1 day old in these pictures.

The water way into our dam has a lot of sandstone rock (our soil here is very sandy) here is a close up after some recent rain. It can be quite pretty when the sun glistens on the running water.

Spider & Toadstools

After some recent rain I took my camera down to the dam area and found this little spider happily skimming aross the water top looking for insects.

There were also a few toadstools scattered around the place, this one was the biggest and so white. Same toadstool just took photo from different angle.

Sydney Skyline

Here is a another shot I took from the plane's window, you can still see the harbour bridge, opera house and then the city centre.

In Plane View

On my trip back from Cowra/Orange I had to fly into Sydney to change planes to head on to Brisbane, I was on a small SAAB Jet Plane and took this great photo opportunity to snap the view of Sydney Harbour through the plane window. You can see the Sydney Harbour Bridge (nicknamed 'the coathanger') and the opera house is also visible. It always makes me feel warm and fuzzy flying into Sydney and seeing this sight, especially at night. I was born in Sydney and lived there for the first 17 years of my life before I joined the Australian Army........ but thats another story LOL

The town of Orange

On my trip down at Cowra I spent some time in the town of Orange (New South Wales). A walk around town with my camera produced these photos, hope you like.

Japanese Gardens Display

Apart from the amazing landscapes, the Japanese Gardens at Cowra NSW also has an indoor display of various Japanese artifacts. Here are just a few:

Cowra

Here are some more photos taken at the Japanese Gardens at Cowra, New South Wales, I hope you enjoy.

Missing In Action

Sorry, I have been 'Missing In Action' for a while LOL, but I am currently interstate staying at my sisters place at Cowra New South Wales for a few weeks. Cowra is a historical town as they had a Japanese prisoner of war camp here and it's famous for the Great Cowra Break-out, if you want to know more just google it, its a very interesting read. The old camp is now a magnificent Japanese gardens and I have some photos to share of my visit there.

SURF CARNIVAL

With Australia being the fun loving place we want it to be and the fact that most Aussies and the tourists that visit here, love the beach we have many surf lifesavers patrolling our beaches to keep the swimmers safe. Our surf lifesavers work for free, they dont get paid like they do over in other countries, they do it out of love for the beach and to keep beach goers safe.

They often have surf carnivals where they raise money for equipment and also we have the Australian Iron Man competition where participants have to do a marathon of different water/beach activities and compete against each other for the Iron Man trophy. When we were at Coolum Beach the other weekend they had an Iron Man carnival being held there. There was even a helicopter in the air over the water with cameras to get all the action as it was happening. If you wanted more info about these Iron Man activities just google it.

COOUM BEACH

We stayed at Coolum Beach last weekend, thats where Garry's daughter lives with her partner and her 3 children... great weather and a very relaxing place.

SNAIL

While we were over at the Sunshine Coast last weekend we found this huge snail, looks pretty old but he was very much still alive (thats my hand by the way, so you can see how big he was).

Eumundi Markets

I havent posted for a few days as we went over to the Sunshine Coast for the weekend. On Saturday we visited the Eumundi Markets, it is huge and settled amongst the beautiful treed township of Eumundi. There are so many market stalls it takes all morning to see most of them. Here are some shots of when we were walking around.

MOON 2

Last night's moon looked real eerie so took a photo

WILDLIFE INDOORS

We also have some wildlife that live inside with us, they are small geckos. This one had his tail chopped off when I closed the sliding door a few months ago unfortunately I didn't see him, however you can see where he has grown a newer tail. They are great to have around, they eat any insects including spiders.... I just need to put little dusters on their tails to get rid of the cobwebs as well LOL.

FLOWER 2

Another angle shot of that flower photo I posted earlier.

BOOT

In my centre garden I have some ornamental items and this one is my favourite, an old boot that has been spray painted and then potted with a couple of plants (which was given to me by a great friend) ... so don't throw out your old boots LOL.

ROSELLA

Australia has some beautiful birdlife, here is a photo of a Pale Headed Rosella that visits me most days, they are not as friendly as the King Parrots, but they still come and stay long enough for me to get a photo LOL.

PLANTS

Just some of the plants we have in our centre garden in the driveway

ONCE A YEAR

As you come down my driveway you can just drive straight around a small garden and back out again, so the garden is virtually in the middle of a roundabout lol. In this garden I have many succulent type plants and amongst those I have a plant that only flowers once per year and the flower blooms at night and by the next morning it is dead, so once a year (around Christmas time) I watch out for the flower. It is quite large, as big as my hand. I dont know the name but here is a photo.

KING PARROT

Australia has some beautiful wildlife and this is one of my many visitors. It is a male King Parrot, when he comes to visit he sits on my back deck and chatters to get my attention so I come out and put a tin of parrot mix on the table I can sit and watch him while he eats the seed and as you can see he is not too shy LOL. We never try and touch them so they feel comfortable around us. Someimes I put seed in my hand and he eats straight from my hand. It is so cool that he trusts me.

FROG

It doesn't take much to bring the frogs out of hiding, with the recent rain we had there are hundreds of them all around the dam area and a few around my spa LOL. This green tree frog was sitting in the open in a sandy area in full sun and didnt look too good, so I moved him into a leafy shady area and poured some cooling water over him, at least he sat still long enough for me to take a photo.

RAIN

Yesterday we had a deluge of rain, it came down that hard and fast that my driveway was like a flowing stream.

Then it stopped, in 5 minutes it was all over. Later on last night it started to steady rain again and continued throughout the night. Oh boy didn't the frogs love it, they (hundreds), croaked all night long. This morning at 5.30am I got up to check to see if the dam wall was still there, yep it was and so is some nice catchment of water. Checked the rain guge and all up we got 50mm rain (2 inches) my water tanks are full again YAY !!

MOON Closeup

I had some nice emails about my moon photo posted yesterday and thought I would add this closeup one I also did, sorry its a bit blurry. I love going outside at night and just looking up, the milky way with its millions of stars are so visible, and the ever present Southen Cross constellation is always there reminding me of this country that I love.

Moon

Ever since I was a little girl (which is a long time ago now LOL) I have been fascinated by the stars. We have a telescope, nothing expensive (under $100) and used my canon A560 which is only a 7.1 megapixel digital camera through the eye viewer and took this photo of the moon, it was very difficult getting it just right as the eye viewer is not made for taking photos through LOL but nevertheless we got this great shot so thought I would share it with you.

Water is precious

I had a comment on my photo from yesterday about water. We dont rely on our Dam for drinking water, that is purely for recreation, water plants etc. However as we are so far from town we have to provide our own water so we have a few water tanks attached to the house and sheds to catch the rain from their roof (when we get it LOL) This one holds 5,200 gallons, it is partly dug into the ground. We also have the tanks set so we can pump from one tank to another if one gets too low. We are water wise so dont waste water, it's a precious commodity but if we were to run out completely there are companies we can buy water from, they bring out a water truck and pump 3,000 gallons into your tank, we have been on this property for over 9 years now and only had to buy water when we originally moved here and put the tanks in. Even though we dont get much rain, every drop we do get on our roof areas go into the tanks and although they have been low over the years we havent run out yet. The last rain deluge we had that broke the dam wall filled all tanks so there was a positive after all.