Merry Christmas

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas
and all the best for 2010!

Car news

Its been an eventful time for the car over the past couple of weeks. On the way back from Dubbo it brought up its 100,000 km which made it well worth pulling over for a photo opportunity!

100,000 km

Last week saw the car get on the news for the first time for its involvement in a four car pile-up on the Iron Cove bridge! It was bound to happen sooner or later in the madness of Sydney's rush hour traffic and so it was that after a bit of sharp braking, some bloke in an enormous SUV ploughed into the back of the line of stationary cars. I was third in line to be hit but was ridiculously lucky as the car behind me was written off and I got away with a cracked bumper! So the car gets a shiny new one in the new year. Lucky car.

A pleasant spot to bring up the landmark

Dubbo twitch

Red-rumped Parrots - Male (top) and female

Firstly, my apologies for not keeping things appropriately updated. There has not been a great deal going on here recently but with the warmer weather upon us the snorkeling is beginning again. There seem to be a lot of octopuses about at the moment.

Too late! Dried up pond

A few weekends back I heard about a Painted Snipe living in a small pond in Dubbo. Although widespread, they are rare and so to hear about one in a little pond with nowhere else to go presented a fine twitching opportunity. Dubbo is 400 km west of Sydney and so a good spot for a weekend away.

Eastern Rosellas showering under a leaky pump

When Emily and I arrived at the little pond, however, it had dried up and the bird had obviously moved on. We must have only missed it by a day or two at the most. We checked out the local wetland reserve which would have been a much more sensible place for the bird to be living in the first place and as the sun went down, I flushed a snipe from the edge of a pond. No tick this trip though as I'm pretty sure it was just the common Latham's Snipe.

Mount Panorama, Bathurst

On the way back to Sydney we took a spin round the Mount Panorama racing circuit in Bathurst which is the Mecca for Australian petrol-heads. They've put speed cameras all around the place though so one has to behave!

A different way to get down the mountain