Wedding and walking

Well done lads!

Over the past week or so the cuckoos have started to turn up in Sydney and so Spring is finally here. It's still a bit chilly at night but we're getting the odd warmer day here and there and the spiders are emerging with two on my car in the past two weeks. Not good.

Keeping the boys moving

A couple of weeks back the lads took part in the Oxfam Trailwalker. The event involved walking 100 km in under 48 hours from Brooklyn up on the Hawkesbury all the way down to Sydney Harbour. Of course I'm not going to be hiking 100 km so I did it in the car as support crew. That just meant carrying their gear, preparing meals, and so on. There were check-points every 10 km or so where the support crews could meet the teams and keep them on the road. The lads put in a top effort and walked non-stop day and night to raise 3 grand for a great cause. Howard even got blisters on his blisters which was a new one for the St Johns Ambulance people. Only about 55% of the teams finished so the celebrations at the finish were well justified.

Wedding day in Forbes

Last weekend Emily and I attended the wedding of Joe Sly all the way out in Forbes. Joe worked with me at Sydney Uni when I first moved to Australia and has been living in Holland and California since then so good to catch up again. Unfortunately the weather was awful with wind and rain but the country always needs rain and so people weren't too upset by it. And on the way out there the conditions seem to have given me a tick as well! We stumbled across a Barn Owl #409 flying beside the road in the middle of the day. What it was doing I don't know but maybe a few nights of atrocious weather and poor hunting forced it out in the day. Anyway, getting out of Sydney and into the country is a very good thing to do no matter what the situation.

A very full Gum Swamp, Forbes

Australasian Grebe

Spot the Reed Warbler