Fishing at the airport

Taking off from Runway 34L

After last weekend's fun with fishing we decided to have another quick go a bit closer to home this time. After a pleasant picnic in the Royal National Park we stopped off at Botany Bay next to the airport's main runway to see if anything was biting (and to watch the planes).

A crazy Three Bar Porcupinefish

Emily quickly opened the scoring with a bizarre Three Bar Porcupinefish. It had inflated itself to the size of a small football, as they do, but when released it just continued to float on the surface. After 10-15 minutes I was fearing the worst but it clearly knew what it was doing as, figuring out by that stage that any danger was now long gone, it suddenly deflated and swam off!

Tarwhine

In between watching the planes come and go I also managed to get in on the action and caught the ubiquitous baby Snapper but a couple of Tarwhine as well.

 Another baby Snapper

 

Fishing in Forster

Forster

We decided to get away from it all last weekend and so spent a couple of nights up in Forster. It's a place we like to head for as it's a relatively comfortable 3-4 hours drive north which can be done after work on a Friday and there are always loads of dolphins to be seen when you get there. Emily is also keen to throw a line in the water as well and is continually assuring me that the place has decent fish to catch despite our last foray up there which only turned up a spectacular array of tiddlers.

Baby Snapper

The fishing this time around initially looked to be following the same script as a baby Snapper was the only thing landed in an uneventful and brutally hot morning session.

Silver Trevally

Yellowfin Bream

The evening, however, saw a change in conditions as thunderstorms and rain rolled in and a concurrent change of bait from worms to everyone's favourite prawns seemed to kick-start the action. The first two casts saw a Silver Trevally and then a nice little Bream landed.

Into the night

Weeping Toadfish

After a break for tea at a quality country-town Chinese we fished on into the night. We'd lost our premium spot next to the boat moorings by that point and so were forced further up the harbour wall. Plenty of weed made things a bit snaggy so Emily switched to a float set-up and promptly emptied the ocean of Silver Batfish.

Silver Batfish (aka Diamondfish)

With the clock approaching midnight and the dolphins coming right in for a close look I lobbed the last prawn into the water and finished the day with a little Sand Whiting and our fifth species of the trip.

Sand Whiting

I know some of you out there love your remarkable trees and so we stopped off on the way home to see 'The Grandis' which they claim to be the tallest tree in NSW. Not quite sure how they figure that out considering the vast tracts of undisturbed forest in the state but I guess it's the biggest that they've found to date. It's a Flooded Gum (Eucalyptus grandis) and comes in at about 85m tall with a diameter of just under 3m so in global terms maybe not so impressive and a wee bit underwhelming!

 'The Grandis'

 

More work-place wildlife

Here's the latest interesting visitor to turn up in the carpark at work. This Boobook spent the day roosting in one of the small trees outside the office.

Southern Boobook

  

Picnics

Picnic in the Blue Mountains

Summer is in full swing which means it's too hot to do much. Run-off from the frequent heavy rain has kept us out of the sea and so instead we've been spending a bit of time on dry land up in the mountains and down on the coast in search of cooler weather. There are a few top picnic spots round and about.

I reckon this one's probably an Eastern Water Skink

At my in-laws' place, a couple of King Parrots have become very friendly over the last few weeks and will now come and sit on your hand to eat. They're very picky parrots so as long as you've got sunflower seeds on the menu they'll come to say hello which makes taking their portraits very easy.

Mr King Parrot

Everybody's favourite Wonga Pigeon is also starting to spend a bit of time in the garden which is great stuff.

 Mrs King Parrot

Wonga Pigeon